NCAA 09 (ps2) Probation Workaround

[Gap Integrity]

I've been doing some testing and was looking for some feedback from the community.

DYNASTY PROBATION WORKAROUND
-set discipline rating to 40%
-set training between 15-20
-recruiting 35-40
The idea here is that the first few seasons in dynasty mode, you have to clean up your roster, and only recruit players with discipline at an average or above rating. Extra points are needed to penalize and are needed to scout during recruiting. Training can be lowered because you now have 17 spring drills to improve all of your players outside of offensive lineman and kickers. Even at 15% training you will still see a handful of players +4 OVR, and a bunch at +2 & +3 respectively.

Penalizing players: with the extra points you have to penalize more than the recommendations. A typical violation is a kid cheats on an exam, they recommend 3 games, give him 4 or 5. The idea is to drop that NCAA interest bar down as quickly as possible within reason. In your first season you will likely see between 4 and 6 violations, and it's normal to see 1 player with more than 1 violation. When this happens, I treat it like real life... if a guy is a troublemaker you get rid of him. It happens all the time. Cut him in the off-season no matter what his rating is. It's not worth the hassle. Within the first 3 years of you dynasty you will see less violations as your squeaky clean players fill your roster, then you can start to slowly lower the discipline bar to the mid 30's and put points elsewhere as needed. It's a process, but with some patience it's worth it.

RECRUITING WORKAROUND
One of the major issues in recruiting is the lack of offensive lineman. This is a simple fix that requires some patience. My thought here is that if you have the patience to play multiple seasons of a dynasty mode logging a ton of hours, then surely you can spend less than an hour each season creating some prospects. I've been creating 50 lineman per season to offset the imbalance. 20 Tackles, 20 guards, 10 centers. A typical 5* recruit will be rated 84 OVR sometimes you might see an 82. I create just a few Blue Chip lineman and a majority are 3 & 4 star guys. Again, it requires a little patience, but to me its worth it. My house rule is none created from my home state or a pipeline state. This issue exists in 09, but it gets worse in 10 & 11 because in those versions you will see a ridiculous amount of 5 star QB's and WR's.

JUMP THE SNAP
This to me is a non issue with 2 things to be done. First thing, you have to change up your snap count... like each play. I know it's a video game, but they do this in real football for a reason. It's necessary. Second, sliders. With proper slider adjustments this game in my opinion plays amazing. I've been using Tone Retro Gaming All-American sliders and they seem to work great.

PURSUIT ANGLES
I rarely see this issue from 08 with the slider adjustments in 09. One thing that seems to have an effect on the game is the sprint button. Abuse of the sprint is what seems to be the center of this issue. Run a sweep, hold sprint, stay behind the line of scrimmage and run straight out of bounds and watch the safties. They won't react until the ball crosses the line. This issue I think is in all of these games, but is punctuated because of the speed of the game overall increasing. Through the years I've become a big fan of only using the sprint button once you are in the open field. Really what happens when you hit sprint, is that it causes the defense to pursue aggressively. Not using the sprint button makes for some beautiful holes and lanes opening up. Abusing the sprint is akin to out running your blockers, the best runners are patient.

Overall I feel this game plays great. The playbooks are incredible and deep. The added dynasty features are nice as well. The player movement is so much more in depth than in previous versions. The older games the only lateral juke you had was the wide hop cut, in 09 you have that along with the quick trigger cuts and the highlight stick that unlocks a bunch of awesome animations. You can combo these 3 into some pretty sweet runs. In older versions the hop juke was the go to, but the hop juke is used much less frequently in real football opposed to the quick cut because you don't lose a ton of momentum, which allows pursuit to close in. I'm big on user control, so in this regard the game is a breath of fresh air.

What's important to keep in mind is that these games were always meant to be fun. We all have different ideas of what that is or how much we can tolerate an issue to achieve a fun experience. Most people are really into dynasty mode. I feel that with this strategy in place you can still have a lot of fun in dynasty. Even if you don't want to play a dynasty this game can be enjoyed. Sometimes I like to play Army-Navy just for the heck of it because I love option football. What I think would be amazing someday is for this community to grow enough where maybe we could have a convention and play a massive tournament in person. They do this in Canada for NHL 94 I believe.

To me 2009 isn't perfect, but I feel it's the most fun version after 2006 because of the playability and added features. For some people the dynasty issues, modding and such isn't fun and I get that. I'm a console guy myself. I feel that in 07 momentum was overdone and caused major problems that were inconsistent. This was the only game I ever felt like early on that the computer just decided that you were doomed to 5 turnovers from fumbles and INT's from deflections. In 08 we know the pursuit issue was a problem. I feel that in 09 these issues were mitigated... not gone entirely, but under control. I feel like this game after 06 is the sweet spot with all the stuff we wish 06 had, and before recruiting was truly busted in 10 & 11.

I love NCAA 06 and I feel it will always be seen as the greatest college football game ever made. It was smooth as glass out of the box (because games had to be then) and easily captures some of my best gaming memories back in that time for me. I feel like any game it has limitations. When I play 06 compared to 09 I feel like the creativity aspect is very limited between playbooks and how the players move on the field.

My last thought on this issue is a question, if they didn't put the little exclamation point with 2 years probation in the top right corner of the team screen, would you really notice much of a difference? If that visual wasn't present and you couldn't see those other teams on probation would it bother you as much? I feel like as long as you can keep your team under control using this method there's a bunch of fun to be had.

I'd appreciate any feedback provided.

[Nflu7]

06 >>>>>>>


Everything else.

[cjnoles9399]

I went back to 06 after the probation thing irritated me so much in NCAA10. It was fun building back up a program that was at death's door because of probation but in the end it was just too much.

It does remind me of a dynasty where I had a true sophomore RB coming off a great rookie season and was off to a great soph year before getting busted for cheating. I suspended him for the season, didn't use him in offseason drills and redshirted him the next which equated to basically getting kicked off the team for a year and a half. Luckily the game didn't have him get busted for anything in his Jr and Sr seasons and he finished in the running for the heisman as a senior. Funny the little things you remember along the way. I think suspending him for the season still ended up costing me scholarships as my guys kept getting in trouble and I ran out of discipline points before the end of the year.

[scarreiro72]

This is great. The pursuit angle issue always bothered me and kept me from coming back to 09. Really curious to try again with this method. I'll let you know how it goes for me