NCAA Football 2012 game catch-all

Thanks Stele! I'm counting down the days until I can get back and finally try the game out (July 28!).

airicc8 wrote:

Jay/Stele,

Once the "good" rosters/coaches are up should we all download the same ones for our dynasty? Or can the commish do it only for the league. I haven't downloaded the rosters before, but I'm assuming it's similar to when you download a created team. Thanks!

Whatever rosters the commish used to create the OD will be what everyone uses, regardless of what they have or have not downloaded themselves. Downloading the roster for yourself is for your personal use only. Or if you start an OD.

We'll see how bad the corruption is for the rosters. Word now is that all players have had their tendencies altered. So pocket passers are now scramblers, power RB's are now finesse, and so on. Even defensive guys are out of whack. It sounds like a glitch. We'll see how much of an impact it has, and if they will patch it.

Do the tendencies matter, or are they just for informational purposes?

It's basically telling a QB like Denard Robinson to stay in the pocket more.

Sometimes RtG just drives me batty. Was playing a game earlier today as LSU (of course) and was down by 7 with 1:30 to go in our bowl game against Wisconsin. I had gotten sacked on 3rd down so I'm faced with about 4th and 20. Since I'm only a freshman, I can only flip the play, I can't call an audible or such. They call a pass play that doesn't come close to being able to give enough yards to get the first. All quick outs that might get 5-6 yards. I'm also out of time outs so I can't call a time out and hope the AI gives me a better play next time.

Sigh, we got about 5 yards and then lost the game.

I hate stuff like that!

Coolbeans wrote:

Sometimes RtG just drives me batty. Was playing a game earlier today as LSU (of course) and was down by 7 with 1:30 to go in our bowl game against Wisconsin. I had gotten sacked on 3rd down so I'm faced with about 4th and 20. Since I'm only a freshman, I can only flip the play, I can't call an audible or such. They call a pass play that doesn't come close to being able to give enough yards to get the first. All quick outs that might get 5-6 yards. I'm also out of time outs so I can't call a time out and hope the AI gives me a better play next time.

Sigh, we got about 5 yards and then lost the game.

I hate stuff like that!

Don't get sacked, frosh.

Yeah my season got a little better in game 7 or so when I got the Veteran Starter thing and could replace 5 plays a game. I try to save them up for important moments. 2 of my 4 sacks on the season have come in the last couple games when I had the option for Safety Blitz and chose it on those plays. Another couple TFL on those as well.

WooHoo! I'm finally back in town and will get a chance to actually try this game! Let me know if you see me online and want a quick match...

EDIT: Nevermind, too many leaping linebackers. I may save myself some heartache and just send this back early in exchange for NBA 2k. This post on Operation Sports caught my attention.

LOL that says enough right there.

I just looked at Colt McCoy's highlight video on youtube and on most of his passes the linebackers don't even attempt to jump they just don't react because the ball is already by them. The problem in this game is they react too fast. What skyboxer is doing is going to save this game for me.

Look at the pass at the 1:07 mark. Throws it right over the linebacker. Also at the 2:28 mark he throws it over two people.

Great videos. This shows that linebackers don't really "jump" by the definition given in ncaa 12. It's more of an awkward flail of the arm.

From what I saw in Skyboxer's video I would say his edits are creating realistic results. If a linebacker never bats another ball down in ncaa 12 it will still be more accurate than if we allow the status quo to continue.

This is the thing I find most incongruous, I think. I'm happy to learn how to read coverages better and find ways to scheme against the DBs. But the LBs. are driving me crazy.

The thread in question - Super Line Backers are back

Not only are they back, but they will drp back 20 yds in zone then warp 15 yds forward to kill the underneath route that should be open in the bubble breath the zones. You really need to understand pre and post snap reads and how the safeties react. Also, most of the quick passes don't work, you have to let most routes develop fully. It is very tough to make good reads in the passing game because of the omniscient defense and the warping of the defenders to the ball. Couple that with the hard hits and receiver drops (you almost always have to click on the receiver or it will bounce off his back or head) the game can be quite frustrating. The game tries to force you into the spread or power running game, both which are fairly effective. So I completely understand DS.

