More NCAA 12 news from recent Dev Blogs
There has been a ton of new info and details revealed in the past week on NCAA 12. EASports devs Jordan Peterson and Ben Haumiller have posted a few blog posts revealing and going into detail on some of the exciting new features for NCAA 12. The Dev Blogs can be found here.
The last 4 blogs cover Dynasty Tuning, Custom Conferences, Custom Playbooks, and Web Improvements.
Web Improvements
Hey Everyone, Ben Haumiller back to talk more in depth about what you can expect when you take your Online Dynasty to the web in NCAA Football 12.
As we’ve already announced, the two biggest additions to the Dynasty web experience this year are the ability to advance the week from the web and the ability to use the new Super Sim app to play your games vs. CPU opponents. However, before we get into those I wanted to take a moment and clear up a couple of misconceptions that have surfaced since Monday’s blog. First is that you do not have to pay to access the Online Dynasty website. The site itself, and everything you could do last year continues to be free to use. Recruiting online, writing your Dynasty Wire stories, email alerts, stats/standings, etc. are all there for you to use simply by being a member of an Online Dynasty. Also, while access to Advance Week and Super Sim from the web do each come at a price of $2.99 it’s important to note that this is a onetime fee for the life NCAA Football 12. If you purchase access to Super Sim and participate in 20 different Online Dynasties over the course of your time playing NCAA Football 12, you will be able to Super Sim games in every one of those Dynasties. There is also a free 7 day trial for you to check out the Super Sim app for yourself and see what it’s all about before making the decision on purchasing access for the life of the game.
If you are the commish of a bunch of different Dynasties you will be able to advance the week in every one of them. Also, you are not required to purchase a commissioner bundle to be the commissioner of an Online Dynasty. You can still be the commissioner of one Online Dynasty without purchasing any PDLC.
Now that all of that is out of the way, let’s get on to the new stuff.
Goal for this year’s web updates
As I mentioned in Monday’s blog, the goal of the Online Dynasty website is to allow you the ability to access and participate in your Online Dynasties “anywhere, anytime”. Last year was a first step towards that goal with the ability to recruit online, create stories for the Dynasty Wire, sign up for Dynasty email alerts, view stats/standings/polls, etc. This year was another big step towards the goal by allowing you to participate in dynasty games as well as run the simulations that need to happen each week in order to move on to the next week of the dynasty.
With the addition of Super Sim and Advance Week we have reached the point where if you are scheduled to play a CPU team in the current week, you can complete your tasks for that week without ever having to boot up your console. Let’s flash forward to launch day. You and your friends get the game, join the same Online Dynasty, and get through week 1 on the first day. Now its day two and you and your friends are going to spend all day at work/class. Now you can fly through the weeks of your Dynasty (while on break or in between class of course) to get to those human vs. human battles when you get home at the end of the day. You will be cruising through seasons faster than ever.
Super Sim
Now it’s time to play your game. Let’s run through the experience:
Here we see a Super Sim game already in progress. Starting from the top you will see your basic scoreboard information (i.e. teams, rank, score by quarter, possession indication, etc.). You will notice that there’s no play clock. That’s because you have all the time you need in between plays to get your personnel just how you want them for the next play, your CPU opponent has all the time in the world, so there’s no rush. You will also see on the right side an Options button and a Skip Ahead button.
- Options allows you to turn on/off the background music that plays during the game as well as the SFX that play during specific events in the game.
- Skip Ahead gives you the option to advance to a later point in the game (next possession, next quarter, end of game).
You do also have the ability to pause the current game and pick it up later. Simply close the app and your game will be saved off in its current state and can be picked up and finished later. You might be wondering if you can start the game on the web and then finish it on the console (or go from console to web). The answer is, not this year, so if you try this you will find yourself starting the game over from scratch and having to explain your restart warning to the rest of your Dynasty.
