ETA for NCAA Football 12 Demo? - UPDATE: June 28

[JeffHCross]

Do they have a scheduled day for EA Sports to have a conference or anything?

The last couple years, the EA press conference at E3 has been very limited in terms of EA Sports news. But the EA press conference is scheduled for Monday, June 6 at 3:30 PM Eastern. It will be broadcast on Spike.

I wonder if any of the community day guys could comment on how close they think the demo will play to the final product, or if they think there will still be a bit of tweaking to do.

As others have said, we didn't get any time with the demo specifically. That said, I think I read somewhere that the demo's code was branched off from the main development at some point before the May trip. So I think there will be some things in the demo that were already tweaked before the retail code was finalized. Have to wait until we get a chance to play it for sure.

[Colossal28]

I thought I read somewhere that Madden was definitely on the list of discussion items for EA, but I didn't see anything about NCAA.

[ram29jackson]

I wont bother with the demo, just get the game when it comes

[Colossal28]

I wont bother with the demo, just get the game when it comes

Why not? The demo is at least something to do in the long wait.

[Deuce]

Why not? The demo is at least something to do in the long wait.

I'm kinda with Ram on this. I will dl the demo and play a few games but I like to wait and 'learn' to play the game while I'm in my first dynasty. To me, it just makes it that much more challenging.

[Colossal28]

I'm kinda with Ram on this. I will dl the demo and play a few games but I like to wait and 'learn' to play the game while I'm in my first dynasty. To me, it just makes it that much more challenging.

That's interesting to me, I always want to play the demo to try and have a handle for the style when I jump into that first OD game on day 1, to each his own I guess

[kindella2]

Demo=appetizer
Full Retail=main course
OD=Dessert

Fully named Rosters and coaches for OD = Someone you know not eating dinner at your table picking up the tab.

[SmoothPancakes]

I'm playing the demo to get a feel for the new defense, and to get the pro combats. I at least want the free ones in the demo as I have no idea where my coaching career will take me in coaching carousel. I may very well end up at a school that uses the pro combats and will want to use them at least once or twice a season while I'm at that school.

[Deuce]

That's interesting to me, I always want to play the demo to try and have a handle for the style when I jump into that first OD game on day 1, to each his own I guess

Yep...if I was going to join and OD right off the bat it would be totally different. I play offline only. My only reasoning is to extend my fun with the retail version.

[boknows34]

Is it a "sexy" feature list? Depends on what you're looking for out of the demo, I guess. From a pure gameplay perspective--based on my time with the game so far this year--you'll probably get enough from the demo to psych you up for NCAA Football 12's full release and make it real difficult to go back to 11.

After EA totally ruined recruiting in 11, I seriously doubt that I'll buy 12. If I wasn't playing a 6 star team, recruiting was near impossible. Jadeveon Clowney, the top ranked recruit, is from South Carolina and is going to South Carolina, Clemson signed 2 top 15 recruits, and Rutgers signed a top 30 recruit. This would have been impossible in 11. There was absolutely no parity in recruiting; it was either you're a 5 or 6 star program and can sign top talent, or you're a 4 or less and fight to sign 2nd and 3rd tier recruits. At least older versions like 09 had parity in recruiting.

[Pig Bomb]

After EA totally ruined recruiting in 11, I seriously doubt that I'll buy 12. If I wasn't playing a 6 star team, recruiting was near impossible. Jadeveon Clowney, the top ranked recruit, is from South Carolina and is going to South Carolina, Clemson signed 2 top 15 recruits, and Rutgers signed a top 30 recruit. This would have been impossible in 11. There was absolutely no parity in recruiting; it was either you're a 5 or 6 star program and can sign top talent, or you're a 4 or less and fight to sign 2nd and 3rd tier recruits. At least older versions like 09 had parity in recruiting.

For my own comparison purposes I'm interested to know what recruiting difficulty did you play with in 11??

