DDS: College Basketball 2017

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Just prepurchased it with the 15% off coupon. Figure I'll just take on the ultimate challenge and try to resuscitate Mizzou.

[Gary Gorski]

If anyone is interested tomorrow is the final day for pre-order or upgrade pricing and here's the blog post detailing some of the new additions.

Wolverine Studios Announces Draft Day Sports: College Basketball 2017 - Wolverine Studios

Also about to drop a playable beta with the final release coming Friday.

[Balldog]

Will be checking out the beta for sure!


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[SlyBelle1]

Beta now posted for people who pre ordered...

• View topic - DDS:CB 2017 Game Files - Playable Beta Fo Pre-Orders

[Balldog]

Oh, wasn't going to pre-order. Hopefully there is a demo.


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[Gary Gorski]

There always is a demo

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Just prepurchased it with the 15% off coupon. Figure I'll just take on the ultimate challenge and try to resuscitate Mizzou.

How are they rated in the game? In the college football game, they are too high and have too many really good players.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

How are they rated in the game? In the college football game, they are too high and have too many really good players.

Haven't jumped in yet, but I'm sure we'll have a similar rating to Eastern Illinois.

Download page appears to be dead in the water right now.

[Gary Gorski]

The link to the beta is in the forum (Slybelle posted it above)

The beta doesn't have the final prestige ratings - that change was the last thing I did and will be rolled out with the final build tomorrow.

Also one last call to everyone here at FOFC in regards to the pre-order. Details are in the blog post I linked to above.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Haven't jumped in yet, but I'm sure we'll have a similar rating to Eastern Illinois.

Download page appears to be dead in the water right now.

With that horrible loss Tuesday, maybe a rating close to Savannah State.

[mauchow]

Time to keep sliding further and further down.. wth Wisconsin. Up 7 comfortably and continue to be the opposite of Wisconsin basketball and choke it away. Unreal. Nice win, Hawkeyes.

[Icy]

Preordered yesterday, hopefully will start playing today.

[EagleFan]

Is it going to be on Steam?

[Gary Gorski]

Not as of right now - I would like it there but we don't have the support to get through Greenlight and they would not approve DDS:CB17 because they didn't feel DDS:PB17 sold enough (which makes no sense to me because any sale they make is money for them) - they are supposed to launch Steam Direct to replace the Greenlight process. I'm going to have to see what they will charge a company to put a game there once its live and if it makes financial sense we will do it but as of right now there's no plan to do it.

[jbergey22]

Love it! Great job Gary.

[weegeebored]

I haven't played since DDSCB2. Any reviews from FOFCers?

[MizzouRah]

I'll get it soon..

[SlyBelle1]

Don't forget there is a demo....no need to take other people's word

I don't recall the 2nd version, but I would imagine it has come a long way and worth it if you enjoy college basketball sim games.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by SlyBelle1

Don't forget there is a demo....no need to take other people's word

I don't recall the 2nd version, but I would imagine it has come a long way and worth it if you enjoy college basketball sim games.

That's right, thanks! You don't see demos too much anymore, but it's appreciated!

[Balldog]

Tried the demo and I agree it's a significant move in the right direction. The quicker recruiting option makes it much less tedious.

One question, how much customization can be done? I.e. - how practical would it be to start a retro type league? Is there the ability to add/delete conferences? Can you mod in real life coaches/players?


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[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by Balldog

Tried the demo and I agree it's a significant move in the right direction. The quicker recruiting option makes it much less tedious.

One question, how much customization can be done? I.e. - how practical would it be to start a retro type league? Is there the ability to add/delete conferences? Can you mod in real life coaches/players?


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Thanks!

Yes you can mod in real life coaches/players if you want to. There's a database export/import option as well as in game editing for players.

Conference customization might be possible as long as everyone is accounted for correctly. The number of teams in the game is fixed and has to stay that way though but if everything in the setup database file is properly done conference wise I would think you could have more or fewer conferences as long as you choose from a conference structure the game supports (ie can't do a 20 team conference or something)

[Gary Gorski]

Just a quick bump here for anyone who owned DDS:CB16 today is the last day you can get the 25% off upgrade coupon price.

[MizzouRah]

Would love to hear some impressions...

[EagleFan]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Would love to hear some impressions...

[MizzouRah]

So I just purchased the game and took the 2nd assistant job at Missouri.. do I have any job duties? I'm trying to figure out how I buy reports, but doesn't look I can? Do I recruit?

Staff role says scouting? Is there a guide or something that explains what an assistant coach does and my role of scouting?

[Brian Swartz]

Assistants have limited roles compared to the HC, corresponding to the three assistant positions. There was a bunch of stuff about it when it was added to the game, but that was at least a version ago so it might not be particularly recent.

If your staff role is scouting, you won't be involved in recruiting at all. Your job will be to scout opposing teams; you'll get a quiz sometime before each game about the opposition(you'll want to look at their games ahead of this), and if you do well, your team will perform slightly better against them. In general I would describe the assistant coach role as being something that, while I've used it, sounded better to most who wanted it added as a feature in theory than it was in practice. I think the implementation is pretty good, but it feels quite limiting to a lot of users because you can't do all the things a head coach can.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

Assistants have limited roles compared to the HC, corresponding to the three assistant positions. There was a bunch of stuff about it when it was added to the game, but that was at least a version ago so it might not be particularly recent.