Moving on, we next come to the “action window” of the app. Here you will see the events of the game unfold. You can sim the currently selected play and view the results, access your playbook to call your own play, or ask the coach for a new play to run. Let’s take a look at the Playbook option first:
Here we see LSU’s entire offensive playbook (Note: Custom playbooks are not available from web Super Sim), I can move through the formations, find the play I want and either select to sim the current play from here, or select the play to then make personnel changes. I’m not ready to sim yet, so let’s select a play:
Here we see the play I selected, and the current personnel on the field for that play. I can highlight any player on the field to get a stat breakdown of their performance in the game. Here I’m highlighting the QB and can see key stats as well as his current fatigue level. If I want to make a sub for the current play all I need to do is click the highlighted player to get a look at that position’s depth chart:
All I need to do here is click on the player I want to sub in, and I can make the change right there without having to mess with my depth chart. This is a one play sub only, so if you are looking to make more long term changes you will want to head down to the depth chart (which we will do in a minute).
Once I have my players set, it’s time to run the play. Hit that Simulate Play Now button and get your result:
This window will not only show the basic result of the play, but on events like sacks, interceptions, touchdowns , etc. you will get a special animation and VO from Brad Nessler
The next set of features are where you can edit your depth chart, follow the current drive, view the scoring summery, and check out player and team stats. Let’s start with the depth chart:
Pretty straight forward; using a simple drag and drop interface, you can shift around your depth chart for each position. Auto-sub Settings allows you to set your sub in/out frequency, and you can also utilize mass subs to get your 2nd string some work in a blow out.
Next we have the Drive Summary, which gives you a nice graphical representation of what’s happened during the drive and where you currently are on the field.
Player Stats and Team stats are just what you think, so rather than bore you with details like letting you know that the number of 1st downs are tracked I’ll just show you a few shots of the web stats and then the console stats for that same game so that you can see the results are exactly the same:
Advance Week
The Advance Week option does exactly what it says, it advances you to the next week in your Dynasty. While that might seem trivial at first, this was actually a tremendous technical undertaking. Each time the week is advanced all of the CPU vs. CPU games need to be simmed, the Top 25 needs to be updated, the Heisman and other awards need to have their favorites updated, stories need to be generated for the ESPN headlines, recruiting results for every team and every prospect need to be processed and updated, Players of the Week named, Conference Standings updated, coach contracts updated, stats and records updated…, the list goes on and on. One click of a button for you launches many different events that need to get moved to the server in order for this to happen.
What this means for you commissioners is that once you get that email alert letting you know the week is ready to advance you can hop on the site, click that button, and keep everyone in the Dynasty moving without having to wait to get home to fire up the console, which will hopefully increase the peace between hostile Dynasty members and their globetrotting commissioners.
That wraps up the web improvements for this year. Check back tomorrow as I’ll go in depth on the new Custom Conference feature.
Custom Playbooks
Hi NCAA Football fans, NCAA Football 12 designer Jordan Peterson here, and I could not be happier to provide some more information about one of the many new features of NCAA Football 12: Custom Playbooks. In this particular blog, I will be walking you through the process of creating a Custom Playbook.
First, let me establish some basics for custom playbooks, and address some of the questions I have seen on the forums. You will be able to create 30 Playbooks, 15 for both Offense and Defense. These Custom Playbooks can be used in Offline and Online Dynasty, any Play Now game, and in Ranked Online games. Now, let’s create a Custom Playbook!
The first step to create a Custom Playbook is selecting a base playbook. This playbook will appear with all of its current plays, and audibles, once you are in the Playbook Editor. Please keep in mind that your Hail Mary, Goal Line and Special Teams plays will be associated with your base playbook, and cannot be edited. So choose wisely!
This is the main hub of Custom Playbooks. From here, you will be able to view your playbook as it will appear in-game by selecting View Playbook, in addition to accessing Adding/Removing Plays, Formations and Audibles. You may also note that for each Custom Playbook there will be a maximum of 377 plays and 40 formations that can be selected. However, for those of you that prefer a more minimalistic view, you can reduce your playbook down to only 50 plays. Before we get into editing the Custom Playbook, let’s take a quick look at the base playbook.
