NCAA Football 12: Road to Glory Breakdown and Q&A with Designer Alex Howell
A popular feature within the NCAA Football series, Road to Glory enables you to take control of your own destiny from high school all the way to your senior year of college. Unlike a regular game of NCAA Football, you only control your position as you try to etch your name in the annals of your school’s history. Road to Glory has received significant upgrades in NCAA Football 12 and that is in part thanks to designer Alex Howell. Alex has an unmatched passion for the game of college football because he lived his own Road to Glory as a walk-on at Auburn. Getting to know Alex over the past few months, you can easily see the passion he has put into this mode this year. Check out The Gaming Tailgate Q&A with Alex below, followed by thoughts from Jeremy Bennett (JBHuskers) on Road to Glory for NCAA Football 12.
JB: Alex, when you first stepped into the role of designer on Road to Glory, what was the first thing about this mode that ran through your mind that you wanted to stress or build upon?
Alex: Right from the start, I could tell that I had a lot to build from. RTG has always had a couple of great features that stood out from the rest of the game, such as quick 15 minute games, the single player aspect, and the Playoffs in High School. So my goal was to keep the best qualities of RTG, while expanded others.
JB: It has been noted that you are a huge RPG fan. Which games did you draw inspiration from, and how did you implement them into the game?
Alex: Oh wow, too many. I am a gigantic video game nerd, especially when it comes to RPG’s. My inspiration for what I wanted to do with RTG this year came from many many different games. Instead of trying to cram a couple of good and notable features from other games, I spent a solid month analyzing the various systems of game, to figure out the best possible way to go about designing it. I found so many great ways to take existing systems and turn them into more dynamic, data driven tools. The Upgrade Store and Coach Trust are a perfect example of that. Design is more than trying to take what the community wants and what we think is best for the game and making it. It’s figuring out the smartest and most efficient way to do it.
JB: What specific elements did you implement into Road to Glory based upon your days as a member of the Auburn Tigers?
Alex: Definitely practice. Aside from being under the lights on Saturday, 95% of your time is spent on the practice field. There is so much that goes behind the scenes that fans never get to see, and I really want to bring as much of it as I can, to the game.
JB: What was the biggest challenge that you had to overcome in your path at Auburn and what kind of similar challenges can users expect within this mode this year?
Alex: How insanely physically and mentally challenging the game is. No one person could have ever prepared me for the challenges I had in college. From red-shirt workouts at 5 in the morning every Friday, to tackling drills with Pro-Bowler Carlos Dansby, it was a hard life. But it was worth blood, sweat and tear. The biggest challenge that I want to put into RTG from my own experiences is the way you control your own destiny. As much as football is a team sport, if you yourself are not mentally and physically prepared, you will fail. So finding a way to make the experience very unique, challenging, and rewarding to each person is the route I had to go in.
JB: What is your favorite Road to Glory improvement in NCAA Football 12?
Alex: Easily the new High School Experience. Sure it’s great playing the playoff’s and simulating a semi-real senior year, but to actually play all of your opponents from the whole year is a different ballgame. Add in importing Team Builder teams, a brand new recruiting system, and Iron Man Football and you have my favorite feature of Sports Games this entire year.
JB: Here are some questions from the community. Do users have to do all 25 Practice reps each week if we attain our goals and/or a satisfactory XP level for that week?
Alex: If you want to leave practice, it will save off everything you have done so far, so you can return to practice. So if you finally got enough XP for a certain Upgrade, you can quit practice, buy the item, and return to practice with however many reps you had remaining.
JB: What changes (if any) have been made to the camera angles in this mode?
Alex: Not a whole lot of camera angles have been changed on the gameplay side, but as far as presentation camera’s, that’s a whole different story. Every replay, vignette, and montage camera angle has been completely revamped for RTG.
JB: Can edited rosters be used as part of Road to Glory?
Alex: Another feature that I would have loved to squeeze in, but we just didn’t have the time.
JB: Finally, any last thoughts on the mode you'd like to share with the community or perhaps some tips for success?
Alex: Well I just want to thank the community for the amazing job they have done in not only being great fans of the game, but giving us constant feedback all the time. Whether it’s through the message boards or on our facebook page, we absolutely need/love the input. There is no other game on the market that has an awesome, dedicated group of fans like NCAA has. I cannot wait to get feedback from RTG this year so together we (the community and developers) can continue to make NCAA not only an amazing game, but a game built off Passion and Love for College Football.
I would like to thank Alex Howell for taking the time to answer some questions on what will be a very exciting iteration of Road to Glory on NCAA Football 12. Now, I would like to share my thoughts on Road to Glory this year. Ever since I sat down in January at a Community Day and took it for a test drive, I was excited to see it grow in the months to come. Since January, I have put a good amount of time into this mode and I am probably the second most excited person (next to Alex) to finally get to talk about it.
