• NCAA Football 11 - Dynasty Blog 2 of 3: Prospects

    The second of three NCAA Football 11 Dynasty blogs discusses Prospects within Recruiting.

    Russ Kiniry (NCAA Football 11 Designer) back again and as promised, here is part 2 of the Dynasty Blogs for NCAA Football 11; you can check out the first one about our new Phone Call here. But before we get into the details of the second blog, I'd like to mention one more thing about the New Phone Call that can help you in a call. We were going to reveal this later but there have been a lot of good discussions at various community sites and we want to ensure everyone has all the new information for our new Phone Calls.

    During a call, when you are between topics, there is a chance you can earn what we call a Coaches Choice. This gives you the option to select the next topic and leverage your program's strengths.



    The only catch is, you don't have control about when it appears. For smaller schools, this and the ability to change topics can be life savers during a call. As you really dive into the new Phone Call, you'll be able to see how all these elements tie together and make you think a little about how you'll react. Now let's get on with the rest of the blog...

    For the rest of this blog we are going to go over some of the new things we've done with the Prospects in Dynasty Mode. As you all know, the further you get in future years of Dynasty Mode the more the new Prospects coming into your game matter, so we had to ensure we did a better job this year in creating and ranking these Prospects.



    As you many of you have already guessed, there is a new ratings spread in NCAA Football 11. You'll no longer see dozens of players at 99 OVR in this year's game when looking at the rosters we ship with. Hence, we had to ensure the new Prospects created in Dynasty Mode matched the new philosophy. The Prospects have been re-created... every single one of them. The reason being is we wanted to ensure that all positions in the game had its share of elite players, multiple types of players, and an even spread from top to bottom.

    What classifies as an elite Prospect has changed from previous years with the new ratings spread. As you can imagine, you'll no longer see true freshman come into the game rated in the 90's OVR or even high 80's OVR. Only the top Prospects at any position this year will come in over an 80 OVR and depending on your school, he may or may not be able to start instantly.



    We tried to create each Prospect in a similar mold to players that play at each position each Saturday and built themes for each position. For example, you can scout defensive ends that specialize in a speed pass rush or a strength based run stopper.

    New to the game this year is the ESPNU 150; which replaces the old Top 100 we had in previous versions of NCAA Football. Each of the top 150 Prospects in the nation will be tagged as one of the ESPNU 150 and you'll be able to see that next to their portrait:



    After the Prospects were created and the ESPNU 150 list was filled out, we took a look at how each Prospect was ranked against each other. In years past the Prospects were always ranked by overall; meaning the "best" player was always ranked at the top of the list. Because of this, we had to have kickers, punters, and fullbacks overall ratings lowered to ensure they rarely showed up in the Top 100. To improve the fidelity of this list we've included position into the ranking formula.

    This change sounds pretty simple, but it has a big impact. We can now weigh a position to be more or less valuable in the rankings formula. For example, last year's list would take an 80 OVR QB vs. an 81 OVR Kicker and rate the kicker higher. In this year's game we are able to keep the Kickers rating at an 81 overall, but his ranking will not even crack the ESPNU 150 because his position isn't as valued. Together, this change and the new ratings spread improved the Prospect rankings in the ESPNU 150; and we were still basing the list on overall within each position.



    Using an arbitrary number to adjust the rankings really seemed like a poor way of going about things, so we took a rating that isn't visible to help solve the problem: potential. What we did for some of the Prospects is change both their overall rank and position rank based on the potential they have. This doesn't mean that you'll now see a 40 OVR player as a 5 star... but it does mean you might see a Prospect who is technically a few points lower in OVR rated above another Prospect. So, why did we use Potential?

    This is a rating all Prospects (and players) in our game have, and it matters equally for everyone when it comes to player progression. We took another look at player progression this year and really pushed Potential to be the major force in driving how much better players on your team get. This choice came from gathering lots of feedback from you guys in the community from the forums and the Live Chat we had on the subject a while back. Basically, potential felt like the best equalizer to measure a players worth in conjunction with his overall rating. The balancing factor to keep this more realistic is not every player uses his potential rating to determine his value, so there is still some surprise when you get any Prospect on your roster.



