• NCAA Football 11 - Dynasty Blog 1 of 3: Phone Call

    The newest NCAA Football 11 blog details the changes to the phone call aspect of Recruiting in Dynasty mode:

    Hey NCAA Fans! Russ here and I'm back to discuss a crowd favorite. We are now less than two months away from the July 13th release of NCAA Football 11. Personally, I'm very excited about all the details we already talked about with game play and presentation. The game is looking really good right now and the team is working hard to finish in these last couple months.

    One of the most asked questions at every event, forum, and live chat we've done so far this year is "What is new with Dynasty?" Well I'm happy to finally be able to answer that question and provide you with a lot of the details in Dynasty Mode. But with all the enhancements this year, Dynasty will be broken down into 3 different blogs; this is the first about the new Phone Call in NCAA Football 11.

    One of the areas we felt would add the most to the Dynasty experience was a new Phone Call with recruits. The goal was to make each call more fun, a lot faster, and just a better experience all around. Much of the same concepts are still around when calling prospects. For example, your school will have the same 14 pitch types and the prospect has his rating of each, as well. The major difference is now you'll need to find a way to maneuver through each call so you can maximize the amount of points you earn.

    At the start of each call you'll be presented with an option to select how many Topics you wish to have. You can pick from 1 to 6 topics that cost 10 minutes for each prospect every week. Every week you'll still have 10 hours for Recruiting like in previous years of NCAA Football; so you choose how much and which prospects to spend your time on.

    Once you select how many topics you would like to discuss with the prospect, the phone call will begin and your first topic will be presented to you:



    There are a lot of ways to go about dealing with each Topic you are presented with. If it's something your school is good at, making that pitch is often a good move; or you can try to compare yourself up against another school that the Prospect is interested in to earn your school some points and take some away from your rivals.

    Make Pitch will always earn you points, but it is very dependent on your program's grade and how important the topic is to the Prospect. The only way to know the importance of a pitch is to find it.

    Find Pitch will always tell you how important a pitch is to that Prospect; unlock the score range and it will earn you some points. Here you can see an example of one of the score ranges for a topic that has been found:



    You'll never need to find a pitch. However, knowing what the Prospect thinks can help you maximize your score. This also opens the ability to sway the pitch.

    Sway Pitch becomes available after you know how important a topic is to the Prospect. This option gives you a chance to convince the Prospect that this pitch should be more important to him. You'll want to focus on trying to sway pitches that are best for you school. The reason for this is it gives you a much better chance of scoring points because the more a Prospect cares about something, the more points you can earn.

    Compare Pitch replaces Downplay from last year's game, and can be one of the most powerful options available. Compare Pitch puts your grade vs. another school's grade and how much the Prospect cares about the pitch all together to give you points as well as remove points from the school you selected. Because of that we show you the grades of each school so it's easy to see:



    The further you out-class your opponent the more points you will take from them. Your score will not be affected, however. So you'll have to decide if it's more important for you to target a rival and bring them down, or keep gaining as many points as you can and hope you catch up (or stay ahead!).

    Change Topic is the first example of one of the outs you have in dealing with a topic your school might not be good at. Each call will give you 3 times you can change the topic (there is one exception to this I'll explain later); so you can feel free to use it every call because they come back. Change Topic will give you another roll at a topic; but, there is a chance you could get a topic you've already passed on. Based on the length of the call and how good your school's Pitches are will dictate how often you use Change Topic. Smaller schools with lower scores may find themselves out of Change Topics often.

    Make Promise is finally not just an off-season recruiting tool. If you don't like the topic you're given, another way to get around talking about it is to offer a promise; this will consume the topic and give you points. You can only offer 3 Promises to any single Prospect and if you do not keep your promises you'll start to lose what you can promise. Promises work off their own score range based on what you are promising.For example, saying you'll win a National Title is a lot more impressive then telling a prospect he won't red shirt his first year.

    Schedule Visit is similar to previous years of NCAA Football. You pick a home game (or bye week) for the Prospect to come to your campus and you earn points based on how well you match up his Activities and how well you play that week. The big difference is this is now considered an out, which means once you Schedule a Visit that topic has been used. Also, you can no longer reschedule visits. Your'e now held accountable for what you tell a Prospect on the phone.

    Offer Scholarship is the last option in a Phone Call. Like the previous two options, it uses the Topic, so you can Offer a Scholarship on a bad Topic for your school to get around talking about it. But you can only offer it once to a Prospect.

    Once you figure out what you are going to do on a topic, you instantly get to know how much you scored on the Topic Results screen:



    Two things to notice on the above screen shot is the Call Tracker at the top of the screen and the Pipeline Bonus under the points gained. The Call Tracker will show you how many topics you have left (6 in the example), the current pitch, and what you have scored on your previous topics. Based on your Pipeline States in Dynasty you can earn extra bonus points if the Prospect you are calling is from one of those states. This is now shown to you on the Topic Results screen so you can see how many extra points you are scoring for Making, Finding, Swaying, or Comparing a pitch.