[oweb26]

After EA totally ruined recruiting in 11, I seriously doubt that I'll buy 12. If I wasn't playing a 6 star team, recruiting was near impossible. Jadeveon Clowney, the top ranked recruit, is from South Carolina and is going to South Carolina, Clemson signed 2 top 15 recruits, and Rutgers signed a top 30 recruit. This would have been impossible in 11. There was absolutely no parity in recruiting; it was either you're a 5 or 6 star program and can sign top talent, or you're a 4 or less and fight to sign 2nd and 3rd tier recruits. At least older versions like 09 had parity in recruiting.

I have never understood people saying this, I played with ECU in my OD at one point yeah I didnt sign any top recruits in my first year there, but I pulled in a couple of top recruits at there position the next year. Its actually quite simple just invest a shit ton of time into a top recruit and you will be okay.

[Pig Bomb]

I have never understood people saying this, I played with ECU in my OD at one point yeah I didnt sign any top recruits in my first year there, but I pulled in a couple of top recruits at there position the next year. Its actually quite simple just invest a shit ton of time into a top recruit and you will be okay.

landing big time recruits can be difficult for lower level crappy teams...but that's how it is in real life... I'm very excited and interested to see how the tweaks they've made to recruiting play out this year!

[Paakaa10]

After EA totally ruined recruiting in 11, I seriously doubt that I'll buy 12. If I wasn't playing a 6 star team, recruiting was near impossible. Jadeveon Clowney, the top ranked recruit, is from South Carolina and is going to South Carolina, Clemson signed 2 top 15 recruits, and Rutgers signed a top 30 recruit. This would have been impossible in 11. There was absolutely no parity in recruiting; it was either you're a 5 or 6 star program and can sign top talent, or you're a 4 or less and fight to sign 2nd and 3rd tier recruits. At least older versions like 09 had parity in recruiting.

Okay. If it's recruiting in the game that will make-or-break it for you, then the demo probably isn't going to sway you either way; it'd be a real ground-breaking decision for EA SPORTS to let you play a full season in Dynasty Mode in the demo.

My statement for the sake of this thread was that you will get enough gameplay experience in the demo--regardless of the teams you can use and how long they let you play--to see the strides made from NCAA Football 11 to NCAA Football 12 on the field. And it's my belief--based upon my time with the game already--that even people who really liked 11 will find it hard to go back to last year's game after playing the demo for 12.

[xMrHitStickx904]

After EA totally ruined recruiting in 11, I seriously doubt that I'll buy 12. If I wasn't playing a 6 star team, recruiting was near impossible. Jadeveon Clowney, the top ranked recruit, is from South Carolina and is going to South Carolina, Clemson signed 2 top 15 recruits, and Rutgers signed a top 30 recruit. This would have been impossible in 11. There was absolutely no parity in recruiting; it was either you're a 5 or 6 star program and can sign top talent, or you're a 4 or less and fight to sign 2nd and 3rd tier recruits. At least older versions like 09 had parity in recruiting.

No offense man, but you probably can't recruit well in all honesty. It was easy to recruit in 11. I did a dynasty for 5 seasons with San Diego State, 4 seasons in, had us a top 15 recruiting class on all-american.

[PeteyKirch]

After EA totally ruined recruiting in 11, I seriously doubt that I'll buy 12. If I wasn't playing a 6 star team, recruiting was near impossible. Jadeveon Clowney, the top ranked recruit, is from South Carolina and is going to South Carolina, Clemson signed 2 top 15 recruits, and Rutgers signed a top 30 recruit. This would have been impossible in 11. There was absolutely no parity in recruiting; it was either you're a 5 or 6 star program and can sign top talent, or you're a 4 or less and fight to sign 2nd and 3rd tier recruits. At least older versions like 09 had parity in recruiting.

To be fair, I was able to nab 4 and 5 star players as Rutgers. You just had to get lucky to have a stud in state. With that slight advantage I was able to sway them from going to PSU/OSU/ND/etc.

[baseballplyrmvp]

No offense man, but you probably can't recruit well in all honesty. It was easy to recruit in 11. I did a dynasty for 5 seasons with San Diego State, 4 seasons in, had us a top 15 recruiting class on all-american.

and recruiting was even easier before 11. i set a personal record on ncaa10, where i landed the #1 ranked frecruiting class with hawaii 18 seasons in a row.

i havent had the #1 ranked class for more than 3 seasons on 11 though.

