Dynamic Awareness During Career

[Jayrah]

I thought about this after losing my qb to a season ending injury, having to insert my RS Freshman backup to start for the remainder of the season in my OD. When young players come into a ballgame at quarterback, they generally do not have the entire playbook at their disposal. It's the same for young players at other positions, except in a different way.

1: Dynamic Awareness: Make practice correlate to how much of the playbook your young qbs can use. They don't have to play in the practice for the sake of the game, but it would be nice to see "mandatory practice" sessions. These could be simmed for the sake of the user, but I think as a freshman qb you need so much practice time to have learned the pb. If you put a freshman or even sophomore qb in the game, your pb should be more limited than when he's a junior/senior. Just simply take plays systematically out of the pb for younger players with X amount of practices (or allow the user to mark up the most important plays/formations to learn to least important). If that is too deep with practices, just make it X amount of games while in the program (this would include redshirting, making it important to redshirt guys while also making it worth it to use lower rated, upperclassmen). The catch would be that the learning curve is faster when a player is playing significantly in games.

THOUGHTS?

[JeffHCross]

Head Coach 09 modeled playbook knowledge, and if a play wasn't "known" the player had a chance of running the wrong play when a given play was called. It was a very neat system, but it did have an element where it felt totally out of control for the user. Since Head Coach 09 was a "Coach Mode" game where the user had no direct input in the outcome of a play, that worked. It's harder to model in NCAA, though you have a good idea here.

I think "Dynamic Playbook Knowledge" would be a better name, to avoid confusing it with AWR. The only problem I see is how to use it in Dynasty mode where a user can change playbooks at will. Or, more specifically, in Online Dynasty, with 12 players. In Head Coach 09, knowledge was broken down by formation and play, so you could theoretically change to a PB that shares 95% of the plays and wouldn't have to relearn much. That's a lot of information to retain though (in the game's database), so that could be a limitation here.

EDIT: I do like your idea of most important/least important. If I'm bringing my third string QB into the game, I already know I'm screwed. But there's only a few formations that he needs to know for me to survive.

[jaymo76]

It's a fascinating concept. I could see something like that being implemented if NCAA goes the CCM route. I have been advocating for the past two seasons that NCAA adopt Madden's DPP as I really like what it added to Madden 12. There is no doubt though that backup QB's are just too good in the NCAA series.

[JeffHCross]

There is no doubt though that most backup QB's are just too good in the NCAA series.

Slight change. While I'll grant you that many backups are inferior and are thusly overrated/out-performers in NCAA, there have been many backups over the years that had little separation from the starter. Think Applewhite/Simms, Joe Germaine and Stanley Jackson (Ohio State in the mid-90s), Craig Krenzel and Scott McMullen (Ohio State 2002/2003), and current examples like Everett Gholston and Tommy Rees (at least this year).

The key, with any system like this, is to allow the coach to decide how much he wants to develop his QB. There has to be a risk/reward to it. For example, when I run a Pro-Style offense, I'm not generally worried about my QB taking enough hits to be knocked out of a game. It's just rare. But when I run a Spread Option where he's a ballcarrier, you know I've got a ready backup because you never know when his bell will get rung.

[baseballplyrmvp]

what if dynasty mode went the road to glory direction and brought the upgrade store in? then you'd be able to earn XP and buy more playbook knowledge for your qb. at first, a freshman qb would be limited to easy plays like slants, levels, spacing, 4 verts, etc. as more and more playbook knowledge is purchased, plays automatically become available, depending on their complexity. this would avoid the tedious mandatory practices take it a step further and have available options for purchase for every position?

additionally, they could tie playbook knowledge into recruiting. depending on how early/late recruits commit to your school, they could start out with varying levels of playbook knowledge. this would simulate (kinda) the early enrollee's, despite them not being able to participate in offseason training.

[JeffHCross]

The RPG mode might work ... if your backup QB is the only guy you're having to track that for. If it became more positions, or worse the entire roster, that would get overly burdensome. Though, personally, I'm not a fan of the way they implemented that in RTG. I know what they were getting at, I just don't think the implementation works completely.

Plus, thinking of Online Dynasty ... that's one more thing people would "have" to do week in and week out. That may be a dealbreaker for any system that requires regular maintenance.

[Jayrah]

what if dynasty mode went the road to glory direction and brought the upgrade store in? then you'd be able to earn XP and buy more playbook knowledge for your qb. at first, a freshman qb would be limited to easy plays like slants, levels, spacing, 4 verts, etc. as more and more playbook knowledge is purchased, plays automatically become available, depending on their complexity. this would avoid the tedious mandatory practices take it a step further and have available options for purchase for every position?

additionally, they could tie playbook knowledge into recruiting. depending on how early/late recruits commit to your school, they could start out with varying levels of playbook knowledge. this would simulate (kinda) the early enrollee's, despite them not being able to participate in offseason training.

I like these ideas in a sense. I do think Jeff's right though, just like a mandatory practice would do, having to go in and buy stuff would add one more tedious thing to do. What about taking the "linked plays" idea from EA a step further and linked plays 2 and 3 deep within formations that could be "unlocked" with a certain amount of success (probably earned in fictional XP points similar to what you've described) from "play A". Could be done 2 ways:

1: Tied specifically to qb. Freshman need more success or "points" than Sophomore's. Juniors and Seniors can run the entire PB.

2: Tied to amount of team AWR. Tougher to do I would think but basically accumulative AWR of the starters dictates what % of the PB can be run. In this particular scenario, Dynamic Awareness from game to game would need to be introduced. A bigger game performance would factor into better AWR for each player, unless there was a better idea of how to base a DYN AWR system.

[baseballplyrmvp]

The RPG mode might work ... if your backup QB is the only guy you're having to track that for. If it became more positions, or worse the entire roster, that would get overly burdensome. Though, personally, I'm not a fan of the way they implemented that in RTG. I know what they were getting at, I just don't think the implementation works completely.

Plus, thinking of Online Dynasty ... that's one more thing people would "have" to do week in and week out. That may be a dealbreaker for any system that requires regular maintenance.

the upgrade store wouldnt be limited to just player improvements though. they could offer stuff for new facilities, which would increase your athletic facilities pitch; a trophy hall for a better program tradition pitch, video room for increased learning of playbook, etc.

you're right about online dynasty though. didnt think of that. i guess the argument is "you dont always have to do it." but thats a weak argument, imo, and is getting away from the original topic.

[JeffHCross]

i guess the argument is "you dont always have to do it." but thats a weak argument, imo, and is getting away from the original topic.

Right. And, in my experience, the "you don't always have to do it" argument always fails because either A) people think they need to do it because they don't trust the CPU to do it for them; B) they feel like they're getting screwed if they don't. Sure, you could probably get away with not doing it every week, but people would want to do it more often than not.

I do like the idea of it being more than a player progression, and there's the risk/reward factor I was talking about. Do you choose "improve offensive playbook knowledge" every week? Or do you forgo that a few weeks so that you can get that weight room renovation the AD's been talking about? I would be slightly worried about the scale factor though ... spending practice time on your playbook isn't remotely equivalent to building a new facility. Would be tough to offset those enough that they feel fair.

Also, going back to Head Coach 09, they had a RPG system for every coach ... OCs could improve on playbook knowledge development, physical development, stuff like that. It was a very cool system. HOWEVER, it was a system designed to be worked toward for years and years. Unless you started the game as Bill Belichek, you usually had very few of the skills at the start. And it took forever to get the XP to learn them. So you have to come up with a system that is reasonably equal in satisfying the guys who play 1/2 years of dynasty and the guys that play 6/7. That's tough. Doable, but tough.