NCAA Football 11 Blog: Leaderboard Changes

[cdj]

You can view the page at http://www.thegamingtailgate.com/for...rboard-Changes

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NCAA Football designer Russ Kiniry has posted a new blog discussing changes to online ranked games.

From Russ:
NCAA Football 11 fans have provided a ton of feedback this year, and since the release, we've been working hard here at Tiburon to address your top concerns. Near the top of the list of feedback we've gathered is how wins and losses are tracked in Ranked games that end in the first half.

Our objective has always been to make our leader boards free of cheaters. It was with this objective in mind that we previously changed the system so it does not award wins or losses if someone quits before the first half is over. However, as of the server maintenance this morning, we've changed how wins and losses are tracked once again. Now, wins and losses are counted regardless of when you (or your opponent) quit the game. If you jump out to an early lead and your opponent quits, you will still receive credit for the victory.

However, to ensure we keep our leader boards as honest as possible, we will be adjusting the skill points awarded to players that get quit on quickly to be lower than a game that reaches the second half. We want to avoid the situation where someone can have two accounts (or a bored friend) and simply jump into games repeatedly, quit out, and rack up wins to advance up the leader board. Hopefully, going forward the leader board will stay honest and wins/losses will be properly awarded to everyone in a ranked game.

Along with the above changes we've resolved a few issues on the server where some people were having difficulties accessing their online dynasties. If you were encountering an issue, please try again and contact us if something still isn't resolved by posting here on our forums.

Finally, we are getting a patch out as soon as possible to resolve an exploit that was introduced in Patch 2. We will provide more details as soon as we can.

Please continue to provide feedback on this, and other changes, you've seen (or would like to see) to NCAA Football 11 on our forums.


Thanks,
-Russ Kiniry
Designer NCAA Football 11

[JBHuskers]

Good news on the new patch.

[Jcoop9]

Thats definitely good news, hopefully the game will play like it did pre patch #2

[Kwizzy]

no word on the issues people have been having playing others online?

[Roy38]

Let's hope it's an effective patch. There's several things they could address. One would hope they would include as much as possible since they are having to pay for this client update.

[CLW]

Darn. I was just starting to perfect my pump fake backwards offense. It was truly revolutionary.

[jaymo76]

I may be reading it wrong but didn't he say the patch is to fix an exploit (aka pump fake glitch). It didn't imply anywhere that other items were being fixed???

[cdj]

I may be reading it wrong but didn't he say the patch is to fix an exploit (aka pump fake glitch). It didn't imply anywhere that other items were being fixed???

You are correct, but I think we're assuming/figuring that with the patch being needed (and at a cost to EA), they might put some other improvements/tweaks in this patch to get more bang for their buck. Though, they may not do too much to make sure they don't need another patch should something go awry.

[JeffHCross]

Beyond the second patch, at least historically, developers have to pay M$ and Sony a fee in order to patch their game. The first two patches are done with no fee, but the third and beyond comes with a fee.

So it's generally safe to say that they won't issue Patch 3 for only one thing.

As well, if they're not going to provide details now (rather "as soon as we can"), that further suggests that it's just one item on a patch list. If that was the only thing being patched, they'd be more likely to say it now. Unless their concern is that mentioning it will cause further exploits ... though, personally, I think most people that read the blogs (and therefore are reading about NCAA online) probably know about it by now.

[CLW]

So if you guys are correct (and I tend to think you are) NCAA 11 is probably a "finished product" now with no other patches/tuning updates to be expected.

[JeffHCross]

Based on previous years, barring a massive, game breaking problem (which the 'exploit' would certainly be classified as), I would certainly expect Patch 3 will be the final patch.

[JBHuskers]

I expect tuners to possibly be tweaked throughout the year.

[JeffHCross]

Ah, hadn't seen he mentioned Tuners. Tuners ... well, it's difficult to predict. The last NHL Tuner set was released around 5 months after the game has hit stores.

[Rudy]

One thing about the tuners - these are actual files like roster files that can be saved. I think we should probably start saving them to USB sticks in case we don't like the new ones for offline play.

[CLW]

For some reason (perhaps b/c they seemed hesitant to even mention tuners prior to release) I get/got the impression that the NCAA team wasn't going to use Tuners very much. My hunch (for what it is worth) is that we will not see any tuners after the final patch. The NCAA team seems pretty happy with the way the game is playing despite complaints of no CPU rushing attack and too many fumbles.

[JeffHCross]

One thing about the tuners - these are actual files like roster files that can be saved. I think we should probably start saving them to USB sticks in case we don't like the new ones for offline play.

On the NHL game last year, there was a line item in the Options Menu for "Tuner Set", and you could either pick "Current", or scroll through the list of previous tuners. I'm very disappointed that option seems to not be in NCAA, because that's part of the point of tuners ... flexibility.

[Rudy]

I don't know if it's possible but it would be nice if they could tune the success of the option runs and shotgun runs separately from a normal run play. The cpu really struggles to run those plays properly. It annoys me that they advertise 120 ways to win but it good luck winning with half of those offenses if you are the cpu.