It used to be that you could sit back, call the same play over and over again, and just “out athlete” your opponent. It used to be that you could hop around the playbook jumping from I Form, to Ace, to Shotgun without a care in the world for creating an offensive identity. And it used to be that you could know exactly what your opponent was going to know, know exactly how you would stop it, but didn’t have a way to tell your players that that without a doubt the next play is going to be a run to the right, go shut it down.
Thankfully those days are behind us. With NCAA Football 10 strategy takes on a huge role with three new gameplay features that put the emphasis on out thinking your opponent instead of just out maneuvering him on the sticks. By gameplanning, setting up plays, and keying in on what you think the offense will be running you can affect the outcome of the game just based on your coaching decisions.
And you are going to need to strategize your opponent like never before. With the inclusion of Adaptive AI CPU controlled defenses will learn what you are doing, and focus on shutting it down. Rush up the middle for a few big gains? Good Job. The next time you come to the line you will see that the defensive tackles have pinched in to take away the running lanes. Found that route you love to run if you need to pick up a first down? Be careful, you run that route too much the defense will be looking for it and blanket your receiver. Even if you try and get sneaky by calling the same route from a different formation, the CPU will be watching for that route, not the play, and shutting you down.
It’s not all about defensive upgrades for the CPU either. While on defense the CPU is going to test you deep to try and open things up. If you are the type of guy that likes to press all of the time, you’re now going to be the type of guy that also likes to chase a receiver down after they got past your DB and got hit wide open on a streak.
Gameplanning
The first feature we will talk about is Gameplanning. This feature is all about determining how aggressive, conservative, or balanced you want your team to play during certain situations. There are six defensive situations and five offensive situations you can adjust at any point during the game, based on your preferred strategy for that moment.
The Gameplanning screen comes up automatically after the coin toss, and at the start of the 2nd half, as well as after any timeout. You can also manually bring up the screen any time you are in the playcall screen (pressing LT/L2). From here you will be able to adjust your gameplan as you wish. While you may want to play more aggressive at the start of the game, if you are protecting a lead you will most likely want to ease off the throttle a bit and play more conservatively.
Each gameplan option has its own risks and rewards. For example, if you want your defense to always attempt to strip the ball, you will see the strip ball animations play on almost every play, and the chance of successfully stripping the ball increases. However, the more the defender is going for the strip, the more likely they are to get a hand up a little too high and grab hold of a facemask. If you don’t mind tacking 15 yards onto a play every now and then in order to force a turnover then you can set your strip ball gamplan to aggressive. You can also go more of a conservative route and tell your defenders to focus on making the tackle instead of stripping the ball. In this case you will get less facemask penalties, but you will have little chance of ripping the ball out. If you don’t want to play one way or the other you can set this option to “normal” which will allow for the defenders to choose how to play on their own (as they have in previous versions of the game).
All of the options for both offense and defense default to Balanced. You will be able to see what your current setting is by looking at the color checkmark next to the each option. Green means you are set to Balanced, Yellow is Aggressive, and Blue is Conservative. Based on your Gameplanning settings, you will earn Strategy Credits for Season Showdown when your Gameplan settings were successful on the field.
Since the screens do a great job of listing out what the pros/cons of each option are I’ll let the screenshots do the talking for each gameplan event:
Defensive Options (click to enlarge)
Offensive Options (click to enlarge)
Setup Plays
The next new Strategy feature is the Setup Play. This feature allows you to run one play successfully in order to “setup” a variation of a similar play. The easiest example of this is to run the Power O play to setup the play action pass based on the Power O play (PA Power O). At the playcall screen you will be able to tell which plays set each other by the chain links that connect the two plays. Here’s a screenshot of the Power O example:
While the play action off of a run play is the easiest example, Setup Plays are not limited to just this type of playcalling strategy. There are pass plays linked to other pass plays, where one play may have a “mesh” route where the receiver streaks across the field, the linked version of that play involves the same receiver cutting that mesh route off and instead running a hook route. Another example is how a draw play can be used to setup a HB screen.
You can run either play to setup their linked play, so you can either setup the PA Power O by successfully running Power O, or you can setup Power O by successfully running PA Power O. As you run one play, you will see how close you are to fully setting up its linked play. Once the linked play is at 100% setup, the defense will be at its highest likelihood of getting faked out, increasing your chances of successfully executing your setup play. The chance that the defender will get faked out is all based on their individual ratings, so a top rated defender will still be less likely to fall for the play action than some walk-on freshman. The Setup Play just means that the defenders have the highest chance of getting faked out when you run that play.
The Setup Play only works once before you need to work on setting it up again, and if you run a play you are setting up before it’s reached the 100% Setup status, you will need to start over again as that play will be reset to 0% Setup. Here is a screenshot showing a play in the process of getting setup:
There is no time limit on how long a play will be setup for. If you setup a play in the 1st quarter, and never run it again, the play will still be setup and ready to go in the 4th quarter.
The speed at which a play is setup is based both on the success of the play as well as the difficulty level. If you want to get a play to 100% setup on Heisman you will need to do a lot more than a couple of 5 yard gains.
If you are able to run a play that is 100% setup and either get a 1st down or a touchdown you will earn Strategy credits.
Defensive Keys
If you have ever been in a game and you knew, without a doubt, that your opponent will be running to the strong side of the formation, or its 3rd and 1 and you know a run up the middle is coming, or if you know your opponent will be throwing to a specific receiver on the play, but you have never been able to shut the play down based only playcall/defensive shifts alone then Defensive Keys is what you have been waiting for. During preplay while on defense you will be able to bring up the Defensive keys menu by holding LT/L2. You will then be able to choose what you want the defense to key on for that play. Here is a screenshot of what this looks like:
With the right stick you will be able to pick your defensive key for that play. If you choose Run Right, at the snap of the ball you will see your defensive players flood toward the right, and if you guess correctly, the ball carrier will have nowhere to go. Now, if you guess Run Right, and your opponent instead runs a toss to the left, well you’ve just opened yourself up for a potential big gain by the offense. Selecting to play the pass will basically prevent your defenders from getting faked out by a play action play (which is a nice counter if you know your opponent is going to run a setup play action play).
In addition to this you can also choose to spotlight a specific receiver for that play. When you bring up Defensive Keys the camera goes into Coach Cam and each of the offense’s receivers will have a button callout over them. Select the receiver you want to spotlight, and the defense will make that player the focus of their pass coverage to make sure he doesn’t get into any open space. Since you are focusing on one guy the potential is there for another receiver to get into some open space and burn you.
The addition of Defensive Keys adds a new wrinkle to the chess match that is playcalling. If you are too predictable in your playcalling your opponent will be able to pick up on your tendencies and shut you down. Or you can try and out think your opponent by always running on 1st down only to surprise them by calling a deep bomb out of the blue when they are expecting another HB Dive.
You can only choose one key per play. If you select to spotlight a receiver, then select to key on a pass, you will no longer be spotlighting the receiver.
If you don’t want to key in on something, but you do want a quick way to mass shift your defense in a direction you can use the left analog stick towards the direction you want your players to shift. This will not change their assignments, only shift where they line up.
If you key in on a run and stop the play for a loss, or break up a pass play through a sack, swat, knockout, or interception you will earn Strategy credits.
Well, that’s a rundown of the three new gameplay features that make up the Strategy component of Season Showdown.
-Ben Haumiller