Looks like the honeymoon between NCAA and Bill Abner may be reaching that stage we see every year. In this game, Bill had a guy catch a ball 3 yards out of bounds and get a 1 yard gain for the catch.

http://nutweasel.blogspot.com/2008/0...-goes-out.html

Looks like the season sim engine is way out of whack. Stats are unrealistic, especially for QB's.

http://nutweasel.blogspot.com/2008/0...eason-sim.html

More impressions from the OS forums. The stats from this game on All-America difficulty are absolutely frightening. Looks like the interception problem are still 'in the game'.

HA is in the box right now, but still wants to be part of the NCAA 09 league. So, eaglesfan27 and whoever else needs to talk to HA about the league, feel free to PM me and I can pass messages back and forth. HA asked me to do it and I have no problem with it unless it gets crazy, which I doubt it will.

He is on the Imperial League's boards, so that is another way if anyone is signed up over there who is doing this.


That is all for now.

Xbox Live has messages you know...

And a paragraph up he says:


Yeah, he really seems to be getting frustrated...

How quickly you forget his reactions to last year's game. It also started as a 'good' game and it quickly went downhill.

It would appear he's having more concerns as he continues to play. The bugs and stat inconsistancies are starting to surface. He's apparantly found a bug two years in where all of the rushing stats for the season just suddenly disappeared. Ouch.

http://nutweasel.blogspot.com/2008/0...g-pops-in.html

Here, he's noticed that the rushing stats are way under what they should be.

http://nutweasel.blogspot.com/2008/0...-test-sim.html

And here, he's noting that the defensive stats are also way under what they should be. He also notes some issues with the polling system and Heisman award selection.

http://nutweasel.blogspot.com/2008/0...de-screwy.html

I'll pass that along to him. ;)

Considering the only time I read anything from him is when a link gets posted here that may be of interest, "forget" is the wrong word.

With the way MBB fan reacts to EA Sports games, you'd think he was talking about NFL Fever or something.

So do you usually react the opposite way that I do to games that should be good but always end up with a whole lot of unfulfilled promise?

My only surprise at this point is why EA would be dumb enough to send a retail build of the game to Bill Abner and several other people 2 weeks early. As a result, Abner is going to end up with the honeymoon ending long before release day and he'll likely have all the warts on this year's build flushed out long before next Tuesday. Really dumb move by the PR group. They'd be better off just keeping a lid on it until release day to avoid bad publicity before the release date.

Last years game was the best football game I have ever played by a pretty big margin. If he thought that game had problems, then I don't think I'm going to buy much into what he says. I think this falls under the same vein as "you're comparing this game to what exactly?"

I like how MBBF fails to post that the game log from OS with all of the turnovers was on default sliders. Bill has already posted multiple games that show turnovers aren't an excessive issue with sliders adjusted.

Agreed. I respect Bill Abner's gameplay impressions, but he loses me when he goes off the deep end comparing stats to real life. I've never seen a graphical game nail that.

Edit - Well after his latest posts he may be right. It's pretty ridiculous.

Ridiculous doesn't begin to describe it. How many years into this franchise are we at this point? There's obviously a few people who will always defend EA and this franchise and downplay the problems in this game. Those people wouldn't be swayed by honest opinions about the game anyway. Thankfully this year for the rest of us, EA sent the game out to a reviewer who would provide a balanced assessment of the game and detail the problems accurately.

There's no excuse for EA not to get the game balance and stats correct at this point in the franchise. There are multiple people in NCAA gaming communities that provide sliders to try to balance what EA has f#$ked up. Why not hire one of those people to balance the game in beta testing. Better yet, take those slider settings and make them the new defaults for next year's game (i.e. if 30 is the best setting for QB accuracy this year, make that the new 50 for next year). Each year, you're going to get closer and closer to a good game just by doing that, which wouldn't take much work at all.

It's also become blatently obvious that EA's testing group is doing a whole lot more game-playing than they are doing game testing. True acceptance testing draws out all of the possible ways the game can break and exhaustingly tests each and every scenario. That all goes terribly wrong when a testing group just starts playing games over and over and assumes that all scenarios will eventually occur rather than making sure they are covered in testing. The testing group needs a severe overhaul at this point.

BTW, new post up detailing that the statistics are continuing to disappear. This time, it was the passing statistics. Another example that EA wasn't checking stats on a regular basis during testing. Wonder why the stat totals aren't accurate...........

http://nutweasel.blogspot.com/2008/0...tim-tebow.html

That's what is frustrating though. The sim stats were good last year.

Well, you can thank Tiburon/EA for the 'enhancement' to this year's game then. :)

So, this is what happens when Missouri basketball sucks?

Or when Mizzou finally has a great team and I still can't bear to play the game.

I'm not sure why a Nebraska fan is talking smack. At least we have one good sports team.

Agreed. Almost makes me wonder if they upped the sim completion percentages because the played games feature high completion percentages. If they kept last year's sim engine, but users completed a high percentage of their passes in their played games, it might have been too easy to win the Heisman.

More info about NCAA09 from Bill Abner. Evidently, one of the developers was posting on the OS forums saying that Bill Abner was incorrect, so he posted some screen shots to prove him wrong.

http://nutweasel.blogspot.com/2008/0...h-screens.html

Overall, Abner said that his experience thus far is that there are more pros than cons........

http://nutweasel.blogspot.com/2008/0...ncaa-2009.html

Over on OS, Bill and the developer have also confirmed a workaround for the disappearing stats bug. If you save the dynasty and reload, all of the stats reappear correctly.

