NCAA Football 09 Patch Announcement

[Phobia]

Quote: Originally Posted by callmetaternuts

Adam, Both AA and I made some posts 2-3 pages back concerning the 2nd patch and the defense, can you address any of that?

Yea I think the biggest game play problem across the boards, is the Defense playing lower than the offense. This being adressed would help greatly. I mean the offense will still have all the new juke moves and break ankle type stuff. We just want the D to play tighter and the D-line to play like it should.

[mdgoalie37]

Quote: Originally Posted by OMT

As I said, I'm not a gameplay guy. I'm a features guy. And your post about sliders not helping pass rush.... I asked if fixing the slider bug will help and you said no because there is a bug in sliders. Ummmm....

I would like to see some major changes on the defensive side, well all 3 sides really, many have been mentioned here so I won't get into the specifics. However I think most of these changes won't come via a patch as they will need to be coded into the 'game philosophy', so to speak. Basically what I mean is neutering the defense in order to achieve the 'wide open gameplay.'

Anyway the sliders are part of the game now, and they don't work correctly or in some cases at all. It's almost as if you selected a punt, but the kicker didn't kick it and just ran around in circles (yes, this is an extreme example but I think you catch my snowdrift). I mean that would be seen as a major bug, as it's a play that just doesn't work (esp if it was all punt formations). The sliders are are a feature in the menus that just doesn't do what it's intended to do. If they worked, at least we would be able to make those adjustments and in turn tune the game ourselves.

It's a shame because I think if you took 08, fixed the INTs, toned down the superman LBs a bit, then gave us the ball carrier moves, the QB throw 'feel' along with the player models and graphics of 09 you have a great game. I feel like it's in there now, it just needs to be dragged out.

[AuburnAlumni]

Quote: Originally Posted by OMT

As I said, I'm not a gameplay guy. I'm a features guy. And your post about sliders not helping pass rush.... I asked if fixing the slider bug will help and you said no because there is a bug in sliders. Ummmm....

Read more closely.

The slider bug right now is that Human sliders appear to effect BOTH the Human AND CPU attributes.

So.... with that in mind.

If I have Human Sliders set with a Break Block of 100 and a Pass Block of 0, you would think that my defensive line AND the cpu defensive line would be blowing up the O line, busting through every play, and killing the QBs at that extreme of a setting.

They dont.

So either the sliders are reversed or its a placebo effect and those two sliders don't work at all. You tell me.

If they do work, and simply effect BOTH sides, then my statement still holds true. That Break Block at 100 and Pass Block at 0 doesn't help any pass rush.

[Icebergz]

Quote: Originally Posted by OMT

Well, I can think of two former Division 1 quarterbacks and a former highschool football coach that work in our gameplay department. EDIT: and another guy who played in the CFL

Then I would like to think that if you shared AA's last comments about high rated DL players going against low rated OL players, they would agree 100% and hopefully address this glaring issue in the patch.

[rudyjuly2]

Quote: Originally Posted by DrUrsus

rudyjuly, Don't you think that the kickoff return team always gets to far up the field, even for college football. I am hardly ever stopped anywhere near the 20 yard line. The CPU usually makes it to at least the 30 on me, and I usually make it to the 40. I would have to handicap myself (which I HATE to do in videogames, I hate house rules and such) and not use the sprint button at all and I still think I would make the 25 at least every time. The problem I see on AA and Heisman is that the blockers stonewall or knock down the defense. Do you see that (serious question) as well? What's everyone else seeing?

I actually think that the cpu slider for kickoff length might actually work separate from the human. I have it set at 100 for cpu. I do agree that kick returns come out a little too far but we can't forget that the NCAA just recently moved the kickoffs to the 30 and we should expect better field position than the NFL because the kickers suck.

This link (http://cfbstats.com/blog/2007/08/17/kickoff/) shows some stats from kickoffs from the 30 yard line the year before the rule change. The average kicked landed at the 9 yard line with the average starting drive at the 32. I think that is more than people realize. Chris Fowler predicted before last year that the average starting point would be between the 32 and 35 yard line (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/previe...ris&id=2997281).

Punt returns are awful though and I just don't use turbo as a house rule. It sucks but not much else I can do. I do think they are a LOT better on Heisman though. Maybe I should bump up the difficulty for returns only. On punt block formations nobody even tries to run down the field to tackle you. That is really bad.

