Share Your Impressions of NCAA Football 11 (Post-patch #2, LTP #2)

I wouldn't mind the hook zones issues with the stock plays so much if they at least gave us some kind of over-ride option. It looks like the issue is that the stock plays have hook zones tied to specific areas on the field. If there was at least some way to manually hot route a hook zone that would essentially just drop straight back no matter where the player lines up, then that would be a workable solution.

Realistically, they could also partially solve the problem by having the drop points tied to where the ball is, rather than to field landmarks. So for instance instead of dropping to 8-10 yards and on the hash mark in cover 3, the MLB could instead just drop 8-10 yards off the ball and about 7 yards to the left/right of where the ball is snapped from.

The problem is that right now there are literally areas on the field that are impossible to cover with zones. There is no combination of hot routes that will get a player to go and stand in the desired place. And there are actually multiple players guarding the wrong spot, so you can't even just manually take control of somebody and do it yourself, because that just leaves a hole someplace else.

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Originally Posted by steelerfan

Jaymo, they said they fixed the problem of teams stockpiling certain positions. Your Dynasty (like mine) would take years to correct itself. A patch isn't going to instantly correct a roster that has 7 Free Safeties and such. That would take a few years for that team to turnover their roster.

That being said, I don't know if it's fixed now. The only way to find out would be to start a new Dynasty and get back to year 5 or so.

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Good point Steerlerfan. I guess beig so far into dynasty it will take a lot longer to sort out. That's the crappy part though... I love my team and I don't want to restart. However, do I want to play the next 3-7 seasons before the issues sort themselves out?

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Originally Posted by jaymo76

Good point Steerlerfan. I guess beig so far into dynasty it will take a lot longer to sort out. That's the crappy part though... I love my team and I don't want to restart. However, do I want to play the next 3-7 seasons before the issues sort themselves out?

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That is my quandry too, brother.

I've only played a couple games since the patch (had to go through offseason in Dynasty Mode), but in a game today the CPU QB was excellent but their run game was very weak. Excluding sacks, I think they had around 10-20 yards rushing for the game. I'm anxious to get into conference play and see if that continues.

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Originally Posted by jaymo76

2. What happened to the cpu rush game? Post patch two not one team has over 100 yards ruhsing.... (the closest was 71)

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In our Online Dynasty, three teams (UNC, Maryland and Iowa) all had 100+ days against top-tier defenses (VT, FSU, and Ohio State).

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Originally Posted by JeffHCross

In our Online Dynasty, three teams (UNC, Maryland and Iowa) all had 100+ days against top-tier defenses (VT, FSU, and Ohio State).

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Are those sim results or are those cpu rushing totals against human players? If those are cpu rush totals against human players then I'm guessing you guys are playing on Heisman or those guys have no clue on how to stop the run. Iowa is a good running team though.

I'm not a great player. For most guys on hardcore sites I'd probably be considered pretty average. The one thing I'm good at is playing as a LB and stopping the run game. EA ALWAYS releases a game with a neutered cpu running game. I usually have to do big slider changes but that's fine. Now I can't do anything because the sliders are screwed in this area. I've played quite a few games after this second patch and it's a real problem that I think more and more people will find. Right now I don't think people believe me in how screwed up the sliders are. Glad Jaymo tried cpu run block at 100 and human rush defense at 0 to see the horrible results.

Rhombic - have you experimented with the pass coverage sliders in the gameplan section to see how they affect those zone coverages? I do like playing with aggressive zone as it seems better but haven't tried anything else.

The gameplan settings aren't viable. Aggressive zones leaves huge gaping holes down the seams and over intermediate-deep middle.

Your best bet when using a zone coverage on the hash is to call a C3 rotation "Cloud" coverage. You will leave the flat to the boundary side open, as with any coverage you will leave something open however.

The Problem though is that EA didn't supply us with a lot of rotation coverages.

In the 4-3 playbook there are only 6 plays that are designed hash zone defenses.

4-3 Normal: Zip Shoot Gut (Blitz)
4-3 Under: Over 3 Strong
4-3 Under: Zone Blitz (Blitz)
Nickle Normal: Over Strong
Nickle Normal: 3 Weak Roll
Dime Normal: Strong Roll 3 (Blitz) will work but you will need to hot route the boundry slot corner to a buzz zone.

There are a few others that you can get to work with hot routing however. Always make sure the cloud corner (plays the flat) is to the field side, if he is playing on the boundary side the buzz defender to the field side will over run the curl leaving it wide open.

