NCAA Football 12: Custom Playbooks

[morsdraconis]

So for example Virginia Tech's playbook in NCAA Football 11 has a weird or different than normal Goalline formation.



What if I wanted that as my goalline formation? Is there an option to choose that or would I have to choose it as, and use up, one of my other allowed formations and plays?

I hope they think about letting you choose amongst the different goalline formations or just take out the mandatory goalline altogether. I'de totally choose this Goalline or Maryland I over the normal Goalline anyday but I would hate to have to have a normal Goalline in my playbook and not use it meanwhile waste some spots for other formations/plays by choosing to add this in there as well. Seems like you should just be able to choose what Goalline-like formation you want, or none at all. Defeats the purpose of "custom playbook" Special Teams should be mandatory but goalline you should be able to choose amongst the different formations or opt to not have one.

I would venture to guess if you choose the Va Tech playbook as your default playbook, then that goalline formation would be your default goalline formation.

[gschwendt]

So for example Virginia Tech's playbook in NCAA Football 11 has a weird or different than normal Goalline formation.



What if I wanted that as my goalline formation? Is there an option to choose that or would I have to choose it as, and use up, one of my other allowed formations and plays?

I hope they think about letting you choose amongst the different goalline formations or just take out the mandatory goalline altogether. I'de totally choose this Goalline or Maryland I over the normal Goalline anyday but I would hate to have to have a normal Goalline in my playbook and not use it meanwhile waste some spots for other formations/plays by choosing to add this in there as well. Seems like you should just be able to choose what Goalline-like formation you want, or none at all. Defeats the purpose of "custom playbook" Special Teams should be mandatory but goalline you should be able to choose amongst the different formations or opt to not have one.

To get that particular goalline formation, you'd either have to start with Virginia Tech as your base playbook or start with another but then add the Power I as one of your 40 allotted formations. You can't change your goalline set once you've started creating a playbook.

[Kwizzy]

So Kwizzy, I assume the base playbook for offense also determines your roster requirements?

Yup.

[Cipher 8]

I would venture to guess if you choose the Va Tech playbook as your default playbook, then that goalline formation would be your default goalline formation.

To get that particular goalline formation, you'd either have to start with Virginia Tech as your base playbook or start with another but then add the Power I as one of your 40 allotted formations. You can't change your goalline set once you've started creating a playbook.

I totally forgot about the base playbook, so that is how it is then? That does actually sound about right. What else would choosing a base playbook mean? If your filling in the bulk of the formations and plays yourself the base would only be for the special teams and goalline then. Thanks, Morsdraconis and gschwendt. I hope that is how it is.

[gschwendt]

I know everybody is going to want my awesome playbook setupso my quesiton is " Can people download other players playbooks"?

No... though I'm not certain whether or not you could share a save file manually or not. I'll see if I can get clarification on that.

[JeffHCross]

Yeah I guess I didn't realize that was public yet

3 plays displayed.

I answered that like a month ago. Just nobody noticed . It was actually in the pictures that Operation Sports posted, but you had to be looking for it.

[Cipher 8]

but they really need to go back to 6 plays/screen IMO

I totally agree. I would like more then three on screen. The 6 plays was good I thought. Well I better get to reading all these comments before I go pick up Brink at midnight!

[JeffHCross]

One thing that i would like to see at some point is having to set a playbook in the preseason. This allows for every play in that book to be implemented up to a potential 100% effectiveness.

All other playbooks and plays can be used but with less effectiveness. practice would need to be done every week to either learn new formations and plays or maintain a high level of effectiveness in current ones.

NFL Head Coach 09 had this mechanic. It's a good idea for those of us that like a good deal of depth ... but honestly it adds a lot of tediousness to the general game. I'm one of the guys that likes the idea, but I also know why other people wouldn't want to be forced to learn their playbook.

Of course, it could be an option for Dynasty. That way people in charge of the dynasty (or OD) could turn it on/off. That might work.

[smace767]

NFL Head Coach 09 had this mechanic. It's a good idea for those of us that like a good deal of depth ... but honestly it adds a lot of tediousness to the general game. I'm one of the guys that likes the idea, but I also know why other people wouldn't want to be forced to learn their playbook.

Of course, it could be an option for Dynasty. That way people in charge of the dynasty (or OD) could turn it on/off. That might work.

i agree that some would be turned of by the level of detail.

