KOs are Overpowered

I see plenty of people say KOs are fine, so it's pretty mind-numbing. All you have to do to prove the point is play one game of Madden 23 and see how much better it is being able to actually pass. And for that matter, being able to not completely worry about unblockable blitzes and the CPU getting insta-sheds every snap is a whole lot better. Even Madden 24 Regs, or the previous Draft stuff showed how utterly busted KOs are. 

Abilities are fine as a concept, but the issue is that there's no balance. Some are necessary for players to function properly (like Pick Artist, even though it's a bit too much), some are worthless, and some are grossly overpowered (like the KOs, Bottleneck, One Step Ahead, etc). KOs across the board makes the game just unplayable slop. Defenders react instantly and knock-out every single pass unless you get lucky, having both is just absurd. 

Here's to hoping that NCAA (and I guess Madden 25) tune the Abilities well (or remove them), because the merry-go-round of every year having different Abilities being busted and ruining the game more is the worst.

Imo the best thing to do about KOs would be a  very high AP cost. If they only worked sometimes, then it would just add more randomness to the game, which would be irritating for me personally

Idk mang 95% of post i see are ppl bitching about cheesy ko's.

Change the guaranteed knockout to a small bonus chance... idk what the actual algorithm is but assuming in a normal situation its catch in traffic vs hit power that is rolled on contested catches, make it so the KOs treat hitpower at 110%

elmango30 said:

Imo the best thing to do about KOs would be a  very high AP cost. If they only worked sometimes, then it would just add more randomness to the game, which would be irritating for me personally

Raising and lowering AP costs is just a bandaid issue for any Ability, but I completely agree about less randomness in the game. Whenever I see people cry about things that're guaranteed to work but are easily countered by one adjustment, it makes my head spin. No matter the level of player, we want the game to be a chess match, where we know what'll happen pretty much every snap. Random animations and whatever other nonsense removes skill-gap from the game and feeds into EA bailing kids out with DDA and fluke. 
 

But KOs are fixed instantly if they just removed the knockout effect, all it is is a bailout for bad defense. The gain in reaction-time and awareness is more than enough to make KOs a good pick, but not required.

Eagles215 said:

Idk mang 95% of post i see are ppl bitching about cheesy ko's.

Maybe here, but I see plenty of guys that're shitters or (actual) top 100 players in the world say they're fine. 
 

Knowing that they've played Madden for years, even though I like them, Dubby and Civ constantly having awful takes about Madden is horrendous. "Jukes aren't OP," "KOs are fine, you just weren't open enough," "The run is fine," "Content is great," "This is the best Madden for gameplay," etc. That shit is easily the same level as rage-inducing as kids who spam glitches the entire game and think they have any skill. 
 

Madden as a game is easily made to be great for Madden 26, with Madden 27 being legitimate the best ever if they were just ran by people who gave a damn and knew what they were doing.

Well those guys love catering to EA since EA includes and promotes them on twitch so yeah youre gonna hear them saying "the right things" not to upset little bro EA. But we the community know whatsup they can glaze ea all they want.

Gameplay in M24 is trash. I'm definitely thinking about going back for a bit before NCAA release. Just have a few unlocks in M24 I might as well get.

KissTheRing said:

Raising and lowering AP costs is just a bandaid issue for any Ability, but I completely agree about less randomness in the game. Whenever I see people cry about things that're guaranteed to work but are easily countered by one adjustment, it makes my head spin. No matter the level of player, we want the game to be a chess match, where we know what'll happen pretty much every snap. Random animations and whatever other nonsense removes skill-gap from the game and feeds into EA bailing kids out with DDA and fluke. 
 

But KOs are fixed instantly if they just removed the knockout effect, all it is is a bailout for bad defense. The gain in reaction-time and awareness is more than enough to make KOs a good pick, but not required.

I think that idea also works. Acrobat used to kinda do that but it was very inconsistent

elmango30 said:

Imo the best thing to do about KOs would be a  very high AP cost. If they only worked sometimes, then it would just add more randomness to the game, which would be irritating for me personally

I think the problem with a high ap cost is that inevitably EA will discount it for pack sales. And the discounts eventually reach a point where the KO abilities are too cheap. Imo, EA just benefits too much from releasing unbalanced cards/abilities for them to care about mut being a well balanced experience.

I get that randomness is annoying but it isn't inherently a bad thing. Nobody likes losing because of a coin flip. But at the same time, a coin that's weighted to always land on heads is also uninteresting to flip unless you're the one who benefits. Personally, I think KOs are a bit too close to a weighted coin to be balanced for my liking. I'd also say the same thing about offensive xfactors like angry runs when the defense doesn't have secure tackler. I know this probably won't change anyone's opinion on randomness. I just think it's important to recognize that without some randomness, games can be become boring.

No idea how to implement it, but I wonder if there's anything Ea could do so that there needs to be more user input once the ball is in the air in order for KOs to succeed. That way there's more risk to if KOs will work but it's not entirely random.

KOs exist because of horse piss poor coding of defensive AI, if they did not exist, any average player could drop 50 points without Much effort. This is the bandaid ea used to counter this. What they do need to change is the delayed KOs, if my wr takes 2-3 steps and then drops the ball, that’s absurd.

DrNO said:

KOs exist because of horse piss poor coding of defensive AI, if they did not exist, any average player could drop 50 points without Much effort. This is the bandaid ea used to counter this. What they do need to change is the delayed KOs, if my wr takes 2-3 steps and then drops the ball, that’s absurd.

I don't disagree that the coding is bad (and my understanding is that it's that way due to EA only hiring contractors that work on the game for a year and then aren't retained, so it's a never-ending cycle of people scrambling to keep their head above water), but I don't think that's because of the reaction times of the CPU. As far as I can tell, in Regs the scores can get really high because of the differences in Speed leading to busted coverages constantly. I could be wrong, but playing the Draft event earlier, I don't think reactions were necessarily a problem, just speed issues, just like how I think Pick Artist needs to be toned-down to like 70% of what it is. 

I guess we could technically just play some games without KOs and having juiced teams to see if the Speeds being the same works, because if it did, then we know KOs don't need to exist. But the actual knocking out of the ball is the most frustrating part of it all. Like I said, we can't throw the ball at all unless the receiver is either 40 feet away, going out of bounds, in the End Zone, or is going to get popped instantaneous by two defenders. KOs just ruin the game and bail kids out, and the WR Abilities not only don't counter it (to my knowledge), you can't really afford them AP-wise due to the necessities of other Abilities just to survive a millisecond. 

Honestly, I had the thought that I could just try and play wager matches where we ban the shit that ruins the game. No KOs, no rollouts, no abusing the run, no bullshit offenses, no unblockable blitzes. At least then it can be a fun and playable game.

KOs are OP trash. Period.

DrNO said:

KOs exist because of horse piss poor coding of defensive AI, if they did not exist, any average player could drop 50 points without Much effort. This is the bandaid ea used to counter this. What they do need to change is the delayed KOs, if my wr takes 2-3 steps and then drops the ball, that’s absurd.

This right here