Offline Franchise Does not Load

[EA_Blueberry]

Hey, Madden fans.

The fix was to address the crashing for franchise games. If a franchise save file crashed and corrupted the file, it's possible that file is not recoverable. I was hoping to get some positive responses from players about being able to open up those older save files. If they do not open, we can only advise to delete them to remove corrupted saves from your system and start a new franchise going forward as this fix should help prevent further issues.

@kansas82 

Please keep us updated on whether you suffer any technical issues in your new franchise around that time-frame.

[kansas82]

@EA_Blueberry  This is a long report so forgive me in advance, but I want to be thorough for you guys. (I have good news and bad news). 

I have had a decent chance to test the offline franchise mode after the update (I spent about 12 hours of my weekend testing this). I want to make note of a few things before starting my report:

• I play on a ps4 pro
• I play offline mode only
• Prior to starting my first test file I did the following:
  • Deleted ALL Madden Data (save files and all)
  • Uninstalled Madden 22
  • Reinstalled Madden 22
  • Made sure Madden 22 was up to date on all recent updates
  • Started an entirely new profile and franchise from scratch
  • These test files were purely on new franchises that were created after this update. I feel that fixing an already corrupt file is a whole different issue of its own. I count those files as lost. Sorry guys.

Now that all that is out of the way here is a write up of how I played each file so that it can be repeated for testing purposes.

• I have tested three total franchise files so far. Below is a short summary of the three.

• File 1: My goal for this file was to simply make a mess and see if it corrupts the file at or around the exact same time my past files corrupted (Super bowl and post season games just past 2029). I wanted to do a speed play of what I or someone else may aim to do throughout an entire 30-year franchise mode. In short it crashed, and the file did corrupt. However, there is hopeful news for file 2 and 3. 

For File 1 I did the following: 

• I started the 2022 season out by selecting 5 users.
  1. The first was an undrafted improviser QB for the Lions.
  2. The second was the regular coach for the Eagles
  3. The third was the regular coach for the Colts
  4. The fourth was the regular coach for the Seahawks
  5. The fifth was the owner of the Texans
• Settings to start the season
  1. Rookie
  2. Arcade
  3. Offline
  4. Salary Cap Off
  5. Flags off
  6. User Relocation Settings (ALL)
  7. Simple mode for team management
  8. Switched playbooks to KC playbook for all managed teams. I did this because I wanted to quickly test the hall of fame, NFL records, and stats.
  9. Started with an active custom roster (downloaded a random updated “madden 23 rosters” from the top of the shared folder)
  10. Imported a random “2022 draft class” from the shared community
  11. Started at Pre-Season
• From here I did the following:
  1. Simulated the 2021-22 pre-season
  2. Used another user to max out the stats of my “improvisor QB”
  3. Made the Texans move to become the Portland Lumberjacks
  4. Added a custom draft class
  5. Rigged games for Cincinnati and Rams to make play offs and win super bowl like in real life (One of my favorite features is the league history and I like having it accurate. Now we just need an individual team history page to go with it that keeps track of past seasons of each team. That is a separate thread and suggestion though).
  6. After the Texans’ moving process was complete (Week 6?) I simulated to the playoffs.
  7. Had LA win the super bowl against Cincinnati
  8. Simulated to the next season. Skipped offseason entirely
  9. Rigged 2023 games to get my team to playoffs so that I could test an early crash in the play offs. I did not expect a crash this early. I Made it through with no crash. Lion’s won the super bowl. Still no crash
  10. This is where I really started to make a mess.
  11. I simulated the 2023 offseason and preseason.
  12. At the start of the season (after pre-season), I decided to change an existing user’s team and create a new user as well. I retired the Texans or “Lumberjacks” owner and switched to the “Chargers” owner role under the same user. After that I chose to retire the Colts user and actually retired the user all together. I then immediately added the Chiefs as a new team/ new user to the league. - I suspect this moment to be important due to what I find during my second file.
  13. After this I simulated to mid-season. I retired the Chargers owner in the middle of the season. (To simulate wanting to change teams or losing a desire to manage a team mid-season).
  14. After that I simulated on to the post-season. I once again rigged games for the Lion’s to make the post season
  15. I played the Superbowl and won. No issues and didn’t expect them.
  16. Now this is where I felt good that the game had been messed with enough to crash.
  17.  I simulated 10 years to get closer to where I expected the crash.
  18. I rigged games to make the playoffs.
  19. I retired the Chief’s user while in the playoffs. Mostly for giggles and to see if it messed with things. Changing teams was common throughout my franchise runs in the past as well.
  20. Rigged games to get the Lions to the super bowl.
  21. Played the Super Bowl
  22. Won the Super Bowl
  23. No flags all game
  24. Hit end game
  25. Crashed and File Corrupted.

