Playing in your home ground with a crowd that’s your own feels great. It really boosts morale and motivates players to do better. But Madden takes this one step further, giving teams actual bonuses for playing as the fan favourites. This is called the Home-Field Advantage (HFA), and it isn’t limited to louder cheering.
HFAs range from providing the home team with extra speed to the away team fatiguing faster. But while it sounds interesting, does HFA really have an impact on the outcome? Are all HFAs equally balanced? And can Madden accurately represent HFA on the field? This is what we’ll be talking about today, so stick around to find out.
What Is Home-Field Advantage?
Home-Field Advantage refers to the benefit a team receives when playing in its home stadium. These perks are super impactful and can definitely turn the tide of the game. There are a few conditions teams have to meet before activating the HFA:
- Must be playing as the home team
- The home uniform must match the home stadium
If you fulfil both these conditions, the HFA will be applied once the match starts.
Home-Field Advantage is only applicable in head-to-head and Madden Ultimate Team modes. If you try this against the CPU, the HFA don’t come into play, so be wary of that. HFA does not work in offline modes. Now that we’ve hyped up Home-Field Advantage quite a bit, let’s talk about whether it matters.
The Impact Of Home-Field Advantage
Home-field advantage has a significant impact, in my opinion. If you go through the list of HFAs, each one provides certain perks to the team that can prove to be game-changing. The Chargers’ Bolt Up provides the home team with faster acceleration and is a great example of HFA’s impact.
This was a single example; however, numerous other HFAs would be considered better than this one. Denver, Tennessee, and Buffalo, to name a few. The caveat is that you need to take advantage of the buff and play into it, rather than just expecting it to win you the game.
For example, the Steelers’ HFA is “Away Team’s hot routes have a chance to fail on 3rd/4th down”. The best time to rack up on defence, as the Steelers would be at the 3rd and 4th down, since the away team’s hot routes are more likely to fail. Each HFA targets a different aspect of the game, so make sure you know what your home-field advantage does before locking in your team.
Does Madden Take HFA Into Account?
This has been a highly debated topic amongst the community, with strong arguments on both sides. Several players have mentioned that HFAs did not activate, despite meeting the criteria. While this is possible due to temporary glitches, this has not been a widely reported issue.
The main reason players sometimes don’t receive the home-field advantage is that they aren’t using their home kits. As I mentioned earlier, simply playing as the home team doesn’t activate the HFA; you also need to be wearing your home kit. If you’ve done both those things, and the HFA still doesn’t activate, you can reach out to support.