From this view, you will be able to view plays that are currently in each formation, in addition to accessing Add/Remove Formations. Once you have advanced into a particular formation via View Plays, you can jump to the Reorder Plays screen and Add/Remove Formations. The functionality for maneuvering through Play and Formation views should be very familiar; it’s the same functionality for Playcall in game.
Now, if for some reason I wanted to add a power running game to my spread offense, Add/Remove Formation will allow you to add entire formations to your playbook with a single button press. Here you will find every formation, from every single playbook we have in the game. The options here are practically limitless.
However, if you’re like me, you may want to break down your Custom Playbooks even further. Selecting Edit Plays will provide an even deeper level of customization of your playbook. From here, you will be able to add any single play from the global playbook pool, or, trim your playbook down to a more manageable size. Only want to run 6 plays out of Strong I: Close? Trim it down and make it easier to find your plays.
Finally, those of you that always wanted to see your plays in a particular order within a playbook, or have spent what seems like hours frantically scouring a playbook for a particular play, can now rearrange your plays on the Reorder screen. From here, you will be able to drag and drop each play and arrange your playbook so it appears exactly as you want it to in game. Never again will you have to search through a massive playbook to find the particular play you like to use in a particular situation.
And that’s the final step. From there you can rename your playbook, and use it in Play Now, Dynasty, Online Dynasty and even Ranked games. Or, go ahead and create more playbooks.
I hope you enjoyed this preview of Custom Playbooks, please stay tuned for more information on Dynasty and Road to Glory in the coming weeks.
Thanks again, and remember, NCAA Football will be available on July 12th!
Custom Conferences
Hey Everyone, Ben Haumiller here to give you the details on the new Custom Conferences feature in NCAA Football 12.
This is without a doubt one of the deepest features added to the game in years. With conference membership movements, conference rule changes, and editing BCS bowl tie-ins the combinations you can make in your Dynasty are almost endless. Plus, you can make updates in future years of the Dynasty, which not only allows you to make updates based on changes in the real world, but also allows you to make whatever changes you prefer to see in your Dynasty.
There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get to it:
Conference Realignment
The hot topic of the last off-season was conference realignment and the possibility of 16 team super conferences seemed very, very real. As a college football fan it was fascinating to watch these stories develop. Rumors of major shifts in the college landscape seemed to happen almost hourly at times and trying to keep up with the news left your head spinning with possibilities of how these new conferences might play out on the field.
Great Plains/Great Lakes anyone?
Not only were the rumors rampant, but they also felt like they were never ending. Just when it appeared as though the dust had settled on schools moving conferences TCU jumped to the Big East and the Mountain West set their eyes on a few schools from the WAC. Even as I type this there are still talks of the Big East looking to expand.
It’s because of this that we wanted to give you the flexibility to expand/contract conferences to be able to adapt to the changes in the real world. Even though we are not able to go higher than 120 schools in this year’s game, we allow the ability to take a conference below the required eight schools so that you can move Fresno State, Nevada, and Hawaii out of the WAC even though that drops the WAC down to five schools.
There are three ways you can edit conference membership. Just like last year you can import a TeamBuilder school to replace an existing school and swap schools between divisions or conferences (i.e. you can swap Florida State and Virginia Tech so that FSU is in the Coastal and VT is in the Atlantic). Now for the first time ever you can move a school from one conference to another without having to replace that school in the conference.
You can go to a max of 16 schools in a conference, and as mentioned above, drop down to as few as four schools in a conference. The exception to this is Independents. You will be able to grow Independents to as many as 32 schools and as few as one school, which can really shake up the college football world.
For divisions in a conference 12 is the magic number. Drop a conference below 12 members and the divisions disappear; go to 12 schools or more and you will see schools split into two even divisions. Once the divisions are set, you can swap schools within the conference to get them aligned just the way you want.
One final note on conference realignment: the movement of schools is all up to you now (or your commissioner in an Online Dynasty). Since the old conference invite/demote logic had a lot of issues and only involved human controlled teams, we decided to give you the power to adjust conference membership, rules, and BCS tie-ins during future years of the Dynasty so that you can make the moves that you see fit.