I had DT drop back almost 10 yards and make an INT....A DEFENSIVE TACKLE!!!

Leroyog wrote:

I had DT drop back almost 10 yards and make an INT....A DEFENSIVE TACKLE!!!

Was it the one handed leap animation - that one almost cost me a controller and apologize for my language :).

LMAO, no, it was the two handed stretch animation where it looks like the ball is past but they manage to suck it in

This game is going to be really frustrating to anyone used to dropping 70 points on the CPU regularly. But as a sub-average gamer, I can still put up 20-30 points a game, complete 50% of my passes, and throw for 300 yards.

I don't care if the animation used to penalize you for throwing a bullet over the middle looks weird. The result is a solidly realistic game.

I'm not sure how folks throwing up 70 points a game and 6000 yard passing in a season are really worried about realism.

I have yet to this an INT to an open receiver. I have yet to have pass batted down, leaping or not, when I didn't take the time to find an open passing lane.

I have completed several passes to a receiver that was totally covered. I have shed blocks in which my HB was dead to rights in the backfield. But no one takes time to complain about this, or the wide open slot receivers.

So to balance all of this, I look at the stats. If they makes sense, I can live with it. The game provides the ability
to adjust your play to perform better. I don't want the game to adapt to me, I want to adapt to it. That's when the gameplay is fun and compelling.

Jayhawker wrote:

This game is going to be really frustrating to anyone used to dropping 70 points on the CPU regularly. But as a sub-average gamer, I can still put up 20-30 points a game, complete 50% of my passes, and throw for 300 yards.

I don't care if the animation used to penalize you for throwing a bullet over the middle looks weird. The result is a solidly realistic game.

I'm not sure how folks throwing up 70 points a game and 6000 yard passing in a season are really worried about realism.

I think it depends on what kind of realism you are shooting for. You personally want statistical realism. You come from a history of playing beloved games that didn't focus on the visuals so much as simulating real football through correct play calling, etc.

I personally realize that this is a video game. As such I am willing to live with stats or difficulty being unreal as long as the game doesn't feel cheap to *play*. Playing the game being what I care most about.

So for me a game that gains statistical realism by having linebackers bat down deep balls and DBs who are telepaths isn't fun. It ceases to be football any longer. It's now this weird alternate universe where our hero faces ninja LBs and magical DBs while playing with stupid receivers who won't go to the ball. Yes, that formula gains statistical realism, but at the expense of the game turning into a fantasy game more like Oblivion than football.

Remember back when the game to play was APF2k8? What mattered most was that in the human vs. human games the mechanics not get in the way of 2 people feeling like they had control over the execution of plays. That you could control your own destiny and win if you were more skilled or clever. 4 years after 2k8 I still don't feel like EA is even close. I'd rather have Ruthless kill me in 2k8 than throw for 600 yards in a game where I have to roll out of the pocket to throw *around* the LBs.

EDIT: And just to be clear once again, since you seem to so frequently take issue with me, I don't think you are "wrong". I just think we have different priorities. I'd rather have a game that mechanically played realistic-ish and you want a game that has realistic outcomes. It's possible to simply disagree, no matter how passionately we feel about it.

It depends on what your definition of an open receiver is. In a mechanically correct football game a receiver running an out pattern would know before the CB where he was headed and be able to get open. Yet even this play is locked down by psychic CBs who break before he does and run in front of them. Something they couldn't do and wouldn't do if the WR could change the route he was running to put himself in front of the CB or break off the route.

So much of the difference as far as statistical outcome is the way the game handles huddles and the play clock and those interactions. Seems like they have balanced the no-huddle and aggressive clock management with a 5-min quarter game to end up with somewhat realistic results for yards and scores.

Of course most people don't want to play a 2 hour game for each game of football, skipping timeouts and halftime but having everything else drug out to 15 min quarters and long huddles, and replays after every play and so on.

