NFL Tour wishlist

It isn’t known whether there will be a follow-up to NFL Tour, however pastapadre.com readers have submitted a bunch of great ideas for a potential sequel and I’ve compiled those along with my own suggestions. Thanks to everyone who took the time out to include their thoughts. If you have your own on something that could be improved upon or added feel free to leave them in the comments.

Presentation Related

Team celebrations should be in. NFL Tour touchdowns are exciting and everyone should get involved. Whether thats with players jumping in the air and giving each other highfives, dog piles, or lifting up a player that made an amazing catch. The fireworks are a nice touch but it still feels a little empty as-is.

Every team should have an alternate jersey. The Chargers should get their Powder Blues and the Bears their Orange jerseys ect.

How about this for an amazing intro. A clip of the team’s bus traveling down the road to the stadium in front of buildings like the White House or the neon in Miami. Then you see the bus park right out in front of the stadium. Part of the wall in the stadium opens up at the 50. Then the great players start to get introduced and appear from the bus. The last person to leave the bus is your created player. He should run out on the field and interview with Trey Wingo about how the Tour is going so far.

The intro could be a almost like watching a hockey game. The players run out onto the field off the Tour bus and the lights are dim. The fireworks from the walls light up and a spotlight is on the player. Also the logo of the team is flying around the field (much like it is now during every play on NFL tour). This game is short and there should be as much hype around it as possible.

Homefield advantage needs to be more significant and more customized to each city. If you travel to St. Louis you see the arch pre-game but not during the game. The field should also represent the teams colors. So instead of the blue grass with the stars it should be the colors of the home team.

Tour Mode Related

The first thing that came to mind was the jerseys. You can select any of the four variations in the other modes. Yet you cannot choose uniforms in Tour Mode. Its’ refreshing to see your team in a different uniform especially when the mode has around 40 games that need to be played.

Lets face it, the only reason Tour mode was played was to get the achievement considering you do not earn anything by beating it. There should be rewards unlocked at the end. How about All-Star teams?

You can also go in another direction with the Tour bus. Have all the teams you have beaten on the side of bus with an “X” on it. Also you can start out with a crappy bus and upgrade as you advance in the mode.

*A more comprehensive list of Tour mode additions/improvements will be made in the near future.

Gameplay Related

There should also be some enhancements to help the defense. Tour is based on offense and the defense basically feels like they are just delaying the inevitable. There should be some more tools given to the defense such swatting the ball away. Also interceptions should happen more often. There isn’t much more frustrating than making a play on the ball and having it dropped when that one play probably would’ve been the difference in the game.

Expanded and balanced rosters. There shouldn’t be teams with four recievers while others have two for example. Add more players available to use and make it so you can switch them to offense or defense.

There should be more significant separation between QBs. While there is a slight difference, mainly which are seen by a few errant passes from the poor ones, there isn’t that much separation between the elite QBs and the mediocre or bad. The same could be said for a few other positions such as the offensive and defensive lineman. Just haven’t seeing much difference between the best players there and anyone else.

Adding in variable weather could make the games in the NFL Tour even more fun. It would be neat in some stadiums because of the orange roofs to have rain. A running back could be running in dry grass and than all of a sudden do a wall jump and slip in a puddle. Rain can add a very interesting element to backyard football, everyone loves playing in a downpour. Windy conditions could make passing interesting and maybe force teams to change their strategy.

The limited playbooks in the game are a good thing because it keeps the pace up. No one wants to sit there and wait 20 seconds flipping through or waiting for an opponent to find a play. But there should be wider selection available to complete your playbook. Either each team should have their own unique mix of plays or each person should be able to customize their playbook by selecting from a larger pool. Keep the 44 offense and 20 defense just make the plays different by doing one of those two things.

Overtime needs to be changed to a college type system. Basically in the Tour the person who gets the ball first will win and right now that is automatically the road team. A lot of great games in Tour could come from a college overtime situation. Imagine someone having to try a conversion from 20 yards out because 5 rounds passed or something of that nature. The pressure on the conversions and each possession would be intense.

Add a “Throw-off meter” or something to make throw-offs vary in distance. In the throw-off currently all you do is hit the “A” button, and it goes to the same area all the time. Look at what Blitz The League did with the kickoff. It is easy but if you do not pay attention the ball travels shorter. What happens is buttons start to come up on the screen and if you do not hit them in time you get an “X” and the balls travels shorter. So say you hit four buttons in a row and get them correct but accidentally hit the “B” button instead of the “A” button your throw would go about 10 yards shorter.

How about an “onside throw”. If they are implemented into the game there would need to be a huge risk for the “throw-off team” as it will be abused if it is to easy. There are a few ways an onside could go. The quarterback should either be forced to bounce it off of the ground and retrieve the ball or try to bank the ball off of the wall. Once it bounces off the receiving team should have the option to catch the ball by hitting a button but if they hit it too late the ball flies off its path and it’s anyones ball. However if the offense is as easy to move the ball as it is now there wouldn’t be any risk to attempting an onside every time so unless there is some sort of advantage involved for the receiving team assuming they recover it then it shouldn’t be considered.

There should be some limited audibles. With the small playbook there are times where you’ve picked your play, come out to the line, and know you are doomed (especially the play actions and flea flicker). At least give the chance to change out of play action or change from run to pass and vice versa.

Add in the ability for the QB to pump fake.

This may not fly but how about working some sort of kicking into this game. Not necessarily include kickers but maybe allow the QB or whoever has the ball the ability to drop kick. If it isn’t as easy to score TDs there could be uprights to score FGs. It would be a risk to accurately attempt a FG because they weren’t kickers but it might be fun.

The camera angle needs to be fixed when you intercept the ball in the end zone. Currently the camera raises up and you really cannot see anything.

Wall jumping is definitely a great asset to this game but there should be an animations that let you take someone down off the wall. In NFL Tour all the defender can do is watch and wait till they get on the ground to tackle them. It would be nice if the reversal system could be used where the defense can crush them into the wall. Maybe the ball carrier counters that move he steps on his shoulder and springs himself even further.

In Tour if you are not touched but you dive on the ground you are down. With Backyard football I think of people diving for catches and getting up and running for the score. There are many instances which this would come in handy. A wide receiver dives and catches the ball but the play is dead even though he could of got up and scored. It would also eliminate what people are do online once the “Smash” meter is activated. All they do is dive on the ground so they do not potentially fumble because a lost down is not a big deal.

Feature Related

EA Sports World integration. Screenshot and video uploading and stat viewing.

Consider having roster updates.

Deeper create-a-player mode using the camera such as Tiger Woods’ Game Face.

Export your created player into Madden.

Online Related

Online Team Play mode. Three vs three would probably be ideal.

Ability to change rosters for online play.

Online needs stats like they have offline.Your record, passing yards, rushing yards, kickoff for TD’s ect.

They should have ranked games with tiers and put teams into specific tiers. As of right now it is bothersome playing people who take the Chargers every game because there is little reason not to.

Take your created player into online games.