I generally do not play free-to-play games. I usually associate such games with scammy, exploitative micro-transaction economies. However, I do feel that one genre of video game that could actually be a very good candidate for a free-to-play model is sports games. Sports games have long been criticized as being "full price roster updates". This has become painfully more true as games have become bigger, more complicated, and more expensive to create. There just isn't enough development time in between annual release schedules to implement comprehensive updates to a sports game, and so they typically only receive minor, token changes, which often feel under-developed and poorly-tested and balanced.
In a free-to-play model, however, the developers aren't constrained to rush a "full new game" out every year, in time for the start of the new sport season. They can continue to update the same game, adding new features -- no matter how small or large -- on a much more liberal schedule.
More importantly, gamers aren't forced to buy a whole new game each and every year and reset all their progress. If I play a particular release of Madden for a few in-game seasons, building my team through the draft and developing my players, I eventually get to the point where it feels pointless to continue playing. The new Madden will release, and all my draft picks, player upgrades, and roster moves will be erased and replaced with whatever happened in the real NFL season. Even indie games that aren't tied to a real-life sports league (and its rosters), such as Axis Football, have this same problem. Every new year's game release requires restarting my franchise or dynasty from scratch, erasing dozens (or hundreds!) of hours of play and progress.
My rosters and progress won't get reset every year when a new game releases.
With a free-to-play model, there isn't going to be a "new game" every year, and supposedly, I will be able to continue playing the same dynasty or franchise for as long as I want, and still be able to receive any gameplay updates or new features that are released.
Honestly, I've been wishing that Madden would go to this sort of model for years now. Just have a single, live service football game that is funded by Ultimate Team and other in-app purchases. Maybe annual roster updates could be like a $10 DLC or something?
Dynasty season pass?
But this does beg the question: how will Maximum Football's publisher make money? The method of monetization was always a concern for Maximum Football's reboot. They wouldn't have the names and likenesses of real football players to slap onto digital trading cards for their version of an Ultimate Team. They could potentially get by with selling cosmetic-only items. But would there be enough of a market for such purchases? Maybe they would have to resort to micro-transactions that feel more like pay-to-win mechanics, such as paying for progression boosts for Dynasty players, or literally just buying recruiting prospects (think of the original launch of Middle-Earth: Shadow of War).
The good news is: there is no trace of any pay-to-win mechanics in Maximum Football's Dynasty Mode that I could find. The bad news is: Dynasty Mode is still monetized.
Even though Maximum Football does have its own equivalent of Ultimate Team, complete with in-app purchases for card packs and power ups, the Dynasty Mode is pay-walled by ... <sigh> ... a season pass.
If you want to play more than 1 or 2 seasons of Dynasty, you have to pay (or grind).
You can download Maximum Football for free. You can create and customize teams for free. You can play as many exhibition games as you want (using your created team(s)) for free. And you can start a Dynasty and play through a full year or 2 for free. But if you want to carry that Dynasty into future seasons, well then you gotta pay. Additional seasons of Dynasty are locked behind a $20 season pass. Or you can use the 2 Dynasty Tickets that you start with to play 2 seasons, and then try to earn more Dynasty tickets from daily login rewards or from grinding other game modes.
New Dynasty tickets seem to be earned every 14 days that you log into the game. I guess if you're playing 1 Dynasty match per day, then the daily login rewards should be enough to keep your Dynasty going indefinitely.
The game says that the $20 Season Pass grants "unrestricted access" to Dynasty Mode. So I'm assuming (and hoping) that this means Maximum Games isn't going to charge us for a season pass every year if we want to keep playing Dynasty -- effectively turning Dynasty Mode into a subscription service. But I guess we won't find that out for sure until next year.
In fact, there's a season pass for the Franchise Mode too, even though the Franchise Mode isn't even actually in the game yet. The game is techncially in Early Access, so the idea of paying for content that isn't actually in the game yet is a little more forgivable than retail games that sell season passes for future DLC that doesn't exist yet. But still, I'm wary of any game that sells content that isn't actually in the game yet. If Maximum Football flops, and this Franchise Mode never actually releases, then that's $40 down the drain.
