NCAA Football 11 Live Tuning Pack 1, Available Now

Hi NCAA Fans,

It's Russ Kiniry here again to add some more details about our first Live Tuning Package (LTP) from Roy's "Thank You" blog on last Thursday. We continue to work hard on all the feedback we've received from the community, but I wanted to provide an update on our progress and offer some insight on the questions we've seen surrounding the LTP's.

THE FIRST LIVE TUNING PACKAGE FOR NCAA FOOTBALL 11 WILL INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING UPDATES:

• Increased the default starting values for all Recruits.
• Slightly increased progression for low and mid tier teams.
• Tuned CPU recruiting to prevent teams from signing too many players at any one particular position.
• Increased CPU's focus upon needed positions in recruiting.
• Top schools will sign 5 star prospects earlier in the season.
• After a recruit Soft Commits, any CPU team that is not ranked in the top three will spend significantly less time calling the recruit.
• Addressed an issue with big lineman jumping too high and deflecting passes.
• Tuned ESPN U Top 150 Players to be more in line with actual top 150 recruits by decreasing the number of Fullbacks and Kickers.
• Tuned Field Goal, Kick Offs, and Punting in Super Sim.

WHAT DOES THAT ALL MEAN?

For gameplay you should notice that larger players cannot jump as high to swat down passes making things look and feel more authentic. In Dynasty mode, it means two things. First, the majority of the teams in Dynasty will be slightly better than before due to having access to higher rated Prospects and slightly better progression. Second, CPU teams will do a much better job of accurately filling their rosters.

Let's take a closer look at the details behind the Dynasty changes and what they actually do. *Caution* Lots of charts and numbers inbound. Skip ahead to ‘Going Forward' if you don't like math.

This first charts shows the players in Dynasty Mode (by Overall rating) and compares the before and after of LTP 1. In the first Line Graph you can see a sample of one sim of Dynasty (each year is a line) where Players would end up being rated significantly lower than the default roster, which is shown as the Red Line.



On the second Line Graph, in future years the Players are now shifted forward to be more in line with the shipped Rosters. These are all averages of a number of Sims we ran over the last couple weeks. Again, the Red Line is default and the rest of the lines are averages of future years (since one Dynasty can always have some different highs and lows depending on the recruiting classes). The biggest reason why the above charts are important is they show how much the Overall ratings of players change in a Dynasty as it advances. The closer the future year's lines are to the red line (default year 1) the less deviation you'll see from years 1-3 and 4+.

Next let's take a look at what the actual numbers look like for different Prestige Teams.



You can see these changes, on average, had an increase on the top end teams (6 and 5 star) and a much larger impact on the lower teams. A big reason why you'll see the top teams increase in Average Overall is that they are getting slightly better Prospects AND, more importantly, they are doing a more efficient job at recruiting in general. Remember the CPU teams are not wasting as much time on players they can't get and are filling their needs better. The lower teams get the benefit of better recruiting logic and better Prospects like the higher teams, but also slightly higher Progression than they had before LTP 1.

What that means is on average lower prestige teams will end up being rated higher in future years of Dynasties before LTP 1. Basically, less D rated teams, which you can see in the next chart:



The left side is a sample of data before LTP 1, and the right is using LTP1. You'll notice a big shift in the lowest teams (previously 46% down to only 24%). And we moved a few teams that were close to being A Rated before into that elite range. There is only so far we really want to go with these numbers as it will soon start to impact the top end Players too much. These LTP are a little limited in what they can control, but just being able to make the changes above without a patch is a huge step forward for the NCAA Football franchise.

GOING FORWARD

The goal of these Live Tuning Packs is to fine tune the game using both your (community feedback) and our own internal testing. We want to continue to make adjustments to the game where they make sense, and not use this to make large sweeping changes, given how much of the game is "just right". Continue to tell us how you feel and what you'd like to see on our forums.

Some additional LTP changes will not be put into place until after Title Update 2 (currently estimate is in Mid-August). More details to follow, but we expect to address items such as Kicker and Awareness Progression.

Let me also clear up a couple of common misconceptions about NCAA 11 and the way progression and awareness work "under the hood":

• Teams do not get progressively worse in extremely late years, for the most part what you see in years 6+ will be consistent over the long run due to the fact that the entire NCAA is taken over by our generated Prospects at that time. To put it simply you won't look at year 10 and everyone in the NCAA is rated 60 Overall or lower.
• The Awareness of a player does NOT affect his ability to Run Routes, Play Defense, or Block. Each of those have their own ratings that drive how good the player is:
- Route Running (RTE)
-Defense: Zone Coverage (ZCV), Man Coverage (MCV), Play Recognition (PRC) and Pursuit (PUR)
-Blocking: Run/Pass Block Footwork (RBF, PBF), Run/Pass Block Strength (RBS, PBS). And the assignment each player gets is based on the offensive play vs. the defensive play.
• Every Kicker (no matter his ratings) CAN kick a 30 and under yard field goal. Granted accuracy can causes misses as well, but they do have the distance.

We hope that you will enjoy these changes to NCAA Football 11. Your continued feedback and enthusiasm for the game is greatly appreciated. Keep visiting our Forums for the most up to date information.
Thanks,
-Russ Kiniry
Designer NCAA Football.