    When you are done with a Call you are given a Call Recap screen (this is the same screen you'll see if you quick call as well):



    This is an example of a call with 5 of the options you can perform.

    Now that you can really see how many points you are scoring in each call we made a change to the Prospects Top Schools screen to help you:



    You can now see how many points you are behind (or ahead) of every school in the Top 10 for every Prospect. Also you can access this screen during a call to help you decide on your course of action during a call.

    Well that's it for Dynasty Blog 1 of 3: Phone Call. Thanks for taking the time to read it. I hope you'll enjoy the new Phone Calls as much as we do. Keep checking back here for the next two parts.

    -Russ Kiniry
    Designer NCAA Football 11
    Comments 71 Comments
    1. BlindRedBaron's Avatar
      BlindRedBaron -
      I think everything looks really slick. I love how much simpler and transparent everything in recruiting seems now with this new phone call system. Additionally, it introduces a whole new level of strategy to recruiting (how many topics do you want to cover, when should you change topics, when should you use an out, and a clear overview of the point distribution).

      Plus, we get our first look at the new interface and the really awesome looking ESPN ticker at the bottom.
    1. duckfan4's Avatar
      duckfan4 -
      I think that this is a huge upgrade from the previous games. I personally like how you can now see why you're moving up or down on the recruit's list. I agree that it does make the recruiting process more of strategy thing instead of just selecting quick call and hoping for the best. This makes the recruiting process much more realistic and enjoyable IMO. Great news! Can't wait for the 2nd and 3rd part of the recruiting update!
    1. AustinWolv's Avatar
      AustinWolv -
      Certainly looks pretty, but my reading comprehension must suck today, as I really feel I need to actually play with it to figure out what is going on......

      It appears you'll be able to budget your time better, instead of attacking a topic in past years and not having an idea of what it will 'cost' you.

      The change to Compare instead of Downplay looks like it could make for some good fun late in the season when the lists are pared down and you know the main competition for a recruit, as well as online dynasty humans fighting over recruits.

      Also, you can no longer reschedule visits.
      This seems like a bit of a constraint now in that you don't want to bring recruits in too early potentially.
    1. BlindRedBaron's Avatar
      BlindRedBaron -
      The quick overview is:

      Each week you pick which recruits you want to speak to, and how many topics (10 mins each) you want to cover with each recruit.

      When you enter the call, it takes you to a random topic. You have 5 options of how to handle the topic (6 including change topic; but you only get three of those per week). The goal is to maximize points, and point are determined by how good your school is, how important it is to the recruit, and how you chose to handle the topic.

      One of the real cool things is the point overview to see how far you are behind the other schools.

      Does that help your understanding?
    1. JBHuskers's Avatar
      JBHuskers -
      Yeah it is very slick. The very first thing I liked about the whole recruiting interface was the call recap screen. Really liked that to wrap up the phone call.

      I also like how you can see your progression of all of our pitches and actions up on the top, along with your instant feedback after that pitch.

      The compare pitch with a different school is very handy as well so you can instantly see if you should try to recruit against a school or not. And as you said there is a new level of strategy where you can try to change the topic or just go to make a promise to try to optimize your phone call.

      At the community day, I definitely had a blast with the recruiting. Russ was challenging me to try to just do hard sells only to see if I would succeed. And I wasn't really. So it is going to be a fun challenge.
    1. Solidice's Avatar
      Solidice -
      looks really good. I like that they added the promises to be used during the season and not just off-season, and that they limited them. hopefully they'll not be bugged like the last couple years.
    1. duckfan4's Avatar
      duckfan4 -
      Quote Originally Posted by JBHuskers View Post
      I also like how you can see your progression of all of our pitches and actions up on the top, along with your instant feedback after that pitch.
      At the community day, I definitely had a blast with the recruiting. Russ was challenging me to try to just do hard sells only to see if I would succeed. And I wasn't really. So it is going to be a fun challenge.
      ^^^^ This.
    1. BlindRedBaron's Avatar
      BlindRedBaron -
      Hey JB, in previous years quick calls have often been nearly counter-effective. Did you happen to check out the quick call at CD? If so, was it at least relatively but not quite as effective as if you had done the call?
    1. JBHuskers's Avatar
      JBHuskers -
      I was having so much fun doing the regular calls, I didn't mess with quick call because I was really trying to get through a whole season doing my own plan of recruiting (and time constraints only got me through half a season).
    1. texacotea's Avatar
      texacotea -
      I like the new look, but I think there was something about trying to find out what pitch each recruit liked and what they liked most. Also correct me if im wrong but I can only use 1hr on a recruit right?

      Also CD guys did you see any small schools getting big time recruits? I know in the OD I was in I pulled the #1 recruit 3 yrs in a row with Troy.
    1. JeffHCross's Avatar
      JeffHCross -
      Definitely going to be a huge change. No more 3 hours to one recruit for me.

