• NCAA Football 11 Dynasty Blog - Recruiting Logic and Extras

    The third blog covering improvements and changes to Dynasty Mode in NCAA Football 11 has been posted. Composed by developer Russ Kiniry, the blog covers Recruiting Logic and Extras.

    Among the pertinent information:
    - CPU Recruiting Difficulty Setting increasing points the CPU can earn each phone call
    - Changes to the recruit logic in picking schools
    - Half sacks and assisted tackles are new stats being tracked
    - New Trophies: Walter Camp, Nagurski, Ray Guy, Biletnikoff, Outland
    - Expect more Dynasty news around E3 next week

    Continue on to read the blog and share your thoughts with the Gaming Tailgate community.

    Dynasty is such a huge part of NCAA Football games that it took three blogs to get through all of the new features this year. You can check out the first two on the new Phone Call and Prospects by clicking on the links. This blog is dedicated to the behind the scenes logic and extras in NCAA Football 11 Online Dynasty and Dynasty Modes.

    One of the biggest changes to Dynasty Recruiting this year is a new setting allowing control of the difficulty. It has four options: Freshman, Varsity (the default setting), All-American, and Heisman. What you will see as you increase the difficulty is the computer controlled teams will maximize the amount of points they earn each Phone Call. In turn, you really need to be on your game on Heisman mode to sign the Top Prospects.

    A huge part of the Recruiting Logic is making the Prospects have a more realistic approach to what school they are going to attend. To accomplish this, we made a few changes to the Prospect’s thought process. First, before a Prospect can pick his final school, he has to have his Top 10 in order. Second, the better a Prospect is, the more it takes to get him to come to your school. Finally, for some Prospects staying near home is a major deal, and it should give those close schools an advantage. To ensure this happened, we did the following:

    1. Worked on the logic each Prospect uses to decide what schools he will consider for his Top 10 at the start of a season. The objective was to limit the amount of lower caliber Prospects that were filling their Top 10’s with the best schools in the nation. Now, they take the Team’s Needs and Prestige more into account.

    2. In years past, each recruit was given an equivalent point total that would have to be met before signing with a school. The process now bases the total number of points upon the recruit’s caliber - meaning, a 1 Star Prospect is significantly easier to sign than a 5 Star Prospect.

    3. There is now a chance that a Prospect will have a bonus to any school close to home. For some of the Prospects, every school in their home state will get a different amount of extra points when he is created.



    Example of a Top 10 start for a top Prospect in Week 1.



    Example of a Home Town bonus in Week 1.

    Once Prospects were working properly we moved on to the CPU Teams and how they recruit. In years past, the CPU has not been very competitive in Recruiting. To ensure they would provide a challenge, we changed how the CPU goes about all aspects of Recruiting; from how they order their Recruiting Board to how they pick which Prospects they are going to call:

    1. CPU Teams will now go for Instant Commits more often. If a Prospect has their school number 1 in his Top 10 list, the CPU will be far more likely to offer a Scholarship for that chance at an Instant Commit

    2. CPU Teams will reorder the Recruiting Board more often and ensure the best players are near the top of the board. Team Needs is still a big part of filling and ordering the Recruiting Board, but the Caliber of the Prospect is going to have a significant impact upon ranking.

    3. The logic behind how the CPU calls prospects has been completely reworked. If the CPU wants a Recruit, they are going to start spending the maximum amount of time possible early and often until he signs. At the same time they are much smarter at giving up on Players they do not have a shot at signing, so they don’t waste Recruiting Time. The real key to this rework is how the system changes over the course of a season. For example, early in the Season it’s still anyone’s game for most Prospects, so they will continue to call a Prospect even if they are behind to try and make up ground. As the season progresses, that gap gets smaller and they really start to focus on Prospects they can get to commit.



    All of the changes to Recruiting, from the Phone Call to the CPU Logic, have allowed for some really cool situations to occur in my time playing Dynasty in NCAA 11. One particular instance, as a smaller school (Kent State) I found a 4 Star Quarter Back early in the season, that wasn’t being recruited yet by the bigger schools;. He had me on his Board at number 10 because he really wanted to stay near home and we had just had a great season last year. I used every option I had and worked my way up to 3rd on his Board when I noticed Penn State had offered him a Scholarship midway through the season (they were 5th at the time).