Note:
Do not use Nickle Strong: Cloud Zone for this purpose as it covers nothing on the weak side flat or curl, unless you want to hot route a defensive lineman to a buzz zone.

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Originally Posted by Rudy

Are those sim results or are those cpu rushing totals against human players?

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CPU rushing against humans. All-American difficulty with Oneback's sliders.

To be fair, Iowa only broke over 100 because of a single 74-yard rush against me. No clue how the other two gave up their yards.

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Originally Posted by JeffHCross

CPU rushing against humans. All-American difficulty with Oneback's sliders.

To be fair, Iowa only broke over 100 because of a single 74-yard rush against me. No clue how the other two gave up their yards.

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By boosting cpu RBA we can have the cpu break the long runs but it's impossible after the second patch to have them establish a consistent ground game unless you go to Heisman imo. Iowa's ground game sounds pretty pathetic against you when you remove that 74 yard run. I know most college backs average 5 ypc in part to longer runs but the cpu doesn't get consistent 3-5 yard runs. There are tons of plays stopped for negative yardage now. Way too much. My NT in 7 games has 21 tackles for loss. It's terrible now.

I even tried a game on Varsity yesterday just hoping the cpu run game would be better (some claim it is) but it still sucked like AA. In a couple Heisman games the cpu can definitely establish a more consistent ground game. At least I have the option of deleting the second patch. You guys don't.

What I really don't understand about this second patch is that they boosted the kickers to make them more accurate and have stronger legs. They boosted the QB accuracy (how much can be debated). They dumbed down the cpu running game. NOBODY asked for this stuff. Most people felt these were good or needed to be pushed in the opposite direction. Why on earth would they have adjusted those things? It makes no sense to me.

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Originally Posted by Rudy

What I really don't understand about this second patch is that they boosted the kickers to make them more accurate and have stronger legs. They boosted the QB accuracy (how much can be debated). They dumbed down the cpu running game. NOBODY asked for this stuff. Most people felt these were good or needed to be pushed in the opposite direction. Why on earth would they have adjusted those things? It makes no sense to me.

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If true (haven't tested it, but I believe you), that's pretty discouraging. I really liked how they were toned down out of the box this year, but hopefully this is something that a LTP can address. I wonder if they were bumped up to help users who had very poor kickers several seasons into Dynasty Mode before the first LTP arrived.

In terms of sliders I don't think the punters were affected too much but the FG kickers have about at least a one click boost in length and accuracy. The one thing I do like about the special teams sliders the last few years is that they are universal across difficulty levels. You don't have to adjust them when you bounce between AA or Heisman.

I actually squeezed in 3 freaking games on Heisman this morning. What I've been doing the last four games is playing a "same" game. Ie. This morning I played VT vs. VT, LSU vs LSU and OU vs OU. It's a really good way to identify imbalances in your sliders when figuring out what to do. I must say I'm very happy with Heisman at this point. It doesn't play cheap imo. It's just harder than most people like at default. With some tweaks in your favour the game plays really well. I don't notice any cheating at all. The only negative is how aggressive the cpu is on defense. They really press and blitz more than on AA. Too many blown coverages where you can hit a player racing down the seam. And I do agree with the one poster on OS that is saying that they tend to do this more on 3rd downs. I hope they tone down the cpu blitz tendencies. I think the cpu can get too pass happy at times but their running game is a lot better on Heisman.

The coach sliders according to guys on OS do not work as well as pre-patch #2. I've never really played with those run/pass tendencies and def aggressive sliders (only available in dynasty under coach positions I think) but some good people are not happy with those either.

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Originally Posted by Rudy

What I've been doing the last four games is playing a "same" game. Ie. This morning I played VT vs. VT, LSU vs LSU and OU vs OU. It's a really good way to identify imbalances in your sliders when figuring out what to do.

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I suggested this exact technique in the Community Sliders threads. ;)

Weird....not sure if this is coincidence or not, but the CPU rushed better for me on RTG.

I played four games today on AA with slightly tweaked sliders (+5 to CPU Run Blocking & +5 Run Ability). Best run game for CPU was 18 for 65, worst was -2 yards, but sacks buried that number. I'm going to bump up each by 5 again and see how that works out.

Yeah, played another AA game vs Oregon.... under 50 total rush yards for the cpu. Whatever EA did, they need to fix it. Here's the question though? Was running affected by the PATCH 2 or Tuner set 2? If it's tuner set two that should be an easy fix??? Hopefully...

