Madden NFL 21 Reveals New Features for 'Franchise Mode' in Upcoming Update

EA Sports announced several new features that are set to be added to Madden 21's franchise mode via a title update this week. 

The update, which will roll out Nov. 12, will see several minor tweaks that fans have clamored for, along with adjustments to development and X-Factor customization.

Most of the fan-requested changes are structural but important. You will once again finally be able to see week-by-week statistics and what team a player finished a season with in their player cards. Previously, you were not able to see a player's week-by-week performance without individually going into box scores, leading to many fans abandoning the practice altogether.

The same goes for a new retirement screen in the To Do function of the franchise menu, which gives players a chance to more easily view retirements. In recent years, retirements were essentially buried in a transaction screen, leading to some players becoming frustrated when veteran players seemingly vanished without warning.

An additional welcomed menu feature is the new playoff bracket, which begins popping up in Week 13 of the regular season. The screen shows current playoff scenarios over the season's final five weeks and then remains through the playoffs, allowing players to more easily see game results. Previously, players would have to go through multiple menu options to get to the league schedule in order to see week-to-week results.

The non-cosmetic changes with this update come mostly via X-Factors and development traits. Development traits will now have limits to avoid an oversaturation of desired dev traits as players progress, which could lead to some stars losing their X-Factors later in their careers. 

"Star, Superstar, and Superstar X-Factors will now have desired counts that are treated as the “correct” amount of each Dev Trait in your Franchise (a new League Setting has been added for each Dev Trait to allow Commissioners to decide the right amount for your league experience, and default values match the roster count of Dev Traits that shipped in Madden NFL  21’s Preseason Roster) in the offseason, new logic will run to decide which players are eligible to regress. If there are more players at a specific Dev Trait than the setting says is desired, eligible players will be regressed in priority order until the target is met (in some cases, there may be slightly more than target after regression if no players were found eligible). If you prefer to play in a league where Dev Traits can’t regress, you can also turn OFF Dev Trait Regression in League Settings.

We also tuned the criteria to receive a Breakout Dev Scenario for all positions to prevent an overabundance of high Dev Traits after multiple years (and make sure we’re increasing the Dev on players who truly deserve it)."

Additionally, players will now be able to adjust which X-Factor trait a player has in the coach and owner portions of franchise mode. That feature was previously only available to the player franchise component.

A second update to franchise mode is set for January, with features like personnel logic improvements (e.g. no more Bengals drafting a quarterback despite having Joe Burrow) and several commissioner customization options, including play cool down and repeat limits.