A lazy game by a lazy company.
The first thing I want to address is that EA perpetuates the fact that this game is a football sim. That is not the case. This is not a true football sim. The mechanics are unrealistic and poorly implemented.
For instance, it is highly unlikely that a 6'2" 250 pound linebacker has the vertical jump to bat down a pass 15 yards out when you're throwing to a receiver that's 30 yards out. In fact, it's physically impossible considering your 6'4" 210 pound receiver wouldn't be able to catch the ball from that trajectory. And yet, virtually every pass you throw with a linebacker lined up in the general trajectory of the ball is inexplicably batted down.
Now there are ways to avoid this and it doesn't make the game unplayable. However, something that's physically impossible like that should not exist in a football sim.
This may even be forgiveable if EA cared enough to rectify it. But their philosophy is once the games is off the shelves they've already got your cash in their front pocket. I believe there was a public fan request some time ago where someone complained about the nanoblitzing exploit prevalent in the previous installment. He wanted to know what EA would do to fix it. And EA responded by saying that it was part of the game and they would not be doing anything to fix it.
Translation: We are too lazy to fix something that was a result of our shoddy developing.
Then don't pretend it's a football sim. Or that you actually care about making a fun, fair game.
But let's get away from the myriad of mechanic problems that EA doesn't really give a crap about. Let's talk about the other areas of the game.
Interfacing with this game is a pain in the butt. You may not notice at first, but over time the overly elaborate menu animations and 4 or 5 seconds it takes to perform a function will grate on your nerves. This is not how a menu is supposed to function on a next gen system. They did not optimize the game to perform seamlessly because they do not care about making the best game possible. They only care about making it seem like everything is different when in reality everything is more or less the same.
Now, let's talk about some of the Franchise improvements. You get a 75 man roster to tinker with now in the preseason. Which turns out to be completely useless. The players you get to tinker with are pretty much all potential Fs, Ds and the occasional C. There is nothing here to get excited about because these people won't make the team anyways. You know what would've worked? If they removed their ridiculous potential system and let players progress based on their performance in the season. So if you see a guy in preseason that you like who has the attributes you look for in the player, like speed or strength, you can develop them over time and they won't be capped at 59 or 69. That would be an intelligent addition. But once again, EA drops the ball.
Furthermore, CPU operated teams are the biggest idiots. They cut potential As like Jordan Cameron and Noel Devine and let them rot in free agency. If you don't pick them up, no one will because all of the teams operate in that same fashion.
Add that to the fact that it takes an absurd amount of time to actually sim through the preseason and Franchise mode is not off to a good start. The annoying menus and fact that you have to go and cut players yourself every week rather than letting the entire preseason sim at once (if you don't, your team will act dumb and release the potential As on your team) make this game unbearable.
The one saving grace is that scouting players for the next season is actually a good improvement but nothing incredibly innovative and certainly not enough to make me say this game is worth the money.
Free Agent bidding, while flawed in that the menus are too slow to sort through fast enough to get to every player you want to, is a step up from the crappy system they had in place last year. So I will give them credit for that as well.
Player Roles is a new addition to game that's interesting. Or is it? Actually Player Roles has been around for awhile. And it's a nice idea. But why did EA feel the need to REMOVE this feature from previous installments and then add it to the game once again? EA does not operate like a company that wants to put out quality games. They operate like a company who wants to trick the consumer to buy their game without actually thinking outside the box and innovating. So every year they remove features only to add them to the game once again later. It's a despicable marketing technique but people seem to fall for it over and over again.
There are a tremendous amount of ways to improve this game. Like, for instance, implementing a fair play option online so people who want to play sim games can do so. What is the argument against this? Going for it on fourth down, unnecessary 2 point conversions, nano blitzing, onside kicks are all part of the game. I agree. However, why does it hurt to allow the people that want to fair play to do so? It doesn't. EA is so lazy, they can't even implement fair play rules online. It's just incredible to me that they are making money with this line of thinking.
Save you money. I can't believe it, but this game is actually worse than it was last year.