NCAA Football 12: TGT's Coaching Carousel & Dynasty Preview
Coaching Carousel, one of the most popular feature requests by the NCAA Football community over the last few years, finds itself as a major new feature in NCAA Football 12’s Dynasty Mode. In real life, college football programs make each new hire or promotion with the hopes that their new coaching staff will lead or return them to conference or national prominence. Now, gamers can replicate that experience as a head coach, offensive coordinator or defensive coordinator and work their way up the ranks or stay at one program and build a powerhouse.
Dynasty Mode begins with players able to use a new or existing coach. Along with the physical appearance edits – options include polo, shirt, suit, sweater vest, visor, and glasses - you can set your coach’s alma mater, offensive and defensive playbook, and tendencies on each side of the ball. Your alma mater and playbooks will help play a factor in your career advancement throughout the Carousel. Being an LSU alum may lead to you getting a job offer from the Tigers in a close field of candidates while having a similar playbook to the previous coach could give you an edge as it may help ease the transition to a new coaching staff.
After creating your coach, you begin your career as a FBS head or assistant coach. Each coaching position has its own set of Contract Goals based upon Program Prestige and contract length. Low prestige programs are much more forgiving and exhibit lower standards than high prestige programs. As you reach the upper echelon of college football, nine and ten win seasons become the norm and failure to reach that mark – in real life and in the game – can put a significant dent in your Job Security. Coordinators will need to excel on the field as well or they may find themselves on the Hot Seat. Winning games along with reaching statistical goals are imperative to move up the coaching ranks and to build your Coach Prestige. New coaches will begin with D-rated Prestige, while users who begin with existing coaches will inherit their Prestige.
As you progress through your coaching career, your goal is to establish and build Prestige and Job Security. While you may be considered a prestigious coach (perhaps you have won conference titles in the past), you must continue to win over the fans and athletic director each season to stay in a ‘safe’ Job Security range by completing your contract goals. Coach prestige impacts player progression and a few other aspects. However, this does not mean that players on a team with an A+ Head Coach are going to have over the top progression. Firings can come mid-contract, so don’t feel like you are guaranteed the entire life of your contract to prove yourself.
If you begin your coaching career as a coordinator, you can SuperSim play on the other side of the ball or watch the action. In addition to your on-field duties, you also have full responsibilities in Recruiting. If you are a coordinator, do you build up your side of the ball for increased success and more job opportunities? Should the other side of the ball struggle, losses may rack up and hurt your Job Security & Prestige.
Throughout the season you can monitor Job Security for all head coaches and coordinators to see who is on the Hot Seat and who is safe. In addition, cumulative win-loss records as well as accomplishments are tracked for all current coaches throughout the length of the Dynasty. Among the info tracked are win-loss record for career and at school, conference record, record vs. Top 25 & Rivals, Heisman Trophy winners, All-Americans, average recruiting rank, longest win streak, and more.
Once you hit the off-season, the action picks up with the Coaching Carousel. Behind the scenes, it begins with schools that are very pleased with the performance of their coaches by rewarding and re-signing them to new contracts. Next, schools will begin to hire or promote coaches to replace those who have been fired, released, retired, or have left for a new job.
Schools will then make their hiring process to fill open positions. Under the Now Hiring tab, users can view the previous job filled, the current school hiring, and the next school about to make a potentially program-defining hire. For the school currently hiring and about to hire, Top and Rumored Candidates are shown, respectfully. However, schools do not always hire someone shown on this list, keeping users guessing on what each program may do.
Unexpected Jobs are those opened up by those coaches who leave their job suddenly to take a position elsewhere. The Filled Positions tab gives a recap on the moves made by each school to let users recap the action of the Coaching Carousel.
Users can go through the Carousel one move at a time to track coach movement just by pressing A (360)/X (PS3) or they can skip to their contract offers (X/Square). If there are no job offers, this will simulate through the entire Carousel.
Should you find yourself on the Hot Seat, offers from other schools become very intriguing. Can you turn things around the following season or do you risk being fired and having to work your way back up the ranks? When you get a job offer, you can do two things to scout the team you may be moving to. You can view the entire roster of that school and you can view the details of the contract being be offered by the school.
The coaches for all teams in-game are generic, but can be edited to allow you to customize your competition.
If a user wishes to play under the traditional Dynasty format, they can turn off Coach Contracts when creating their Dynasty.
In terms of presentation, cutscenes will show your coach interacting with his players, officials, roaming the sidelines, celebrating, and more.
Other Dynasty Mode Improvements
Within Dynasty Mode, a new Pipeline States screen helps users breakdown their roster to determine which states they currently have designated as Pipelines and also any states they may be in danger of losing in the following season should they not sign a player from that state.
