Quote Originally Posted by morsdraconis View Post
But, Jeff, I'd venture to guess, 99 times out of 100, the casual users don't change their difficulties levels any anyway.
True. Which means that the default will be All-American, since that's the existing system. Which may look weird to someone playing on Varsity. I agree that most casual users don't change their difficulty levels, but since it's presented rather obviously on the main Dynasty screen, you can't avoid having to effectively communicate it. There are plenty of hardcore users that aren't community members and/or don't read the blogs. Plenty. Effective communication is not catering the lowest common denominator. You think gamers in general don't mess around with difficulty settings without absolutely knowing what they do? Bull. We see "difficulty" and we turn it down or up, almost naturally.

Catering the casual fan is not how you make a great game, I agree. But the sports genre has unique hurdles to overcome. Diehard football fans are going to be overwhelmed by the current game. There are ways to fix that while not dumbing it down so much that people like you are turned off by the game. It's not a 0 or 1 choice. And, besides, effective communication is not dumbing it down.

His four levels were so drastically different, that you'd have to effectively communicate it, even for people like us that read every word of the blog. Otherwise there are going to be tons of ODs out there that can't figure out why they'd suddenly lost In-Season Recruiting.

I'm not saying don't do it -- I'm just saying that how it will be communicated has to be considered. Programming something is only half (or not even) of the problem.