Why "restrict direct passing options"?

[ask1]

Was just looking at the wishlist and noticed this:
"Restrict direct passing options to players that would be visible to the ballhandler. Would be affected by a player's Offensive Awareness."

This one doesn't really make sense. If I want to blindly heave a pass to a teammate I should be able to - however the chance of such a pass being stolen/intercepted, or flying out of bounds should be much higher.

Even if I don't actually 'see' my teammate, I may be expecting him to be in a specific area on the court, ready to receive a pass.

[Andrew]

The idea is that players with good offensive awareness would be able to make blind passes and find teammates with difficult passes. Joel Przybilla can't move the ball around and find teammates like Jason Kidd can, this is one way of reflecting that in the game.

[T-Comm55]

Andrew is right the direct passing should be limited to players ability. I would also like to see some more passing animations like "tricks" when passing. Tricks meaning fancy passes.

[Colin]

The argument the Madden dev team has made for something very similar (QB's not being able to pass to certain players depending on awareness) was shot down because "if you 're controlling a player, you are his awareness." It makes sense to me.

[ask1]

That's what I mean - it makes more sense to penalize the 'human' player for making poor decisions (ex. using Pryzbilla to throw a difficult pass) by having the ball go out of bounds or get intercepted.

[Andrew]

I can understand that argument. But as the human player, you can see the entire floor from a TV style view which is much more than a player on the court can. However, I agree that simply having poor passers through more errant passes would be a satisfying improvement too.

[cashless__]

Can somebody explain the concept of "direct passing" .. i think i have misunderstood the whole thing. I know what it ought to be but ...

[Andrew]

The Direct Passing feature is the ability to pass to a specific player by holding down the "direct pass" button/key and then pressing another button that corresponds to the other four players on the court.

[cashless__]

Yeah ... but there's nothing direct about it really. Direct passing should be passing the ball before you have it, like in almost every other sports game out there. In the same motion you recive the ball, you pass it to the direction you hold the thumbstick (and pressing the passing button of course)

[Andrew]

I don't quite understand what you mean. Direct Passing allows you to pass the ball directly to the player of your choice; it allows you to direct a pass to a particular player. You can achieve similar results by holding the direction stick/key towards another player and pressing pass (that was the only way in early Lives), but it's not always as accurate.

[T-Comm55]

EA Sports announced last week they are tweaking the QB passing in the madden 06, they said they are going to make his passing more real, meaning passing to the players he could see. There should be something like that with the direct passing.

From EA Sports Website:
The new QB Vision Control lets you scan the field, look off defenders, and make perfect throws withing your quarterbacks unique field of vision.

http://www.easports.com/games/madden06/home.jsp