Hopefully the developers are smart enough to have a patch for that ready at release now that they know the issue.

The dissapearing stats bug was in last years game too...I remember seeing it on several occasions.

What day does this come out? I am tired of beating up on LSU with OSU on seemingly Starter.

July 15th. Next Tuesday.

At least for the 360, there's no way that they'd get certification in time for anyone to actually have such a patch on release day, right?

I believe it is a lengthy process, yes.

Not a chance that it will pass the certification process in time for release day or likely even the next few weeks. However, the developers have confirmed this is an issue they are working on for the 1st (they hope the only) patch.

Wait, how did I become a Nebraska fan?

Pretty decent shot to get this tomorrow afternoon/evening. I could sure use the distraction - work and buying our first home is kicking my ass in the stress department.

F U

+1

I unpacked our NCAA's today (Friday). Its going to be tough looking at them on the back shelves for the next few days.

So will the places having midnight openings have it Monday Night or will the Midnight openings be Tuesday Night?

I always get confused after waiting all year to get a game on release day...

I thought I had a shot at getting it today in Winston Salem (2 hour drive) but the store didn't get their shipment... :(

Oh well...

Stores that do midnight openings will do it at 12:01 AM Tuesday morning.

It largely depends on the number of preorders they have.

CDJ on NCAA Utopia reports a problem with custom naming PS3 Rosters. The thread is apparently gone now. Not sure if that means it was just a problem with his PS3 or if it was removed for some other reason:

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but.... Between games & impressions, I started editing rosters with the hopes of enough people getting the game early to where we could pass the file around and get it done by release or close to it since a significant portion would already be completed. Well, on day one and after editing a few teams, the game would freeze (and even occassionally bump me back out to the XMB) when attempting to accept changes made to a player. This lost me about three teams of work. Since it did not happen again, I felt it was an isolated incident, though I did forward it on to Will at Tiburon. Since then, I have been backing up every save on my USB drive as well. This added a lot of time, but was worth it - or so I thought. However, an hour or two ago the problem resurfaced after not happening since Tuesday evening. I was able to use my save file to keep going only for a few moments. Even on the back-up file on the USB drive now, it freezes the game when attempting to save changes to a player. This means that all work done on editing the file has now been lost. (Technically, I can still play games with the roster file, it just cannot be edited further.) I am attempting to see if EA Tiburon wants me to send down the file so thay can maybe figure out the issue easier that way. This is something that was probably impossible to catch in testing. I was able to edit three, and then 20+ teams before it hit. Until then, I recommend people working on PS3 rosters save in several locations after editing each team - perhaps on two USB drives, alternating on each drive after editing each team - until this issue is resolved. I am hoping this is a local problem (maybe something on my system doesn't sit well with the roster save) and not widespread, but I am not optimistic after these developments. If I hear anything, I will post in this thread. Again, I hate to be the bearer of bad news and I am as disappointed as anyone.

Dola -

My bad. I saw a bad link to the thread. The thread is still there and I'm reading through it now:

http://www.ncaastrategies.com/utopia...ad.php?t=59099

Double Dola -

Just read through the thread. The developer who has been posting on a lot of forums is aware of the situation and reports it is a nasty bug. Fairdale Kings is reporting that he is seeing it on the 360 as well. No idea how Pasta Padre got his 360 roster set done, but that looks to be the only roster available until they get a patch out.

No doubt this will help quell the lust to have the game early.

NCAA 09 Full Player Ratings

Thank God for pastapadre and the 360.

Todd Boeckman getting a 89 even has me scratching my head. Beanie being the best RB in the nation, however, is spot on. :thumbsup:

Man I hate this time every year... Can't sit still, wanna play NCAA, hoping to find it early, hear of other that have the game early, playing the demo, looking at videos online, looking at screenshots, looking at NC State's Roster and hoping that some of our key recruits are in the game...

I feel like such a doofus for feeling this way at this point in my life but this is the only game that gets me this excited anymore...

I have enjoyed the demo so far. I have noticed that the post-play celebrations and dissapointment animations seem to be better this year and less over the top (on regular plays not scores). I haven't noticed anyone pick up 15 yds on a 4th down attempt and come up 3 yards short and still jump up and celebrate like they won the super bowl like last year. I know it is small but having appropriate reaction shots (if they are in the game anyway) makes it much more immersive. I hope these things are really fixed and not just missing due to the lack of animations in the demo.

Also I am really enjoying the L-stick shimmy included in this years game. I use it alot on kickoff returns and punt returns.

Icing the kicker and being iced is nice.

Picking the defense they were in after an INT is nice also but they seem pretty easy with the successive overhead shots they give you. I haven't missed one yet.

This is probably the best they have ever done on BYU's ratings. Last year, coming off an 11-2 Season, they had UNLV and San Diego St rated better than the Cougars...

Hmm. I never got the big deal with people wanting player ratings early. Hell, even while I'm playing the game, I don't know what the ratings of my players are. To each his own, of course.

Picking up my copy tomorrow

Is it safe to say Bill Abner will not be receiving a copy early next year?

C'mon, Tuesday. Get here already.

I give you a 9 Pumpy

Uhhh...is it just me or is this only the ACC?