Madden 18’s Ultimate Team player overall formula gets major overhaul

EA Sports is making major changes to player overall inMadden 18‘s Madden Ultimate Team.

“Arguably, the number one piece of feedback collected last year was that players did not receive enough of an individual ratings boost to justify a 2-to-3 point OVR jump,” EA explained. “This made players feel like they couldn’t tell much of a difference when playing with the upgraded player.”

To address the issue, EA has made changes to MUT’s player Overall formula.

“In the simplest terms, player OVR is calculated in a similar way that the salary cap value is. Each position has a formula catered specifically for it. From there, we identify what ratings mean the most at each position and assign a weight to them.”

In layman’s terms, it will take more individual rating increases in order to increase a player’s Overall. The goal is that even a one-point Overall increase will feel like a major difference in performance. The catch is that now you will see lower individual ratings at the beginning of the year.

“The benefits of this OVR philosophy shift really come when factoring in how much “better” a player will feel after an increase in OVR, and later in the year when the player OVR’s start to get a little higher,” EA justified.

For a simpler look at how things have changed, here are some player comparisons of Overall and ratings in Madden 17 vs Madden 18.

MUT 17 vs MUT 18 Player Overall Comparison

Julio Jones (Man of the Month)
Ratings	Madden 17	Madden 18
OVR	94	94
Strength	75	75
Speed	91	92
Acceleration	90	91
Agility	92	93
Jumping	93	94
Catching	92	93
Spec Catch	93	95
Route Running	89	92
Catch in Traffic	92	94
Release	91	92
Spin Move	80	80
Stiff Arm	76	76
Juke Move	79	79
Run Block	56	56

And just for good measure, here’s a comparison of Le’Veon Bell’s OVR Signature SEries from Madden 17, with a hypotehtical 99 Overall Bell in Madden NFL 18. EA points out that simply porting over the Madden 17 version of Bell, his Overall would be a 97 in this year’s game. Here is the bare minimum it would take to make Bell a 99 in Madden 18.

Le’Veon Bell
Ratings	Madden 17	Madden 18
OVR	99	99
Strength	80	81
Speed	94	97
Acceleration	94	96
Agility	96	97
Jumping	91	92
Catching	76	77
Spec Catch	75	76
Route Running	79	80
Catch in Traffic	80	81
Release	64	68
Spin Move	92	93
Stiff Arm	90	91
Juke Move	95	96
Pass Block	80	82
Carrying	96	97
Truck	89	90
Elusiveness	96	97
BCV	92	93

Player Overall is just one of the changes in Madden 18’s Ultimate Team mode. EA has also adjusted the cards found in Packs, whichyou can read more about here. This includes abrand new “Team Tokens”form of currency.