Maximum Ultimate Team
And yes, there's also plenty of cosmetic items that you can buy with real money. It ain't cheap either. Buying a single custom facemask can cost as much as $5! I've said this before, but I really question the appropriateness of the term "micro-transaction"; these really seem like "macro-transactions" to me!
A single facemask costs $5?!
The other primary method of monetization is ranked play via the Maximum Pro League. This is basically Maximum's version of Ultimate Team. You buy card packs that give you players or upgrades, and then play ranked matches online against other gamers to move up the ranks and earn credits for better card packs.
I tried playing the Pro League mode, but was unable to open any card packs. Every pack I attempted to open (including the free ones that are available by default) resulting in an error message saying "could not createcard". So I gave up. I probably wasn't going to play the Pro League much any way (other than to just test it out), due to my long-standing principle of not playing games with pay-to-win micro-transaction economies. But if the game can't even give me the rewards that I am properly entitled to -- let alone ones that I might have paid for -- then that is an absolute deal-breaker!
I couldn't open any Pro League card packs due to a recurring error.
Trial-and-error Dynasty
A college football game lives and dies on its recruiting. Sadly, recruiting is where Maximum Football dies. Recruiting players just doesn't feel good. The interface is extremely clunky and difficult to use. I experienced a number of presumed glitches (especially in the first season). And since almost all of the players in the game have overall ratings in the high 70's or 80's, I just don't feel particularly engaged in trying to recruit elite players. I can just recruit a lower-rated prospect and then spend my shitloads of accumulated experience points to bring his ratings up to the same level as a starter (while he's still a freshman).
My favorite feature of the original Maximum Football
was the biographical flavor text for each prospect.
The one thing that I like is that this recruiting model takes its inspiration from NCAA Football 13, in that it frames the recruiting process as a dialogue with the prospect, including keeping histories of text message conversations between you and the prospect. Unfortunately, there's no flavor dialogue for the phone calls or emails. This version of Maximum Football also lacks the personal biographical flavor text that was present in Canuck Play's version of the game. That was my favorite feature of the old recruiting feature, and it's a huge shame that Maximum Entertainment did not bother to port it into their game.
And honestly, the recruiting kind of just goes downhill from there.
There's no way to query prospective recruits by their interest towards your school. Instead, you have to pay 5 Prestige points just to unlock the prospect's interest level and basic physical characteristics. You have to blindly select prospects, one at a time, and spend 5 points on each just to find out if they are even interested enough to be worth recruiting to begin with. Then you have to spend more points to scout their ratings.
Once a prospect is on your recruiting board, the actual cost to recruit that prospect is also not clearly presented to the user. For starters, you have to spend Prestige points simply to open contact with a prospect, but the game doesn't tell you this up front. So you might think that you have enough points to call and do a Soft Sell. But no, it costs more prestige than you have. In fact, you can't even view the prospect's pitch interests or your contact history with the recruit without spending the Prestige points.
You can also spend Prestige points to email a prospect to learn his pitch interests, or sway those interests, but the game doesn't specify how many Prestige points this costs. And it's a lot of points!
Recruiting is clunky and buggy.
Figuring all of this out requires trial-and-error, but the game is designed to prevent the user from being able to learn via trial-and-error. It costs a "ticket" to start a new Dynasty, and I could not find any way to create a manual save backup. There's no way to go back to undo a mistake in recruiting; no way to experiment; no way to figure out how all of this works. Nor can you quit your Dynasty to refund your ticket in order to start a new Dynasty. You have to just play, and if you screw up because you didn't understand what you were doing, you have to just live with it.
More broadly speaking, there just aren't enough Prestige points to spend on recruiting on a week-to-week basis. I don't know, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but early in a Dynasty, I can only call 2 or 3 prospects per week. There's also no offseason recruiting at all! If you fail to achieve commitments from prospects before the end of the regular season, that is it. You don't get to sign those players, even if they have enough interest for a scholarship offer. The Dynasty mode also defaults to only having a single week of preseason, which means even less opportunity to recruit. The inability to filter for prospects who are already interested in my school, the limited points, and the lack of offseason recruiting meant that I had entire seasons in which I did not successfully recruit a single player. Most seasons, I only signed a handful of recruits -- a far cry from the 25 scholarships that I supposedly have available! These issues make recruiting feel like a crap-shoot and grind.