Conference Rules
Once you have the schools where you want them, the next step is to adjust the rules for each conference. The rules are set based on what the conferences do in real life by default, but here you get a chance to change things how you see fit:
Schedule type - if you have 12 schools or more you will have the option to choose what type of schedule you want: one with protected rivals or one without. Protected rivals on means you will have one anchored opponent in the other division of your conference that you play every year while the remaining cross divisional schools will rotate on/off the schedule after a home/home series. College football wouldn’t be the same if Ohio State didn’t play Michigan every year, so if you keep them in separate divisions, make sure they are set as protected rivals.
The number of conference games depends on the schedule type you select and the number of schools. By default all conferences use the correct schedule type, but we needed to account for how conference schedules would work for conferences with less than eight schools or more than 13. Here’s a quick breakdown of how many conference games will be played for each schedule type:
4-8 schools – 7 conference games. There are no protected rivals since everyone plays everyone else. For conferences of 4-6 schools FCS opponents will play the part of your additional conference games
9 schools – 8 conference games. There are no protected rivals since everyone plays everyone else.
10 schools – 9 conference games. There are no protected rivals since everyone plays everyone else.
11 schools – 8 conference games with a rotation of other conference members.
12 schools – 8 conference games when using protected rivals. 9 conference games when not using protected rivals. (Note: C-USA will use their 8 conference game, no protected rival format by default)
13 schools – 8 conference games. Protected Rivals are not available in conferences with odd numbered schools.
14 schools - 8 conference games when using protected rivals. 9 conference games when not using protected rivals.
15 schools – 10 conference games. Depending on the rotation you will have 6-7 division games in a year with 3-4 rotating cross divisional games (based on the MAC’s 13 school schedule rotation)
16 schools – 9 conference games. With protected rivals you will have 7 division games, 1 protected rival, and 1 rotating cross division opponent. Without protected rivals you will have 7 division games and 2 rotating cross division games.
Night Games in November – in an attempt to get every possible detail of a conference correct we added this setting. The Big Ten is currently the only school that abides by this rule, but if night games in snowy conditions are your thing go ahead and turn this off…the player’s won’t mind.
Weekday Games – some conferences only play on Saturday, while others seem to take the field any time someone says they will show up with a TV camera.
Start Conference Games – Are you a fan of getting the non-conference games out of the way at the start of the season? Make sure you set this so that the conference games start later in the season.
Location for Championship Game – once you have 12 or more schools you will determine your conference champion with a championship game. Here you will be able to set where that game is played. You can select any stadium in the game, any bowl game, any school’s home stadium, even the high school stadium and practice fields. If you aren’t into the neutral site thing, go ahead and set it so that the school with the best conference record hosts the game (like the PAC-12 and Conference USA do).
Division Names – When you go from 11 to 12 schools the default names are Div A and Div B. It’s up to you to change that to whatever you want. You can also edit existing division names too if that’s your thing.
Protected Rivalries – here you can set up each protected rival matchup. In the Great Lakes/Great Plains example above, you can make sure the Battle for the Land Grant Trophy carries on every year by setting Penn State and Michigan State as protected rivals.
Schedule Logic
Now seems as good a time as any to talk about some of the new schedule logic that was added to make sure that certain games were scheduled on certain dates even if you changed conference sizes and moved rivals into different divisions.
College football is a sport overflowing with tradition, and there’s not shortcoming of traditions when it comes to the schedule. From the Third Saturday in October to Thanksgiving weekend you can set your watch to certain games kicking off on the same week every year. Protecting those traditions were very important when determining how schedules would be created when conferences changed membership and attempting to keep those rivalry games alive and scheduled on the correct date even when the schools have been moved to different conferences were also greatly considered when determining the new schedule logic.
If you take the Big Ten from 12 to 16 schools, Ohio State and Michigan should always play in the final week of the regular season. We’ve also been able to clear up an issue you might have seen in the past where an extra week was added to the end of the schedule allowing a non-conference game to be scheduled after Ohio State/Michigan week. I’m very excited to finally put that problem to rest.