    For the next five weeks I worked every angle I could. I used the Compare option when I had a higher grade on a Pitch than Penn State (which was only Playing Time and Proximity to Home), offered all of my Promises, and brought him in for a Rivalry game that we won big. But each week I would continue to see the point difference between my school and Penn State continues to shrink. This year, on the Top 10 screen we have already mentioned that you can see how many Points you are behind, but just as in previous years, filling that bar does not mean the Prospect is instantly going to sign. When Penn State filled the bar I started to panic; but knew I still had a shot and called one last time. Surprisingly, I had my biggest score of the year thanks to the times two bonus (amazing odds that it came up when it did) so I hit Week Advance and crossed my fingers.

    Anthony Ware was the prospect’s name and we were going to make waves in College Football. I say were because, well, he ended up signing with Penn State. At first I was not happy because I spent all season on a player and lost him in the end. When I retold that story I realized it was one of the coolest things I’ve had happen in an offline Dynasty recruiting against the computer teams. All made possible by the following things:

    * I was a small school who got a chance at a Prospect because of the super bonus

    * Managed to work my way up his Top 10 alone for a few weeks because the computer teams were focused on getting a better player

    * I had to take longer to sign him because of his higher points for being a 4 Star Prospect which…

    * Gave the CPU team time to lose the player they wanted first, reorder their board and realize they wanted the same player I was going after

    * Then a larger school came calling and earning more points than I could every week because of the new phone call



    Anthony Ware throwing his first Pass… not for my team sadly.

    It was just awesome! I’ve rambled on long enough; let me get the last few details into this blog before I break the size limits. We also added a bunch of new Trophies to Dynasty Mode and started to track Half Sacks and Assisted Tackles for every player. Here is a list of the new Trophies:

    * Walter Camp

    * Nagurski

    * Ray Guy

    * Biletnikoff

    * Outland

    So it’s been a really big year for Dynasty Mode in NCAA Football 11 and I’m very excited to get the game into your hands to hear what you think about the improvements. I know this was Dynasty Blog 3 of 3 but… we’re not done. If you are a fan of Online Dynasty mode (and I’m guessing you are if you’re still reading this novella) then you have to pay attention to the NCAA Football news that will come out around E3.

    -Russ Kiniry

    Designer NCAA Football 11
    Comments 27 Comments
    1. Deuce's Avatar
      Deuce -
      Maybe I missed this but has there been any mention of the CPU recruiting to the style of their team? ...will option teams recruit option QB's and so on?
    1. morsdraconis's Avatar
      morsdraconis -
      Quote Originally Posted by cdj View Post
      Knowing how EA tries to make Freshman mode very easy and accommodating for new users, Freshman and maybe Varsity difficulty probably will be very manageable.
      Yeah, there's no doubt in that. I just think it might end up being ridiculously difficult with All American and impossible cheat mode with Heisman (CPU teams know exactly what players you are going after and snatch them all up without you have a prayer of getting them).

      Quote Originally Posted by jaymo76 View Post
      Wow! Can we say "major overreaction!" I guess that's what I get for asking a question... aka are there any additonal features for offline or is the last announcement going to be for online only? As to the cut scenes comment, a lot of people love them and never skip over them as it adds to the immersion of the experience. To each his own. On this I guess we will cordially agree to dissagree.
      My bad man. I get so used to people saying things like "What?! No more additions to offline dynasty!?! Well EA really dropped the ball on this one! No coaching carousel!!! rabble rabble rabble" that I thought your comment was one of those.

      From what I gather from what they've said and the hints from various CD people, the two wow announcements are something to do with online dynasty and something that affects the game in general most likely that's the only major improvement that specifically targets offline dynasty.

      Quote Originally Posted by Deuce View Post
      Maybe I missed this but has there been any mention of the CPU recruiting to the style of their team? ...will option teams recruit option QB's and so on?
      Only thing I've seen at all about style of players was when they talked about recreating the entire recruit database and basing them more on their style of player. There were thoughts that that might coincide with the CPU recruiting players that fit their schemes, but there hasn't been anything that solidly points to that.
    1. Solidice's Avatar
      Solidice -
      Quote Originally Posted by cdj View Post
      The feature Russ is referring to will be marketed and talk mainly (solely?) about the Online Dynasty aspect, but will apply to offline as well as far as I know (or it did at the CE, at least). Once the snake in the mailbox is revealed, it'll make sense and we can talk about it.