I'd like to know if the devs are reading some of these concerns. The broken sliders (cpu run block and human run defense) are a huge concern for me. I want those fixed.

I personally think the problem is that across the community boards, kids that get the game and have a difficult time adjusting start complaining that everything is too hard. "OMG it's too hard to run against the cpu. Defense needs to be toned down", etc. That's my read on some of the changes. Like cdj said it was nice how everything was toned "down" to start, and also the recruit rating issue probably is to blame for the special teams boost.

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Originally Posted by Rudy

I'd like to know if the devs are reading some of these concerns. The broken sliders (cpu run block and human run defense) are a huge concern for me. I want those fixed.

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That's weird because across the board in about 6 games between mine and my brother's dynasties (post patch) the cpu avg rushing has been higher than before, at anywhere from 135-156 yards/game. TF LoC Sliders on all 3 dynasties I'm in.
http://www.traditionfootball.com/for...42&postcount=2

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Originally Posted by Jayrah

That's weird because across the board in about 6 games between mine and my brother's dynasties (post patch) the cpu avg rushing has been higher than before, at anywhere from 135-156 yards/game. TF LoC Sliders on all 3 dynasties I'm in.
http://www.traditionfootball.com/for...42&postcount=2

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Thanks for those man!

I've been meaning to look and see what you guys have been using on All-American and I'm DEFINITELY going to start using those cause I know you guys are right around my skill level so those sliders are going to be great for me.

:thumbsup:

I am still really enjoying this game post-patch. Just hope they hurry up and fix that pump fake glitch so I can play randoms again.

I saw a tweet from adembroski where he said deleting his tuning file from his system and redownloading the last one fixed some QB accuracy issues.

I'm going to give that a try tonight Chris. Can't hurt. He said that Ryan told him that the patch/tuner shouldn't have touched the sliders either. I will find out but I still think they inadvertently broke something. If it doesn't work after that I'm going to delete everything to see how the sliders work without the patches and tuning files.

Well I deleted the tuning file and redownloaded it. I didn't see any difference. All I know is they made kickers have stronger legs and be more accurate, made QBs more accurate, made WRs hands a touch better for less drops and broke the cpu run block and human rush defense slider. A lot of changes went away from sim football. I do like the fact they made the outside running game tougher and loosened up the man coverage a bit but the zone coverage against the cpu absolutely blows now. It was at least useable before with aggressive coverage.

I'm still having fun but only on Heisman. AA is completely ruined for me right now. I will say I still see a ton of super leaping swats on Heisman. That could be toned down some more. I hope EA boost up zone coverage to make it more effective and fixes the sliders. That would really improve the game and let me finetune things better.

Played the Little Brown Jug today in the 2nd year of my dynasty. I had a blood pressure game - the kind that pisses you off like crazy. I was playing at home against Minnesota. They are a B team and I'm a B+ so I'm figuring it won't be too hard. They jump out to a 17-0 lead. I'm fuming. Then I score a TD to make it 17-7. Next possession my NT strips the ball and I recover their fumble with less than 2 minutes to go and inside their 25. I punch in another TD to only trail 17-14 at the half. I get the ball first in the second half and promptly score two more times to lead 28-17. I think I've got it made. Wrong.

With just under two minutes left they score a TD and get the 2 point conversion to cut the lead to 28-25. Then they recover the onside kick. They actually march down to my one yard line where I make a goalline stand to force the tying FG. Off to OT and my defense holds and they miss the FG! I march down and punch one in the end zone to win 34-28. I really struggled running the ball but Odoms and Roundtree are impact WRs so they bailed me out in this game. Great game score over 500 (#9 for me) but that game frustrated the heck out of me. I think Minny did pull off an upset at the Big House a few years ago while Carr was coach. That wasn't fun either.

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Originally Posted by Rudy

Well I deleted the tuning file and redownloaded it. I didn't see any difference. All I know is they made kickers have stronger legs and be more accurate, made QBs more accurate, made WRs hands a touch better for less drops and broke the cpu run block and human rush defense slider. A lot of changes went away from sim football. I do like the fact they made the outside running game tougher and loosened up the man coverage a bit but the zone coverage against the cpu absolutely blows now. It was at least useable before with aggressive coverage.

I'm still having fun but only on Heisman. AA is completely ruined for me right now. I will say I still see a ton of super leaping swats on Heisman. That could be toned down some more. I hope EA boost up zone coverage to make it more effective and fixes the sliders. That would really improve the game and let me finetune things better.

