The Pyramid 2017 - Cut Players

[Kodos]

Welcome to Week 1! It's just recruiting for all teams in Week 1.



=============== #6 Washington State Cougars (0-0) ===============
This week, the Cougars are idle.

=============== Texas State Bobcats (0-0) ===============
This week, the Bobcats are idle.

=============== UTEP Miners (0-0) ===============
This week, the Miners are idle.

=============== Memphis Tigers (0-0) ===============
This week, the Tigers are idle.

=============== Wyoming Cowboys (0-0) ===============
This week, the Cowboys are idle.

=============== Florida Atlantic Owls (0-0) ===============
This week, the Owls are idle.

[Julio Riddols]

cruitin's done.

[CU Tiger]

Handed out some hundreds...hoping for some committs early.

[Grammaticus]

UTEP Complete.

[MacroGuru]

Complete.

[Kodos]

Games! There are actual games in Week 2!

[Julio Riddols]

Time to teach these poofters a lesson in how to really grab a sweaty man and pull them down.

[Julio Riddols]

Side note: My defense is going to be total shit this year.. My god, there is just nothing there.

[Julio Riddols]

In a sign of things to come, we struggled defensively all game long and barely squeezed out a 42-35 win thanks to a 4th quarter 4th and 15 conversion from my own 22 with about a minute left. We managed to get a 44 yard bomb on a broken play and with about 8 seconds left we punched it in to seal a win. If we had failed to convert or even punted on the 4th and 15, we're probably 0-1.

[MacroGuru]

Recruiting complete.

[CU Tiger]

So we fell behind 31-7.
We surged back to win 45-38 in OT.

Had to let them score with 40 seconds to go. Then score with 6 seconds left to force OT. A TD scramble on 4th down gave me the lead and we managed to hold them scoreless for the Victory.

There were a total of 7 turnovers in this game. Including 2 "random" fumbles by my RB. Actually liked seeing that. A random dive up the middle and the ball popped out. Shocked me.

Really excited about our True Freshman CB Zach Hardy. He was a late recruiting win for me and many saw him as a WR. He had 4 tackles, a ssack and an INT in his first collegiate game working as our Dime Back.

Likewise Freshman WR Hayden King made his first career grab a 21 yard TD to force OT.

BTW looks like our gameplay settings have changed on my end, but no complaints it was fun!

[Kodos]

No sliders have been touched in quite some time.

[CU Tiger]

Originally Posted by Kodos

No sliders have been touched in quite some time.

Strange.
I looked at them after my game because it just played "different" and they were all over the place.

Just logged back into dynasty and looked and totally normal. NOt sure whats up with that.

[Kodos]

That's really odd. Like I said, it's been a long time since anything changed. (I actually think we should tweak them to make things harder, but I've lost that battle repeatedly in the past.)

[Julio Riddols]

I think the best way to make this game harder is to limit recruiting classes in some way or something.

What if we could only recruit 2 stars and under or something equally drastic?

[Julio Riddols]

I think we start a 3rd dynasty, haha.. Created cupcake teams, all from Alaska, all replacing independent teams. No ladder/pyramid, no conference changes. Can only recruit 2 stars and under. I think this would increase the challenge permanently while adding some interesting wrinkles in other ways.

[Julio Riddols]

In fact, I think I might try doing this in a solo career.. ought to be interesting.

[Kodos]

It should be set in Hawaii. Might as well enjoy a nice climate!

[CU Tiger]

I'm in another online league with some old college buddies.

Now we have a weird rule set that many might not find enjoyable. Namely we dont play any games (sim) until bowl season. And all H2H games are simmed.

But our recruiting rules are very simple but make the game a much tougher world than you woud think at first blush.
2 rules:
1) No team can sign more than 15 recruits per season. Over signs are cut in order of signing. If multiple commits at offseason stage put you over the number team owner can pick which player to keep.
2) During the cut phase the rest of the league chooses (via vote) one incoming freshman to eliminate from your team and you must cut them.

So what happens here is 14 x 5 = 70
If any player transfers or leaves early you have a walk on on your roster.
You have to be careful who you take early because it may mean you cant take stud late.
You have to over recruit a position of need. If you need a Qb and you sign a stud the league is cutting him, so you better sign two.
If you dont sign all 15 one year you are going to have walkons.
There is also a strategy that has developed of quickly signing 2&3 stars. and then just trying to sign as many players as posisble to force them to be cut.
I think one team last year had a starting QB (converted RB) ranked 48 OVR.

Like I said we have 10 owners who know each other well, we quite enjoy just screwing with each other. And we play 1 stage every day 7 days a week. Dont make the 9est deadline tough crap the league moves on. Its kinda fun though because a season lasts 2 weeks.

[Kodos]

Eh, anything where you don't actually play the games is a non-starter for me.

As for Julio's suggestion, I think a 3-star and below recruiting rule could be fun.

[CU Tiger]

Right I asnt suggesting the sim only for this league. I wouldnt be interested in that. And the only reason we sim only is to keep it at a stage every day.

Im not even suggesting the other recruiting rules be adapted, just giving ideas of something Ive used.

The slider set we currently use would suck out loud with only low star players, mainly because of the speed differential.

I personally like the choice of fewer stars and let folks pick where to apply them. But im down with whatever you throw out Im not leaving until I win me a natty somewhere.

[Grammaticus]

UTEP paid back Texas A&M for the loss last year. It was a good old school ass whippin.

[Kodos]

"Revenge." Is there any sweeter word in sports?

[Kodos]

We're on to Week 3.

[Julio Riddols]

Wow.

We started off down 21-0 to Michigan, in Michigan. We had one first down, things looked bleak at the end of a quarter. Second quarter, we stop the bleeding and get a stop, then we get a score of our own. 21-7 going into half time.