Thats why by default i would suggest it be automated with no penalty, but if you changed playbooks during the season there would be negative affects which are realistic in changing playbooks from one week to the next. After a few weeks with the new playbook not much penalty. all this without the user doing anything.
The practice could be automated too and just another menu. if you wanted the depth and negate the penalties of new plays and formations during the season, you could go in manually, in these menus and make changes.

a little more than causal i know, but i think a very large percent of young and old football gamers can relate to game planning and practice and it could be way less of a task than the current recruiting while still having a big impact on the game and add depth in gameplay /experience.

i coached an 8-10 year old youth team in ft Polk LA. first round of the playoffs. We scraped what we mainly did and practiced some things we had worked on but had not used. Came up with break of tendency plays and practiced hard and upset the number 2 seed. Got blown out the next game but the look of the kids face after that playoff win, that work they put in made the season. the next game was a short turn around and the other team was ready for everything we through at them.

[Cipher 8]

/\ That sounds like a good idea as an optional feature to add to Dynasty Mode. I agree default of 'off' or 'no' would be best because the majority of the people just want to play their game and advance it but I know for a fact not everybody is like that. My friends and I would totally love and use a feature that is this in depth.

How cool would it be if it sorta had the same mechanics as recruiting where you were only allowed so much time to practice the plays on a weekly basis and you had to choose how much time to spend on each play? Where it would go 10 snaps, or 10 times you run the play for every 10 minutes used or something?

Each team/school would only have so many practice hours each week, (Unless you were Michigan ) and then would really have to gameplan for your upcoming opponent. By practicing plays that you planned on running against that specific team more. If you know you'll be behind probably you better practice more shotgun passes if you feel you'll be ahead practice more runs ( unless your Wisconsin then you just practice runs either way ). The plays you spent most time on and executed good in practice would be more effective, sorta like set up plays that are linked in the playbook, so when you use them in that weeks game then they work better. The other plays in the playbook you didn't get to spend much or any time practicing you could still run in game they just wouldn't be set up or that bonus to effectiveness. You could still gain yards or score a touchdown on them though. Just wouldn't have a receiver run crisp routes and be wide open or not have your lineman block perfectly on that particular play because you didn't run it a lot in practice.

For those of you who don't want to do it they could implement it like Recruiting. Where if you don't want to spend your full 10 hours of recruiting you don't have to and you can quick call or let the AI do it. They could do the same thing for your practice time with this feature. Like you can sim a call by setting the amount of time to spend on the player, you could sim a play and choose the amount of time you can spend on a play and let the AI do it for you. Only allowing so much time per week would make it challenging though and would make it so not all the plays are set up and can be run to max effectiveness. Maybe they could even show, like they do with linked plays that are set up, all the plays you practiced and have the effectiveness bonus in your playbook so you know when to use them. They could also include something if you run that play a lot in the game it would lose it's effectiveness bonus because the team is aware of that specific play.

I just think this type of a feature would open up a lot to the game. The weekly gameplan where you have to practice plays you plan to use in your gameplan would add a realistic portion to NCAA, and probably more specifically Madden. I think that would bring a lot to Dynasty/Franchise mode and then you would truly be in charge of a team/program with Recruiting, Practice, Play Calling, and Execution on Gameday.

[jcalv83]

I was curious as to whether anyone knew if they were going to also allow the user the ability to customize formation audibles...

This honestly seems like a given, because if you truly have the option of having any play in a formation and, consequently, the ability to remove any play from said formation, formation audibles such as "slants" or "hb dive" might not even exist in a custom playbook (not in my book, at least ). It would almost seem silly to not have custom formation audibles, because if they keep the defaults for the formations, theoretically that would allow you four extra plays in EVERY formation.

I've read in this thread, briefly, that EA is looking into this issue, but if/when anyone knows the answer to this, I would LOVE to see it! This will truly get the creative juices flowing and allow for some amazing offensive and even defensive schemes. Great thread and thanks for all the information!

[JerzeyReign]

I was curious as to whether anyone knew if they were going to also allow the user the ability to customize formation audibles

--> Answered. No, we are not. Forget what page it was on but it was within the first 3 pages.

[smace767]

BLUF= can you assign multiple teams the custom playbook?

Example you create a run heavy offense or heavy zone /zone blitz defense and you want to assign it to 5 or 10 teams in dynasty.

in the current state you could assign 20 teams the wisc playbook.

This would be a tool for od commish to make cpu teams a better challenge depending on the level of play and playcalling by the cpu. As well as reset base team style ever 2 or 3 years if the recruiting and roster management dont improve and you have run heavy teams with a stud pocket qb and three good wrs or 3-4 teams with stud dlineman and no good lbs.

a post from op sports:
How do you figure that? With being able to only having 15 offensive playbooks, you realistically will only be able to change 14 CPU offensive playbooks in dynasty (Considering that you change your own). So out of 100+ teams in NCAA you will only be able to change 1/10 of the teams "play calling".

