NCAA's Broken Dynasty Mode -- Another reason we need a revolution - RaychelSnr's Blog

RaychelSnr's Blog

NCAA's Broken Dynasty Mode -- Another reason we need a revolution

Posted on July 27, 2010 at 02:26 PM.

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As many of you may know already -- and if you don't it's ok I'm about to enlighten you -- NCAA's dynasty mode is horribly broken this year.

Since EA Tiburon made the decision to rate recruits lower coming into school (but yet I guess forget to work on the progression of the game), most teams end up with middle of the road talent after years 4 or 5. It's like all of the football talent in America dries up after this year and all you are left with are a bunch of players rated in the 70s. I did a sim to see how bad it was and my Oklahoma Sooners went from a team with A ratings to a team with C+ ratings, yet they still won the Big XII in Year 7 with that kind of talent. Mostly because Texas had slipped to a team with C-s across the board. Baylor actually was rated as D+ (roughly where such powerhouses as UL Monroe and Western Kentucky lie today).

To me -- this just shows how horribly stale Dynasty mode is in NCAA.

It's a lot like how the signs that we are running out of cheap and easy to extract oil become rather evident when companies are having to resort to drilling thousands of feet down underneath a mile of water already. In the same way, the signs that this version of dynasty mode are running it's course (now going on 13 years) are abundant everywhere. NCAA's developers are having to resort to new tricks to keep the mode fresh which are starting to really hurt the mode's quality in more ways than one. People I have talked to hate the new recruiting system anyways, and then you add in the broken ratings coming in to keep users' teams from being too good, and you see the risks really aren't paying off.

So what does the NCAA team do from here? In this guys' opinion they go back to the drawing board and figure out how to recreate dynasty mode -- and I have the answer right here: You are the coach.

That's right, rebuild dynasty mode as a simulation of what's it's like to be a coach in one of the best sports in the world. College football is built around coaches personalities and programs more than it is players, so Dynasty mode should be about coaches.

You should be able to start dynasty mode with career goals such as win more National Championships than Bear Bryant or win more overall games than Joe Paterno did. And for those achievement freaks -- there should be big time rewards for doing these things.

This would go along with you having a real coaches market where you have to hire and fire coordinators and whatnot. Each coordinator would have ratings which effect player progression and a system which would determine your playbook. This coaches market would also include your coordinators getting offers to go coach elsewhere and also you getting offers as well. Each school has different budgets, which you set at the beginning of the year to pay your coordinators as well as to set towards recruiting. These are all real decisions coaches have to make to keep their program in check.

And EA Sports' can set up a website with a NCAA Football 12 Coaches Hall of Fame, showcasing players best careers in their hall. Shoot, set up a competition or two and give away from free swag towards the players who compete and complete some career goals over time.

And dare I say it, you could even set up historical challenges where the year is 1947 and your name is Bud Wilkinson and you are now in charge of the Oklahoma Sooners. You have 13 years to complete certain challenges which would match what Bud did (win 47 in a row, win 3 national championships, go 131 - 13 -3 overall). And what about a Bill Snyder challenge at Kansas State? How cool would that mode be?

It just takes a little imagination EA. Revamp dynasty mode, we beg you.

Viva la revolution NCAA'ers.

Chris is the Executive Editor of Operation Sports and maintains this blog on the site. He is also a native Oklahoman and avid storm chaser. You can follow him on Twitter @ChrisSnr.

Comments

# 16 Atomic Martian @ Jul 27

think this has anything to do with importing draft classes into M11

# 17 ANDROMADA 1 @ Jul 27

nice article. This tid bit of info may make me reconsider playing in an OD. There would be no point imo.

# 18 Bumble14 @ Jul 27

That coaching mode would be freaking amazing...love it as much as I love MVP 05!

# 19 Fluffhead @ Jul 27

Good summary. I just don't like how the original OS review (and every other) didn't even touch on this topic, but we now get supplemental reviews saying how bad this mode is. I know it takes time to review these games and you guys do a fine job of it, but the site name is Operation Sports and a certain level of credibility in reviewing sports games should come with that. It's a major portion of the game that was glossed over and only addressed a couple weeks after the fact. Was the rush to be first on the reviewer circuit really worth it?

