NCAA 11 GWJBCS (Xbox 360): Year 3 Week 12

We should make sure we have enough spots, which may depend on how many are able to be in an online dynasty in NCAA 12 and how many of the originals stick around. There was one previous request to take a spot in this league (airicc8), so you two will have to chat with the commish (shag).

Even if this first one is still full with NCAA 12, there may be enough interest to convince us to open a new one! There's currently a 2* dynasty, in which we each took on 2* prestige schools and tried to develop them. It already has slots. If you're interested in that, contact Jayhawker. We're nearing the end of our third season, but we're going to run another before NCAA 12 comes out.

firesloth wrote:

We should make sure we have enough spots, which may depend on how many are able to be in an online dynasty in NCAA 12 and how many of the originals stick around. There was one previous request to take a spot in this league (airicc8), so you two will have to chat with the commish (shag).

Even if this first one is still full with NCAA 12, there may be enough interest to convince us to open a new one! There's currently a 2* dynasty, in which we each took on 2* prestige schools and tried to develop them. It already has slots. If you're interested in that, contact Jayhawker. We're nearing the end of our third season, but we're going to run another before NCAA 12 comes out.

Hansom is correct. First person with a chance into the league is airicc8.

Yeah, and I heard that airicc8 guy is really cool too.

airicc8 wrote:

Yeah, and I heard that airicc8 guy is really cool too.

I do know about really cool. Anyway, what teams would you be interested in airicc8? There might be a spot open for Season 4.

I guess this would be a good time to say that I am going to drop at the end of this season. I want to spend more time playing MLB 2K11 and other games until NCAA 12 comes out.

I'm anxious to see how NCAA 12 works in regards to online dynasties. I understand the excitement to get a league rolling right away, but I can't commit to anything until I play the new game and get a feel for how much I want to play it. Based on Madden 10, I figured I was going to be playing all Madden, all the time this year. But NCAA 11 turned into the game to play for me.

I know that might leave me on the outside waiting for an opening if you guys hit the ground running. My preference is really a league with custom sliders now, anyway. And who knows, maybe this year is the year Madden might be the game that takes up my time.

You know what Shag, looking at my schedule, it might not be good for me to join just for this 4th season (last season) with my upcoming schedule this summer.

I leave for the mainland to visit Washington on June 28, then Minnesota for 2 weeks starting on June July 12, and I won't be back home in Hawaii until July 26.

I don't want you to have another dead user for your final season.

I'd still like to be #1 on the waiting list if possible to the '12 game. But if you wanted to plug someone else in for this last '11 season, that might be better for the league since I'll be gone without an XBox for those 3 weeks.

Thanks!!

And who knows, maybe this year is the year Madden might be the game that takes up my time.

Screw Madden. There, I said it.

The NFL is playing with fire right now with the lockout/dissolution of the union (both sides are equally blameful, as far as I'm concerned). The draft in Madden will not be as much fun as the recruiting process in NCAA.

...AND I won't be playing it! So, how could it be better? They don't even have 5 overtime games in the NFL (regular season, at least). I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I couldn't stretch the stress over extra time!

firesloth wrote:

The draft in Madden will not be as much fun as the recruiting process in NCAA.

This is ridiculously true. Not only is it better than the draft, it is better than free agency even more.

But I can't say that I am not a little excited to give the Chiefs whirl. They are getting really good now. But the gameplay of Madden 11 was just horrible. Even without recruiting, the gameplay on the field of NCAA 11 was so far ahead it wasn't funny.

My overall preference is to pick-up NCAA 12 and have so much fun with it that I don't even think about trying Madden.

The gameplay in Madden was fine. It was a tweaked 10. The lack of improvement on the online/offline franchise is what turned me off. you still can't change your team's default playbook. So the 2010 Lions still play like the 2010 Lions in 2019.

Leroyog wrote:

The gameplay in Madden was fine. It was a tweaked 10. The lack of improvement on the online/offline franchise is what turned me off. you still can't change your team's default playbook. So the 2010 Lions still play like the 2010 Lions in 2019.

It really didn't feel that way to me. But then, I didn't stick with Madden for very long. But it felt like the old Madden 97 game I hated so much, in that it had just too many big plays.

But like I said, I didn't really take a ton of time with it. I have no idea how patches and tuning might have fixed it.