[boknows34]

I typically get top 10/5 recruiting classes. If you're getting 5 star players as Rutgers or SDSU, I assume that you're a few years into a dynasty because from my experience, only 6 and maybe a few 5 star programs have the interest of 5 star prospects at beginning of the year. If you're trying to win a 5 star player but you're not in his top 10, winning him becomes very difficult. My point about recruiting was not that I recruit poorly, but that good teams like Stanford don't stand a chance to get even a 4 star player in the 1st year of a dynasty. I did a comparison between 09 and 11. In the preseason of the 09 dynasty, there were 30 5 star players and 6 star programs were on 131 of 300 (30 prospects x 10 slots per prospect) slots which is about 44%; the remaining percentage included 5,4, and 3 star programs. In 11, 6 star programs were on 307 of 360 slots or over 85%; for the top 10 recruits, 6 star programs filled all 10 slots for 7 of the top ten, and the remaining 3 were interested in 9 6 star programs. A 5 star recruit could be from Maine, California, North Dakota, or North Korea, it doesn't matter; odds are, he will be interested in USC, Florida, Ohio State, Texas, and Alabama. Maybe a 5 star program like Miami, FSU or Nebraska will garner some interest from a 5 star player, but as my comparison showed, it's rare in 11. I point this out not because I'm a bad recruiter, but because it cripples all of the other teams. Even, TCU and Wisconsin don't get very good prospects. The top prospect interested in TCU was the 58th ranked prospect, and #61 for Wisconsin. This isn't the top ranked player that TCU or Wisconsin signed; it's the highest ranked person interested in TCU/Wisconsin at the beginning of the season.

In terms of gameplay, the feature lists seem very impressive

[PeteyKirch]

I typically get top 10/5 recruiting classes. If you're getting 5 star players as Rutgers or SDSU, I assume that you're a few years into a dynasty because from my experience, only 6 and maybe a few 5 star programs have the interest of 5 star prospects at beginning of the year. If you're trying to win a 5 star player but you're not in his top 10, winning him becomes very difficult. My point about recruiting was not that I recruit poorly, but that good teams like Stanford don't stand a chance to get even a 4 star player in the 1st year of a dynasty. I did a comparison between 09 and 11. In the preseason of the 09 dynasty, there were 30 5 star players and 6 star programs were on 131 of 300 (30 prospects x 10 slots per prospect) slots which is about 44%; the remaining percentage included 5,4, and 3 star programs. In 11, 6 star programs were on 307 of 360 slots or over 85%; for the top 10 recruits, 6 star programs filled all 10 slots for 7 of the top ten, and the remaining 3 were interested in 9 6 star programs. A 5 star recruit could be from Maine, California, North Dakota, or North Korea, it doesn't matter; odds are, he will be interested in USC, Florida, Ohio State, Texas, and Alabama. Maybe a 5 star program like Miami, FSU or Nebraska will garner some interest from a 5 star player, but as my comparison showed, it's rare in 11. I point this out not because I'm a bad recruiter, but because it cripples all of the other teams. Even, TCU and Wisconsin don't get very good prospects. The top prospect interested in TCU was the 58th ranked prospect, and #61 for Wisconsin. This isn't the top ranked player that TCU or Wisconsin signed; it's the highest ranked person interested in TCU/Wisconsin at the beginning of the season.

In terms of gameplay, the feature lists seem very impressive

You can get 5 star recruits with 3* schools if everything breaks for you.

For Rutgers, get a 5 star Prospect in NJ who has Proximity To Home (Most) Academics (Very High), Coach Prestige (High) Early Playing Time (Very High) and you have a good chance at wheeling him in.

[boknows34]

You can get 5 star recruits with 3* schools if everything breaks for you.

For Rutgers, get a 5 star Prospect in NJ who has Proximity To Home (Most) Academics (Very High), Coach Prestige (High) Early Playing Time (Very High) and you have a good chance at wheeling him in.

I know that it can be done, but it requires some fortuitous breaks. I just wish that there was more parity so that CPU teams, like TCU and Wisconsin, can pick up some quality recruits and remain competitive.