NCAA 12 - League Organization - Xbox 360

I think we let you have LSU because you assured us you sucked.

Kidding aside, the big SEC teams are retry powerful, but you were coming into season 2 and hadn't had the opportunity to better a team through recruiting, so it seemed reasonable.

Besides, being a Michigan fan, we felt bad for you.

LMFAO.... Thank you all for understanding. I'd love to take Michigan over if Handsome will let me. Here's a fun fact: In all the years there's been an online dynasty, I've NEVER been Michigan.

Leroyog wrote:

LMFAO.... Thank you all for understanding. I'd love to take Michigan over if Handsome will let me. Here's a fun fact: In all the years there's been an online dynasty, I've NEVER been Michigan.

Then we need to start paying Handsome to stick around

So for NCAA 12, do you guys want to set the "overall" team score to be 90 when choosing?

Leroyog wrote:

So for NCAA 12, do you guys want to set the "overall" team score to be 90 when choosing?

Is that indicative of future success or is it school prestige level?

When you select a team at the beginning of joining, it gives you the overall scores, in numbers.

Leroyog wrote:

When you select a team at the beginning of joining, it gives you the overall scores, in numbers.

Yes, but doesn't it also give you prestige levels? My point being that a school that's an 80, but is 5 or 6 star prestige program will have a lot easier time recruiting and improving.

I'm not sure what limits you guys had to begin with for the BCS league. I just joined a league where they had an 85 overall limit. They didn't care what prestige it was.

Leroyog wrote:

I'm not sure what limits you guys had to begin with for the BCS league. I just joined a league where they had an 85 overall limit. They didn't care what prestige it was.

I understand. Read my earlier post. I don't care who people take at this point. I'm simply putting out there that if we are going to put restrictions on that or have a gentleman's agreement of sorts it should probably take both of those factors into account. Either way I'm taking Oregon State and living or dying by them.

My choices are always Michigan then Cincy. Since there were already 2 Big East teams, I went elswheres

I think all options are very good options either way you choose. I will stick most likely with just the big league and hope that they allow more than just 12 teams.

My hopes for the GWJBCS league was to have 12 teams (2 in each big 6 conferences). My main concern was playing human games and not just playing the system and to also have a big blowout at the end of the year of human vs. human games. Tweaking the schedule helped in doing that.

As far as making everything even when we first start off is fine by me. When the game release gets closer we can all discuss on what teams people would like to have and make any necessary tweaks to make the game enjoyable.

While we are discussing possible organizations, I thought I would throw out another option that EA has made available that is awfully dear to my heart. This would be extremely different than whatever main leagues we do. And that is, EA has introduced coach mode in which we do everything we do now, up to the snap of the ball, where the CPU takes over for both teams.

This harkens back to FBPro 98 and much closer to what I always wanted out of a football sim. During that time, I didn't have much use for football games in which a joystick jockey had control. It was the collapse of Sierra Sports and the beautiful NFL 2K on the Dreamcast that brought me back.

I'm not sure the game can be sim enough to make this mode compelling. For one, if it is a true chess match of plays and personnel over twitch skill, we need useful research. In FBPro, we uploaded the game logs for the league to download every week. You had the ability to see what formations and plays teams used in what situations. This was used to create a gameplan for the next week. This is realistic.

When preparing to play Northwestern this week, I had no idea what gameplan he used, or even what defensive formations he used. It was totally blind, and not realistic. In real life, all teams have access to gamefilm from all of their opponents. It would have been more fun to load up a defensive and offensive gameplan that Northwestern has been running, and use my players to practice against it in the week leading up to the game. that'/s how the practice mode should work.

NFL 2K5 was on the verge of really doing this when they added profiles to be downloaded. You didn't get lists of plays run. but if you loaded your opponent's profile, you could practice against an AI that called plays in a similar manner as your opponent.

But NCAA does have one feature that would have been nice in FBPro, which is the aility to know how many WRs, TEs, and RBs are on the field before calling a play. So at least there might be some trade-off.

Does anyone have any interest in trying a true sim league based on NCAA 12?

Of course I'm in. I want to try a lot of this out

I'm leaning towards taking a lower rated team like UCLA, Colorado or Clemson.

