Draft Day Sports: College Football 2017 News Post

Draft Day Sports: College Football 2017 Available For $34.99

05:51 AM - November 21, 2016 by Steve_OS

Wolverine Studios has released Draft Day Sports: College Football 2017 on PC, for $34.99.

Game Description
Draft Day Sports: College Football 2017 puts you on the sideline of your favorite school. You’re in charge of setting the game plan, preparing your roster for success and of course recruiting the next class of standout players. If you really want to roam the virtual sidelines you can even call your own plays and watch the games unfold in exciting 2D action! Chart your school on a course of success over a long career and go back in time through a massive historical almanac to relive your biggest successes.

Gameplay Features

2D game play mode lets you coach and call the plays and then watch the action unfold before you.
Detailed recruiting module lets you scout the country for the best players for your program.
Deep game planning feature lets you set your strategies for any situation.
Full customization of teams, logos, field graphics and much more.
Multi-player mode lets you create a league and take on your friends.

Draft Day Sports: College Football 2017 screenshot gallery - Click to view

Game: Draft Day Sports: College Football 2017Reader Score: Vote Now
Platform: PCVotes for game: 0 - View All

Member Comments

# 1 Vaporub83 @ 11/21/16 10:46 PM

Is there a demo for this type of game? $35 for a test seems risky

# 2 woodjer @ 11/22/16 03:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vaporub83


	Is there a demo for this type of game? $35 for a test seems risky

Looks like you can download/install the game as a trial with a code to unlock the full version. Haven't tried it myself to know what the limitations are but will probably do that after I get off work.

# 3 Iceman87GT @ 11/23/16 01:33 PM

Wolverine Studios has been putting out a lot of Sports Management Sims as of late, I wonder what kind of quality they are... Are they trying to feel a niche market need by putting out these games or are they actually putting out great games that happen to fill that void, I certainly hope it's the latter.

The biggest concern of any Sports Management Sim has to be with the simulation engine, it's why EHM (Eastside Hockey Manager) is still better than NHL branded FHM3 (FHM3 gets the nod in trading (retain salaries), and the ability to start whenever you want instead of being beholden to a database being created among other front office improvements definitely closed the gap), it's also one of the reasons why Beyond The Sidelines (American Football Sim) is taking long.

I'm definitely going to check out the trial, hopefully there's enough of it to get a good idea how realistic the sim engine is.

# 4 dmacgreg37 @ 11/26/16 10:51 AM

Yeah, and DDS: College Basketball was super unstable. Had crashes all the time. I'll probably wait until a few more try this and give word on it.

# 5 bkrich83 @ 11/26/16 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dmacgreg37


	Yeah, and DDS: College Basketball was super unstable. Had crashes all the time. I'll probably wait until a few more try this and give word on it.

Demo is free, and you can play 2 full years in to your franchise with it.

# 6 JP7555 @ 11/26/16 12:41 PM

I got it. The team definitely has some things to iron out before I'd even call it a "finished" product.

Gameplay issues - I think the past 2 games my pretty accurate QB (w/ pretty good receivers) had a line of something like 6/28 for 150 yards or so. So, QB play could be shored up a bit....???? If I'm not running for 200 yards every game, I wouldn't win at all.

Some visual issues w/ game play, which is to be expected. I've gone to OT twice but, for whatever reason, it didn't let me actually "play" the game anymore. The CP just finished the game and the next thing I knew, I was at the weekly schedule of games w/ the result of the game I just "played" displayed. Ok......

The graphics in these text sims are just going to be a work in progress. We saw it w/ OOTP baseball as well......

I've got a freshman whom I redshirted, starting at RB for me. I set a master depth chart, which he obviously wasn't on. But there he is starting for me..... Is it because he's the highest rated RB I have?

The recruiting is OK. The concept is fine, I guess. But the presentation could be shored up to make it easier to see what's going on. Instead of having all your targets on the left in a mini window for you to endlessly scroll through, why not make them more apparent in a bigger window for easier viewing?

I like the 2D graphics and the idea of being able to see what's going on. The game play just needs a little work to make it more realistic, IMO. And I'd like to be able to play the OT's.........

# 7 jfsolo @ 11/27/16 12:12 AM

I absolutely love the two basketball games, there have been several of those games so they have had time to establish a great foundation there. It's a different lead designer for the CF game, so some things will be different of course, but I feel like the blue print for making this game a strong title right out of the game was there, but a decision was made not to exactly mimic the hoops titles design wise, and that was a mistake, IMO.

# 8 binga30 @ 11/27/16 03:40 AM

Wow can't believe what I am seeing. I had been working on a small project for a College Football sim, looks like all my hard work was for nothing.

# 9 FedExPope @ 12/05/16 05:42 PM

Downloaded a roster file as well as something to give all the team names and sprites correct, they don't seem to want to load together. Starting a new dynasty in general is unreliable. And it won't let me even end the process through task manager...seems like a dud to me.

# 10 canes21 @ 01/19/17 04:42 PM

How does this game compare to Bowl Bound?