      The three blogs may not have been flashy (as in no back of the box feature), but the changes were needed to improve the quality of Dynasty Mode and some of it had to be very time-consuming if not also very difficult. (Rebuilding thousands of recruits in the Dynasty recruit pool? Yikes, no thanks. Not to mention reconfiguring the CPU logic, etc.)
      yea, I think they referred to most of the dynasty changes from last year as online dynasty changes(like the competitive recruiting), but it still applied to offline dynasty as well.
    1. Rudy's Avatar
      Rudy -
      I personally love halftime and postgame shows. With 2K5 I used to always watch the Berman recap show. I thought it was great. I got an HD for the PS2 just to watch the video highlights (even though 2K5 disappointed me in general). I'd love to see an expanded show with commentary and a weekly wrap up show if possible.

      I wonder if accessing an online stats database for records, stats, achievements for online dynasties is something they will add. It would also apply potentially to offline dynasties. That's something that EA could also do DLC stuff in order to pay for server space, etc.
    1. JeffHCross's Avatar
      JeffHCross -
      Quote Originally Posted by gschwendt View Post
      I actually wasn't even aware that they had been working on the recruiting difficulty slider. Very nice addition.
      I hate being a conspiracy theorist. Hate, hate, hate it. Yet, I can't help it.

      G doesn't know a Recruiting Difficulty slider is being worked on.
      I, that I can recall, have never seen it be a requested feature before this year.
      Suddenly Utopia gets several threads asking for/about a recruiting difficulty slider.
      Then the "chat with the people that make the game" ESPN chat mentions, out of the blue, a CPU recruiting difficulty slider.
      Now it's legit.

      Someone burst my bubble here. I can't help but think that some of those 'requests' were plants. It's too convenient otherwise.
      Quote Originally Posted by Deuce View Post
      Maybe I missed this but has there been any mention of the CPU recruiting to the style of their team? ...will option teams recruit option QB's and so on?
      Not specifically, but I don't think we have to worry about this, at least not too much. The CPU already recruits to their base offensive style. They did say they overhauled how the CPU looks at their board, so what was already a decent logic (in terms of recruiting players to base style) will only get better.

      The real issue isn't whether an Option QB will be recruited by Georgia Tech or Air Force ... we're already safe on that one. The real question is whether the AI will recognize a difference in Florida's Spread and Oregon's. I think ... hope ... yes.
    1. Jayrah's Avatar
      Jayrah -
      Jeff I was thinking along those lines for a time as well

      I know I've seen it mentioned before, but nothing to the extent of the Utopia thread just after the first 'dynasty' blog came out. So my first inclination is with you, but the other part of me just says that maybe it was the next logical step in harder recruiting, and someone just latched on. Actually, when looking at it, if it hadn't been leaked and suspected by so long by us, it may have been a semi-wow feature by itself. By now though, we've picked apart the possibilities, and it's really just a relief that it wasn't all a hoax.
    1. Jayrah's Avatar
      Jayrah -
      I was wondering when they were going to add half sacks and assisted tackles some time ago. Glad to see those made it in. And I love the extra trophies. Something else to shoot for throughout the dynasty.

      All 3 of these blogs put together are the meat and potatoes of dynasties now for years to come. I don't know if it works or not yet obviously, but I really appreciate the effort this year from these guys to grind out the important stuff. Could have half baked it, like in the past, but no. Not this year. Decided that laying the BASE groundwork for what will have an opportunity to be a GREAT GAME, was the most important thing. And I couldn't agree more with the approach.

      We've been on this for 5 years now, trying to figure out why the base was never placed on the ground correctly. Well, it seems they have done it finally. Even if there are issues, there is now a logical solution to the problem, because we finally will have a logical problem to deal with. They ignored the unnecessary bells and whistles, and ignored extra fluff that would take away from what was most important to the core of the game. EA was on a workout program, and ignored the junk candy. But somehow managed to find some health kick, protein candy along the way.

      APPLAUSE: AND WELL DESERVED EA. Now in the future we can get some of these glitzy features that for some reason everyone's suddenly clamoring for into the game, and it won't add unnecessary hot air, to make the balloon fly even further from it's destination. I think I'm finally ready to sit down and enjoy this edition for more than what it's worth, and for what it is: A great football game. At least in principle .