Recruiting is framed as a dialogue, but lacks flavor text.
I recommend giving yourself at least 4 weeks of preseason to do some recruiting.
Dynasty mode also goes one step beyond College Football 25 by including some financial management. You have to pay upkeep for your stadium and pay coach's salaries. You can set ticket and merchandise prices, and also spend your money on upgraded facilities. Sadly, there are no coordinators or position coaches, let alone other money syncs like a medical staff, opponent scouts, recruiters, a marching band, cheer squad, mascot, or so forth. There's also absolutely no mention of "Name, Image, Likeness" (NIL) anywhere in the game. You don't pay players, or have to worry about them transferring to more lucrative opportunities.
Hopefully, some of these mechanics will be added to the game in the future.
The player can set ticket and merchandise prices, and spend money to upgrade facilities.
Live game experience
The Dynasty mode has other nagging annoyances. The biggest one is that all progression is handled by the single currency of coach experience. Coach experience is used to upgrade coach skills and to upgrade player ratings. Money can also be used to upgrade your stadium and facilities, but for the most part, you'll be playing for coach XP. Individual players do not gain their own experience points from playing in games or from weekly practice.
This means that your choices of who to redshirt have little impact on the players themselves. It also means that there's very little point in playing rotational players or in subbing in backups during a blowout (other than to mitigate injury risk). These players don't gain any benefit from extra game reps. In fact, you're better off continuing to play your starters in such games. They will play better, put up better stats, and be more likely to gain additional experience for your coach, which will allow you to upgrade your team faster.
Players do not gain levels or ratings boosts from playing in games or from practice reps.
The XP system also makes weekly practice feel more like a grind. Each week, you can practice 10 plays on offense and defense in order to earn extra XP. The plays you run in practice will be highlighted during that week's match, but the game doesn't explain what this does. Do my players have some kind of boost when executing those plays?
Unfortunately, the game does not provide any kind of scouting report for your upcoming opponent. In fact, your upcoming opponent isn't even displayed anywhere on the main Dynasty hub. You have to go into your full team schedule just to see who you're playing this week. You cannot see their playbooks, or personnel, or stats, or tendencies, or any other useful information that might give you an indication of what plays you should practice during the week. And there sure as heck isn't any kind of weather forecast or anything like that.
And then there's the things that the Dynasty mode just gets plain wrong. Like how redshirts have to be declared during the preseason, before advancing to week 1 of the regular season. Redshirts can't play in 4 games like in reality.
And there aren't any options to include bye weeks in the schedules. Every team plays every week.
There is a full special teams depth chart!
And there are issues with the depth charts. Certain specialist positions can't be starters at other positions. This includes the longsnapper not being allowed to be a starter at another position. There's also 2 kicker positions, one for field goals, and one for kickoffs, and they aren't allowed to be the same player. So you either have to have your punter do kickoffs, of keep 2 kickers on your roster.
I do appreciate that the game includes depth chart positions for special teams players like the longsnapper, holder, and gunners, but these other problems with depth charts are really annoying and prevent me from building my team the way I want.
Less janky than the original
So the Dynasty mode feels like a big let-down. So is the on-field gameplay at least good? Well, this is a bit of a mixed bag. Overall, the on-field gameplay is fine -- for an Early Access indie game. Gameplay is a lot cleaner and more robust than in the original Maximum Football games, and it sure as hell looks a lot prettier. A lot of the jank that defined the original Maximum Football games has been ironed out here. The bigger budget and larger development team makes a big difference!
Presentation is also much better, complete with commentary, pre-game player highlights, halftime cutscenes, and more. I think the game also looks pretty good visually. Stadiums and environments actually look pretty great, and the crowds aren't bad either. Some of the backdrops are outright beautiful. Though I do wish there were more variety in stadiums and backdrops. Almost all of the stadiums are along riverfronts or a beach, none of which really works for a custom team located in Las Vegas. It would be nice if the backdrops were interchangeable and customizeable, so that I can have a stadium in a mountain, desert, or urban environment that might look more appropriate for a UNLV-inspired custom school.