There's also a difference in sports. I personally like big plays. It's just me. Over my life I've generally gravitated towards teams in the NFL (Cunningham's Eagles, the Okoye Chiefs, Moon's Oilers) that have dynamic players and personalities that can do make big plays and do exciting things. I like statistical oddities like RBs going 1000/1000 and QBs that rush for 1000 yards. The NCAA is the home to more of that simply because the talent level is lower and spread thinly across the country.

The NFL, on the other hand, I expect to be a little more conservative. In other words, I'm with Jayhawker on this. Part of why I prefer NCAA is because I actually like big plays. However, with Madden when I think about it I realistically shouldn't expect the game to be as wide open. In the end, though, they're all video games and the people playing them will always skew how games turn out.

In the end, though, they're all video games and the people playing them will always skew how games turn out.

Like when I played SpyNavy in Madden last year...

I agree that NCAA is fun because of the big-play frequency, both in the game and in reality! I think the game has done a nice job in capturing the difference in feel between Saturday and Sunday football. I've hated pretty much every previous iteration of NCAA because it felt too cartoonish and not enough like a simulation. I suppose NCAA 11 still has a bit of that, but it feels like a very good game of football to me.

One nagging complaint I have about all video game football: Defense. I'm a defensive guy, but playing defense is often a bit bland. A few things that strike me:

1) When will we get more team-specific defensive playbooks like offense? Sure, the offensive playbooks are all somewhat similar, too, but go to the trouble of making each team at least a bit difference on D!

2) I think part of why it's harder to make the defensive side more fun is that it's harder to play a specific player and not screw up. If you are on offense and switch to a WR, you may drop a ball. No biggie. If you're on defense, you give up a TD. That's harsh. So, I tend to play in the front 7, mostly on the line. I'm less likely to really screw things up that way. Is there a strategy the developers can take to overcome this?

3) The game needs to do a better job of disguising defenses before the snap. APF2k8 did this to some degree. It's way too easy to diagnose the defenses in NCAA 11. I know it's the college game, but where's the movement? Where is the man look that turns into zone? Why have the CB on the outside receiver come down toward the slot when he's going to blitz? I know to throw it to my wide-open receiver deep on the outside before he can get to me because of that!!

So, here's hoping the changes they make in the zone D go some way to making defense a bit better off in this game. For the longest time I completely gave up on zone defenses because they were unusable against human opponents. Things have come around as players come into your team that play better zone, but it's still an issue.

Okay, so a new blog post talks about a few of the improvements to the dynasty mode in NCAA 12. Of note: you can only use the web-based sim and the ability to advance the week as commissioner if you buy a 240 MS points ($3) add-on.

I suppose I can understand it from the point of view that it cost them a lot of money to move some of that control of the simming of unplayed CPU games to their servers (for the commissioner advancing via the web), but I find the cost for the commish much less understandable than that for players hoping to sim their game via the web. The web advancement just seems like it should be part of the game!

Those damn bloodsuckers.....

**rolls up sleeve for bloodsucker**

But this looks awesome!

In an offline dynasty you are on your own to determine your starting job, but in an Online Dynasty the commissioner can force everyone to climb their way up the coaching ladder by restricting which jobs are available when joining the dynasty (i.e. everyone starts as a 1-star Coordinator, start as a 3-star Head Coach or lower, etc.).

That's cool. Might be something fun to try on the side. I'm open to try all of that out to see how it runs.

I can't wait! I have no doubts that the '12 game will build upon all that we liked from '11.

There are so many online dynasty possibilities. I'm secretly hoping for one where we all start out as 1-star coordinators and see who can land a head coaching job and win a NC first.

But maybe we start out as 4-star coordinators and half to drop down to a 1 or 2-star school for a head coaching job. There are a lot of ways to go.

That is true, maybe we can start out at our "alma mater" that the game makes us choose (if it is 4 stars or less). That would be great too. If we get a coordinator one going, I won't even need/want to run an offline one.

I've been "pretending" to be a lowly coordinator who gets job offers for years, and now they've finally added it to the game.

Leroyog wrote:

The gameplay in Madden was fine. It was a tweaked 10. The lack of improvement on the online/offline franchise is what turned me off. you still can't change your team's default playbook. So the 2010 Lions still play like the 2010 Lions in 2019.

Well I am down for a slot if it opens in NCAA 12 Also since Madden has become a subject let me just inform everyone you are more than welcome to join the current Madden League as well as Madden 12 league. We have 23 slots open as of right now. Let me know

Where do we stand with recruiting this week?