NCAA Football 12 Dynasty Info Q&A thread

[DariusLock]

As Ive posted in many other places, not being able to fully edit players in dynasty mode is a deal breaker for me at the current moment. Im making valid, intelligent posts about this. So theres no need to take shots at me for the way I feel about this game. Ive bolded and colored the strong points. Get mad at me if you want, but you know im right.

Unless they make some much need changes to recruiting and progression or allow us to edit players full to correct all the errors in realism made by bad progression and recruiting logic, I wont be getting the game. Why do they keep claiming how they want to make the game as real as possible, but their entire recruiting system and progression system is a JOKE.

Me and buckeye02 have done rosters for the last 3 years and this year we are getting the game a week early. Meaning that we could have fully named rosters and coaches done before release date.

But Im going to pass on the game and just wait for a much better game, called Madden 12. I just can deal with all the unrealistic crap that comes along with the problems in Dynasty mode, LIKE:
-The top 100 being littered with too many JUCOs,
-Top schools cant sign enough players or any back up players so they end up signing really bad overall players to fill their roster or take walk ons. Teams like Florida or Ohio State end up with players on their rosters in the 50s overall. Which harms on down the road.
-Teams signing too many Quarterbacks, all within the same range overall. Im tired of seeing teams with 12 QBs.
-In last years game, me and buckeye tested this. The AI controlled Ohio State, during dynasty was signing an average of 6 JUCO players each year, with some of them being terrible low star prospects. Like a JUCO WR as a 58 overall. Ohio State has no business signing a player that lowly rated. And teams like Ohio State sign 1 to 2 JUCOs a year in real life. NOT SIX!
-Boise State signs a ton of 5 star prospects allowing them to crush teams in the WAC and now, Mount West. In real life, Boise State signed ONE 4* prospect, no 5 stars.
-Offseason recruiting just has new 5* players show up out of nowhere, never having been recruited before. THATS NOT REALISTIC!!! AT ALL

And the big dagger is progression.
-In season progression was busted and pretty much a joke. No one cares to see a guy who is having a breakout year progress 1 to 2 points a year. Thats pointless. He needs a bigger boost than that.
-Recruiting was manipulated into something that is wasnt. Last year, they made it sound like the smaller schools actually had a chance to land some higher level players. Yeah, as a school like Mississippi State, you could get your name on a 5* players list, BUT NEVER ACTUALLY LAND HIM. Not even if he is a LOCAL standout. Mississippi State and Ole Miss recruit better than Boise State. Someone needs to tell EA this fact. Only the top 6-8 programs are going to land all the top 100-150 players, so the whole having a chance is a pointless gimmick that just wastes recruiting time. South Carolina signed the #1 player this year in real life, NOT happening in the NCAA Football game. Arizona should occasionally be able to land some 4 and 5 star players from in state. Occasionally.

Having this being so busted, causes team rosters like Arizonas to deteriorate over the years in dynasty. AZ started out with Two 90+ overall players on their defualt 2010 rosters last year in game. That team, whether controlled by human or user, has an inability to sign any 4 or 5 star players. Mix that in with the garbage progression system, and its impossible for AZ to ever field another 90+ player. Its true. Ive tested it.

The progression system is a random 3-7 point increase for every player on a team. Which is crap. Players should progress based on their season performance. Meanwhile, redshirted players should get a small increase. And players who lose their jobs or play like crap should decrease. Yeah, college players should decrease too. Awareness rating is a big rating that EA needs to comprehend and utilize. Underclassmen should come in with a solid set of speed, agility, accel, throw, catch, break tackle, and tackle ratings. Those attributes are something that a player has by the time he gets to school. Over time those ratings should increase a little as the player gains experience, coaching, or size for breaking tackle. But awareness should be low to start and come up over the years. Its the best way to bring about some real life progression.

EA needs to get on the ball on making a dynamic progression system that goes player by player instead of team by team. A players potential and last seasons performance is all that should matter when a player progresses or goes down in overall.

EA has it right by keeping the overalls of every player and team on the low side, as opposed to the high side. This keeps the dynasty mode from being littered with 99s and 90+ overall players, and every team from being a monster.

But with stale and random progression, all teams get equally better and worse over team. For example. Alabam will be a 95 overall in year 1. Ole Miss will be an 85. After year three, due to bad progression, recruiting logic, and inability of Miss to ever land a great prospect, Alabama will be a 91 in year 3, and ole Miss will be a 80. The gap between decent teams and power teams will grow uncontrollably due to the mid level schools only being able to sign 3 star prospects, while the Alabamas and Floridas sign an unrealistic amount of 5 stars.