# 11 Ohgr @ 02/08/17 07:28 AM

BBCF/DDSCF Comparsion

Some facts:

Things BBCF has, but DDSCF has not:

- Optional playoff settings
- Different polls
- Coaching carousel
- Staff/Staff hiring
- JUCO recruiting
- Transfers
- Conference changes (not sure if that was a thing in BBCF though)
- Effect of preset schemes (bonus if xx formation is used, malus if xx formation is used)
- Classroom does matter in BBCF, not in DDSCF

Things DDSCF has, but BBCF has not:

- Animated plays (moving dots, a bit more detailed when lifeplaycalling)
- Since made by the same guys who made DDSPF16, you can easily use draftclasses from cf in pf.
- Play Sandbox or online league. You can also play Career, which allows you to control only one team compared to sandbox...I don't know if you can get fired.
- Weekly training, which you can micromanage into the extreme if you'd want.

Recruiting/Player development:

I guess, it's the most important thing for some, maybe even the main reason, why people love playing college football games.

Here is the major difference:

While recruiting is a seperate offseason stage in BBCF, recruiting in DDSCF is a task of the whole year and part of your weekly routine. So it's more of a realistic approach by DDS. I'll go a bit more into detail for DDS, I guess most of you guys know how BBCF works.

How does it work:

- You have a list of all available prospects.
- This list can be sorted by State, Distance to your university, Position, Stars etc.
- You have a pool of recruiting points for the whole year and weekly renewing scouting points to spend.
- recruiting points: The amount of effort you put into each player (max 10 pts/Player).
- scouting points: Used for interviews (5 pts) to unlock all personal traits/skill, and scouting to unfold player skills (20 max, the more you use, the more accurate the result).
- Interviews: You do them once and unlock everything you need to know on the personal side of stats. Is this player a teamplayer, is he a leader, does he prefer a university close to home? Always do interviews.
- scholarships: you have a max of 85 scholarships split into 4 years. If you do not use all of them, you'll still get some players on remaining scholarship, if you don't want them, you can cut the players after signing day.
- Walk Ons: As far as I can tell, there are no walk ons
- Signing Day: We all know the excitement on signing day. Do the commits sign to the university or do they change their mind? It doesn't seem to be that exciting in DDS - I can't tell for sure since in my three seasons, all commits ended up coming to my university.

Development:

- Players can practice and improve during the season
- There is a camp stage to round up the whole season, so you can see how much your team progressed throughout the year and during the offseason
- The practice system allows you to micromanage this. You can create different schedules that focus on different aspects, so you can target weak spots of each player, if you wanted to do so.

My personal opinion

Weakpoints:

- The sim feels relatively dead, because you are the only actual coach in it. There are no coach names, no reputation system for different coaches etc, therfor you can't forge a rivalry with one. Also no situations that affect the players, like a kid being stupid once again.
- I think staff management plays a major role in college football. There is no such thing in DDSCF. You are all on your own with a bunch of kids. (While some nameless guys still report to you, if the players progress and stuff).
- Handling is sometimes a bit off. No easy to access player cards, or sortable player lists by position, while you try to assign the depth chart.
- While playcalling is fun, there is still some lack of the same. During the match you have no ability to tell your players to blitz. Just a bunch of plays and blitzing after gameplan, also no hurry up or kill clock.
- Speaking of gameplan, it isn't very detailed. You can only assign a playbook to a down situation (2nd short, 2nd long), but not relative to the gameclock or score.
- Linemen come with Runblock and Passblock skill, which is a bit pointless, because you can not assign your linemen to running or passing situations, unless you dedicate a whole formation to one or the other.
- Playcalling can be a gamble, if you don't put in the effort to figure out, what the plays do. Which can also be seen as a gameplay feature though, since it requires you to gain experience and keep track of the plays that work.
- Watching games from other teams isn't that enjoyable, since it is still the old animation as you might know from DDSPF16 (ball hangtime is completely skipped, while you can see it in playcalling though - i hope it will look like playcalling one day)

Conclusion:

While there is a whole lot of stuff that still needs work to make this a perfect sim, it is to me a whole lot of fun. Compared to it's precursor (DDSPF16) this is already a major step forward, since it added playcalling to the game and recruiting ofc is one of the major features of it.

And exactly those two things are doing it for me. While I really don't like that there is nothing that adds life to the game, the playcalling itself with the game animated gets me to the edge of the seat and the recruiting and development feels satisfying.

For those who love the numbers: I can not tell much about it. It looks like the numbers are okay if you're using game generated players, but I honestly didn't pay too much attention to it.

So taking this as a starting point for a potential college football franchise, I want to say, this is a good start. The core gameplay is fun, and added and improved features will make me a returning customer for any future version.

Since I can not recommend the game for everyone, I'd suggest you guys go and test it out yourself to see if it is for you. The demo takes you two years through the game, so you can playcall a good amount of games (if you like it) and recruit your first two classes, before you would have to buy it.

Hope this wall of text helps a bit. Sorry for typos/grammar - english isn't my first language.

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Draft Day Sports: College Football 2017 Available For $34.99