When preparing to play Northwestern this week, I had no idea what gameplan he used, or even what defensive formations he used. It was totally blind, and not realistic. In real life, all teams have access to gamefilm from all of their opponents.

This annoys me. ...the current approach is pretty crude and unrealistic. The only teams for which it's at all reasonable are those you play year after year, but there are only one or two of those in our BCS league. (The 2* league is a bit better, since I've now played Counselor's Buffalo 4 times and Leroy's EMU 3 times.)

Another option would be for EA to allow us to play our online dynasty teams in the instant play mode, so at least we could get a scrimmage against the other team to know more about their strengths and weaknesses. It wouldn't allow us to discern play-calling tendencies, but at least it would give is *some* information about the other team.

My scouting involves depth chart hunting and current player stats.

Jayhawker wrote:

Does anyone have any interest in trying a true sim league based on NCAA 12?

I can see how you'd love that. We've had many conversations and that definitely sounds like something you would enjoy. Me personally I like playing the games, but I think that would make for a great league. I just hope that EA has also spent some effort on improving the engine and AI.

Leroyog wrote:

My scouting involves depth chart hunting and current player stats.

That's pretty much what I do.

And with these brand new custom playbooks, I think it will be even more important to really know what plays a team is running. I'm not a fan of custom playbooks, personally. I think there needs to be some limit to what you can run week in and week out. Instead of custom playbooks, I'd prefer something even more restrictive. I'd be in favor of having to stick with one type of gameplan all year. So if you start spread, you can move to another spread team that might have some formations that work for you better.

the idea would be that maybe you want to run a bunch of triple option against a particular opponent. IRL, you can't install the Georgia Tech system in its entirety. But you might be able to find another spread or one back team that runs some.

Heck, I'd love to go even further. How about you can't run any plays in a week if you haven't run them in practice? Mostly, I'd rather see EA force changes that make us think and sacrifice more. The idea that I can install entire triple option, pistol, spread offenses with my one back or pro style gameplan is kind lame, to me. I don't mind it being an option for those that want it, but I if I was running a dynasty, I'd use an option to limit it.

But then, that's my sim gamer self coming out.

I'm really digging what I'm hearing about the new zone coverage. Players will follow a bit better through their zone and instead of them standing in the middle of their zone, they will shade to the receivers. So you wont have your CB covering a half of the field where there is no one at, they will play more towards the middle.

And I really like building dyansties without having to play them.

Jayhawker wrote:

But then, that's my sim gamer self coming out.

I think this is why you might never see those features. Because you're definitely just coming at it form a different angle. Not a "wrong" angle, just different. I personally want to run football plays with my team that I can execute with the video game. I want some realism, but not on that level.

I can see the desire for it, though. As much as EA is piling sliders and things like coaching carousel into the game it's possible they need to consider another game at a certain point. I was thinking about that last night while playing my 2star game. A lot of the changes to the run blocking AI and sliders wouldn't be necessary if you couldn't see the whole field. Being able to see the whole field gives you the advantage to watch how blocks are setting up and pick your way through the defense.

When you really stop and think about it, how weird it is that, that as a defender I have a view of the entire field? Or how, as a quarterback, I have a 360 degree view around myself. If you wanted to be realistic the game should be played in first person with you only having a view of what you could see as you were running the ball. As a QB you should only be able to see receivers you're looking at. So then the developers of the game have to make up for this by leaping linebackers and other strange oddities. They try hard to make the statistics or difficulty of a game realistic, but in the end it's still not realistic. It's still way off the mark.

I think the bottom line is that it's a video game. Some of us are going to be happy with suspending some realism in favor of the game playing enjoyable. Other people are going to be bugged by these things that aren't realistic and want more simulation. I understand both sides. I just hope there's always room for both. I wonder if the reason you find this so incongruous, Jayhawker (aside from the fact that you prefer things to be simulation) is because we have other games like FPSes and physics-based games where you're getting closer and closer to things being realistic. So having a QB who can run a play he's never practiced and see the whole field might seem a little strange given what other games can give you in terms of realism.

There is no doubt that what I crave is a niche product, and one that would do much better on the PC than console. Otherwise, EA would be coming out with yet another version of NFL Head Coach and hopefully working on NCAA Head Coach now.