• File 2: My goal for this file was to play as conservative as I could with as little change as possible from the start. A “Play it safe” file. In summary this file survived, but I made it my goal to find out why and what would result in a crash through process of elimination.

• I started this franchise with the same settings as above... except I did not add a custom downloaded draft class.
• My User’s this time:
  1. Field General QB for the Chiefs. Mid-Round pick.
  2. Eagles regular coach
  3. Colts regular coach
• Simmed the entire season
• Simmed the offseason
• Simmed the pre-season
• Rigged games to make Super Bowl – won it and expected no issues
• Simmed forward 10 years.
• Started the 2033 season.
• Simmed pre-season
• Rigged main season for Eagles to make it to the super bowl
• Played the super bowl – tested the flag theory by receiving a flag.
• Won the game. Hit end game. (this is where the game had crashed in the past)
• The game did not crash this time.
• I decided to test it another season to be sure. The game did not crash in the 2034, 2035, or 2036 seasons.  I'd say that this was evidence that had I stayed the course with this file that it likely would not crash… I wanted to know why it crashed in the past though.

• Now I decided to do process of elimination from what I suspected to be the least likely to the most likely cause of the crash and to test all of it until I crashed the game and corrupted the file at the end of the Superbowl.
• So, I made multiple save files at the conference championship in order to leave me some wiggle room to try these different scenarios at the super bowl that may result in a crash. 
• I tested editing rosters first, no issue. I expected no issue.
• I tested playing two users at the Super bowl, no issue. I expected no issue.
• I tested sliders, no issue. I expected no issue.
• I tested creating an improvisor QB for one of the teams in the conference championship and playing as him. No issue. I expected no issue. (I’ll avoid the Lion’s to be safe).
• I tested retiring a user completely and creating a new user that was controlling a team that was already in the playoffs. Still no issue.  I expected an issue to be honest.
• I tested adding a new owner after retiring an old user team, no issue. I expected an issue.
• I tested the flag theory and no issue. I did not expect an issue.
• I tested switching user teams. In this case I switched to the lions as an owner (or coach I do not remember which). I went to play the conference championship game and it told me that I could not play it due to a lack of coaches on the team. So, I went to the coach hiring screen and there were only two coaches left for hire. I could not hire them. It gave me an error message when I attempted to hire the only available coaches. I exited from the hiring menu and the game crashed. I did not expect this crash. I suspect it happened due to a lack of coaches AND may have been the result of me switching to a team that had not been auto managed on “simple mode” by the user. The file became corrupted.
• I reloaded a backup as the last crash had deleted the file.
• Next, I tested retiring a user from their role/team and switching that same user over to a different team/role instead of retiring the user completely. I then simulated the conference championship and played as the newly selected team in the super bowl. I expected the crash. I got the crash right where I expected it when I clicked “end game” at the super bowl. The file was corrupted.
• I had one file left and decided to create two more backups of it. The only thing I had not tried that I could try was the custom draft class file I had downloaded. I added it during the playoffs so that may do it as well since it may have messed with Mock drafts… but it crashed at the end of the super bowl and corrupted the file.  I tried this a second time and it crashed again.
• Something to also make note of is that without the last three issues being involved the file was able to move on to 2037 every time. That is the farthest I have ever been able to get in this years franchise. I've managed to get through all 30 seasons in the past. 
• So, my guess is that the issue is in one of those three places. Or it has something to do with the Lion’s, but I doubt that since I experienced the crash with the Eagles as well.

I created a third file and I am not very far in, but I'm cautiously optimistic and plan to use it as a true franchise file as I plan to cautiously tip toe around these issues in hopes that this will do it for now. Of course this isn't a fix and I will follow up on how things go for my third file... but I feel confident that I have found at least some sort of work around until the issue is looked into and resolved completely. Things seem to run better than they did before, but the issue is still present.

In summary after testing things on file two I suspect that it has something to do with one of the following issues. They may even all tie together

• When a user switches from one team to another mid to late season. (Retiring the user, but using the same user to change to a different team/role. Whereas the other option (the option to avoid the bug) is to retire the user all together and create a new user.
• Lack of coaching staff in the mid game and operating a team that needs coaching staff whenever no coaching staff is available for hire.
• Perhaps if the game is having errors when there is a lack of coaching staff it may also show errors for a team that a user "retires" the head coach on? I don't know to be honest.
• Custom draft classes may do something wonky near the mid-game for some reason as well. My test may have messed things up as well since I added the custom class file near the end of the season instead of at the beginning. It may have messed with the game since it had already made mock drafts. None the less it created a similar crash and I would recommend be avoided until investigated.

My current fix for file 3 and advice for others.