Coaches ratings need to matter a lot on how a team performs and recruits. PERIOD.

The whole coaching carousel idea seems pointless if you play all your dynasty games. You cant hire and fire coordinators and none of them have ratings. Seems like a waste to me, hopefully it improves over the years.

Hopefully they fixed the program's recruiting pitches. Fixed to where they dont just bounce around at random and kill your program. You win two national titles in a row, and your coach prestige and program stability still goes down??? What???

Hopefully all this is addressed atleast somewhat with the dynasty blogs, but I wont get my hopes up. I never do with EA anymore. Because its certain that the game will ship with numerous broken plays, glitches, and bugs. And we will all have to play the yearly waiting game, waiting on a patch or tuner like we do every year. Get mad at me if you want, but you know its true. EA doesnt test their games fully, they dont need to when they are allowed to "fix it later" with a patch or tuner.

Is the bug going to be fixed that causes you to take a home loss, when you lose a neutral site game as the home team. Or will it be in the game for the 5th year in a row? Just curious.

Id love to have the rosters done by release date, but its not looking good as of right now.

Quoted for truth.

[GatorBait06NC]

Regardless of his unproven history, I think he's still a "Big Name" in the coaching world, even if it is due to controversy. He's got family history and experience in the NFL. Let me also add that I don't support or like Kiffin haha. USC is paying the guy $4M to coach for god's sake, even if he might run them into the ground.

Again, my original point was that I hope Big Schools don't offer just because it's a user. I just want it to make sense.

Hes a big name because of his antics. Not because hes even a mediocre coach at best. He talks big game and cant back it up. He accused Urban Meyer of cheating on the recruiting front, and Meyer wasnt breaking any rules. Oh, and then all the while, it was he who was cheating.

IMO, he belongs at USC.

You have to be the lowest of the low when even Al Davis knows the low down on you, while everyone else doesnt. LOL

[GatorBait06NC]

2 Things that I left out from my in depth post concerning recruiting and progression:

1) Having a recruit come in with higher positional ratings such as speed, agil, accel, catch, throw, tackle, break tackle, etc, will also make it easier for some users to play with certain lower rated players rather than the superstar QB or RB for example. To break it down, for example. A freshman Running Back should not come into the game with a 75 speed, ESPECIALLY if his size resembles a speed guy. So he should come in a have a 75 speed rating as a FR, and by the time he is a Senior, it be bumped up to a 89-92. The freshman should come into the game with close to max speed already. You dont learn speed. You either have it or you dont. Awareness is the key. Thats a rating that affects overalls greatly. You may play better with the 75 overall QB over the 90 overall QB, due to both players having their positional attributes being close to max. Just a huge gap in the AWR between the Freshman and the Veteran. Thats realistic.

Freshman players dont learn how to run or catch in college. They know that before they get there. THATS WHY THEY ARE BEING RECRUITED. NCAA is not the NFL. You dont recruit project players and teach them how to run faster. That cant happen.

2) On the teams getting worse and better over time equally. I just wanted to point out that the gap between upper tier and mid tier teams gets large and very noticible. For example.
-After 3 or 4 years into dynasty, all the power schools will still be around a 90-95 overall as a team, due to monster recruiting and the lack of big time prospect signings from mid tier schools. So these teams will be covered with 80s and 90s all across their depth charts.
-Meanwhile the next level of team, the mid level teams all stay around 80-85. Their depth charts are littered with high 70s and a few 80s.

Its not right. Theres never a chance of a team like Ole Miss or Missouri to come up and be great for a year. The Floridas, Ohio States, Texas, Oklahoma, etc will always be the power teams. There is absolutely no turnover. The gap between upper and mid level teams becomes large and the chance of a school sneaking up and having a great year is gone.

[steelerfan]

I don't even know where to begin.

You have a lot of valid points, but they get lost in the tempermental rant. There are a lot of things that could make recruiting "more realistic", but giving Freshmen high speed ratings, while true-to-life, would not work in video game land. If you give me a Freshman with 90 SPD at HB, he's gonna dominate. That's just a fact of gaming.

As for rosters, TGT had the first named rosters in the world last year. If you don't buy the game, I'm sure someone will step up to the plate and get them done.

http://kotaku.com/5587346/the-first-...aa-football-11

[Treadstone6700]

Full player edits in dynasty is a big deal for me too. It seems like a simple enough add. I've asked around various boards why that hasn't gotten into the game at this point b/c I really don't understand why it wouldn't be. No one really seems to know, would be nice to hear what EA has to say about it.