    Once we got the Prospects created and ranked, we moved onto JUCO's next. These Prospects were really easy to deal with after all the work done above. We simply raised the attributes of every JUCO a few points more than they would have been with the new ratings spread and made the value of a JUCO lower in the rankings. So here is a likely scenario for 4 different Prospects you'll see once you have the game:

    Player A - True Freshman QB, 70 Overall rating, 90 Potential rating
    Player B - JUCO Junior HB, 75 Overall rating, 75 Potential rating
    Player C - True Freshman HB, 73 Overall rating, 50 Potential rating
    Player D - True Freshman QB, 71 Overall rating, 70 Potential rating

    On average with the 4 players above would end up being ranked like this in NCAA Football 11:
    1. Player A
    2. Player D
    3. Player C
    4. Player B
    In previous years, only overall would have mattered.

    When you add up all the changes to Prospects and the new Phone Call we've already made some significant changes to Dynasty Mode in NCAA Football 11. But honestly that wasn't enough (and well this is only Blog 2 of 3), so there is still more. What's great is Blog 3 will address some of the comments about the first blog: both about Kent State being in the Top 10 of our 5 Star Fullback (in the last blog's screen shots) and the points showing up in the Top Schools menu. We will take a look at the logic behind signing a Recruit and how the CPU will do it.

    Once again thanks for reading, and keep checking back here for the next blog about Dynasty Mode.

    -Russ Kiniry
    Designer NCAA Football
    Comments 75 Comments
    1. cdj's Avatar
      cdj -
      Thanks for posting this, Austin.

      I love the changes made to help the ratings of prospects match up with the base roster. That had been a problem for years in the franchise. They really put in a lot of work and time into this huge database, but it'll be worth it.
    1. Schauwn's Avatar
      Schauwn -
      im surprised we got a new blog so quickly, here's to hoping the 3rd comes in a few days too...

      it sounds great to me. I love the idea of spreading out the ratings and making really great players stand out. also with the retooling of the entire recruits database to fit in with the base rosters is fantastic. this will help dynasties stay interesting longer IMO. I think something that shouldn't be overlooked in this blog is at the beginning where he talked about the ability to win a "coaches choice" or whatever he called it. this will give me something to look forward to while recruiting with smaller schools, when i can get that topic of my own choosing and really harp on something that is maybe my only real strong suit with the prospect. maybe my favorite thing of this post though is the idea of having a potential rating, this is AWESOME IMO. to see that a kid might be good as a freshman but not really ever get any better or to see a kid that might not be that great as a freshman but has huge upside, this adds another level to recruiting that hasnt been there in the past, i'm excited.

      wish they would have called this recruiting blog rather than dynasty blog though...teased me as to what was going to come along.
    1. Solidice's Avatar
      Solidice -
      I love that they spread the ratings out as well as putting the potential rating more into the progression. I also like the menu interface with the ESPN theme to it. looks nice.

      Also, TCU's pro-combat uniform. I love those.
    1. Jayrah's Avatar
      Jayrah -
      Quote Originally Posted by cdj View Post
      Thanks for posting this, Austin.

      I love the changes made to help the ratings of prospects match up with the base roster. That had been a problem for years in the franchise. They really put in a lot of work and time into this huge database, but it'll be worth it.
      *Standing Ovation*

      A few things: (1) This is actually partial recruiting and partial miscellaneous dynasty, because of progression throughout a players career. It sounds like the 3rd blog may be something similar in concept. But I love the changes. (2) Our first look at pro combat unis [TCU], looks like those are in . (3) CD guys: it sounded like 'potential' was already there but didn't matter previously as much, is that correct? Also, is it a visible or invisible rating. It sounded like it's invisible, and thus we would only be able to calculate our recruits based on lower rated recruits jumping above a higher rated recruit (at least within the position).
    1. AustinWolv's Avatar
      AustinWolv -
      potential rating
      This. Big.

