Draft Day Sports: College Football 2017 Available For $34.99

[binga30]

Wow can't believe what I am seeing. I had been working on a small project for a College Football sim, looks like all my hard work was for nothing.

[FedExPope]

Downloaded a roster file as well as something to give all the team names and sprites correct, they don't seem to want to load together. Starting a new dynasty in general is unreliable. And it won't let me even end the process through task manager...seems like a dud to me.

[canes21]

How does this game compare to Bowl Bound?

[Ohgr]

BBCF/DDSCF Comparsion

Some facts:

Things BBCF has, but DDSCF has not:

- Optional playoff settings
- Different polls
- Coaching carousel
- Staff/Staff hiring
- JUCO recruiting
- Transfers
- Conference changes (not sure if that was a thing in BBCF though)
- Effect of preset schemes (bonus if xx formation is used, malus if xx formation is used)
- Classroom does matter in BBCF, not in DDSCF


Things DDSCF has, but BBCF has not:

- Animated plays (moving dots, a bit more detailed when lifeplaycalling)
- Since made by the same guys who made DDSPF16, you can easily use draftclasses from cf in pf.
- Play Sandbox or online league. You can also play Career, which allows you to control only one team compared to sandbox...I don't know if you can get fired.
- Weekly training, which you can micromanage into the extreme if you'd want.


Recruiting/Player development:

I guess, it's the most important thing for some, maybe even the main reason, why people love playing college football games.

Here is the major difference:

While recruiting is a seperate offseason stage in BBCF, recruiting in DDSCF is a task of the whole year and part of your weekly routine. So it's more of a realistic approach by DDS. I'll go a bit more into detail for DDS, I guess most of you guys know how BBCF works.

How does it work:

- You have a list of all available prospects.
- This list can be sorted by State, Distance to your university, Position, Stars etc.
- You have a pool of recruiting points for the whole year and weekly renewing scouting points to spend.
- recruiting points: The amount of effort you put into each player (max 10 pts/Player).
- scouting points: Used for interviews (5 pts) to unlock all personal traits/skill, and scouting to unfold player skills (20 max, the more you use, the more accurate the result).
- Interviews: You do them once and unlock everything you need to know on the personal side of stats. Is this player a teamplayer, is he a leader, does he prefer a university close to home? Always do interviews.
- scholarships: you have a max of 85 scholarships split into 4 years. If you do not use all of them, you'll still get some players on remaining scholarship, if you don't want them, you can cut the players after signing day.
- Walk Ons: As far as I can tell, there are no walk ons
- Signing Day: We all know the excitement on signing day. Do the commits sign to the university or do they change their mind? It doesn't seem to be that exciting in DDS - I can't tell for sure since in my three seasons, all commits ended up coming to my university.

Development:

- Players can practice and improve during the season
- There is a camp stage to round up the whole season, so you can see how much your team progressed throughout the year and during the offseason
- The practice system allows you to micromanage this. You can create different schedules that focus on different aspects, so you can target weak spots of each player, if you wanted to do so.


My personal opinion

Weakpoints:

- The sim feels relatively dead, because you are the only actual coach in it. There are no coach names, no reputation system for different coaches etc, therfor you can't forge a rivalry with one. Also no situations that affect the players, like a kid being stupid once again.
- I think staff management plays a major role in college football. There is no such thing in DDSCF. You are all on your own with a bunch of kids. (While some nameless guys still report to you, if the players progress and stuff).
- Handling is sometimes a bit off. No easy to access player cards, or sortable player lists by position, while you try to assign the depth chart.
- While playcalling is fun, there is still some lack of the same. During the match you have no ability to tell your players to blitz. Just a bunch of plays and blitzing after gameplan, also no hurry up or kill clock.
- Speaking of gameplan, it isn't very detailed. You can only assign a playbook to a down situation (2nd short, 2nd long), but not relative to the gameclock or score.
- Linemen come with Runblock and Passblock skill, which is a bit pointless, because you can not assign your linemen to running or passing situations, unless you dedicate a whole formation to one or the other.
- Playcalling can be a gamble, if you don't put in the effort to figure out, what the plays do. Which can also be seen as a gameplay feature though, since it requires you to gain experience and keep track of the plays that work.
- Watching games from other teams isn't that enjoyable, since it is still the old animation as you might know from DDSPF16 (ball hangtime is completely skipped, while you can see it in playcalling though - i hope it will look like playcalling one day)

Conclusion:

While there is a whole lot of stuff that still needs work to make this a perfect sim, it is to me a whole lot of fun. Compared to it's precursor (DDSPF16) this is already a major step forward, since it added playcalling to the game and recruiting ofc is one of the major features of it.

And exactly those two things are doing it for me. While I really don't like that there is nothing that adds life to the game, the playcalling itself with the game animated gets me to the edge of the seat and the recruiting and development feels satisfying.

For those who love the numbers: I can not tell much about it. It looks like the numbers are okay if you're using game generated players, but I honestly didn't pay too much attention to it.

So taking this as a starting point for a potential college football franchise, I want to say, this is a good start. The core gameplay is fun, and added and improved features will make me a returning customer for any future version.

Since I can not recommend the game for everyone, I'd suggest you guys go and test it out yourself to see if it is for you. The demo takes you two years through the game, so you can playcall a good amount of games (if you like it) and recruit your first two classes, before you would have to buy it.

Hope this wall of text helps a bit. Sorry for typos/grammar - english isn't my first language.