In addition, when you are viewing the list of all recruits, each player has the logos of his Top 3 school choices next to his name and vital info. This makes finding players who have you listed in their Top 3 much easier than it has been in the past.
Dynamic Attendance helps differentiate power programs from lower-tier programs as you can go from playing in front of a packed house at Michigan to a desolate stadium at Tulane or Akron. (In Play Now games, stadiums will be at 100% capacity.)
Fully Customizable Conferences
After a long year-plus of rumored and eventual conference realignment, NCAA Football 12 features Fully Customizable Conferences. Each conference must have a minimum of four teams and can have a maximum of 16 teams, except for Independents which can have a minimum of one team and a maximum of 32. You may re-align conferences, but cannot delete or create entirely new conferences. Divisional names can be edited (goodbye Leaders & Legends), but not existing conference names or logos. TeamBuilder squads can be swapped in, though no teams can be removed or added meaning that users must stay at 120 FBS programs in their Dynasty.
Conference Rules
Schedule Type: Protected or Unprotected Rivals – Helps you protect certain cross-divisional match-ups so they occur within each season of the Dynasty.
Night Games in November: Allows users to set whether or not conference games will be played at night in November.
Weekday Games: Allows users to set which weekdays conference games can occur.
Start Conference Games: Select which week of the season conference match-ups will start being played.
Location for Championship Game: Select the location for the Conference Championship Game (if applicable) amongst any stadium in the game.
Division Name 1 & 2: Name (or re-name) any division in the game.
Protected Rivalries: Set the protected cross-divisional match-ups that will be played each season of the Dynasty. Each team can have one protected match-up.
BCS Bowls
The BCS National Championship Game is locked with BCS #1 vs. BCS #2.
Up to eight Automatic Qualifier slots (amongst Fiesta, Orange, Rose, & Sugar Bowls) can be filled with any of the conference championship winners (not just current AQ schools) or any number of these slots can be open to ‘at large’ consideration.
Coaching Carousel + Fully Customizable Conference + Online Dynasty = Ultimate Competitiveness
Coaching Carousel not only gives users a new Dynasty mode experience – it can redefine the Online Dynasty experience.
Online Dynasty (OD) Commissioners can set the maximum Prestige level for teams users can select at the start of the OD. Members can then all start at the same Prestige job as they work to move up the ranks.
With the Fully Customizable Conferences feature, Online Dynasty Commissioners can arrange all OD members into their own conference to help make it become more of a challenge. For example, in a 12-member Online Dynasty (with all members in the same conference), there will be a conference schedule with plenty of Human vs. Human games. This will make the challenge of moving up the coaching ladder that much more difficult. With the competitiveness that already exists in Online Dynasties, no users will want to be the first coach to be fired as they will have to hear about it for a long time.
Conferences can be customized after each season meaning that people joining an OD a season or more in aren't restricted to fit within a set criteria of teams to match their fellow OD members. For example, if after two seasons of an SEC dynasty, you join and want to be Florida State, you can do so and then join the rest of the SEC.
The Protected Rivalries feature allows Commissioners to establish league rivalries amongst members by ensuring they play every season. When two coordinators play each other in an Online Dynasty, they will play in a basic head-to-head game, calling plays and playing out each side of the ball.
If each OD member creates a new coach, the Alma Mater tab could be construed as the program where they wish to ultimately become Head Coach, basically 'Favorite Team'. With the possibility of another OD member reaching that position first, competitiveness in Online Dynasties will reach a new level.
In the offseason, OD members can go through the Coaching Carousel together in a matter of just a few minutes. Will you get the first big job offer or will your rival get the benefit of being the first at a six-star Prestige program?
With many Online Dynasties featuring members who have played against each other for years, Custom Playbooks will allow users to develop the perfect playbook to counter the strengths and exploit the weaknesses of their competition.
Coaching Carousel, Fully Customizable Conferences, & Custom Playbooks all will play a huge role in changing NCAA Football and they will also change the dynamics of Online Dynasties.
Conclusion
Coaching Carousel and Fully Customizable Conferences will change the way users play Dynasty Mode and Online Dynasty. Will you stick with the first school that gives you a job and build them into a national power? Or will you work to become coach of an established six-star Prestige program? With all of the new game features, Dynasty and Online Dynasty modes will bring new dynamics and challenges to users. These are the major new additions and features coming to Dynasty Mode, but there's additional feature(s) and options yet to come to enhance the Dynasty & Online Dynasty experience.
To see Dynasty questions from the community and answers from Community Event attendees, visit this thread.
Latest images (click here for NCAA Football 12 Information Central)
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