      Cool element of the decision to chase a QB A who is rated nearly the same as QB B, but has higher potential while only having you 4th on his list while QB B has you listed as first on his list.

      A comment that was dropped from my original post:
      I think the value of recruit position is hopefully tying nicely into how different teams with different styles will pursue certain positions and thus recruit according to their needs for those styles.....hopefully on offense AND defense.
    1. AustinWolv's Avatar
      AustinWolv -
      Quote Originally Posted by Jayrah View Post
      *Standing Ovation*

      A few things: (1) This is actually partial recruiting and partial miscellaneous dynasty, because of progression throughout a players career. It sounds like the 3rd blog may be something similar in concept. But I love the changes. (2) Our first look at pro combat unis [TCU], looks like those are in . (3) CD guys: it sounded like 'potential' was already there but didn't matter previously as much, is that correct? Also, is it a visible or invisible rating. It sounded like it's invisible, and thus we would only be able to calculate our recruits based on lower rated recruits jumping above a higher rated recruit (at least within the position).
      The raw potential isn't visible is what I gather, but you'll be able to determine which guy has better potential by how they are ranked:
      Using an arbitrary number to adjust the rankings really seemed like a poor way of going about things, so we took a rating that isn't visible to help solve the problem: potential. What we did for some of the Prospects is change both their overall rank and position rank based on the potential they have. This doesn't mean that you'll now see a 40 OVR player as a 5 star... but it does mean you might see a Prospect who is technically a few points lower in OVR rated above another Prospect. So, why did we use Potential?
      Player A - True Freshman QB, 70 Overall rating, 90 Potential rating
      Player B - JUCO Junior HB, 75 Overall rating, 75 Potential rating
      Player C - True Freshman HB, 73 Overall rating, 50 Potential rating
      Player D - True Freshman QB, 71 Overall rating, 70 Potential rating

      On average with the 4 players above would end up being ranked like this in NCAA Football 11:
      1. Player A
      2. Player D
      3. Player C
      4. Player B
      In previous years, only overall would have mattered.
    1. Jayrah's Avatar
      Jayrah -
      Quote Originally Posted by austinwolv View Post
      this. Big.

      Cool element of the decision to chase a qb a who is rated nearly the same as qb b, but has higher potential while only having you 4th on his list while qb b has you listed as first on his list.

      A comment that was dropped from my original post:
      i think the value of recruit position is hopefully tying nicely into how different teams with different styles will pursue certain positions and thus recruit according to their needs for those styles.....hopefully on offense and defense.
      yes
    1. Kwizzy's Avatar
      Kwizzy -
      Sounds great. There isn't one thing discused in the parts about the ratings & rankings of prospects that doesn't sound good to me.

      Nice to see that the coach will sometimes have the ability to chose which pitch he makes though hopefully it's not just a random thing. Just based on what we've heard so far, and not having played the game at all, it seems to me like it might've been a good idea to remove one of the 3 "change topics" per call & add one "coach's choice" per call. After all, the coach can always steer the conversation in a direction he wants to go during a call. It'll be interesting to see how it works.