      JB, would appreciate you answering this or not ... depending on how I want to read the blog, it seems like either I can select each of the topics I want to touch on, or I just select the number and then get them Russian Roulette style. I'm relatively certain I'm misreading, but the blog isn't entirely clear.

      On another topic, found out I can get to the site from work. That's actually a shock ... a pleasant surprise at that.
    1. BlindRedBaron's Avatar
      BlindRedBaron -
      Right, you can have up to six topics per recruit, and each topic takes up 10 minutes
    1. Kwizzy's Avatar
      Kwizzy -
      Sounds promising... I definitely like the idea of what they've added/changed. Of course I'll reserve my judgement until I've tried it but it seems like they're heading in a good direction. I really like that you can now make promises at any point in the season. I've thought since they added promises that this needed to be the case. How often do smaller schools land a big time recruit because they promise them the chance to start/play immediately.

      I really hope that the next 2 dynasty updates are about changes completely unrelated to recruiting. It seems like that is the only area of dynasty that has been changed in awhile. I really hope to see some other aspects overhauled (offseason training, gameplanning/ scouting, etc..).

      Overall, a really nice start though!
    1. JBHuskers's Avatar
      JBHuskers -
      Quote Originally Posted by texacotea View Post
      I like the new look, but I think there was something about trying to find out what pitch each recruit liked and what they liked most. Also correct me if im wrong but I can only use 1hr on a recruit right?

      Also CD guys did you see any small schools getting big time recruits? I know in the OD I was in I pulled the #1 recruit 3 yrs in a row with Troy.
      Should be tougher as you're not going to get as many points unless you're rated highly in a certain category, and you're able to pitch that category to the recruit.

      Quote Originally Posted by JeffHCross View Post
      Definitely going to be a huge change. No more 3 hours to one recruit for me.

      JB, would appreciate you answering this or not ... depending on how I want to read the blog, it seems like either I can select each of the topics I want to touch on, or I just select the number and then get them Russian Roulette style. I'm relatively certain I'm misreading, but the blog isn't entirely clear.

      On another topic, found out I can get to the site from work. That's actually a shock ... a pleasant surprise at that.
      You can do up to six actions....scholarship, promise, or pitch....the pitches come at you randomly.
    1. JBHuskers's Avatar
      JBHuskers -
      Quote Originally Posted by JBHuskers View Post
      Should be tougher as you're not going to get as many points unless you're rated highly in a certain category, and you're able to pitch that category to the recruit.



      You can do up to six actions....scholarship, promise, or pitch....the pitches come at you randomly.
      The strategy involved is either using one of your skips, throwing in a promise, or just offering a scholarship on the spot for those pitches that are not strong points of your school.
    1. Kwizzy's Avatar
      Kwizzy -
      Quote Originally Posted by JBHuskers View Post
      The strategy involved is either using one of your skips, throwing in a promise, or just offering a scholarship on the spot for those pitches that are not strong points of your school.
      So if you "change the subject" does that count as one of the "pitches" you spent 10 minutes on or is it replaced with another?
    1. pbplayer178's Avatar
      pbplayer178 -
      I like the new interface, but the actual calls were never a problem for me. I'd like to see recruiting be a little harder and maybe be able to see hard verbal recruits decommit. I'm excited to see what else they added to dynasty because the only other major thing I can think of is coaching carousel, but I would be shocked if they added that this year.
    1. AustinWolv's Avatar
      AustinWolv -
      When you enter the call, it takes you to a random topic...............the pitches come at you randomly.
      Yes, this is what I was questioning earlier. Thanks for clarifying.

      One of the real cool things is the point overview to see how far you are behind the other schools.
      Agreed.
      Previously, the intuition was there if you were in the bottom 1/3 of a Top10 to avoid wasting your time unless you felt like dumping a lot of effort into a guy but being in the middle 1/3 of the Top10 was feasible, so having an actual point value when you are middle of the pack to know if you are at that 'cutoff' of being too far behind or not is helpful.
    1. JBHuskers's Avatar
      JBHuskers -
      Quote Originally Posted by Kwizzy View Post
      So if you "change the subject" does that count as one of the "pitches" you spent 10 minutes on or is it replaced with another?
      It counts as one of the 3 skips you have per phone call.
    1. gschwendt's Avatar
      gschwendt -
      I really enjoyed the changes they made to recruiting this year. It definitely makes it more challenging which is a welcome change.
      Quote Originally Posted by Kwizzy View Post
      So if you "change the subject" does that count as one of the "pitches" you spent 10 minutes on or is it replaced with another?
      The change subject doesn't use any of your pitch time. Rather, it allows you to change the subject. What the subject changed to is random, however on occasion, you'll be able to pick the topic. So, if you have 3 really good topics you want to talk about and they don't come up in random, you have might have the chance to pick one of those topics.

      It basically acts like a normal conversation with the recruit leading most of the direction of that conversation.