[Phobia]

Quote: Originally Posted by AuburnAlumni

Read more closely. The slider bug right now is that Human sliders appear to effect BOTH the Human AND CPU attributes. So.... with that in mind. If I have Human Sliders set with a Break Block of 100 and a Pass Block of 0, you would think that my defensive line AND the cpu defensive line would be blowing up the O line, busting through every play, and killing the QBs at that extreme of a setting. They dont. So either the sliders are reversed or its a placebo effect and those two sliders don't work at all. You tell me. If they do work, and simply effect BOTH sides, then my statement still holds true. That Break Block at 100 and Pass Block at 0 doesn't help any pass rush.

agreed

[callmetaternuts]

Quote: Originally Posted by AuburnAlumni

Read more closely. The slider bug right now is that Human sliders appear to effect BOTH the Human AND CPU attributes. So.... with that in mind. If I have Human Sliders set with a Break Block of 100 and a Pass Block of 0, you would think that my defensive line AND the cpu defensive line would be blowing up the O line, busting through every play, and killing the QBs at that extreme of a setting. They dont. So either the sliders are reversed or its a placebo effect and those two sliders don't work at all. You tell me. If they do work, and simply effect BOTH sides, then my statement still holds true. That Break Block at 100 and Pass Block at 0 doesn't help any pass rush.

To add to this, for Adam's sake, AA is saying we know the sliders are broken, that right now the HUM sliders affect the HUM and CPU side. So right now with Break Block at 100 (maxed out) and Pass Block at 0 (maxed out), we still arent getting pressure.

So yes A) the sliders are broken (old news) but more importantly B) they do not have a HUGE impact on the game. Sliders are "tweaking", what we need is a revamp, overhaul, fix, correction, whatever you want to call it. We arent a notch or two away, we are a good distance away. So to answer your question, No, we dont feel that corrected and working sliders will remedy what we are seeing at this point (not trying to be a jerk, just trying to clarify thigns)

We nkow the hardcore crowd isnt the big market that is catered to, we have known that for awhile. But when we have guys from different forums (Bill Abner and his blog, AA, Pared, Countryboy, ODogg (where is he), rhombic, as well as all these other avid gamers) Spweing the same thing that the pass rush and defense isnt up to snuff, something has to be done.

If it were jsut me complaining, i get it, im one voice in a million, but it seems that this is the overwhelming view of the game right now from multiple people from multiple sources.

Im know we are laying it to you Adam, but you are the voice that we have to go back to EA and construe our thoughts. You make valid points, as do we, there are things we'd like to be fixed or corrected or updated. There are a few posts a fe wpages back that go into great detail on what we are looking at, and even what Ian was looking at.

[rspencer86]

Quote: Originally Posted by OMT

As much as we'd love to design the game 100% hardcore, that just isn't feasible. We have to make a game for a whole spectrum of people that may decide to purchase it.

Adam, I believe that you could make the game appeal to both the hardcore gamers AND the casual gamers. The key is providing options for us hardcore players who want a simulation-style game.

One of the ways to do that is by making the sliders much, much more effective. I'm not talking about fixing the bug that makes the User sliders affect both the user and CPU. I'm talking about things like if I set my interceptions slider at 0, there should not be any interceptions at all. If I set it at 100, I should be picking off 10-12 passes a game. Same thing with penalty sliders. I understand that the casual gamer doesn't want a bunch of holding and facemask calls negating their huge runs and ruining their 72-0 beatdowns of the CPU. But when I set the penalty sliders all the way to 100, I should see a LOT of penalties. Having this kind of extreme range allows us, the users, to find a "happy medium," whether that is on the "arcade" side or "simulation" side.

Also, you guys should take a look at the slider options in other sports games. Frankly, games like NBA 2k8 can be made to play much better than they do from default because they offer so many different sliders to adjust. NBA 2k8 has sliders for almost everything: fatigue, screen success, and even very fine details like tendencies for throwing flashy passes and using triple-threat moves. Another great way to appeal more to us hardcore types is to give us the ability to fine tune many aspects of the game. Having the opportunity to (significantly) alter such things as QB aggressiveness (which could affect how often the CPU tries to "force" throws rather than perhaps just throwing the ball away), fatigue, injuries, etc. would really help those who want a more realistic game to be able to do that, without affecting the casual gamer.

The bottom line is, the dev team should really take a hard look at some ways to give the gamers more control over how the game plays. If we want the game to play a realistic, sim-style type of football, give us the options to do so. For those who don't, they will be fine with playing the game at default.