Tuesday night on OS Radio, Operation Sports' Chris Sanner & Christian McLeod welcomed Ben Haumiller, Associate Producer for NCAA Football.
Among the topics discussed included working with the NCAA and universities, Dynasty/Online Dynasty, game difficulty level used by the team, Ben's thoughts on sliders, the development process & more, as well as their picks for some of the best games in the upcoming bowl season. Click here to listen to the show.
Last edited by cdj; 12-14-2010 at 08:47 PM.
Found it interesting that the devs typically use AA Default on 6min qtrs. I have been using a set of sliders that I set up for the initial release and have only adjusted since all of the patches and tuning sets have come out. I think I will start over again on these settings and work from there.
The most interesting question that got asked, and it got skirted around slightly by Ben, was what the developers were disappointed with in 11. I understand that he probably doesn't want to go on the record in public talking about the shortfalls of his work, but I think it would be really interesting to see if the devs have the same issues with the game that I have (especially gameplay-wise). I think this is a very good game but with some areas that are really holding it back from being an all around AMAZING game. Things like the CPU run game, pass coverage issues, and blocking issues are really keeping this title from that top tier for me. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the developers meetings to know if they share the same, or possibly different concerns.
Meh I didn't really learn anything new that I didn't already know.
LOL Ben is pretty good at saying allot without saying anything in a classic give a rambling answer that isn't really responsive to the question given in hopes that the questioner will not follow up/call them out for not answering the real question.
I'm not sure why they pushed the 'what were you guys disappointed in' question. No matter what company or industry, PR will have any employee who directly answers that burning on a stake by morning. They should have focused on the 'expansion of current features' talk, like when Ben referenced Dynasty Wire not getting quite everything they planned in NCAA 11. That was a possible hint on something we might expect in NCAA 12 (or beyond).
Overall, it was a good show though and provided some nice general information about the dev process. We will work to get Ben and some of the devs in on TGT Podcast once there's some game info to chew on. Without game info, there's too much dancing in circles that goes on (and understandably so).
Yeah the key is how you spin/phrase the question. They could have probably gotten a little better info/incite if they had asked better questions. Then again, I tend to be very critical as I get paid for a living to get good info by asking people questions. There really is an "art" to interviewing/questioning someone.Originally Posted by cdj
If they are all playing on default AA they must love having the #1 run defense in the country and winning most of the time. It makes sense why the game is tuned the way it is but the dev team either wants the game to play differently than most of us hardcore guys or they aren't that good at the game.
They may also do it b/c their numbers indicate that is what a plurality/majority of their consumers do?
Really, EA is put in a tough spot. They have a very vocal online/hard core community that are all/most the Top 5% in terms of talent wise that plays the game. If they go to far in our direction the casual fan thinks its too hard quits and stops playing/buying their product. However, if they go too far to the casual crowd they lose their base consumer and the people that spread the word about their product.
I don't envy the task but have always felt that a possible solution = a "simulation" mode and a "arcade" mode.
I'd love an arcade and sim mode but I don't want just a different base slider set. I think arcade should also have boosted spins, jukes, stiff arms, etc. The more options the better.
I get what you're saying here cdj and I completely understand that. I guess "disappointed in" would be too strong a word for the kind of answer I'd like to hear(especially if you're trying to get an answer in a public interview). I guess what I'm most interested in is how the devs view the gameplay from last year when they look at it objectively. Surely they are not completely satisfied with their game or else there would be no room for improvement.
Now, I understand why they wouldn't necessarily reveal those things in an interview like that or to the public in general. I was merely saying that that is what interests me most. What are the views of the developers when it comes to things that aren't quite right yet (especially when it comes to gameplay). Obviously I don't blame Ben at all for the way he handled it, just interested in what the off the record closed doors version of that answer might sound like.
That's one of those questions that every journalist (and every thinks-he's-a-journalist) asks, but they/we (gotta include myself in that one) always know it won't get answered.
Twitter: @3YardsandACloud
with disk space being the reason we're not getting larger rosters, are there ways that they could make each player smaller in file size?
i've never really understood why a player needs to have a value for every rating. d-linemen never kick the ball and they never throw the ball, so why do they need a rating value? why cant they narrow down every position group to only use the most important ratings that that position requires? in each rare occurance that happens where a non essential rating is required to be used for that player, a default value of 40 could be used. for certain positions, like kickers/punters, you could eliminate up to 80% of the ratings.
Disc space is a non issue on the PS3.
It really should be a non-issue for the 360, just make it a download to put on the harddrive. Granted that woudl suck if you still have an orginal 20 GB but I think its doable.
If it is truly just disc space, my take is to have the default rosters be limited to 70, but allow custom and/or dynasty rosters be as large as 85. Then it becomes an issue with console HDD storage.
That is a fantastic idea that I had never even considered. There is no reason play now or online players would need more than 70 however it really is difficult for me as a dynasty player (as I'm sure it is for a lot of people like me) to decide who to cut out of the roster we take into a dynasty. Trying to decide which 69 players (1 spot left open for campus legend) to keep takes me quite a bit of compromise.
Considering Smackdown vs Raw 11 put a 5 GB install on my HDD that I didn't even notice installing ... I really think installing on the HDD should be a simple decision.
Twitter: @3YardsandACloud
I install every game I plan on playing for a while to the HDD anyway because it speeds up load times (and diminishes overworking the DVDrom reading the disc all the time) so I have no problem installing more stuff to the HDD and they shouldn't be worried about that being an issue. There's a reason why they have 100gb and 250gb HDDs for these consoles now people...
Tell Sony that. sigh.
Twitter: @3YardsandACloud
Is there a reason why they won't let you install games to the HDD unless they're specifically programmed that way? That's been a BIG negative for me being a new PS3 owner when compared to the 360...
None that I've ever been aware of them officially saying. The PS1 had massive piracy problems, even without an HDD, so that has been my first and foremost guess.
Last edited by JeffHCross; 12-22-2010 at 11:53 PM.
Twitter: @3YardsandACloud
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