Granted you will never play all 100+ teams in dynasty and maybe only 20+ regularly, it still leaves a gap where you will be forced to go with EA's default playbook for that team. Unless you can add/delete/change pb's in dynasty mode and re-assign them to new teams.

Now I look forward to this feature and playing with it. Just wish they would have let us create as many as we like and assign them to as many teams as we like.

Response

You could make 5 or 6 good default base playbook like my post suggested.

Think spread option, power run, run n shoot / air raid, pistol ect on offense and the same generic ones on defense. Think zone / zone blitz defense, multple man defense, all 4 down line man or all with 5 dbs a true multiple defense. the key being you could remove the useless 7 and 8 man blitzes and add more logical base plays the cpu can be more successful with.

you could assign the same playbook to 10 or 20 teams. you are not limited to use a playbook only once.

In ncaa 11 in dynasty we went through and took out the spread option teams playboooks since they didnt run them well and gave them all wisc, or mich st, or another run heavy base option playbook.

With 40 formations, that is twice as many formations as the current playbook so diversity would still be better than what was in ncaa 11.

On a side note i guess it has not been determined if you could load these multiple times per dynasty team. I dont see why not. its one file u use multiple times like a teambuilder team in conf play after the user retires.

You use an alternate profile and assign each team with the improved base playbooks then go in and switch teams and change the next team until you retire that profile. when you leave the playbook and coach settings stay.

can this still be done?

[cdj]

BLUF= can you assign multiple teams the custom playbook?

Unless I missed something, you cannot assign playbooks to specific teams. Just before you enter the game, you get the pop-up to select User Profile, O Playbook, D Playbook, and Control Style. Pick which playbook (default or custom) you want for each and then enter the game.

EDIT - I misread your post! You should be able to do the same thing in NCAA 12, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

[jcalv83]

--> Answered. No, we are not. Forget what page it was on but it was within the first 3 pages.

Actually, I don't think we've received a solid answer on this yet. On page two, someone said they didn't think you could, but then on page three it was stated that further clarification on this issue is needed from EA. This is by far the most important question, for me. If you do have the ability to customize formation audibles, this means that on any given play, assuming that your main "button" audibles are geared toward similar formations/personnel, you could come to the line with up to 30 options!

[PDuncanOSU]

How do similar formations, but with different names, work when adding them to your custom playbook?
The example I'm thinking of is Miss State's "Bulldog Heavy" and Florida's "Gator Heavy" formations. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe these two formations were identical. If I added Bulldog Heavy to my playbook, and wanted one or two plays from Gator Heavy that weren't in Bulldog Heavy would I have to add Gator Heavy as a seperate formation?

[psusnoop]

How do similar formations, but with different names, work when adding them to your custom playbook?
The example I'm thinking of is Miss State's "Bulldog Heavy" and Florida's "Gator Heavy" formations. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe these two formations were identical. If I added Bulldog Heavy to my playbook, and wanted one or two plays from Gator Heavy that weren't in Bulldog Heavy would I have to add Gator Heavy as a seperate formation?

It is my understanding that yes you would have to add that as another formation.

[gschwendt]

How do similar formations, but with different names, work when adding them to your custom playbook?
The example I'm thinking of is Miss State's "Bulldog Heavy" and Florida's "Gator Heavy" formations. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe these two formations were identical. If I added Bulldog Heavy to my playbook, and wanted one or two plays from Gator Heavy that weren't in Bulldog Heavy would I have to add Gator Heavy as a seperate formation?

Where they could, they consolidated those formations to be a single formation. They were still in the process of cleaning some of that up when we were last there but they hoped to have it condensed as best as possible. So in that case, they might just rename it to Shotgun Heavy or something like that and all of those plays be in the same formation.

[PDuncanOSU]

Where they could, they consolidated those formations to be a single formation. They were still in the process of cleaning some of that up when we were last there but they hoped to have it condensed as best as possible. So in that case, they might just rename it to Shotgun Heavy or something like that and all of those plays be in the same formation.

Thanks for the info. I'm sure there are similar situations w/ other formations. I just thought of this b/c I plan on using this formation for my short yardage plays in my spread option playbook.

[blkkrptnt819]

Kwizzy,

You said something t the extent that offense and defense have the same play limitations 40 formations and 377 plays. How many defensive formations are there total? And you can add and subtract plays out a formation? I figure we would just pick our 11 formations. Does it make you have a dime and a nickel? Just elaborate on defensive playbooks as much as possible.