NCAA Football 12 News Post

NCAA Football 12 Blog - Custom Conferences

04:22 PM - May 26, 2011 by mr janny

NCAA Football 12 developer Ben Haumiller talks at great length about the addition of custom conferences in today's blog at EA.com.

This addition ties in with what seems to be the team's overarching goal of providing users with more customization options throughout the Dynasty mode this year.

Quote:


	This is without a doubt one of the deepest features added to the game in years. With conference membership movements, conference rule changes, and editing BCS bowl tie-ins the combinations you can make in your Dynasty are almost endless. Plus, you can make updates in future years of the Dynasty, which not only allows you to make updates based on changes in the real world, but also allows you to make whatever changes you prefer to see in your Dynasty.

Check out the rest of the blog to get all the details.

Game: NCAA Football 12Reader Score: 7/10 - Vote Now
Platform: PS3 / Xbox 360Votes for game: 104 - View All

NCAA Football 12 Videos

Member Comments

# 41 dochalladay32 @ 05/26/11 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by justblaze09


	No you play against 4 1-AA teams, which means they have to win 9 games to be Bowl-Eligible. It's not ideal unless they made the 1-AA teams as good as low-level 1-A teams.

I dont know about that. Although, if they do implement the real FBS bowl eligibility rules, that means more bowl bids will be available. Anything possible to give more at large bowl bids so rearrangements yield more positives than negatives. But if those FCS games are treated as conference games, then they just need the usual 6.

# 42 Wildcats302 @ 05/26/11 08:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by justblaze09


	No you play against 4 1-AA teams, which means they have to win 9 games to be Bowl-Eligible. It's not ideal unless they made the 1-AA teams as good as low-level 1-A teams.

If this is the case then I'm fine with this. They should have to win 9 games to make a bowl if they get to play 4 I-AA teams.

# 43 dochalladay32 @ 05/26/11 08:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skull


	except that NCAA doesn't follow bowl eligibility rules, and the most important thing in the game is winning, so beating those 4 I-AA teams will help them increase their prestige. big fail on EA's part

??? The NCAA doesn't follow their own eligibility rules? They make them lol. I'm not going to dig it up, but there is a rule about how many FCS wins you can use in a number of seasons to apply towards bowls. They may be able to use those wins for one year, but the next few seasons, they would need to go undefeated outside of those games to make a bowl game.

And it wont' increase their prestige. Think about it. They basically have 4 teams that are rated D+ at the best. If you were doing a dynasty and made all your OOC games against the generic FCS teams, do you think you would have a good strength of schedule? I doubt that at 12-0, with 9 games against the FCS (4 team conference, every other game against weakest opponent possible) that you would help your case. If you do, that is another flaw.

# 44 jwilphl @ 05/26/11 08:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dochalladay32


	No, you only play each team in your conference once just like now; in order to reach 7 conference games, you play FCS teams. I'm hoping they just mean those games are filled by FCS teams and they don't actually count in conference standings. It isn't much better, but it is more realistic at least.

Ah okay. That almost sounds worse to me. I suppose it is more realistic, but how realistic is it to play 4 FCS schools--especially fake ones like FCS Southwest or what have you? I don't know any teams that play more than one.

That was a pretty poor design choice.

# 45 dochalladay32 @ 05/26/11 08:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jwilphl


	Ah okay. That almost sounds worse to me. I suppose it is more realistic, but how realistic is it to play 4 FCS schools--especially fake ones like FCS Southwest or what have you? I don't know any teams that play more than one. That was a pretty poor design choice.

Yes, it could have been done much better. As long as they don't count in the conference standings, I'll be a tad more content. Just seems like laziness that they classed all conferences with fewer than 8 teams together. I'm hoping the FCS games are a last resort, but it doesn't sound like it. It should at least try to schedule games with other independents and teams that are lacking games, but I would not be surprised if you saw a ton of FCS games... but in the scheme of things, for my plan to create retro alignments, makes more sense. Schedules were only 10-11 games back then so a 12th game against a cupcake for many teams I can tolerate.