QBs put significant air under their throws.
One of the strongest qualities of the game is passing the ball. Throwing is a lot less of a crap shoot compared to the original Maximum Football games, in which low-rated QBs were horribly inaccurate, and receivers dropped way too many passes. In this new Maximum Football, quarterbacks put really good arc on their throws, which allows passes to be floated over the top of defenders. This is something that EA's games have struggled with for as long as I can remember.
I also like that this version of Maximum Football includes more power moves and power running concepts. Playbooks feature pulling lineman (but no screen passes), and there are buttons for stiff arms and trucking defenders. Following a pulling blocker and letting him set an edge before hitting the speed burst and blazing into the secondary feels really good. Strangely though, these power running plays with pulling linemen are only available from shotgun formations in the pass-oriented playbooks. The actual "Power Run" playbook with the I formation and Singleback formations does not have any pulling linemen anywhere in it. Weird...
Power running is in the game.
Unfortunately, there isn't much else that does feel genuinely "good" in this game's Early Access state. Most of it the gameplay mechanics are serviceable, at best. Running can feel floaty overall. Changes of direction lack any sense of inertia. This certainly makes it easier to hit holes with your running back, but it makes playing defense feel unfairly hard. You can control a linebacker and fill the gap, only to see the opposing running back change direction on a dime and reverse field for a big gain. It's also far too easy for receivers catching passes along the sideline to cut up field for extra yardage.
Defenses tend to over-pursue too far up-field, and have a really hard time keeping the play in front of them. A single missed or broken tackle near the line of scrimmage can often result in a breakaway touchdown because there is nobody between the runner and the endzone. Zone coverages also frequently act like match coverages that convert to man. But other times, they are way too shallow, and allow un-contested mid-depth catches. My best guess is that it all depends on the routes the receivers run. If anybody stays underneath, then the underneath zones play shallow; if everyone goes downfield, then all the zone defenders go downfield. I'm not sure; I really haven't been able to figure out how these zones work, because they just don't seem to be played consistently.
Because of the weird zone coverage rules, QB runs are overpowered because the entire defense (even in zone coverage) will chase receivers down the field instead of staying in underneath zones, looking at the quarterback. Even if I call a play with a Spy linebacker, that Spy runs right into blockers or gets himself caught up in traffic and fails to pursue the QB.
QB scrambles are overpowered.
Routes to the outside and to the flats are also overpowered. Defenses seem completely incapable of defending outside-breaking routes. But yet cornerbacks will completely lock down slant routes, regardless of whether the defender is in man or zone coverage.
Defenders also seem completely incapable of intercepting passes. In an entire season of play, I've only ever seen 1 interception, and it was off a tipped pass. Whenever a catch is contested, the ball seems to hang or hover in the air, and float around the defensive player's hands and right into the hands of the offensive receiver. There are a crap ton of fumbles though, so my defense still leads the nation in takeaways, despite only having a single interception.
Can't kick to save my life
As is common with indie football games (and football video games in general), special teams is horribly under-developed. There's no option to use the XFL-inspired new kickoff rules, nor are there any onside kicks, fake kicks, or any trick plays. If the opponent puts their punter or kicker on the field, you can rest assured that they are kicking.
There is a fair catch button in the game, but the CPU is completely oblivious that fair catches and touchbacks exist. You can kick every kickoff to the back corner of the endzone, and the CPU will run it out and get tackled at the 16 yard line. I feel like this particular problem has been in the first few iterations of every indie football game that I've ever played (with maybe the exception of Legend Bowl).
There is pressure on almost every punt, but sometimes the ball goes right through the blocker's body.
This punt is not blocked.
I do like that punters hold the ball for a moment before kicking it. It gives the defense an opportunity to get penetration from anywhere and potentially block the punt. However, I've seen multiple instances of a punt that should have been blocked, but the ball seemed to go right through the defensive player's body. Field goals are much harder to block.