The problem is they've also tweaked the sim engine to get realistic results based on those 5-min quarters. So now if you do anything to gameplay that slows it down or makes it more realistic with pass completion % or yards per carry or whatever, you end up making it impossible for the user to compete with the CPU opponents for awards and such in dynasty.

Even extending that and playing 6-min quarters last year, I was never in 6 seasons in the running for the Heisman. Of course I tend to run a more realistic offense similar to what my team does. They will run in more of an alternating RB system, keeping fresh legs and speed on the field for as many plays as possible. So I end up with 2 800-1000 yd RBs instead of one close to 2000 and in the running. But there's only so much time and so many plays. Unlike the very broken CPU simulation, I can't huddle, choose a play, and run that play every 10 seconds.

I don't know what the solution is.

It's still a fun game. But it definitely needs more work. I think the best fix would be if the NCAA lets 2k Sports back in. Competition makes things better. NBA 2k11 was so good it killed the NBA Live franchise.

I have been playing with 8 minute quarters and the game speed set to Slow. The goal is end up with about 120 plays, and these settings have kept it in that ballpark for me.

The game still screws up the no-huddle after first downs by not starting the clock soon enough.

Good point, Stele. I'm a programmer so often when I see the jenky AI I'm reminded that they're bending the rules of reality in many places. One of them is that they change physics and QB accuracy / blocking to give a boost to offense to compensate for the fact that you have 1/3rd (5 min vs 15 min quarters) less time. Every sports video game faces this issue to varying degrees. One exception would be MLB The Show (been playing that a lot lately) and there you don't have a clock.

So yeah, modeling a "realistic" football game in a third the time means altering physics to favor the offense. This year they compensated for that, but by making the defensive players superhuman. Honestly if someone wanted to make a football game where the quarters were 15 minutes and the game could be played progressively over the course of multiple play sessions I'd give that game a chance. Especially if it meant altering the physics to be more sane.

If you actually watch football you know that there are tons of punts most games. And that when there aren't it's because teams are running clock like crazy. I would play that game at this point in my life.

DSGamer wrote:

It depends on what your definition of an open receiver is. In a mechanically correct football game a receiver running an out pattern would know before the CB where he was headed and be able to get open. Yet even this play is locked down by psychic CBs who break before he does and run in front of them. Something they couldn't do and wouldn't do if the WR could change the route he was running to put himself in front of the CB or break off the route.

There is far less of that in this years game. And an elite CB can read a route and beat a WR to the spot. And I can pretty much tell how locked on a CB is to my receiver, and move on to another option.

And you are right, there is no right or wrong. But when I read complaints that only reflect a frustration when a gamer fails, but all of the issues related to making the game too easy to score are ignored, I discount that opinion a lot. It doesn't make the option wrong, but i don't find it useful in actually assessing the game, or helping to fix it by adjusting sliders.

Jayhawker wrote:

This game is going to be really frustrating to anyone used to dropping 70 points on the CPU regularly. But as a sub-average gamer, I can still put up 20-30 points a game, complete 50% of my passes, and throw for 300 yards.

I don't care if the animation used to penalize you for throwing a bullet over the middle looks weird. The result is a solidly realistic game.

I'm not sure how folks throwing up 70 points a game and 6000 yard passing in a season are really worried about realism.

I can still hang 35-42 on a top tier team and hang 60+ on a conference pushover. I don't like the super LB, but it does force you to really understand coverages and use route combos and hot routes to exploit weaknesses in zone coverage. You also need to have a well thought out audible system. I would like to see the super jumps toned down, but I will survive. My favorite has been the blitzing LB who gets hung in the line and engaged with my linemen who jumps up to snag the lob pass to the streaking TE 15 yds deep and 5 yds to the right. Grrrrr.

Against an FCS opponent last night with Oregon I scored 112 points and passed for 1,000 yards. So my point isn't that the game got harder. Just cheaper. The game is definitely broken in other ways. In being easier as well. The game got cheaper and now I find myself finding the deep seams and abusing them. This makes me want EA to genuinely improve the defense in an authentic way. They've taken away legitimate passes with super LBs and still haven't improved the game.