[Rudy]

I can understand some of your concerns Gaitorbait but I don't think we need player regression in college football. Barring an injury I don't see why a college football player should regress in overall ability. Every year they should get bigger and stronger. We're not talking about NFL players that age and get worse, that doesn't happen in college. The players that disappoint us are simply the players that aren't as good as we hoped they would be and probably don't progress as fast as we'd like.

My biggest complaint about the recruits is that their weight wasn't associated with their ratings. Power backs could be 180 pounds. Run stuffing NTs could be 265 pounds. Weight was 100% random for a recruit within the min and max range of their position. Add that in with the fact that only player ratings affected performance and not weight and some things just weren't quite right.

[rhombic21]

I really like the consistency rating that Madden is using this year. That could be a huge upgrade to NCAA if they implemented it somewhere down the line. Ideally, consistency would increase as players get older, but there would also be within-class variation (so some freshmen come in and are mature and play solid, while some seniors never get it together and can't be depended on).

I would think that something like that could be a really useful feature that would help dynasty feel more dynamic. Also, it would make even more sense in college than it does in the NFL, where we continually have crazy upsets every year that nobody could see coming.

[steelerfan]

Full player edits in dynasty is a big deal for me too. It seems like a simple enough add. I've asked around various boards why that hasn't gotten into the game at this point b/c I really don't understand why it wouldn't be. No one really seems to know, would be nice to hear what EA has to say about it.

I probably shouldn't spout off specifics, but I was asked about this last week. Just know it's on their radar.

[SHO]

Does Height and Weight actually factor in this year or is it still randomized and ratings based for recruits again?

Have the ratings for recruits been tweaked and tuned so they are more aligned with the default roster ratings scale or vice versa? Last year I felt agility was too low in general for players at some positions and it was near impossible to find a strong safety recruit that was faster than an outside linebacker.

[Pig Bomb]

Freshman players dont learn how to run or catch in college. They know that before they get there. THATS WHY THEY ARE BEING RECRUITED. NCAA is not the NFL. You dont recruit project players and teach them how to run faster. That cant happen.
.

Recruit project players and making kids faster-----Sure they do! players work on strength, speed, and agility all the time.... players grow, build muscle, improve technique, and become faster frequently.
[I've made players faster simply by teaching them the proper way to run and also increasing their reaction time thru training].

I'd also argue that there are tons of WR's that do actually "learn how to catch" when they get to college. College coaches are frequently fixing poorly coached technique from high school and refining it.
Players can become better at catching the ball for sure...I think that growth can continue on into the NFL for some players as rates of growth vary from player to player.

Some kids come in with great technique but need to grow physically... others come in as great athletes, but lack the technique to take it to the next level.... both types are project players you hope, as a coach, will work out in the end thru good coaching and practice.

[Deuce]

Recruit project players and making kids faster-----Sure they do! players work on strength, speed, and agility all the time.... players grow, build muscle, improve technique, and become faster frequently.
[I've made players faster simply by teaching them the proper way to run and also increasing their reaction time thru training].

I'd also argue that there are tons of WR's that do actually "learn how to catch" when they get to college. College coaches are frequently fixing poorly coached technique from high school and refining it.
Players can become better at catching the ball for sure...I think that growth can continue on into the NFL for some players as rates of growth vary from player to player.

Some kids come in with great technique but need to grow physically... others come in as great athletes, but lack the technique to take it to the next level.... both types are project players you hope, as a coach, will work out in the end thru good coaching and practice.

Yep...totally agree

[Colossal28]

Recruit project players and making kids faster-----Sure they do! players work on strength, speed, and agility all the time.... players grow, build muscle, improve technique, and become faster frequently.
[I've made players faster simply by teaching them the proper way to run and also increasing their reaction time thru training].

I'd also argue that there are tons of WR's that do actually "learn how to catch" when they get to college. College coaches are frequently fixing poorly coached technique from high school and refining it.
Players can become better at catching the ball for sure...I think that growth can continue on into the NFL for some players as rates of growth vary from player to player.

Some kids come in with great technique but need to grow physically... others come in as great athletes, but lack the technique to take it to the next level.... both types are project players you hope, as a coach, will work out in the end thru good coaching and practice.