Field goal kicking is also excessively hard. The kick has to be dead center. If a kick of medium or long distance is off by a single degree, it goes wide, even with a kicker who's accuracy rating is 85 or above. Maybe there's a strong cross-wind that the game's U.I. isn't actually telling me about? I cannot make a field goal of more than like 30 yards to save my life. I don't know what this recent fascination is with making kicking obnoxiously difficult in football video games, but I wish it would stop. Sure, there should be a chance of missing a 30-yard field goal, but if my 85-overall kicker is hitting less than 40% of field goals (without a single attempt being over 50 yards), then there's a problem! At the very least, there needs to be difficulty settings to make kicking more forgiving.
In fact, Maximum Football does not seem to have difficulty settings or sliders at all! There's not even so much as a global "easy" / "medium" / "hard" toggle for gameplay. I don't necessarily expect an Early Access game to have robust difficulty settings and sliders like in a AAA release, but I really don't think it's too much to ask for the game to have an "easy" / "medium" / "hard" setting for each of offensive gameplay, defensive gameplay, kicking, and recruiting. As it stands, the actual football matches are pathetically easy to win with even a remotely decent team -- in spite of my poor kicking performance.
This field goal went wide right... Yes, I said wide right!
CPU clock management is also not great. In fact, the CPU doesn't have any clock management logic for the first half of the game. They treat the end of the 2nd quarter as if it were the end of the 1st quarter. They won't use their timeouts to conserve time at the end of the first half, nor will they attempt to kick a field goal if time is expiring.
Hopes dashed?
Oh, and then there's the obnoxiously strict profanity filter. Common, and completely non-offensive first names, such as Mike, Mick, and Mickey are all banned for custom players because they are "profane". I also could not name an alternate uniform with the word "white" because the game considers that to be "profane". But "black" is not a profane word. Look, I'm not one of the crybaby right-wing snowflakes who's triggered into a temper tantrum by the slightest perception of "wokeness" in a video game. Games can have all the pride flags, homely female protagonists, gay and transgender romance options, and penis size sliders that they want. Representation and political correctness are perfectly welcome in my games. But censoring the word "white" in the description of a football uniform color is just plain absurd!
The profanity filter censors out common, non-offensive names and words.
You may think I'm a fool, but I had high hopes for Maximum Football. I hoped and expected that it would be the football game that I would come back to every off-season, when I'd be jonesing for some football, but playing Madden, or College Football, or Axis Football would feel pointless because the new game would be just a few months from release. But I just don't see myself jonesing to play Maximum Football, unless this game gets a lot better before it leaves Early Access.
A lot of the problems with poor explanation of mechanics and the poor recruiting U.I. can likely be fixed during the Early Access period. Other bells and whistles (such as more plays in the playbooks, and more customization options) can also be added to all the game modes. And I'm sure that the on-field gameplay (such as running locomotion and defensive coverage) will be cleaned up considerably.
Other structural problems that are closely tied to the decision to be free-to-play, are much less likely to change in any meaningful way. Having to pay for additional seasons of Dynasty, or grind other modes in order to unlock tickets, is unlikely to change. The experience system that ties all progression to your coach is unlikely to change. The inability to restart a Dynasty (or go back to a previous save) if you made a mistake is unlikely to change.
Pro League is an Ultimate Team equivalent about buying card packs and playing ranked matches.
The biggest concern is whether Maximum Entertainment will fall into the same trap as EA, and be forced to dedicate most of their efforts to their Pro League (Ultimate Team equivalent), since it is going to be the principle money-maker. If most people simply buy the season pass to play unlimited Dynasty for $30, then Maximum won't be getting recurrent monetization from Dynasty Mode. And if they aren't re-selling Dynasty Mode every year, then the income from that mode will slow to an unsustainable trickle, and see less and less support.
It will be interesting to see how this game changes during its Early Access period, and if it becomes worth revisiting when it is ready for a 1.0 retail release. I certainly hope it becomes a worthwhile football game, since it has a lot of potential to be a great supplement to the other, bigger, annual releases. In any case, the state of this game re-affirms my reluctance to review Early Access games. It's hard to know how many of the game's problems are the result of the game being a work-in-progress, or whether they are working as intended and are just bad.