Frisk posted this about NCAA '13 in the Madden forums: Do any of the gamechangers have any details as to why they were removed (other than they were buggy)? Was it too much effort for them to fix the bugs? Did they attempt to fix the bugs? Do they intend to bring them back next year? (I'm an electrical engineer so I know what kind of effort is involved with fixing bugs as I've done it for 12 years) CPBs was unquestionably my favorite feature of '12. Over the course of '12 I've spent countless hours tinkering with CPBs (I'm sure it's well over 50 hours) and getting them just how I wanted them. They're awesome because you tailor the playbook to your style, get the formation audibles that you want (I hate default playbooks with terrible formation audibles), and most importantly, get your formations and plays in the order that you want (which is huge for a no huddler like myself). In my offensive book I have all of my formations in order by personnel so that I can easily switch to new formations in hurry up with the same personnel. I also have every formation set up to go, from top to bottom, RB runs -> QB runs -> WR runs -> options -> PA passes -> screens -> short passes -> medium passes -> deep passes. This makes it so much easier to find plays unlike default playbooks that have no discernible order to their plays which requires you to hunt and peck for the play you want. I do the same on defense where I go 2 deep zone blitzes -> 3 deep zone blitzes -> cover 2 to cover 6 -> man to man -> cover 0 man blitzes -> cover 1 man blitzes. I'd go so far as to say that giving us the ability to remove plays we'll never use, add more plays (IE. QB designed runs) that aren't in a playbook, choose your formation audibles (for the most part), and order your formations and plays is probably the best addition they've made to this game in the past few years and I'm extremely disappointed to see it go. I'm just curious if some game changers can shed more light on this. Thanx! Shaun Mason Emmdotfrisk
Damn I hope this is true! I've never been a "the sky is falling" kind of guy, but if I had to choose between '13 with no CPBs and playing '12 (which I LOVE and think it's the best NCAA game in history) for another year with CPBs, I honestly don't know what I'd choose.
Oh so you do nothing but put shit on paper I have to fix in the submittal process. Good to know Here's one for our resident Ginger Civil Engineer ^^^^^^^^ Hack: "Hey guys, can we wait for lunch until after I get done with these contours?"
Straight from Ben Haumiller's mouth "Custom Playbooks are IN NCAA Football 13, with some improvements."
I have a video that I will be uploading soon of Ben Haumiller talking about Custom Playbooks in NCAA 13 and how easy it is to set up.
in Madden I don't think its a big deal. In NCAA? The stock playbooks are historically very small and super shitty.
In NCAA 12 I felt the playbooks were fine. I'd like to see them continue to be improved and expanded, don't get me wrong, but in the end I probably only used 2-5 plays from any formation in a given game when we play 8-minute quarters. Custom playbooks aren't a good tradeoff for how difficult it would be to police/monitor the playbooks people create for realism, money plays, etc. (the definition of money plays is always changing, these dyas I would say it's something like "a play with a route that always works against man defense").
if you have a league that knows how to police itself it shouldn't matter...i would rather fill my playbook with formations and plays i use than have a bunch of crap i a have to go through to get to the play i want...and its good for organization as i always put play types together run/pass/playaction...
My .02 on Custom Playbooks: I think that banning custom playbooks takes away a very valuable asset to sim gaming. The idea of being a coach for a team and being able to mold a playbook to your scheme and play style is a huge part of sim game play. My thought process is this: If every coach used the playbook of an existing coach nobody would be watching football nowadays, and the individuality of a CPB can add an extra dimension to leagues
I'm in the school of thought that a guy is much more likely to abuse a few plays if there is a bunch of plays he doesn't care about in his stock playbook. At least in custom playbooks you pick plays you will actually use.
Seems line we're having to sacrifice things such as rosters,custom playbooks, etc. in this initial year or CC. Hope they get this stuff in eventually.
Disagree: I think the playbooks got worse in NCAA 12 compared to the previous year. I couldn't find a single one that fit what I wanted to do offensively. And judging from the Demo, I'm guessing most PB's were not really altered/expanded in NCAA 13. OTOH, I loved the Saints PB in Madden 12. So much so that it's probably my favorite playbook of all time, in either game. Hopefully it didn't change much for 13.
I see where you guys are coming from; I just think a big part of the challenge on offense (you need a challenge on offense to actually have defense IMO) is choosing a playbook. I don't really care what formations people run. Sure, if I was to allow custom playbooks I'd ask them to report which formations they were using and they'd need to be realistic. But that's not the problem for me, it's the plays. The challenge of finding a playbook is compromise. You're guaranteed to find an offense that runs at least a decent facsimile of what you want to run (except for Don Coryell aka PSUEagle over here). But you can't have EVERYTHING you want. That compromise slows down offenses at least a little. And I think that, as well as good schematic defensive play, is what allows us to have at least occasional low scoring contests in T1 and I hope that continues to happen. If you're just picking all the best plays from each formation you select... there's no compromise. I know in the playbooks I have used, there's usually only a handful (if that) of plays that I'm truly confident will beat a certain man defense if they call it. If I had 20 different "money" plays against man defense, I believe offense would start to be way too easy. I think guys in my league would vouch for the fact that there are some great defensive contests that we had this year and that made it a lot of fun. If I put it up to a vote, maybe they'd still wanna try it, I don't know. But it would be hard to convince me because of the fact that you could just choose every effective play in every formation you're running. Anybody who says they wouldn't is LYING. And anybody who says it doesn't matter is DELUSIONAL (or lying). Drifterbub - where do you stand on this? Did you guys run customs last year? Did you have any D in your league?