# 46 Rivals @ 05/26/11 09:19 PM

Still no word on whether conference patches will be adjusted to schools moving to new conferences in the game. Alabama will play with a SEC patch no matter what conference they are in.

# 47 dan_457 @ 05/26/11 09:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skull


	the rule is that you can only count 1 1-AA win towards eligibility, but in the NCAA games, that rule is not enforced. in the NCAA games, winning is the most important thing to making prestige go up

Actually I think NCAA 11 does have this enforced. One year I took navy and and gave them as many FCS teams as I could(not sure why I did now). They ended up either 11-1 or 12-0, but didn't even go to a bowl game due to lack eligible wins.

# 48 moylan1234 @ 05/26/11 10:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skull


	that was in NCAA 11...i cant imagine they took it out

no it wasn't. field art was dynamic, but uniform art was not

# 49 Tovarich @ 05/26/11 10:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jwilphl


	That 120-team limit better be gone next year.

It will, but it won't. There will be more than 120 teams in 1-A, with some schools moving up-mainly to fill the WAC, so in that sense, the limit won't be 120.

But in spirit, you probably won't be able to increase whatever the actual number is.

# 50 dochalladay32 @ 05/27/11 05:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dan_457


	Actually I think NCAA 11 does have this enforced. One year I took navy and and gave them as many FCS teams as I could(not sure why I did now). They ended up either 11-1 or 12-0, but didn't even go to a bowl game due to lack eligible wins.

Were you ranked? That is the more important question. If not, then what I said it is completely true. If you go to my '78 setup with the Southland conference, there were only 4 teams in it that are currently FBS. So they'll have 8 FBS games max. There is a good chance that conference only gets a single bowl bid to the New Orleans (I put them in the Sun Belt) which is good. Every other Sun Belt bid would become at large and open up spots to the massive list of independents. And then if you do actually go 12-0, your record only looks like 9-0/8-0, which may get you into a bowl game, but I highly doubt those poor prestige games filling up a third of your schedule would help your case.

Skull, you may have seen FCS wins count because it was the first time you used them. The rule is hard to understand. It says you can use 1 FCS win per season over a two year rolling period. Best case, is only one of those FCS wins counts every year, so going 4-0 against those teams only counts once. If I'm reading it correctly, the next year, your record doesn't matter against those teams in terms of bowls because you used your one freebie the year before.

I sold my game back, but seeing as how the independents actually get into bowl games more often in NCAA 11 compared to years ago, I think the Navy case is a good one and tells me what I need to know.

# 51 justblaze09 @ 05/27/11 08:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skull


	the rule is that you can only count 1 1-AA win towards eligibility, but in the NCAA games, that rule is not enforced. in the NCAA games, winning is the most important thing to making prestige go up

Quote:

Originally Posted by dan_457


	Actually I think NCAA 11 does have this enforced. One year I took navy and and gave them as many FCS teams as I could(not sure why I did now). They ended up either 11-1 or 12-0, but didn't even go to a bowl game due to lack eligible wins.

What dan did is exactly what I did the first year Ark. St. was in the game. I gave them 4 FCS games, ended up losing a game in conference, and didn't go bowling. I might have been ranked for a week, but once I lost that was the end of that

# 52 Colt45 @ 05/27/11 10:44 AM

To the people upset that conferences of four will play FCS teams, think of it like this: if the WAC is raided of all of its teams, save four, where are they going to get the teams to fill the ranks? The FCS. So it's no different than that, really.

# 53 Watson @ 05/27/11 10:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Colt45


	To the people upset that conferences of four will play FCS teams, think of it like this: if the WAC is raided of all of its teams, save four, where are they going to get the teams to fill the ranks? The FCS. So it's no different than that, really.