Played the Little Brown Jug today in the 2nd year of my dynasty. I had a blood pressure game - the kind that pisses you off like crazy. I was playing at home against Minnesota. They are a B team and I'm a B+ so I'm figuring it won't be too hard. They jump out to a 17-0 lead. I'm fuming. Then I score a TD to make it 17-7. Next possession my NT strips the ball and I recover their fumble with less than 2 minutes to go and inside their 25. I punch in another TD to only trail 17-14 at the half. I get the ball first in the second half and promptly score two more times to lead 28-17. I think I've got it made. Wrong.

With just under two minutes left they score a TD and get the 2 point conversion to cut the lead to 28-25. Then they recover the onside kick. They actually march down to my one yard line where I make a goalline stand to force the tying FG. Off to OT and my defense holds and they miss the FG! I march down and punch one in the end zone to win 34-28. I really struggled running the ball but Odoms and Roundtree are impact WRs so they bailed me out in this game. Great game score over 500 (#9 for me) but that game frustrated the heck out of me. I think Minny did pull off an upset at the Big House a few years ago while Carr was coach. That wasn't fun either.

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I've had games like that as well. I think that's what's great about college football and how they translate it to this game. It can really seem like the records are thrown out the door when teams play in rivalry games sometimes and it just makes a game that otherwise would probably be an easy game to win an absolute headache to pull out. It makes you feel that much better about it too when you pull off the win.

Also, I've found AA fun again. Used the sliders that Jayrah linked to over at Traditionfootball.com and they are GREAT. Granted, I'm back to beating CPU teams that are clearly better than me (B+ teams and I'm B), and I don't mind the fact that I've went like 60-0 over the last 5 seasons in my teambuilder dynasty cause that's just what happens when I go to the Big East and I'm clearly a better team than anyone else in the conference. And, during that time, I've had NUMEROUS close call games where I've had to pull it out in the end, so, in the end, I'm happy with my dynasty on AA still.

I haven't played in about three days (NCAA hangover...) but I fired it up today and played a rematch against the Ducks. Last game (play now) I held them to under 50 yards rushing and blew them out 38-7. Well today in dynasty it was a little different.

:Arizona_State: 14 :Oregon: 44 *it was an absolute blowout

O QB 24-32 381 YDS (15 RUSHES 97 YARDS)
O FB 11 carries for 76 yards
O RB 5 carries for 55 yards (then he got injured)
** due to the depth chart glitch Oregon had no more RB's (but they had 4 FB's)

I had 14 yards rushing on 13 carries... this game was just embarrasing. Maybe things aren't so bad post patch???


This recap was brought to you by :reeses: the perfect combination of chocolate and peanut butter

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Originally Posted by jaymo76

This recap was brought to you by :reeses: the perfect combination of chocolate and peanut butter

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:D

Maybe next year we'll get a better sponsor.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Tu76mbalNw...7x215_aero.jpg


I think what probably caught me off guard in the Minnesota game is that NCAA 11 is back to being fair and unpredictable on Heisman. AA had become too easy post patch and now I have to fight to win. Apathy had set in on AA and now Heisman forces you to wake up and play smart all game long.

I think we need to honor the memory of Billy Mays and have NCAA 12 sponsored by Mighty Putty!

http://rotolo.syr.edu/wp-content/upl...mity-putty.jpg

I need to get some more sample sets, but I think struggling on Madden has made me a lot better post-patch on NCAA. I'm going to try to find some time to get my Nebraska Tech dyansty going...that will be a truly good meter of seeing things post-patch.

I think JB made a prediction that this game would compare to 2004...I agree 100%. I'm now in my sixth season and I'm still having great games. In season 4 I actually had my first losing season ever (6-7). The next season I went 11-2 but got blown out in the Fiesta bowl by tOSU. This season I'm 4-0 but 2 of those games could have gone either way.

I really can't believe I'm in my 6th season and still not even close to being bored. One thing I've done to help keep me interested is after a good season I assume my o-coordinator gets a head coaching gig and I have to change my O. It's really helped keep the game fresh.

What 'tricks' do you guys use to keep things challenging and fresh?

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Originally Posted by Deuce

I think JB made a prediction that this game would compare to 2004...I agree 100%. I'm now in my sixth season and I'm still having great games. In season 4 I actually had my first losing season ever (6-7). The next season I went 11-2 but got blown out in the Fiesta bowl by tOSU. This season I'm 4-0 but 2 of those games could have gone either way.