Non-conference games are the last games to get filled when the schedules are created. If Auburn goes the Independent route but Alabama stays in the SEC, the game will still try and schedule the Iron Bowl for the last week of the season. If it can’t get scheduled that week it will try to find another week to schedule the game. This should help keep some semblance of normalcy to your schedules even though you made a ton of changes to conference memberships.
BCS Tie-ins
Now that you’ve got your conferences aligned and your rules set, it’s time to edit the BCS bowl tie-ins. For me, there’s nothing better than tailgating on Bourbon Street before heading into the Sugar Bowl, so I’m going to move the ACC Championship Game from Miami to the Big Easy. While we’re at it, let’s pair up the Big 12 and the Mountain West in the Fiesta Bowl, and have the Big East champ take on the Conference USA champ down in the Orange Bowl.
Here you have the ability to add/remove any BCS Bowl tie-in, which will determine how those BCS bowl slots get filed every year. You can fill all of the slots like I’ve done above, remove all tie-ins so that the BCS standings determine not only who plays in the BCS Championship Game but also who plays in each of the additional BCS games.
You can set a conference to be tied to a specific bowl, or you can set it so that the champion of a conference is guaranteed a spot in one of the BCS bowls, but not tied to a specific one (think Big East currently).
When you edit a conference’s bowl tie-ins it moves all other bowl game tie-ins up/down by one based on the change made. For example, if you remove the SEC BCS tie-in the SEC champ (if they don’t qualify for an at large BCS berth) will go to the Capital One Bowl, the #2 SEC school will go to the Outback Bowl, #3 to the Gator Bowl, and so on.
Well that about wraps up Custom Conferences. July 12th is fast approaching…time to start thinking about how you are going to lay out your conferences in NCAA Football 12. We’ve got more announcements still to come. Stay Tuned.
Dynasty Tuning
Hi NCAA Football fans, NCAA Football 12 designer Jordan Peterson here once again, this time to discuss some of the other improvements that have been made to Dynasty mode this year. This blog is going to focus on some of the tuning that was done this year to improve your overall Dynasty experience as well as answer some of the questions that have come up after the other Dynasty blogs were released this week. As you are about to see, based on your feedback we’ve made a lot of great improvements to the Dynasty mode experience in NCAA Football 12. Let’s get on to the updates.
Sway Pitch
One complaint we heard last year was that Sway Pitch felt like too much risk without enough reward and because of this, a lot of fans avoided using Sway Pitch all together which is something I never want to hear as a developer. This year, Sway Pitch has been tuned to provide more of a bonus when you are successful, and less of a penalty when you fail. Additionally, we’ve adjusted the percent chance that a Sway will be successful to help make Sway Pitch a more effective recruiting tactic, I believe you will now find the Sway Pitch option to have a greater impact during recruiting.
CPU Scholarship Offers
In addition to Sway Pitch, another significant improvement to recruiting is how efficiently the CPU will offer scholarships. Previously, the CPU would occasionally have a recruit that, even though he was ranked first on their board they would not offer a scholarship in order to close the deal and sign the prospect. The CPU will now offer scholarships more intelligently, and as a result, causes some much closer recruiting battles with the CPU against other CPU controlled teams and the user.
CPU Recruiting Based on Play Style
We have heard feedback regarding CPU not recruiting based on their play style, so this was one of our earliest adjustments for NCAA Football 12. Previously, if you were running an option offense, the CPU would simply take the best quarterback that was available, or possibly one just interested in the school. Now, you will find that the CPU will focus upon players that fit their particular play style. That means scrambling QBs will be targeted by option teams, while air raid teams will look for pocket passing quarterbacks.
Another community concern that we addressed for NCAA Football 12 is the balancing of the top 150 recruits. There was some discussion that there were not enough highly rated defensive prospects appearing in the ESPNU Top 150. Based on that feedback we have increased each defensive position’s chance of having a prospect worthy enough of being considered one of the top 150 prospects in the recruiting class.
