In this Madden 26 Superstar Guide for Beginners, we’ll go over everything you need to know to get started in this player-based career mode. Unlike Franchise, Superstar sees you controlling one character and living out their Pro Career. Throughout your NFL journey, you’ll need to play well, manage your health, and build relationships with various people. Without further ado, let’s dive right in.
Madden 26 Superstar Guide – Everything You Need to Know
Overall, this Madden 26 Superstar Guide will explain everything regarding:
- Settings
- Combine & Draft Process
- Wear & Tear
- The Weekly Agenda
- Training
- Sphere of Influence
- Player Abilities & X-Factors
- Player Progression
- Gameday
Firstly, before we begin, make sure to check out all of the positions and archetypes you can choose from in Superstar mode. Furthermore, learn on how you can import your CFB 26 RTG Character to Superstar.
Character Creation, CFB Import, & Settings
Before beginning your career, you’ll need to make your character. This section is mostly cosmetic, so take your time customizing your character. The only major area of focus is your archetype and player size. These impact the best possible tier of abilities you can receive, as well as maximum ratings for certain attributes.
In terms of settings, make sure to customize your quarter lengths, difficulty, and other areas of interest. For new players, we recommend starting on Pro, and then working your way up as you get more comfortable.
When you finally finish your character creation, you’ll meet your Agent. This conversation will briefly impact your relationships with your fans and your agent, but don’t worry too much about which answer you give. We’ll go over the influence system later when we cover The Sphere of Influence.
After speaking with your Agent, you have the choice of participating in the NFL Combine. Like the last few Madden NFL games, you participate in a few mini-games as you attempt to get good results. While not necessary, we recommend trying it out for fun.
The better your results, the better your draft stock becomes. Furthermore, you can even try a drill as many times as you’d like until you get the result you wanted.
Once you complete your drills, you’ll participate in a brief interview. This provides you with extra opportunities to earn extra Influence with future teammates and coaches. Take a look at every question and answer before beginning your Interview experience. Additionally, some questions may vary based on your position.
You do have the option to skip the Combine and go right to the draft. However, we recommend trying the Combine out for that extra influence, as well as something different.
Once that’s all done, you’ll be drafted into the NFL.
The Sphere of Influence
Before getting into anything else, we feel it’s necessary to explain the Sphere of Influence first. Overall, this system serves as the foundation for all of your relationships in the game. It determines whether or not you’re a starter, if you’re getting the most out of your teammates, and more.
You have opportunities every week to increase your “influence” with people. When you reach a certain influence level with them, you earn a reward or boost.
As you play Superstar, you’ll develop relationships with all sorts of people on and off the field. The most important thing is to prioritize the people who give you the benefits you want the most.
For example, we always recommend increasing your Influence with your Head Coach first. Increasing your influence with him can earn you things like:
- The starting job for your position
- Audibles, Pass Protections, and other Pre-Play options
- Access to locked plays in the playbook
When you first begin your Superstar career, you’ll need to fight for the starting job. And when you finally do get it, you won’t have access to everything. Therefore, impressing your coach early and often will help big time.
We also recommend increasing your influence with teammates. Higher teammate influence levels lead to better ratings boosts, which help their performance on the field. You can see a person’s “Influence” level on their Sphere of Influence page. So take a good look at everybody to see which upgrades you want first.
Wear & Tear
Wear & Tear appears in Madden 26 Superstar. Essentially, every play you’re in, every hit you take all has an impact, and some drain more health than others. For example, sliding on a QB run results in very little damage, while a sack could quickly take you out of a game.
Essentially, you need to monitor your player’s health throughout your career to stay on the field. There are ways to maintain your health, like staying off the field and reducing contact with other players. Additionally, playing less in general results in more healing.
We’ll go over another way you can heal your player in the Training section.
The Weekly Agenda & Training
Every week, you’ll be tasked with training your player and participating in other weekly events. Instead of having a whole week to manage, you now just have one activity per week to worry about.
These Weekly Agenda moments typically involve two or more individuals/organizations who require the Superstar’s attention. For example, your agent may have something scheduled for you with a brand, but another opportunity may arise to do something else.
Do you please your Agent and work with her? Or do you spend time with the other individual who also may be worth influencing? Overall, just remember to prioritize which people you want to influence. For example, I almost never spend time with my Tattoo Artist.
More importantly, you’ll need to train every week. These mini-games provide you opportunities to earn influence with your coach every week. Furthermore, there are three difficulties to these mini-games.
For example, the easiest of these mini-games won’t reward as much influence, but you can recover 30% of any damage to your body. Conversely, you can do the hardest difficulty for minimal healing but higher maximum influence gains. Just be prepared for a challenging training simulation (which can be repeated if necessary).
Additionally, you have the option to skip practice. If your player is injured, skip practice to prioritize your recovery. Overall, this system is pretty simple once you get the hang of it.
Player Abilities & X-Factors
X-Factors and Superstar Abilities return, as well as teammate abilities. Depending on your archetype, you’ll have access to different tiers of superstar abilities, which you can equip at any time before a game.
However, you have limited slots. Therefore, choose wisely which abilities you want for a game. If you’re a WR playing against a tough secondary, you may want to equip the Honorary Receiver ability to improve your catching.
As you level your player up, you earn more ability slots (until you reach the max), giving you more freedom in your build. But how exactly do you get better tiered abilities?
Player Progression & Leveling Up
As you’d expect, play well to earn XP. You earn a grade for each performance on the field, which impacts your XP gains. Leveling up gives you Skill Points and Ability Slots, both of which are useful in creating a powerful player.
Skill Points are once again used to upgrade attributes and unlock new ability tiers. For example, an Improvisor QB can unlock a Gold Tier Short Deadeye ability when they max out their Short Throw Accuracy. This will heavily increase their accuracy on short throws.
No player can fully unlock a Gold Tier for every ability. Therefore, it’s important to spend your Skill Points wisely. Furthermore, if possible, make sure to use any unlocked Superstar XP Boosts if you have them.
Gameday
Lastly, we come to Gameday. Overall, there’s not much to say here, other than play well! How you play impacts your influence levels with others on your team. Here’s an example of how it works with a QB:
Scoring a Touchdown after a long drive will greatly please the following people:
- Any receivers you completed a pass to
- Your Coach and Offensive Coordinator
- Teammates
If a player catches a ball from you during a drive, you gain influence with them. However, if it’s incomplete, you actually lose influence. This encourages players to take passes more seriously, and look for an open man.
Furthermore, defensive players may appreciate you taking a long time to score. This gave them time to rest because you kept them off the field. However, 3 & outs result in a decrease of influence.
When you first begin your Superstar experience, you won’t have access to all the plays, audibles, pass protections, and more. You’ll earn those over time as you influence your HC. In due time, you’ll have full control of your side of the ball.
Overall, that wraps up this Madden 26 Superstar Guide. We hope this helped you understand all the basics of the mode, as well as how to get started. We wish you the best of luck in living out an epic NFL career.
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