100% Right, at OU we had so much QB injury we had to convert WR Paul Thompson to QB (granted he played QB in HS) and went on to win the Big 12.

I'm willing to bet before he was converted his throw power and accuracy would have been quite a bit worse video game wise, then the coaches worked with him, in season, to get those "ratings" up as fast as possible.

Also I'm curious, if we had full player attribute edit in the game, would you just improve your own team, or would you take the time to edit the whole NCAA? I've never heard of only one team progressing...

[Colossal28]

I would love to see impact players really making an impact though. Right now only an impact HB is a real concern. Wouldnt it be fun if you actually had to scheme to try and slow down a star WR, LB, TE or even a great D/O-Line?

This would require a new and improved gameplanning/scheming system though, which would also be sweet. Off the top of my head it would have to include somethings like matching up DB's against WR's, chosing double teams on the line/secondary, and jumping "scouted" routes. I think Madden has/is starting to include a lot of this kind of philosophy, maybe we'll get it soon too?

[Daywalker86]

As Ive posted in many other places, not being able to fully edit players in dynasty mode is a deal breaker for me at the current moment. Im making valid, intelligent posts about this. So theres no need to take shots at me for the way I feel about this game. Ive bolded and colored the strong points. Get mad at me if you want, but you know im right.

Unless they make some much need changes to recruiting and progression or allow us to edit players full to correct all the errors in realism made by bad progression and recruiting logic, I wont be getting the game. Why do they keep claiming how they want to make the game as real as possible, but their entire recruiting system and progression system is a JOKE.

Me and buckeye02 have done rosters for the last 3 years and this year we are getting the game a week early. Meaning that we could have fully named rosters and coaches done before release date.

But Im going to pass on the game and just wait for a much better game, called Madden 12. I just can deal with all the unrealistic crap that comes along with the problems in Dynasty mode, LIKE:
-The top 100 being littered with too many JUCOs,
-Top schools cant sign enough players or any back up players so they end up signing really bad overall players to fill their roster or take walk ons. Teams like Florida or Ohio State end up with players on their rosters in the 50s overall. Which harms on down the road.
-Teams signing too many Quarterbacks, all within the same range overall. Im tired of seeing teams with 12 QBs.
-In last years game, me and buckeye tested this. The AI controlled Ohio State, during dynasty was signing an average of 6 JUCO players each year, with some of them being terrible low star prospects. Like a JUCO WR as a 58 overall. Ohio State has no business signing a player that lowly rated. And teams like Ohio State sign 1 to 2 JUCOs a year in real life. NOT SIX!
-Boise State signs a ton of 5 star prospects allowing them to crush teams in the WAC and now, Mount West. In real life, Boise State signed ONE 4* prospect, no 5 stars.
-Offseason recruiting just has new 5* players show up out of nowhere, never having been recruited before. THATS NOT REALISTIC!!! AT ALL

And the big dagger is progression.
-In season progression was busted and pretty much a joke. No one cares to see a guy who is having a breakout year progress 1 to 2 points a year. Thats pointless. He needs a bigger boost than that.
-Recruiting was manipulated into something that is wasnt. Last year, they made it sound like the smaller schools actually had a chance to land some higher level players. Yeah, as a school like Mississippi State, you could get your name on a 5* players list, BUT NEVER ACTUALLY LAND HIM. Not even if he is a LOCAL standout. Mississippi State and Ole Miss recruit better than Boise State. Someone needs to tell EA this fact. Only the top 6-8 programs are going to land all the top 100-150 players, so the whole having a chance is a pointless gimmick that just wastes recruiting time. South Carolina signed the #1 player this year in real life, NOT happening in the NCAA Football game. Arizona should occasionally be able to land some 4 and 5 star players from in state. Occasionally.

Having this being so busted, causes team rosters like Arizonas to deteriorate over the years in dynasty. AZ started out with Two 90+ overall players on their defualt 2010 rosters last year in game. That team, whether controlled by human or user, has an inability to sign any 4 or 5 star players. Mix that in with the garbage progression system, and its impossible for AZ to ever field another 90+ player. Its true. Ive tested it.

The progression system is a random 3-7 point increase for every player on a team. Which is crap. Players should progress based on their season performance. Meanwhile, redshirted players should get a small increase. And players who lose their jobs or play like crap should decrease. Yeah, college players should decrease too. Awareness rating is a big rating that EA needs to comprehend and utilize. Underclassmen should come in with a solid set of speed, agility, accel, throw, catch, break tackle, and tackle ratings. Those attributes are something that a player has by the time he gets to school. Over time those ratings should increase a little as the player gains experience, coaching, or size for breaking tackle. But awareness should be low to start and come up over the years. Its the best way to bring about some real life progression.