Sim Running Stats
The sim stats for the running backs, backup running backs and quarterbacks were also tuned. Meaning when you sim in Dynasty, the backup HB will get more touches and, in turn, more rushing yards. Quarterback sim stats were adjusted to be more in line with actual NCAA results. The added benefit of tuning these stats is that it facilitated tuning Heisman. Throughout Dynasty you should now see a much better balance of several different position types winning the Heisman.
Incoming Prospect Ratings
Finally, we’ve updated the incoming ratings for all generated prospects with a focus on ensuring they are consistent with the recruits on the default roster. Now you won’t notice a drop off in overall player talent in future years of the Dynasty when the players on the default roster have graduated. I think you will find that some positions, in particular Kickers and Punters, will be far more accurate this year.
Answers to Previous Blog Questions
Earlier this week, we released the blog for Coach Carousel and two Quick Clip videos. I would like to take this opportunity to address some additional questions that I’ve seen on the forums.
Coach Carousel – Who was that mystery man?
In part 2 of the Quick Clips video, NC State hired their Offensive Coordinator, but he was not one of the top 3 candidates. Good catch! This is an example of the bonus that is provided to hiring within the current school. The Offensive Coordinator was not initially one of NC State’s top candidates, but when it came time to hire a coach they decided to stay in-house. Also, you may have noticed that as an A rated coach, he had a lower rating than some of the other Offensive Coordinators that were available.
Coaching Carousel – How fast can you climb the ladder?
Can you become a Head Coach at a 6 star school from a 1 star Offensive/Defensive Coordinator within 2-4 seasons? Yes, it is possible. However, it will require some exceptional skill on the player’s part to pass most, if not all, of their goals and some luck on the carousel. The right jobs need to open up at the right time to progress that quickly. This is certainly possible, but by no means easy to do.
Coaching Carousel – Prestige and Progression
How much does Coach Prestige impact progression? Coach Prestige is now a significant factor in the progression formula. It can also be tuned via Live Tuning Packs, so if at some point we feel it needs to play more or less of a part of progression, we can adjust it accordingly. However, we have kept the importance of Coach Prestige in mind when tuning and are very comfortable with its current impact upon progression.
Coaching Carousel – Is Coach Prestige your only rating?
As mentioned above, there have been a lot of questions on coach ratings and how the addition of the Coach Carousel will alter the course of a Dynasty in future years. We’ve talked a lot about how play styles move with the coach from one school to another and the impact that Coach Prestige has on the game, but I also wanted to point out that the Coach Loyalty rating is dynamic as well. If you are the type of coach that looks to hop from job to job every year, expect to have some struggles on the recruiting trail when a prospect wants to know if you will be there all four years to coach him. At the same time, there will be 119 other coaches out there just waiting to use that pitch against you when they get the chance.
Coaching Carousel – Default coach ratings
There seem to be quite a few A+ coaches? Keep in mind that default Coach Ratings can be edited, customized, and shared via Roster Share. If you want more of a challenge in your Dynasty, dropping their initial ratings will cause them to progress slower. Having said that, during the Carousel, schools will always look at A+ rated coaches that are out of a job.
Furthermore, each player in the Dynasty will start out with a Coach Prestige of D+. The contracts were designed with a slow progression to A+ in mind.
Coaching Carousel – Job Security and Wins/Losses
As an Offensive/Defensive Coordinator, will Job Security go up if we fail the objective based goals but win a lot of games? These contracts were implemented so that Wins and Losses have a significant impact upon job security. However, it is largely dependent upon the team prestige and the caliber of the contract.
Custom Playbooks – Formation Audibles
How are formation audibles set? Formation audibles are set automatically by the CPU for each formation in a custom playbook. The CPU will pick the play out of those in the custom playbook’s formation that most closely matches that particular formation audible.
Thanks once again for checking out our blogs this week and I’ll see you online when NCAA Football 12 releases on July 12th.
Why do Nebraska players have the relatively the same ratings as they did on NCAA 11 I checked and lavonte David still has the same speed strength agility and accelleratipk awareness and break tackle that I know of because the video only shows up to that, lavonte David preseason 1st team all American=89 rating wtf…