Last week was the start of some great info on NCAA Football 10; we released the details on Season Showdown and then followed this week with the huge drop of TeamBuilder. If you have not seen anything about it there is a video here: What is TeamBuilder? and we are not done; expect to see even more details about Season Showdown in the upcoming weeks.
Also a couple weeks ago we released a video about Dynasty on the NCAA Football 10 website. To be fair that video did not even come close to explaining the amount of detail that has gone into Dynasty Mode this year (and Online Dynasty). Luckily I am able to take a little time and explain the other tuning we've been able to get done over the year. We also took a handful of screen shots to show... like so:
A lot of what was tuned for NCAA Football 10 was feedback gathered from forums and community day (held here in Maitland a few weeks ago). Before getting started I just want to say; Thank you everyone for helping us get together many of these details.
This blog is going to cover five different parts of our Dynasty Modes:
- Recruits
- Scheduling
- Poll Logic
- CPU Logic
- Progression
Ok get ready for a pretty long read :)...
Recruits have undergone an overhaul to when they are created in Dynasty Mode. We are creating a situation where you simply do not "reload" with freshmen every year and instead have to actually allow your players to grow into juniors or senior for the majority of your roster. Here is a list of what was done with Recruits for NCAA Football 10:
- Recruits will not come in as highly rated. Overall all recruits have been lowered in how high their Overall rating will be when they are created.
- Not as many "elite" recruits. Instead of the majority of recruits starting out at 80+ there will only be a handful.
- Recruits will take the quality of the school more into account when they are created. Location was too important when recruits were created in NCAA 09, going forward the quality of the school will be the most important factor. This also helps to slow down the growth of smaller schools when under CPU control.
- 40 times are more realistic - you will not see any recruits come in with a 4.19 time.
- ATH will now have more ratings to play different positions; the ratings have been redone to include attributes to make them true athletes. For example you'll find some ATH with Route Running and Man Coverage ratings that will allow you to place them at either WR or CB.
Scheduling in Dynasty has gotten a pretty major update; we've addressed a few issues from NCCA 09 as well as improved future year's schedules.
- Big East Champ no longer tied to the Orange Bowl. Previously if you won the Big East you were forced to play in the Orange Bowl (unless playing for a National Title).
- Big 12 schedule is now on a two year cycle. You play everyone in your division and then you play 3 teams from the other division for two years. In those two years you alternate between home and away. In years 3 and 4 it will switch to the other 3 teams in the other division (home and away).
- Big 10 will not have night games in November. This was a new rule put in this year.
- Arizona State always played Cal & Oregon State on the road in NCAA 09, this has been fixed.
- Additional Rotations for conferences that do not a true rotation (Pac-10 for example) now games will not be on the same date every year. For example Stanford - Cal will always be the last game of Pac-10 schedule but Stanford - Oregon will be different dates in future years of Dynasty.
Poll Logic has been tweaked to allow for more early season movement as well as taking better account for the ranks of your opponents.
- Biggest example is an unranked team beating two highly ranked teams can now become ranked.
CPU Logic has been updated in how they recruit, handle their rosters, and simulate games.
- AI after filling all their needs will begin to target a specific position. In years past they would always go after QB's and FB's now in NCAA Football 10 the CPU will select different positions to attempt to add depth.
- CPU will perform position changes. For example if they have two Right Tackles (84, 87) and one Left Tackle (75) they will move one of the RT's over to LT.
- We revisited some of the simulation logic and now less teams are going undefeated
Lastly with the changes to recruits we had to make some changes to Progression.
- With players coming in lower some stats will now progress faster. This also means ratings that did not progress in years past will now go up; for example Speed.
- Team Prestige is now a much bigger factor in Progression; the quality of your team will influence how fast your players gain attributes.
- Position Changes will no longer cause athletic attributes to go down (SPD, STR, ACC, etc.). When you move a player from WR to CB you will no longer see his speed drop.
That's quite a bit of information for Dynasty Mode (and Online Dynasty)... I feel like I'm back in school writing a 1000* word essay.
Thanks for taking the time to read over our updates. I look forward to getting the game in your hands as July 14th fast approaching.
-Russ Kiniry
Designer - NCAA Football 10
* - Technically it ended up being 975 (yes I counted this as well)