EA needs to get on the ball on making a dynamic progression system that goes player by player instead of team by team. A players potential and last seasons performance is all that should matter when a player progresses or goes down in overall.

EA has it right by keeping the overalls of every player and team on the low side, as opposed to the high side. This keeps the dynasty mode from being littered with 99s and 90+ overall players, and every team from being a monster.

But with stale and random progression, all teams get equally better and worse over team. For example. Alabam will be a 95 overall in year 1. Ole Miss will be an 85. After year three, due to bad progression, recruiting logic, and inability of Miss to ever land a great prospect, Alabama will be a 91 in year 3, and ole Miss will be a 80. The gap between decent teams and power teams will grow uncontrollably due to the mid level schools only being able to sign 3 star prospects, while the Alabamas and Floridas sign an unrealistic amount of 5 stars.

Coaches ratings need to matter a lot on how a team performs and recruits. PERIOD.

The whole coaching carousel idea seems pointless if you play all your dynasty games. You cant hire and fire coordinators and none of them have ratings. Seems like a waste to me, hopefully it improves over the years.

Hopefully they fixed the program's recruiting pitches. Fixed to where they dont just bounce around at random and kill your program. You win two national titles in a row, and your coach prestige and program stability still goes down??? What???

Hopefully all this is addressed atleast somewhat with the dynasty blogs, but I wont get my hopes up. I never do with EA anymore. Because its certain that the game will ship with numerous broken plays, glitches, and bugs. And we will all have to play the yearly waiting game, waiting on a patch or tuner like we do every year. Get mad at me if you want, but you know its true. EA doesnt test their games fully, they dont need to when they are allowed to "fix it later" with a patch or tuner.

Is the bug going to be fixed that causes you to take a home loss, when you lose a neutral site game as the home team. Or will it be in the game for the 5th year in a row? Just curious.

Id love to have the rosters done by release date, but its not looking good as of right now.

Had to quote this....I love playing NCAA, but this hits most of my gripes on the head.
I'm not gonna pass on the game or anything...but I feel like they can fix progression and recruiting. We've heard there have been tweaks...I hope things like this well organized post have been tweaked out.

I'm still looking forward to the game big time. But I admit progression was bugged last year, and though I think recruiting was better than 2010...I hope the "tweak" was a major one.

[Colossal28]

if they've already come out and stated the updated as tweaks, it seems to me they were trying to brace the community to not be upset when there are not major changes, which they've also stated. I wouldn't count on anything other than minor logic updates and the influence of coaches now on recruiting

[gschwendt]

Not sure best place to put this but Ben Haumiller will be on the @EANCAAFootball twitter account this afternoon answering questions. You can go ahead and start asking questions now and he'll begin answering at 3pm ET.

[Koach Vonner]

I don't even know where to begin.

You have a lot of valid points, but they get lost in the tempermental rant. There are a lot of things that could make recruiting "more realistic", but giving Freshmen high speed ratings, while true-to-life, would not work in video game land. If you give me a Freshman with 90 SPD at HB, he's gonna dominate. That's just a fact of gaming.

As for rosters, TGT had the first named rosters in the world last year. If you don't buy the game, I'm sure someone will step up to the plate and get them done.

http://kotaku.com/5587346/the-first-...aa-football-11

I didn't know this. I figured Fairdale Kings was always the first one with the rosters?
Who has the most accurate? Luv or Fairdale?
I've actually heard of guys who get so accurate that they change the height/weight and even hometown (obviously not with their first rosters. But with their 2nd or 3rd patch of Rosters)

[JBHuskers]

I didn't know this. I figured Fairdale Kings was always the first one with the rosters?
Who has the most accurate? Luv or Fairdale?
I've actually heard of guys who get so accurate that they change the height/weight and even hometown (obviously not with their first rosters. But with their 2nd or 3rd patch of Rosters)

TGT did PS3 rosters. Fairdale was the first with 360 I do believe.

[morsdraconis]

Luv goes through and gets the names (and added players) in before everything else. He then goes back, changes equipment, height, weight, hometown, reratings, etc.

[Hustleman]

When a OC/DC with A+ prestige becomes a HC does his prestige go down or stay at a A+??


Because in my mind Kirby Smart is a A or A+ DC but we is not a A+ Head Coach.