I really can't believe I'm in my 6th season and still not even close to being bored. One thing I've done to help keep me interested is after a good season I assume my o-coordinator gets a head coaching gig and I have to change my O. It's really helped keep the game fresh.

What 'tricks' do you guys use to keep things challenging and fresh?

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After season six I quit my job before the season starts (as a result I lose prestige, etc.) and I then take over a school ranked between 100-120 and start the process again. However, this will be the first time since 07 that I will actually play the game after six seasons to do this ritual. Looks like this year I will be taking over New Mexico... that's going to be a long rebuild.... in four and a half seasons they have won only THREE games (3-51).

I think changing playbooks is the easiest and simplest way to keep things fresh.

Later today I'm going to delete the patch and see how I like the game without any patches or tuning updates. AA is broken to me post patch and while Heisman can be fun, the super amount of cpu blitzing, especially on 3rd down where they leave slot WRs open all day is annoying. So is the complete suckiness of zone defenses. At this point I'm calling nothing but man coverages with a few blitzes mixed in on Heisman and that's boring. I like to mix things up but there is zero incentive to do that on Heisman right now. If I like the pre-patch gameplay I will only download the patches/tuning files for offseason work.

I deleted the patch and tuning set and I only got 10 minutes in before I had to turn the PS3 over to the kids since I promised to let them play Toy Story 3. The run block sliders certainly do work better but if I'm perfectly honest, those sliders weren't sensitive enough in the first place. The run blocking and human rush defense sliders were weak to begin with. And then the patch came along and it may have made them weaker or not. I do think they are weaker but the biggest problem is that the cpu run game got hurt bad. It may be due to increased human pursuit or an increased ability for DL to simply break blocks but the cpu run game took a big hit. Combine that with super weak or broken sliders and you can't get the cpu running game going again if you are good at stopping the run (I don't even use run commit). Post patch the slider system and cpu run game resemble NCAA 09 which is not good. I really hope they fix those sliders to make them more responsive. Hopefully I'll be able to get some more time in this morning and experiment on AA and Heisman to see the real differences.

No idea if this is new, legacy, or what-have-you.

I have a CB that came in with 63 CAR, 70 CTH, 54 RTE and 49 SPC. Considering making him into a 2-way player for his FR year and moving him to WR for next year.

When I go to sub him into WR on the depth chart, though, he's really low OVR. In fact, all the CBs are. I scroll over, and their CTH ratings have dropped like a rock. Guys who were 73 CTH are now 48, and my FR is a 46. CAR, RTE and SPC do not seem to be affected.

So not only does he drop to 28 AWR, but his CTH itself goes down.

Note this is on the depth chart. Haven't tried Formation Subs, or Offseason Position Changes, to see if that makes a difference. Seems to be limited to WR though. If I sub him in at HB or QB, CTH (at least, didn't check any others) doesn't change.

Interesting. I could see where this would have been put in as an exploit fix but ... interesting.

EDIT: Oh hell. Stay away from the HB at WR packagaes. QBs and TEs do not appear to be affected ... but HBs and FBs are as well. My HB's 69 CTH drops to 46.

It's a straight 1/3 reduction. I even have a HB that drops from 49 to 32.

EDIT 2: This "bug"/"issue" is not reflected on the Formation Subs screen. A player's "real" values are shown in Formation Subs.

I'd love it if they could patch in a separate coverage slider for zone coverage. It needs to be broken apart from man coverage because zone coverage against the cpu on Heisman is just bad. Unless you blitz and get pressure you get eaten alive. I know patching in new sliders is hard to impossible but I'd be willing to swap out the nearly useless punt accuracy slider in favour of a zone coverage slider.

Zone Coverage on every difficulty is "just bad".

Well I should say that I've actually had a lot of fun on Heisman once I settled on some slider changes. I've made one change in over two weeks since I settled on it and have had some good games. I'm 5-1 in my third game and Bama, LSU and Wisconsin all had RBs go over 100 yards against me. I will be a bit sad when the new patch hits tomorrow and I'll be back to playing some Play Now games to see what has changed. I've probably played about 25 Play Now games and over 30 dynasty games so far. But let's hope things get a little better and no problems come up tomorrow. I may go back to AA but Heisman has been fun. It forces you to be on your game all the time.

I freaking missed an XP in my last game against Wisconsin and just about lost because of it. They missed a 48 yarder as time expired for me to hold on to a 26-24 win. I would have been pissed at myself. I already had missed a FG earlier and barely made a 42 yarder with a minute left to take the lead.