Right off the bat, the first thing you notice different is the option to choose a second position. I was excited to see that Ironman football was brought into Road to Glory as part of the ‘High School experience.’ Coming from a small high school that played 8-man football, almost everyone on the team would play both offense and defense. The combination I seemed to like the most was playing as an option QB and as a MLB. The option QB is fun because you can attack the defense in multiple ways. On the other side of the ball as a MLB, you can either rush on a blitz or play in coverage. The combination of these two positions gives you a nice mix of everything.
A great addition to your high school career is the ability to play the ENTIRE senior season. Another nice touch is the ability to customize your schedule with TeamBuilder teams. You can create your high school rivals and import them into this mode. Unfortunately, the rosters do not carry over, only the stadium and look of the team. On top of that, if you think the high school opponents in past Road to Glory’s were too easy, you can adjust the difficulty of each team while you are in the setup phase. You can make your high school’s heated rival be the toughest game on your schedule. Before you start your senior season, you get to choose your own personal top three schools that you would like to attend. As you progress through your senior season of high school, schools take notice of your play and will add you to their watch list. After each game, you will earn points based on your performance, and this will go towards the progression of your scholarship bar. Once you hit 100% on that bar, that school will offer you a scholarship. The more prestigious the school, the more you’ll have to do to hit 100%.
Once you have finished your senior season, it is time to make that tough decision. Which school are you going to enroll at? If you had a school that you had your heart set on attending but didn’t hit that 100% to get a scholarship, you can still walk-on at that school. However, your road to become a starter may take some time. Just like in years past, there will be a list of schools, along with the position on the depth chart you would start at. With the flip of the button, you can go back and forth from teams that are offering you a scholarship and schools you can walk-on to.
Now that you are settled into your new school, it is time to go to work. One of my favorite parts of Road to Glory this year is the practice mode. Normally, I do not use practice mode, as my preference would be to just jump into a game to hone my skills. With Road to Glory, practice mode has been tweaked very well this year and I thoroughly enjoy practicing. There are two key stats within practice mode that you need to build up to make your push up the depth chart, Coach Trust and XP. Coach Trust and XP are part of the RPG elements that Alex has infused into this mode this year.
Your XP is used to buy boosts to your players attributes. These boosts can last for one week or for your entire career. Similar to an RPG, Alex and the team created the Skill Upgrades section to spend your XP. There will be many various upgrades you can add to your player and some of these upgrades will be rare, some will be on sale, and some are fairly common. Boosting your skill attributes is very important because the amount of Coach Trust that you need to earn to get to a position battle is based on the difference of your overall rating between yourself, and the player who is one notch higher on the depth chart.
Coach Trust is the key element in achieving your goals in Road to Glory. When you come in as a freshman in college, your overall rating is going to be compared with the overall rating of the player next up in the depth chart. There is a base amount of points that are needed if you are only one rating point underneath the next person up. For any additional overall points that you are behind, the amount of Coach Trust needed to earn a position battle is multiplied by the difference. For example, if the starter is a 90 OVR, and you’re second string at an 85 OVR, you will need 5x the base points to earn a position battle. However, if you use XP to boost your OVR, that multiplier will decrease because the Coach Trust points needed to get that position battle is dynamic with your OVR rating.
Once you have earned enough Coach Trust to get to a position battle, you will need to earn a set amount of XP in practice to be able to overtake the next rung within the depth chart. If you fail to get that XP, you will continue to stay in the same place on the depth chart and you try again next week to overtake the next spot via a position battle.
Once you have battled your way up to starter, the journey does not end. Using the example of the quarterback, the next rung is Starter+ which enables you to flip the play in pre-play. Next up is Captain; where you can have three plays to choose from instead of just one. The next captain tier lets you be able to use hot routes at home games. The next captain tier from there gives you the ability to do hot routes at away games. Even after all of that, there are still a couple more tiers for you to unlock to give you even more flexibility under center. This is another great example of the RPG elements that are infused into Road to Glory.
It’s very clear that Road to Glory is going to look different this year. There are so many wonderful elements that Alex and the rest of the staff have put into this game mode this year and it will only be the beginning of things to come. My personal favorite additions are the Coach Trust and XP to the practice mode and then tying those two elements into the Position Battle and Skill Upgrades sections. This just gives Road to Glory some great depth, and when you add the path that you take from second or third string to the very top rung of your progression, Road to Glory gives you total control of your destiny and truly puts you in the game.
***
You can view the page at http://www.thegamingtailgate.com/for...er-Alex-Howell
