NCAA Football 10 Developer Interview With Russ Kiniry (Vetzballin)

Vetz: Lets switch gears a minute and talk about the overall game play for a minute. In NCAA 09 speed is king, how much impact will speed have in NCAA 10?

RK: We actually looked at how much speed was affecting the game and looked at the speed curve. Fast was really fast, you know there was that plateau then dropped off. This year we revisited it a little bit and made it more of a linear skill so it makes sense. Now you’ll notice those 98, 99 speed players aren’t going to be much that much faster than those 93, 94 players. We did a couple of things, first we looked at that curve and where the speed was at and adjusted that, secondly one of the biggest problems in the game now is the A.I. took such bad angles to make tackles, that if you got outside, it was going to be a 80 yard touchdown. So we tuned that and improved the pursuit angles so now you still can outside, but it’s only going to be a 15 yard run now.

Vetz: Can you explain how the adaptive A.I. will work?

RK: Basically we designed the artificial intelligence to pick up on what you like to do as the game goes along and adjust to your play calls. Say you’re gaining a chunk of yards from running up the middle a lot from the same formation you’ll the notice the A.I. start to pinch in their defensive line, or bring their safeties up tighter whenever you got to that set again. Overall the A.I. is just much smarter this year and will offer more of a challenge.

Vetz: How about in head to head games with another human opponent. Will the adaptive A.I. be evident there, especially if a guy keeps killing you with a particular route or play?

RK: Yes it will work a little bit for you as well. In 09 say a guy is running comeback routes or post routes from the same formation and for the same player, the A.I. always played it the same way. Well now they’ll know it’s coming especially if it’s from the same formation and to the same guy. They’ll react quicker now and make more plays to the ball.

Vetz: Tell me about some of the changes we will see with the offensive/defensive line interaction. One of the complaints about 09 is the lack of a pass rush generated from the front four.

RK: That has been a huge focus for us. One of the things we took into account more this year was the individual ratings for how often a guy should really win his individual matchup. Again this also kind of ties back into what we talked about pertaining to speed. That shouldn’t be the only rating that governs the entire game, so this year you’re going to want to have that DE that has those great finesse or power moves so he can get around the offensive lineman and make a play. Creating a true pocket for the quarterback was also something else we wanted to achieve this year, so you’ll noting the offensive guys riding the guys out more to form a pocket.

Vetz: One of the biggest problems with the pash rush was the defensive line would get pancaked too many times throughout a game. I’ve literally had instances where 3 of my guys would be on the ground leaving one guy to rush the QB.

RK: We actually rewrote those pancake blocks and took a lot of those out so they won’t happen as much anymore. Cut blocks make sense, but not all the time and on every play.

Vetz: I noticed from one of the playbook screens you had a play flashing and with a percentage of how much it was set up. Can you explain just what that is?

RK: In year’s past, every play was kind of run on it’s own, but this year with adaptive A.I. with the computer adjusting to your tendencies that opens up other options which allowed us to link certain plays together. So going back to what I said before about constantly running up the middle out of a certain formation, you noticed the A.I. creeping up a bit cheating on the run. Well that will set up a good opportunity for a play action pass and you’ll see the play that’s linked to it flashing with a percentage of how successful that play may be. So if I’m running Singleback HB Dive successfully a few times the adaptive A.I. will adjust to that creating an opportunity to run play action.

Vetz: So what if I have a play that, for the sake of argument, shows that it has a 100% chance of being successful, does that automatically mean it will be money?

RK: It’s not entirely, you just set up the play and it will be money. No, that’s no fun for anyone. So it’s also a little bit based on situation too. I mean if you come out on 3rd and 12 and try to run play action with a linked play, well you’re probably not going to be successful there. Now if it’s second and short and you see the defense up tight, you’ll have a better chance of moving the chains. But it’s not money plays, that’s the last thing we wanted to do. Also, that’s where ratings come into play. Their ratings will dictate how successfully the play will work. A lower rated secondary will be more susceptible to being fooled than a higher rated one. Or looking at it individually, that safety with low awareness will be more apt to bite on the play fake, than one with high awareness.

Vetz: Has the defensive coverage been improved this year? Particularly the man defense, as it stands now, the wide receivers typically get too much separation from the defense. I guess the speed rating factors into that though.

RK: It’s part of the speed rating and our overall ratings in general for man coverage. We retooled our ratings a lot this year to make corners a little bit better. All coverages this year have retooled.

Vetz: Has the sideline animation triggering too far away from the out of bounds marker been looked into?

RK: Yeah that has definitely been addressed, that was one of the first things we looked at. We definitely have something good in store, I don’t how how much we’re ready to talk about it yet, because it’s a little bit tech, but yes that’s definitely been a focus because that frustrated us just as much as it frustrated you guys. We’ve also addressed the animation you sometimes see of the defender grabbing at air and falling down when trying to make a tackle.