# 20 ronnymixmaster @ Jul 27

For heaven's sake... I thought you were going to say something about the online dynasty issues. As far as recruiting goes... I never make it into the 3rd year of a dynasty anyway so I suppose I'll not ever realize the problem you're focused on.

# 21 stlstudios189 @ Jul 27

every year it's something else. I am enjoying the game this year and I won't get far enough for it to matter. As for making the game more in depth that's cool but the avg. 12 year old or casual sports gamer doesnt care about this stuff.

# 22 bms715 @ Jul 27

Man..I was just about to get this game but now it seems like I will be saving my money for something better. I think if you really want a truly good franchise/dynasty mode experience, then the text sim genre is probably the best way to go

# 23 boritter @ Jul 28

You said Dynasty mode is broken because progression doesn't work. I said bumping up the AWR ratings would fix this issue.

Then you respond by saying, "I'd hardly call a mode fixed that's been essentially the same for 13 years."

Umm, YOU said progression is what ruined Dynasty mode. So based on YOUR logic fixing progression would fix Dynasty mode.

Your ideas for Dynasty mode improvements have zero bearing on what YOU say ruined Dynasty mode.

# 24 BroMontana82 @ Jul 28

i'm not going to lie, i didn't know this. has EA acknowledged this? are they going to fix it in a patch?

# 25 tbach @ Jul 28

I loved your ideas to upgrade dynasty mode. That sounds pretty sweet. On the other hand, I really like the recruiting call this year. It actually keeps me interested now where before I skipped a few weeks every season.

# 26 goalieump413 @ Jul 28

I like the idea of making the dynasy mode a "coach-centered" mode, but I fear a lot of gamers would lose interest. You have to remember the target audience here. Most of them are younger people who don't have much of a perspective on what it takes to coach someone. Building the game mode around a coach's program will only work if it's a feature that can be check box automated or not.

Also, I take exception to the fact that you think the recruiting system is broken. Player progression is, but that's servicable with a patch. The recruiting system is much better than last year's system, and finally shows you, based on numbers, where you are in a recruit's mind. Not broken, don't fix!

# 27 RaychelSnr @ Jul 28

@Bo: I said the messed up progression is another sign of how stale dynasty is. Plus what are you going to do about bad kickers and imbalanced rosters? AWR doesn't fix that, so your fix isn't really a fix anyways for the larger problem here which is a recruiting prospects problem from the get go.

# 28 mjarz02 @ Jul 28

While I think that the Dynasty mode needs to be seriously redone in the future. I think we need to figure out how Dynasty mode can be salvaged this year. I'm all for having a coach mode as a great new feature for NCAA 12. Lets face it, Gameplay was the most glaring issue and that seems to be fixed, well for me it has been.

Progression to me doesnt seem to be a HUGE deal, there could be a little bump but thats about it.

The larger issue is Recruit Generation. The top WRs come in with 60-70 elusivness max and some will have it in the 30s. Thats ridiculous! It seems to be that the elusivness and juke code for WRs got messed up!

If they are able to change that and maybe add some better 2* and 3* recruits I will be a happy man.

Great Idea Chris for the future of Dynasty Mode!!

# 29 Raven Nation42 @ Jul 28

Great post.Totally agree that EA really needs to revamp the dynasty mode and the coach mode would be an excellent start.A prior post spoke of 2K's success with their college basketball series using this. Laying out objectives over a period of time would build on the current platform used now when you have created a coach and taken over a program.They have the potential of starting the process now by retiring the RTG series. I know that they are planning to redo the Madden dynasty, here's hoping that they also include NCAA as well

# 30 blkraven1 @ Jul 28

U guys should relax and think for a minute...the only reason for the "stretched" ratings is for the upload fix to madden 11...there cant be 90+ ratings for almost every position on a good team like Oklahoma, or Alabama...it would result in madden having an overstocked draft class every season with nothing but good players...there should be a balance of great players who can make an impact as rookies, good players who need time to develop with high potential, to the career backups...I do agree however that they should have made this same scale with the stock rosters...almost every team seems like it has 2 or three stars on it.

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