rudyjuly2's Blog
I don't think so. I really think the NCAA team has tunnel vision with what they want. Others will say I'm just saying this because they aren't delivering what I want and there is definitely truth in this. They sell close to two million games across all platforms every year which is a good number for any game and so I think there is a conservative effort with regards to changing things. NBA 2K11 sold just over two million games on the 360 alone. NCAA 11 sold 890,000 on the 360. College football is more popular than the NBA imo (or at least it's close) so why should a basketball game sell more than double a college football game? I will argue that the quality isn't there and the EA team needs to push themselves more. This is NOT an argument of laziness or work ethic. I don't doubt for a second the guys at EA work hard but are they pushing in the right direction?
I'm just going to look at some things that I think would be easy additions to the game and illustrate tunnel vision.
1) Sliders for fumbles, fatigue and injuries. These have been in Madden for awhile. People ask for them. Why not add them? This can't take much effort. IMO, this is because the NCAA team plays on default and doesn't care as much about sliders. There are massive slider threads everywhere on OS and you will see thousands of views in some of the major sets. The NCAA team needs to get their heads out of their comfort zone and push for things that they may not care about. Again, they don't add some things that would appear to be simple. Why not?
2) Camera angles. People have been pushing for custom camera angles for years. I'm sure this is difficult due to framerate issues but we've only had one playable camera this entire generation. They finally added broadcast cam last year but you couldn't use it to play. Why not? Madden has 4 playable camera options. Can't you borrow their tech? Every other sports game has tons of playable camera options and zoom options. NCAA has nothing but one default camera to play with. This appears to be tunnel vision - everyone on the dev team likes it so it can't be a problem.
3) Player momentum and weight. This has been a huge complaint over the years. Why not have more momentum? Why not have an option like speed threshold where we can adjust it (slow down acceleration and/or agility) to tweak this ourselves if you don't want to give it to us? I will never forget Russ Kiniry (former NCAA dev) answering a question about why the game doesn't have more momentum after NCAA 11 released, "I guess we could make it count more." This area has absolutely nothing to do with software or hardware limitations. The dev team likes the way players zig zag all over the place with little player weight and momentum. This is a design decision and while some may like it this is a huge complaint on OS and other places. How the game currently plays is based on what the dev team likes. Maybe they should add an option or tweak this more. This is the number one way for this series to re-invent itself imo and truly feel and look different.
4) There are some pretty vocal critics of how EA rates and animates players. Gotmadskillz and Playmakers show good examples of this. Playmakers really gets into the ratings and claims that a lot of the stuff we don't like can be fixed with massively edited rosters. Has EA ever considered bringing these guys in to the Game Changers program or are they considered too negative? It seems all the game changers love NCAA 12 and still play it. Why not bring in some critics like Ian Cummings first did with the Madden program (he brought in a 2K5 guy, Madden *****)? Just surrounding yourselves with guys that are happy with the game and play it all year will never push the game in a different direction.
5) Presentation. Look how long it's taken to get stat overlays. The presentation in NCAA 12 didn't really match TV style presentation and I thought Madden 12 was much better than NCAA in this area (arguments about commentary are another thing). Even the replays are odd in NCAA and there just isn't variety. The NCAA team loves these spline videos of showing QB throw, WR run route, WR catch and yet I think a lot of people were sick of that in the first year let alone still seeing it. Where is the variety to please everyone? Keep those replays but show more traditional ones too. I know EA is sick of hearing about 2K5 in every way but the presentation style to the commentary to the weekly wrap up shows were top notch. You can't claim any of this stuff isn't possible due to programming problems when it was being done on the PS2.
At this point I'm frustrated because EA isn't delivering the type of college football video game I want. This is selfish on my part but I do think EA could do a better job delivering more options and addressing some of the major complaints out there. I feel they are too safe with how they change the game. They don't want to risk hurting sales at the expense of growing the game. Just frustrated from what I continue to see and read about NCAA 13.
# 2
rudyjuly2 @ Jun 3
The transition into this gen for EA Football has been very rough. I will wait a lot longer next time before upgrading as a result.
rudyjuly2
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To tell the truth, I think EA is limping into the next gen with whatever they currently have. This is in regards to what you say about adding sliders, fixing the physics, etc. I can see it taking a good deal of work to implement these things (though they are things that should have been in all along). Maybe they think that they'll just be restarting next gen and include all or some of this stuff.
EA does a fantastic job of making sure people come back year after year by introducing "new" features, which are often in reality just things that used to be in the game on last gen. I understand the marketing premise of it. But here we are nearly at the end of this gen, when in accordance with that theory, we should be nearing a "perfect" game, but in reality we are far from it.
I've learned my lesson from this gen. The only reason I own a PS3 is to play NCAA football. I play no other game. But if EA decides to repeat the model the did this gen on next, I won't be buying a PS4 or NCAA football for many years because it will be a shell of a game, not even comparable to NCAA 06. It's sad, really.