DDS: College Football 21

[MizzouRah]

No thread for this game yet? I purchased but haven't had much time to dig into it yet with the real world mod.

Anyone playing?

[Lathum]

I got it but also haven't dug in to it. Seems a little clunky, but probably just the learning curve.

[BYU 14]

i have really enjoyed past versions, will pick it up this week

[Atocep]

I'm keeping an eye on it. Would love to hear impressions.

[Vegas Vic]

I’ve bought the previous two versions of this game, and this year they’ve made some great improvements. Their rebuild to the “Au” platform is stunning.

My main beef with this game (same that I had with TCY and BBCF) is the unrealistic scheduling. I do understand it’s difficult for a programmer to replicate college football scheduling, but at least they could get the conference schedules correct, since they’re all cyclical and pattern based. With that being said, at least DDSCF 2021 allows the user to import custom schedules (like OOTP does), so I plan on making my own custom schedules to reflect the real-life ones (nine conference games for Big Ten and Pac 12, correct cross over non-division games, rotation, etc.)

[Sweed]

Thinking if giving this a go. With no new FOF in the foreseeable future a good profootball game is lacking. I know dds has pro but financials, from other's posting here, are lacking. With college relying more on recruiting than dollars this may be the way to go?

Certainly keeping it in mind.

[BYU 14]

Wow, thanks for sharing that Vic, definitely a big upgrade and so much more immersive!

[_dawgfan_]

I'd recommend downloading as a demo and giving it a test-drive. I really wanted to like this game because there's been such a dearth of good CFB sims since TCY got long in the tooth, and there are major improvements in the UI over the last one.


That said, I couldn't get even halfway through a season before I gave up. I just find it too tedious. Some may like getting really granular with recruiting actions and gameplanning, but I prefer something that is less time-intensive and so much clicking. I thought TCY did a good job of getting the feel right without being a slog, and FBCB2 was probably the pinnacle for me of a college sports sim in terms of being fun, realistic enough but also something you could get through reasonably fast.

[Kodos]

Looks like it needs much more variety in the player faces to make having faces immersive. Unless it's a team of clones.

[Vegas Vic]

In addition to doing real life custom schedules, I've also created a custom universe with the 130 FBS teams and 117 FCS teams. The game allows for that; however, it doesn't allow them to co-exist as separate leagues. For the purpose of making the FBS more realistic, I'm only using the FCS schools to play one or two games per year against the FBS schools.

The challenge is to try and keep the FCS schools' prestige low enough so that they get essentially the same talent level that one would expect. However, I'd also like to see some separation between upper echelon FCS teams like North Dakota State and James Madison compared to bottom feeders like Texas Southern and Presbyterian. So, hopefully, the scores will mainly be blowouts with the lower FCS opponents, while the upper echelon ones will provide stiffer competition and pull the occasional upset.

I also think this will help to bring more realistic records for the FBS teams. As it stands, these college football simulation games have the FBS cannibalizing each other's records, and you see a lot of 7-5 and 8-4 teams in the top 25, and sometimes 3-loss teams getting into the playoffs. Also, the bowl tie-ins get really goofy and jacked up because the conferences don't have enough bowl eligible teams to fill their slots.

The non-conference scheduling can now be more realistic, and in fact can be exactly as officially scheduled into the future years. So, instead of Auburn traveling to Oregon the week before they play Alabama, they will play some Sunbelt or FCS cupcake.

So, I'm still tinkering with this setup, but the results are promising so far.

[korme]

So, you can create your own conferences and add teams? Can you put a prestige cap on a conference to prevent it from growing?

[Vegas Vic]

Originally Posted by korme

So, you can create your own conferences and add teams? Can you put a prestige cap on a conference to prevent it from growing?

Yes, in custom mode you can do that. If you play with the stock 130 team NCAA FBS setup, your options are limited. The scheduling is rigid in the default setup also. If you don't want to use the AI schedule, your schedule needs to be exactly 780 games, with each team playing 12 games. In custom mode, this isn't required, which allows someone like me to add 117 FCS teams to serve as schedule fillers for the FBS teams.

I'm still tweaking some things, but my testing is going well so far. I'm playing out the real-life schedule for 2021, and the FBS teams are winning about 85% of the games against the FCS teams, which is a bit lower than the 90% in real-life, but not too far out of the ordinary.

[CraigSca]

I'll take SC State +4.5, please?!

[Vegas Vic]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

I'll take SC State +4.5, please?!

Yeah, those lines are not really of much use. Not really sure whey they're in there, except for cosmetic purposes. Alabama was only favored by 8 over Mercer, and they beat them 70-3.

[nilodor]

Originally Posted by _dawgfan_

That said, I couldn't get even halfway through a season before I gave up. I just find it too tedious. Some may like getting really granular with recruiting actions and gameplanning, but I prefer something that is less time-intensive and so much clicking. I thought TCY did a good job of getting the feel right without being a slog, and FBCB2 was probably the pinnacle for me of a college sports sim in terms of being fun, realistic enough but also something you could get through reasonably fast.

This is where I always end up with their games, to many things to do that I don't enjoy. This and I normally find how the generate the ratings to produce kind of a weird game. Especially in the basketball game the tendencies result in a weird simulation of basketball. If you edit them you can get something more realistic, but that's a lot of work.

[MizzouRah]

I'm enjoying so far, love that it's in the new UI.

[AlexB]

Originally Posted by nilodor

This is where I always end up with their games, to many things to do that I don't enjoy. This and I normally find how the generate the ratings to produce kind of a weird game. Especially in the basketball game the tendencies result in a weird simulation of basketball. If you edit them you can get something more realistic, but that's a lot of work.

I’m with you on this [/snip]

Edit - that was overly harsh TBF: style over substance would have been a better choice of words.

[_dawgfan_]

Originally Posted by AlexB

I’m with you on this. The phrase ‘Lipstick on a pig’ springs to mind

I wonder what we'll have to do to get Jim to make TCY2?

[Vegas Vic]

Originally Posted by nilodor

If you edit them you can get something more realistic, but that's a lot of work.

It's work, but at least games like DDSCF and BBCF affords the user that opportunity.

TCY was a fine simulation in its time, but it had a number of quirks that were irritating to me. The teams, conferences and bowl affiliations were hard wired into the game, and could not be changed. Also, the bowl affiliations for the most part did not mirror the real-life conference affiliations of that time. The game had a fictitious conference, the "Solecismic 8" that was apparently required in order for the game to generate the season's schedule.

In my opinion, there was too much emphasis on academics, and you could rapidly build a powerhouse program by recruiting a bunch of eggheads to boost your academic prestige. Player tracking had some weird quirks, like whether or not the player had a girlfriend.

With the rapidly changing landscape in college football, TCY would require some major changes to have a chance to succeed in today's world. Of course, the coding and GUI would need to be brought up to 21st century standards, and the game would need to split out the teams, conferences and bowl affiliations from being hard-wired into the game. The scheduling logic would need to be updated to get rid of the "Solecismic 8".

Of course, for those who are just interested in recruiting and having a realistic game simulation engine, TCY certainly fills the bill.

[korme]

I'm interested if you're willing to share your work, Vic