      Every blog is just more & more impressive. It's not even necessarily one specific thing either. It's like cdj said, when you take a step back & examine the big picture of what they've added/changed this year it's really impressive.
    1. cdj's Avatar
      cdj -
      Quote Originally Posted by Jayrah View Post
      CD guys: it sounded like 'potential' was already there but didn't matter previously as much, is that correct? Also, is it a visible or invisible rating. It sounded like it's invisible, and thus we would only be able to calculate our recruits based on lower rated recruits jumping above a higher rated recruit (at least within the position).
      I've been under the impression it's always been there (invisible), but that now it means more than ever and is still invisible.
    1. Jayrah's Avatar
      Jayrah -
      Quote Originally Posted by AustinWolv View Post
      The raw potential isn't visible is what I gather, but you'll be able to determine which guy has better potential by how they are ranked:
      That's how I read it too. That actually gives a bit of mystery back to your recruiting, as the numbers won't always match up, and you'll have to determine who you wish to pursue based on more factors. I like it.
    1. AustinWolv's Avatar
      AustinWolv -
      I've been under the impression it's always been there (invisible), but that now it means more than ever and is still invisible.
      See my post above. It would seem it is implied by the recruit rankings, although not an absolute known number, but rather a potential hint that is the surprise that it may or may not play out, i.e. the gamble that is recruiting in college football.
    1. texacotea's Avatar
      texacotea -
      Love the ESPN 150, love the potential rating. like the ranking of players. This in all is a great blog. Good stuff here and alot of reason to be excited
    1. Kwizzy's Avatar
      Kwizzy -
      There has always been a potential rating it's just been invisible (& unimportant aparently).
    1. Deuce's Avatar
      Deuce -
      I really like the fact the most freshman will come in below 80. No more easy reloading. Hopefully it takes time and some good recruiting to reload this year.
    1. Jayrah's Avatar
      Jayrah -
      Haha, still holding out for that uniform blog tomorrow, based on the release of a combat uniform screeny. If not no biggy though, I didn't expect this one today, so hoorah.
    1. Jayrah's Avatar
      Jayrah -
      Quote Originally Posted by Deuce View Post
      I really like the fact the most freshman will come in below 80. No more easy reloading. Hopefully it takes time and some good recruiting to reload this year.
      Also gotta love the fact that so many fewer players are *elite* status this year. Makes it easier to go after a mid to high 60's player when you are in need of position depth, when you know the other teams aren't loading it up with 80's guys right off the bat. And finally we will get information on cpu recruiting logic in the next blog. This will be BIG. I can't wait.

      EDIT: Can I also just say that I LOVE the fact that you have to EARN the *coaches choice* option in phone calls. More strategy! They'll explain how in the final blog sounds like.
    1. JBHuskers's Avatar
      JBHuskers -
      Quote Originally Posted by Kwizzy View Post
      Sounds great. There isn't one thing discused in the parts about the ratings & rankings of prospects that doesn't sound good to me.

      Nice to see that the coach will sometimes have the ability to chose which pitch he makes though hopefully it's not just a random thing.
      The coach's choice is a random thing across the board for all schools. This was still being tuned at community day, but it was usually somewhere between one and three times per phone call.
    1. xGRIDIRONxGURUx's Avatar
      xGRIDIRONxGURUx -
      love this... so good to know that elite players will barely crack 80 sometimes as a freshman... i like having the potential rank as well... allows us to recruit for short term players to be in rotation in positions that can possibly produce immediately, but given the rotation, the long term potential wont matter... things like that make things interesting, different, and create the ability to be creative within dynasties, which we all know, is NEEDED BADLY...

      "E"
    1. Kwizzy's Avatar
      Kwizzy -
      Just to clarify Pistol, I'm pretty sure the potential rating will still be hidden, it always has been anyway. I don't know if you were thinking it would be shown.

      JB- 3 times in one call seems like it defeats the purpose of the random & limited topics in the first place no?
    1. xGRIDIRONxGURUx's Avatar
      xGRIDIRONxGURUx -
      Quote Originally Posted by Kwizzy View Post
      Just to clarify Pistol, I'm pretty sure the potential rating will still be hidden, it always has been anyway. I don't know if you were thinking it would be shown.

      JB- 3 times in one call seems like it defeats the purpose of the random & limited topics in the first place no?
      nevermind... i was reading it wrong... at first i thought he was saying that made it more prevalent by putting out there, but now i see its going to be hidden...

      want to hear CD guys spill everything they know so far on this stuff...

      "E"