DSGamer wrote:

Against an FCS opponent last night with Oregon I scored 112 points and passed for 1,000 yards. So my point isn't that the game got harder. Just cheaper. The game is definitely broken in other ways. In being easier as well. The game got cheaper and now I find myself finding the deep seams and abusing them. This makes me want EA to genuinely improve the defense in an authentic way. They've taken away legitimate passes with super LBs and still haven't improved the game.

+1

To me the leaping LBs and prescient CBs have always seemed to be a poor fix for not having an appropriate AI system (on defense, specifically). It seemed as if they ran some sims to see what numbers they were getting, then cranked up those aspects of the coverage until they got the numbers about right. I say this in regards to NCAA11, since I still haven't had a chance to play the new one. I've gotten used to the super-jumping LBs to a degree. It still pisses me off that they do it, but I have to adjust to living in this alternate world in which that happens.

The mind-reading CBs...well, top CBs do adjust and notice tendencies. They do jump routes, but the best receivers can still make counter-adjustments. They can use slant-and-gos, for instance, that would hurt real life CBs more than these digital counterparts. That seemed to be absent from the demo.

It does seem to me the defensive side of the ball has always been a very low priority for this game. Why do we only see what offensive style an opposing team plays, and never whether they play a 3-4 or a 4-3? Because defense doesn't sell games (even if it does win championships). This isn't their focus. Unfortunately, it sounds like many of the niggling issues from NCAA11 weren't their focus either.

I don't understand how they can release a game in which the dynasty progressions are broken...again (at least to hear some of the forum posters...one gent said Troy beat Miami, OH, for the national championship in his second season!). Wait, I do: chumps like me bought it day 1. F*ck.

firesloth wrote:

To me the leaping LBs and prescient CBs have always seemed to be a poor fix for not having an appropriate AI system (on defense, specifically). It seemed as if they ran some sims to see what numbers they were getting, then cranked up those aspects of the coverage until they got the numbers about right. I say this in regards to NCAA11, since I still haven't had a chance to play the new one. I've gotten used to the super-jumping LBs to a degree. It still pisses me off that they do it, but I have to adjust to living in this alternate world in which that happens.

The mind-reading CBs...well, top CBs do adjust and notice tendencies. They do jump routes, but the best receivers can still make counter-adjustments. They can use slant-and-gos, for instance, that would hurt real life CBs more than these digital counterparts. That seemed to be absent from the demo.

It does seem to me the defensive side of the ball has always been a very low priority for this game. Why do we only see what offensive style an opposing team plays, and never whether they play a 3-4 or a 4-3? Because defense doesn't sell games (even if it does win championships). This isn't their focus. Unfortunately, it sounds like many of the niggling issues from NCAA11 weren't their focus either.

I don't understand how they can release a game in which the dynasty progressions are broken...again (at least to hear some of the forum posters...one gent said Troy beat Miami, OH, for the national championship in his second season!). Wait, I do: chumps like me bought it day 1. F*ck.

+1

I enjoy the game as a college football fan and well it is football. I do not enjoy the lazy way EA Sports has handled addressing issues in the game. I will play it and love moments of it, but I will also have blinding moments of rage and WTF moments.

Also here's a Team Info Spreadsheet for this year.

Ratings, Coaches, play % (from real stats ), off/def style (no huddle marked), rivals, pitch ranks in dynasty, and so on.

Useful if you want to do coach tweaks for those run/pass %, or if you just want to look at team locations, conferences, rivals, maybe do a realignment, or pick a different team for your dynasty or whatever.

Found on Operation Sports. This is one of the more egregious psychic DBs I've seen.

http://www.easports.com/media/play/video/82103276

DSGamer wrote:

Found on Operation Sports. This is one of the more egregious psychic DBs I've seen.

http://www.easports.com/media/play/video/82103276

I wonder, if he'd have pump faked to the short guy, if the same play would've happened, leaving the other receiver wide open deep.