We get the ball to start the second, and we march slowly down the field, picking and poking our way in for another TD to make it 21-14. Our defense was better in the second half than it was in the first, so we managed to get Michigan into a FG situation to make it 24-14 Michigan.

We get the ball back and again slowly march down the field to get another score. We barely convert on several 3rd downs, but we make it and that is all that matters. We score right at the beginning of the 4th quarter to make it 24-21 Michigan. Coming back, they drive right down our throat with some killer back breakers on 3rd down, pushing their way inside our ten, but we manage to barely stiffen enough to hold them to another FG attempt. 27-21 Michigan.

About 4 minutes left, we have our shot to take the lead. We drive down and score with relative ease, but we score with 2 minutes left, which is probably way too much time. It does give us the lead, however, 28-27.

They come back out and surprisingly we get a 4 down stop right off the bat to take the ball over and seemingly ice it with one first down. We get the first down, but we also score to make it 35-27. There are about 40 seconds left. Michigan has one time out.

They drive down the field slowly, but efficiently enough to be at our 40 yard line or so with a few seconds left, everything on the line. We drop into prevent, the ball is a jump ball and it comes down right in front of the end zone.. One of their guys has it. Unbelievable catch. But that's okay though, he clearly comes down before reaching the goal line and time has run out.

Or maybe they scored. The ref says that dude scored somehow.

I don't need to see a replay, I want to challenge. I can't. Not reviewable. Son of a damn bitch, are you kidding me?

Anyway, anticlimactic ending, we stop the 2 point conversion attempt and win 35-33. We had to earn every damn ounce of this one though, and it almost got way out of hand before I could do anything.

[CU Tiger]

Julio....I just played about the same game.
Won 30-27 in OT against unranked SC.

Starting QB out for an extended time with a broken shoulder. He is also my ONLY dual threat QB.

Stats will look good for the game but NOTHING was working except for a few rb flare passes and an occasional busted coverage.


Tough tough game but we won.

[Julio Riddols]

It certainly hasn't been an easy season so far, heh. I kinda like earning the wins though, almost as much as I like trying to score 80 a week in the Ladder.

[Julio Riddols]

Also, tough loss on the QB. It definitely complicates things to be stuck with a pure pocket QB. They might generally have better arms, but you can't extend plays and the blocking must be solid for them to be as effective as a guy with some athleticism.

[CU Tiger]

Originally Posted by Julio Riddols

Also, tough loss on the QB. It definitely complicates things to be stuck with a pure pocket QB. They might generally have better arms, but you can't extend plays and the blocking must be solid for them to be as effective as a guy with some athleticism.

The thing is I have a 99 OVR Pocket Pass QB who I bench in favor of an 82 OVR DT.


I love the option. GOing to have to edit my playbook to add pass plays

[Julio Riddols]

Yeah, it double hurts when you are used to an entirely different style of play. I know I almost always forget when something like this happens, and inevitably I run a play or attempt a maneuver that is entirely outside a guys skill set every quarter or so. I had a pocket QB take over for an exceptionally athletic scrambler type in a single player game and must have gotten sacked about 10 times in the first game with him because I kept trying to roll out of the pocket.

[MacroGuru]

I will have my recruiting done tomorrow night.

[Julio Riddols]

I will have internet at my new place by the weekend. Pretty excited, upgraded to a package that is 6 times faster than my old one. I'm hoping that helps with the lag issues that have plagued a few of my head to head games with others.

[cartman]

I played my game last night, but when it went to upload the results, it kept saying the dynasty servers were down. I'll try again this evening.

[Kodos]

Seems like things are getting wonky recently. Get your stuff together, EA.

[cartman]

Still not able to upload results. I've posted on their support forum. Hopefully someone at EA checks it out.

[Kodos]

From looking at OS forums, it appears others are having the same issue. Maybe we need to put things on hold until they iron things out?

[Grammaticus]

Originally Posted by cartman

Still not able to upload results. I've posted on their support forum. Hopefully someone at EA checks it out.

Cartman,

Did you try clearing the cache to see if that would work?

[Julio Riddols]

Clearing the cache worked for me earlier today. 10/10, would bang.

[cartman]

I'll try the cache clearing tonight.

[Kodos]

That sounds like a euphemism.

[cartman]

Clearing the cache didn't work for me. After I cleared and restarted, I went in and tried to make some changes to recruiting before playing a whole game. When it tried to upload the changes, got the same message as trying to upload game results.

[Kodos]

Originally Posted by kwilliam

That is the wrong list of ports, plus it would be on the router.

I got this off of ea's site a while back.

TCP: 80; 443; 9980-9989; 42124
UDP: 3659; 6000; 9570


I'm in year 2027, and I have to retry a few times to connect, but I can get through and keep playing.

Here's another thing you could try. Really, I'm grasping at straws at this point. The website rarely works, and the in-game problems that others have had are disheartening too.

[cartman]

I've always had the ports opened, and even have a dedicated IP address for the 360.

[Kodos]

Cartman--would you rather we advance and see how things go after that, or do you want to try playing your game again?

[cartman]

Let me try playing it again. I'll give it a go tonight.

[Kodos]

Someone on OS said to recruit before your game. If it doesn't give you an error when you're done, it should work when you play your game too. Also, changing your depth chart is a good way to test how things are working at any given time.

[cartman]

yeah, that's how I tested last time. I made a recruit change to see if that would upload before spending all the time playing the game.

[Kodos]

Did it work?

[cartman]

Didn't get a chance to play last night, got caught up with something for work. I'll definitely be able to try tonight.

[cartman]

Was able to get the game in. Unfortunately the outcome wasn't as good as the one I tried for three days to upload.