Happy New Year and welcome to 2010 (yeah I'm almost 2 weeks late). Time for another topic on NCAA Football 10, one that I think we are going to get a lot of opinions on: Game-play. There are some specific things we'd like to hear about, but really this forum is going to be for any feedback pertaining to game-play you'd like to provide.

First off I'm really interested in what you think of the differences in Madden and NCAA; mainly the changes to Game Speed and PRO-TAK.

• Do you like the game speed in Madden, NCAA, or both?
• Should PRO-TAK be something we look at for NCAA?

Secondly what about our new game-play features?

• Set-up Plays
  • How often do you try and set up a play?
  • Are the set-up plays effective enough?

• Game Planning
  • Which do you use the most?
  • Do some work too well? Or not well enough?

• Defensive Keys
  • How often do you Key in on the offensive play?
  • How well do you think the keys work?

I've seen a lot of the feedback about Run Middle, but please leave any comments you have.

And then just anything else you would like to add.

Keep an eye out for a Live Chat on game-play in the next week or so, and make sure you keep checking this forum to add your opinions.

Thanks everyone!

-Russell Kiniry

Designer NCAA Football

Hey NCAA Football Fans! Like I've said multiple times, fantastic chat about Progression. The amount of passion and detail was really nice to see that said; this next chat should be a great one: Recruiting. There is a lot that goes into recruiting players in our game, and I'm curious as to what you think on some pretty key topics:

Recruit ratings:

• Where do you think they should be rated?
• What types of recruits do you want to see? Any types? For example, power running backs vs. elusive running backs.

Recruiting Difficulty:

• Do you find recruiting to be hard? Or easy?
• Do you feel signing players is harder with a lower caliber school?
• Should players wait longer to sign?

Recruits:

• Do you like the topics recruits care about?
• What should be weighted as the "most important" pitches for recruits? Like should more recruits care about Proximity to Home (or other pitches)?

Recruiting Players

• How often do you use Quick Call?
• How often do you move players around on your Recruiting Board?
• What do you think of the Phone Call?

And then just anything you have an opinion about with recruiting.

So like I said a huge chat going into the Holidays. Also make sure you keep looking back here on the forums for news on the next Live Chat, the first one was great in my opinion.

Thanks again guys!

-Russell Kiniry

Designer NCAA Football

First of I'd like to Thank everyone for taking the time to provide some direct feedback for NCAA Football 10 it really helps us in keeping things together instead of filtering through 100's of wish list/feedback posts on the entire game across multiple forums .

With that said I'm very interested in starting with Progression, given the initial feedback from the game and the released patch which changed it. I'm curious about what are your thoughts about the current state of progression in NCAA 10 and was the patch a step in the right direction in your opinion or not? Secondly I'd like to know what you feel is the most important aspect of a player progression both in our game and in reality (personally I feel they should be the same if not similar).

Some examples include:

• A players Potential - Some guys are just going to get good as they get older; sure playing time and coaches might help... but the kid is going to have All American talent
• The Team - Coaches and Facilities build great players; while a recruit has some ability he really can't get much better unless someone helps him along the way
• On the Field - The only thing that matters is what you do on Saturday (or any other day the Sun Belt schedules a game ); meaning that his stats drive how good he can be.

I'll be reading through every post here in my new NCAA Football sub forum and we will have a Live Chat in the near future on this topic, so if you have questions put them in your post. I'll try and get some free time to post as well, but we are working hard on the game right now.

Now that NCAA Football 10 is in stores, we thought it'd be a good time to set up a game with the devs night. For those of you not familiar with this type of event, you will have the opportunity to play a game of NCAA Football 10 with members of the dev team along with members of the EA SPORTS Community and Live Production teams.

The event will take place on Thursday, July 23, 2009 from 5-9pm EDT on the XBOX 360 and will feature several members of our team including:

- Russ Kiniry (EASPORTS RussK) - NCAA Football 10 Designer

- Ben Haumiller (EASPORTS BenH) - NCAA Football 10 Designer

- Larry Richart (EASPORTS LarryR) - NCAA Football 10 Associate Designer

- Greg Heddlesten (EASPORTS GregH) - NCAA Football 10 Associate Designer

- Mike Scantlebury (EASPORTS MikeS) - NCAA Football 10 Assistant Producer

- Will Kinsler (Raczilla) - EA SPORTS Community Manager

- Justin Dewiel (Dewiel) - EA SPORTS Community Manager

- Eric Gray (Emantx) - EA SPORTS Broadcast Producer

- Rob Thompson (SAMamboking) - EA SPORTS Broadcast Host

- Jason Thompson (PrimetimeSA) - EA SPORTS Broadcast Host

*Please note that each team member's gamertag is noted in parenthesis above.

While we'd like to play a game against everyone, we realize that we are only going to play against some of you during the event so we are encouraging everyone to play games against each other and upload the highlights to beta.easports.com for the rest of the community to see. We will be creating a thread in the NCAA Football forums around the event for everyone to interact as well. On our end, we plan on recording and posting a few of the games we play on the site along with a recap article so that everyone can take part in the event. This is your chance to be the first EA SPORTS Community member to beat an EA SPORTS employee in NCAA Football 10. Don't miss out!

Good luck and make sure you are online and ready to go on Thursday July 23, 2009 at 5pm EDT. For those of you planning on participating, let us know and if you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below as well!

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)