But hey, they are putting a cool new broadcast cam and this coach only mode in the game. So I'm definitely going to look and see if it holds up. What I am pointing out is some of what really is needed if they really want it to work as a coach mode. Well, at least if they want it to be compelling enough for folks to want to run it as multiplayer dynasty.

I really like all the discussions we are throwing around. Once we can figure out what the machine/game is capable of, I have no doubt we will create a great dynasty. I like the coach idea as well, I tried the NFL Head Coach game, and liked it until it became monotonous.

It'd be awesome if they had a football version of Out of the Park Baseball, but with the EA engine so you can actually see the plays being run. This is way more important in a football game than in a baseball game, where a text description of the play will usually suffice.

TheCounselor wrote:

It'd be awesome if they had a football version of Out of the Park Baseball, but with the EA engine so you can actually see the plays being run. This is way more important in a football game than in a baseball game, where a text description of the play will usually suffice.

That was pretty much what NFL Head Coach was.

I'm in for what ever I haven't played NCAA in a long time on a regular basis so I will just be getting back into it. You know what teams are my options when the time comes

Jayhawker wrote:
TheCounselor wrote:

It'd be awesome if they had a football version of Out of the Park Baseball, but with the EA engine so you can actually see the plays being run. This is way more important in a football game than in a baseball game, where a text description of the play will usually suffice.

That was pretty much what NFL Head Coach was.

I miss playing that game

More blog info. This time they cover dynasty tuning.

First comes a pet peeve.

Sway Pitch

One complaint we heard last year was that Sway Pitch felt like too much risk without enough reward and because of this, a lot of fans avoided using Sway Pitch all together which is something I never want to hear as a developer. This year, Sway Pitch has been tuned to provide more of a bonus when you are successful, and less of a penalty when you fail. Additionally, we've adjusted the percent chance that a Sway will be successful to help make Sway Pitch a more effective recruiting tactic, I believe you will now find the Sway Pitch option to have a greater impact during recruiting.

There were some issues with recruiting, in that it was not always clear what the positives were for using these kinds of special pitches. But over the course of several seasons between both leagues and my own offline stuff, I came up with strategies about when to use the Sway pitch.

I was definitely one of ht folks that did not use it initially. But the payoff is huge if you can use it early. If you can bump a kid from average to high, that is a bump in points that you see week in and week out as you try to land him. It's not just the one week difference!

The problem is, there is very little explanation for how the developers intend for us to use the tools we have. I don't want to drill down on the best mathematical way to optimize my pitches. But I do want to have an understanding about why I use certain pitches over others. I think they could have done a better job explaining what the advantages and disadvantages are for each strategy, and then let us figure out when to use them. I don't like that their answer is to make is something that requires no thought or planning. I don't want recruiting to be easier, just more understandable.

Now, here is one that we all wish had been in place for the current game.

Incoming Prospect Ratings

Finally, we've updated the incoming ratings for all generated prospects with a focus on ensuring they are consistent with the recruits on the default roster. Now you won't notice a drop off in overall player talent in future years of the Dynasty when the players on the default roster have graduated. I think you will find that some positions, in particular Kickers and Punters, will be far more accurate this year.

Again, we don't need star recruits. But we do need to see reasonable recruits for all positions. Hopefully they have this tuned much better.

I've mentioned it before but what bugs me is there will never be another Patrick Peterson or Von Miller in a dynasty. The recruits that come in are always excelling in one stat attribute but are below average in another. I looked through all the 5* corners in the BCS dyansty and none of them had A across the board for speed, agility, and acceleration. It was more like A, B+, B- Linebackers....there are NEVER 5* OLBs. 4* is the best you will see because they somehow jacked up the ranking system on OLB.

Yeah, the level of the recruits never accurately reflects the reality of college football. I was really surprised when I played college ball (NAIA-D2 back in the early 90s) at the fact that truly every player on my team was better than *any* player I had played against in high school. It's just a numbers game. There are so many kids playing football that even when you whittle the talent pool down to colleges and even small colleges there are going to be some talented players. The recruits, as they stand now, are rated worse than recruits would realistically be rated for D2.