Took the words out of my mouth

BUT IT SHOULD BE ACTUAL TEAMS, NOT FCS WEST, BROOOOOOOO

# 54 illwill10 @ 05/27/11 11:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WatsonTiger


	BUT IT SHOULD BE ACTUAL TEAMS, NOT FCS WEST, BROOOOOOOO

I dont mind there not being FCS Schools, but I was hoping to at least an option to sub at least 4-6 schools in the FCS spot

# 55 Spanky @ 05/27/11 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Colt45


	To the people upset that conferences of four will play FCS teams, think of it like this: if the WAC is raided of all of its teams, save four, where are they going to get the teams to fill the ranks? The FCS. So it's no different than that, really.

I'm not a big fan of spending time playing against a fictional school labeled FCS East, Southwest or whatever. Can't get into it. Takes too much of the realism out. That's why I always customize the schedule of whatever team I'm controlling to replace FCS with a real school.

# 56 TMJOHNS18 @ 05/27/11 12:00 PM

Hopefully in future versions they let you create custom conferences with teambuilder. Being able to design your own patch and conference names to import.

Also, about the FCS scheduling, maybe in the future you could designate what type of OOC opponents your conference plays? If you designate FCS schools, then your conference could loose prestige (especially if you loose). If you want to make the Sun Belt more relevant, maybe you target OOC scheduling with the Big 10 to help raise your prestige. I don't see why they couldn't have the player list 5 or so conference to schedule OOC games with instead of just dumping FCS teams in, sounds like they didn't put enough effort into that aspect.

Going to be interesting to see how making super team conferences end up. Would love to make two 16 team super conferences (top 25 + 7), but then again other conferences will still have good tie-ins and consist of poor competition. Hopefully in the future you can fully customize and even disband conferences. Of course, any newer addition may just be DLC

# 57 Yukon46 @ 05/27/11 12:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WatsonTiger


	Took the words out of my mouth BUT IT SHOULD BE ACTUAL TEAMS, NOT FCS WEST, BROOOOOOOO

They say they cant go above 120 teams....

But all of the blank FCS teams, that we cant edit, are in the game too !

So let us replace those FCS teams with TeamBuilder teams, are atleast let us edit the FCS teams !

# 58 dochalladay32 @ 05/27/11 12:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Colt45


	To the people upset that conferences of four will play FCS teams, think of it like this: if the WAC is raided of all of its teams, save four, where are they going to get the teams to fill the ranks? The FCS. So it's no different than that, really.

That's only good if you are talking the present. I'm going back to make historical alignments. The 1978 Southland Conference only has 4 teams that currently in FBS. All the other teams are FCS or don't play football any more. Now if i wanted, I could do Teambuilder, bring up some of the schools that played back then and switch out the Sun Belt teams that don't exist and some others. But I was content with having my 4-team Southland. They didn't play FCS schools back then (as in they didn't play FCS teams in conference)

So, yes, if you making the WAC of today, that makes sense; but if you making smaller conferences of the past, it is unnecessary. Schedule FCS games OOC if they are lacking games, but don't force a 4-team conference into a 7-game schedule.

# 59 Colt45 @ 05/27/11 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WatsonTiger


	Took the words out of my mouth BUT IT SHOULD BE ACTUAL TEAMS, NOT FCS WEST, BROOOOOOOO

Oh, I understand that. I think it would be better if they weren't called FCS West, for example, and just some made up name like Seattle State, or something. Would be a little better, at least.

I just like to assume I'm ignorant as to why things can't be done in the game and roll with it.

# 60 bad_philanthropy @ 05/27/11 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rivals


	Still no word on whether conference patches will be adjusted to schools moving to new conferences in the game. Alabama will play with a SEC patch no matter what conference they are in.

Would like to know the answer to this as well. I'd be fine even if they simply removed the patch altogether when you move to a conference and not have anything on the jersey. Would be kind of silly to have a Pac-12 team still wearing the pretty bold conference patch while playing in the Big-12 or something.

« Previous 1 234 5 6 Next »

More Links

NCAA Football 12 Blog - Custom Conferences