After that quick look at what's been discussed so far, now comes this week's installment: a focus on improvements made to the DB and WR positions. As most folks already know, as a design team we've been very active on the forums recently (starting about a month or so before the Madden NFL 09 release). Within minutes of talking with the community it's easy to tell that one of the most common areas requested for improvement is DB/WR play. Obviously, we're listening to you, and here are just some of the other improvements and changes that you can expect to see in Madden NFL 10 come August. Defensive Assignments / Matchups This screen has some pretty broken stuff all over it, but what the heck, you guys can look at early software objectively right? For any that aren't totally familiar with this feature, in a nutshell it allows you to assign a defender to ALWAYS shadow a specific receiver around the field. So if someone is moving Randy Moss all over the place and you can't keep track of him, then you can assign your best defender to always keep him covered. I am not really going to dwell on this feature too much as it did exist in the PS2/Xbox days, but I did want to mention that we finally have it back (and it sure feels good to have back). Also of note - this is a Madden only feature.
Route Running and Man Coverage We've really spent quite a bit of time on the 'game within the game' of WR/DB interaction. There are two improvements that I'd like to expand on first (as I feel they are the most important), and both are animation related. First, we replaced nearly every single receiver route animation in the game, with the goal of more accurately recreating real life acceleration and momentum. We are also utilizing the route running rating much more now when selecting these animations. We totally re-tuned which cut moves play (and how 'open' the WR gets) based on an elite/agile/non-agile separation in regards to that rating. Check out the video below - it should really show you what kind of difference this makes from 09 to 10:
Subject: Madden 2010 WR/DB relationship 