• If you decide to change a team or role… create a new user to play as your desired new team or role instead of switching from one role to another as that specific user. Create a new user all together and retire the old user.
• Avoid changing or retiring user teams until the end of a season. It will not affect you in the early game, but it may come back to bite you in the later years of franchise for some reason.
• Pray your team does not run out of coaches’ mid-game. I have turned coach firing off for now in hopes that this isn’t the root of the entire issue. I will likely do a quick sim to 2045 just to see what life looks like when there are no coaches left. I suspect owner roles may suffer a worse fate than coaching roles. My reason for this is that as a coach you'd have to chose to retire, but as an owner you may lose staff to retirement and be in trouble later down the road when there is no coaching staff available.

In short though… It appears that if you tread lightly the issue might be avoidable for now, but it is not entirely fixed either. I'm no game dev or coder. So, I could be wrong all together. I just did my part to break the game and attempt to MAYBE help you guys find what is going on. I hope that my information can help you guys target this better and find the overall root of the problem. My goal of all of this information was to make it repeatable. I also apologize for how long the post is. It may come to no use at all in the end... but this is what I experienced on my quick play through this past weekend. I will continue to report issues if they arise. I will not be able to spend much time on the game again until this weekend, unfortunately. 

Have a great week and best of luck to you and the team! 

[S1LV46]

@kansas82 Great explanation. Thank you so much for your effort. If the devs had half of your dedication this game would be far mor enjoyable.

I had this bug just now, after the update, for the second time. I'm using custom draft classes since the beggining (7 seasons) so that may rig the franchise.

In any case, the game should support it. It is horrible to spend so much time in a franchise just for it to stop working.

[PaddyB2016]

Thanks @kansas82 for that detailed analysis. Is your conclusion so that this update hasn’t solved the issue?
For me it must have been the imported draft classes that were the issue (I’m on M21) - I never switched or retired users - and stuck with the one team throughout.

@EA_Blueberry does this help your devs at all?

[EA_Blueberry]

---

@PaddyB2016 wrote:
Thanks @kansas82 for that detailed analysis. Is your conclusion so that this update hasn’t solved the issue?
For me it must have been the imported draft classes that were the issue (I’m on M21) - I never switched or retired users - and stuck with the one team throughout.

@EA_Blueberry does this help your devs at all?

---

@kansas82 

Thank you for extremely detailed testing on your end, sorry to hear it ultimately ended with crashing, although with some improvement. Submitted your reply over to the team so they can use that in testing. 

[FranchiseBugSux]

@EA_Blueberry, 

I am finding that it has nothing to do with the Imported Draft Classes. I have an old franchise file on PS4 from November that I started when the scouting system was added. The game begins to break in the latter years of franchise after week 13. If you exit out of franchise mode after week 13 the file will corrupt. If you play a game and finish it, the game will give a blue screen error when loads back up to the franchise main menu. When you load the game back up and try to access the file, the autosave file is corrupted and sometimes it even reaches back to the original save file & other files you have saved recently.

If you sim all the way to the off season, the file will save as normal and will not corrupt. So far I have been able to make it to year 2045 by simming past the "error window" of the season. I have downloaded every update and this problem still persist.

I suspect this due to lazy coding due to the extra game in the schedule. Regardless this is totally unacceptable for a Triple A company to release a game in this state. I have to go to extreme lengths to save my franchise files on to a usb drive and back up frequently to prevent hours of my time being flush down the drain due to your teams horrendous quality control.. Please report this finding back to the development team. If they need my files as an example to pinpoint the problem, I'd be more than happy to share them. 

[Grandpappy_B]

So has EA gave up on fixing this issue? I suppose it will happen for a third year in a row?

[wolfarmed]

@EA_Blueberry 

I went so far as to create a Save Point after every game I played. After three or four days I would delete the older ones to avoid taking up too much space. This worked wonders for seven seasons until the 16th game in the 2028 year.

I loaded up the saved offline franchise from the saved point, play the game, return to main franchise screen, create a new saved point and exit the game once I receive the "File Saved Successfully" message.

I exit to the main screen. I go back into franchise mode and attempt to load the just saved Franchise file and it returns to the list of saved files. I go back to the previous games saved point, play the game again and do all the things over again that I mentioned above, and it happens again.

Pure Ground Hog Day. There seems to be something that happens, no matter where my fellow players are in a season, that something happens behind the scenes that corrupts the code making it unreadable to continue.

I am going to try playing the game one more time, immediately play the next game and THEN save and see if getting past the game in question, loading code over code, and see if it pushes me past this stick point. 

Either way, no one wants to invest 160 games played, plus playoffs, and have to start all over. This bug is HUGE.

[daltonmaggot]

Its insane that this is still an issue. It just happened to me and im pissed I hope yall loose the nfl rights cause you are some of the worst creators out there. Noove for the game you shove down peoples throats every year. Its a joke

[Batman69432]

Just had a year 6 offline crash yesterday and now I can’t access the save so no. This issue was not fixed or addressed on any level. At this point it’s becoming clear that Madden fans will need to resort to a class action lawsuit. EA and the madden team will never do what’s right unless forced to by outside forces this much is 100% clear.