If your staff role is scouting, you won't be involved in recruiting at all. Your job will be to scout opposing teams; you'll get a quiz sometime before each game about the opposition(you'll want to look at their games ahead of this), and if you do well, your team will perform slightly better against them. In general I would describe the assistant coach role as being something that, while I've used it, sounded better to most who wanted it added as a feature in theory than it was in practice. I think the implementation is pretty good, but it feels quite limiting to a lot of users because you can't do all the things a head coach can.

Thank you! This explains a lot actually!!!

Wanted to get my feet wet, so being an assistant at my favorite school is a good start, hopefully I'll get offered a HC job at a small school within the next few seasons. This will allow me to see how the game plays.

[cartman]

MizzouRah, if the game makes you recruit guys in St. Louis, and get your sons to play for your team, then the game is indeed lifelike!

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by cartman

MizzouRah, if the game makes you recruit guys in St. Louis, and get your sons to play for your team, then the game is indeed lifelike!

[Mota]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Thank you! This explains a lot actually!!!

Wanted to get my feet wet, so being an assistant at my favorite school is a good start, hopefully I'll get offered a HC job at a small school within the next few seasons. This will allow me to see how the game plays.

I took an assistant job at my favorite school Florida, and am the recruiting assistant. Unfortunately, it just means slogging through a bunch of random players to add them to the recruiting list, and the head coach does most of the actual recruiting. That meant that he blew through the budget halfway through the season, and only offered 2 of the 3 scholarships that were available. Quite disapointing! I renewed for one more season, but after that (and hopefully a few more skill points added), I'll be moving to a head coach position somewhere for sure.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Mota

I took an assistant job at my favorite school Florida, and am the recruiting assistant. Unfortunately, it just means slogging through a bunch of random players to add them to the recruiting list, and the head coach does most of the actual recruiting. That meant that he blew through the budget halfway through the season, and only offered 2 of the 3 scholarships that were available. Quite disapointing! I renewed for one more season, but after that (and hopefully a few more skill points added), I'll be moving to a head coach position somewhere for sure.

Yeah.. that's what I hope to do as well!

[anto1992]

Can anyone write a moderately long review of the game covering its major aspects (I'm mostly interested in how recruiting works)?

I may be interested in buying but I haven't found no reviews anywhere... :/

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by anto1992

Can anyone write a moderately long review of the game covering its major aspects (I'm mostly interested in how recruiting works)?

I may be interested in buying but I haven't found no reviews anywhere... :/

Well I can't review the game but I can answer any questions you have so since you asked about recruiting here goes....

Each school has a budget out of which you pay your asst. coaches and then spend the rest on recruiting. The first thing you do is decide whether or not you want to spend money on scouting reports. They are done by region and have a cheap, bare-bones version and a more expensive version. The game explains the differences but if you have a huge recruiting budget you can buy them all if you like while if you're just a tiny school with low prestige you may only want to buy the lowest one specific to your region since you won't recruit outside of that area anyway.

The next step is deciding which summer camps you are going to attend. Again these are offered by region and nationally and if you attend the camp you get scouting notes on the players who were there. For example I'm running a game using Central Michigan right now and by attending the midwest camp I learned that two players who had interest in my school were in the top 5 prospects for the camp. However they weren't highly rated by scouts so they didn't garner much interest and I was able to land them both. I have no idea if maybe they just had a great showing at the camp and are just average guys or if the scouting reports had them all wrong and I've dug up two gems but that's one of the most interesting parts of the game.

From then you move to the actual recruiting portion which really is almost like a game in of itself. The first thing you want to do is add players to your watch and call list. For a nominal cost every week your recruiting assistant will call each player on your call list and you will get some kind of tidbit of info about the player. The recruiting year is broken up into different time periods - some allow you to bring a recruit to campus or go watch a recruit play or go and visit a recruit and you can always watch game film so that you and your coaches can offer a preliminary rating on a player.

Those actions all cost money in your recruiting budget and the further you have to go or a recruit has to travel to your school the more it costs you. You also have the option to call recruits yourself and ask them questions about their interest in your school, their parents or their feelings about certain "pitch categories". The pitch categories are important to find out about because when you go to make your home visit you set a primary topic to pitch and being able to align that to the recruit gives you a better chance of the visit going well. The parent(s) also can play a role in this - if a recruit has controlling parents then you want to pitch what THEY want to hear

The game also does offer you the ability to turn recruiting over to the AI for anyone reading this that might want only to coach their team really. I also built in a "quick recruiting" option this year which lets you take care of most of the weekly recruiting tasks on one screen instead of going into each recruit card to perform the actions (going into each recruit card does show you more detail though and gives you the option to call the recruit yourself). You can also use both modes (which is what I do when playing)

The game does contain JuCo recruits as well so if you are playing as a smaller school you might be able to land some of those guys looking for a stage to play on and there is also a transfer time period between seasons where you also get to do a little bit of recruiting and possibly fill unfilled scholarships.

If you have anymore questions feel free to ask.

[Comey]

FWIW, I plan to review the game, now that my OOTP duties are promarily done. I have to finish DDSCF first, which I hope to do soon.