How can I give my opponent a win in Madden 11 online franchise mode?
(I'm not just randomly throwing games - there's a story to this.)
In the online franchise league I'm in, we have a rule that games that disconnect in the fourth quarter or overtime are wins for the team with the lead at the time. (This is on the 360, but I would think the solution would be platform-agnostic. If it isn't, I'd like a 360-only solution.)
I was playing this week's opponent, and down 31-13 with less than a minute left in the third, I lost a fumble. I paused the game to challenge and the game decided not to resume - neither of us could get back to the game, so we both quit without a result.
Given the score and situation, I felt it was only fair to give him the win, but we couldn't find a quick way of doing it: if I quit right after we started the game, he only had options to quit with a loss or quit with no result. There is a thread on EA's forums that suggests this may be due to a recent patch of the game.
We ended up playing the game through in such a way as to ensure a win for him, but I'd prefer something that wouldn't take up as much of his time. Is there a way to do that?
As a last resort, I contacted EA support ... I hardly expected to get anything back, given that Madden 12 is just around the corner, and as I thought, I got a form letter reply from first-level support:
Hello,
Thank you for writing to Electronic Arts customer support.
...
We are extremely sorry for the issue. We would like to inform you that we are here forwarding this issue to the game development team and they would look in to this issue and provide you the best solution. If needed a patch may also get released. Please give some time to the game developers as it would be taking some time to make these changes. Your time and patience is deeply appreciated and requested.
If there is anything else we can help you with please let us know.
Obviously this is a form letter, because EA isn't going to patch 11 again. (The auto-response to let me know they received my message was even worse: Thank you, First name
and Customer By Web Form (First name Last name)
. EA quality: less important than meeting deadlines.)
I'll update this answer if I find out anything else, but for the time being, it looks like my choices are to try to pause and quit with a loss, and if that's not available, to simply "play" out the game.