FIGHT NIGHT Round 4 has been on the North American shelves for a couple of weeks and has now hit the streets world wide as fans of the series battle their way to ring supremacy.  There's been a lot praise for the game and the community has been very vocal with what they love about it along with areas that they would like to see improved.

And since the game has launched, as they have been throughout the development process, the team has been listening.

I had a chance to ask some questions about what the community can look forward to seeing in the near future and this is what Producer Mike Mahar had to say.

Q1 - What can fans expect to see in the first DLC pack later in August?  Can you go into detail on the new training gym, sliders, and some of the equipment that will be available?

Mike Mahar - Fans can expect to see some updates in our first DLC pack.  We’ve addressed several of the important Legacy Mode issues including:
-    Boxers missing their hair textures
-    Gamer’s able to schedule two fights at once and then not being able to continue their career
-    Additional bugs that caused Legacy Mode freezes to occur

Gamers have noticed that the new training gym is a modern upscale training gym. Previously the gym was only available in Legacy Mode, but with the update it will be unlocked for use in Fight Now.

We’ve also introduced new gameplay sliders that give gamers the ability to tune and tweak the following attributes:
-    Counter Punch Window
-    Boxer Stamina
-    Punch Accuracy

Gamers can use these settings to further customize the game play experience. If they think they’ve got something worthy of sharing, they can use our File Share system to share them with other FIGHT NIGHT Round 4 gamers.

Fans can also expect to see some new equipment consisting of:
-    All American Gloves
-    All American Shoes
-    Jordan Brand Trunks

Q2 - Will there be new fighters made available in the future as well?

Mahar - While I can’t say for sure whom we’ll be offering, I can say we’re always looking to add more boxer’s to our existing roster. There are past, present, and future greats we’re pursuing and trying to sign. We want to grow the boxer roster and give gamers as many of the boxers they’ve asked for as possible. Stay tuned for more info moving forward.

Q3-  Can you go into detail about the updated control scheme that fans will see in September and why the game didn’t ship with punches on the face buttons in the first place? 

Mahar - The updated control scheme will allow users who are accustomed to using button controls from FIGHT NIGHT Round 3 to return to using buttons in FIGHT NIGHT Round 4. They are very similar in their implementation. The reason they weren’t originally included in FIGHT NIGHT Round 4 was two-fold:
     1.  We didn’t want to put them in the game without extensive testing and tuning to ensure we avoided the mistakes of FIGHT NIGHT Round 3 where some users perceived there to be an advantage to using buttons versus the Total Punch Control. It took some time, but we’ve accomplished that goal.  In FIGHT NIGHT Round 4 it is just as easy to throw fast punches and combos with TPC as it is with the buttons. Gamers will not notice any difference or advantage versus the AI or playing against users online.
     2.  We believe that Total Punch Control gives the user the most authentic and robust game play experience possible. But, at the end of day our consumers are the most important voices and what they say counts. If people want the choice to use buttons versus TPC, we’ll give them that choice.

Q4- Will there be other gameplay improvements that the community has asked about in any of these updates such as improvements to Online or Legacy Mode?

Mahar - Our first DLC pack was almost completed when the game shipped and we’ve squeezed in as many changes as we could. Not everything the community has asked for could make it in. I can promise the community that we’re on the FIGHT NIGHT Round 4 message boards constantly (you can find me posting under EA_MikeMahar) and we’re going to be offering more FIGHT NIGHT Round 4 updates as soon as we can this summer to address issues with Online, Legacy Mode, and more.

Q5- How often will the team be producing DLC updates for gamers?

Mahar - We have an aggressive plan to offer several updates for FIGHT NIGHT Round 4.  Though we can't make any official announcements, I can say the FIGHT NIGHT Round 4 Dev team is going to be around for a long time to support our community.

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)

An exclusive NCAA Football 10 Online Dynasty First look video has been posted on the NCAA Football 10 website. Once you are on the site, scroll down the playlist on the right side of the video player until you get to the Online Dynasty First Look video. After you are finished viewing the video, make sure you leave your thoughts in the comments section below.