NCAA Football 10 Blog: Season Showdown: Show Your Skills

[J-Unit40]

Sorry fellas, but I liked the video. It's looks to be way better than NCAA 09. Way better. If they manage to not screw up the CPU AI (QB Choice or Read anyone ) and not make this a turnover fest like some of the previous titles. This sucker will get a ridiculous amount of time in my PS3.

We still have 7 weeks left for information and blogs. Relax. Season Showdown is a back of the box marketing and promotion feature that's just inevitable. Has there been a little more coverage on it than I would like? Sure, but we still just got 2 minutes of videos. I'm cool with that for now.

I love a lot of the new animations (except that crazy stiff-arm by the tailback). The lack of player momentum is a little eye-opening though. Especially, after getting back into APF2K8 recently. Oh, and playing as the DE does look like more of a battle than ever before. Giddy up!

I am still amped!

[thudias]

The last fumble in the video looks odd to me.

[Pokes404]

I posted this in another thread, but I figured I'd put in my 2 cents over here, as well.

I think there are people out there who will enjoy this feature. Now, am I one of them ... no. Are there enough people out there who will participate in SS to validate resources being spent to implement it into the game? We'll see. However, I do like where EA is going with keeping track of how people play. I like the idea of being able to see someone's SS stats before I play them online. If I can see that they're sportsmanship rating is low and they don't have any underdog wins, I can safely assume that they probably use Florida every game and cheese like crazy. I wish that EA would do something more along those lines as opposed to this season long tournament thing.

In short, I like the ratings, especially if I'm able to see my opponent's ratings before playing them online. But I think the tournament aspect is a bit of a waste.

BTW, I liked the video but the pass rush still seemed a little ineffective (but not as bad as 09) and I can't quite figure out that fumble by the Miami QB. Not sure how a QB would get hit high and then fling the ball straight into the air. Everything else looked good to me though.

EDIT: Looking back at that fumble, the Miami QB had his arm cocked to throw a pass. It still looks a little weird to me, but at least I understand the reasoning behind the ball going in the air like that.

[Rivers17ncsu]

atleast got to see a small clip of NC State intercepting UNC lol

[firktaf]

Here's what I don't get about them trying to encourage sportsmanship through Season Showdown. Football teams don't punt the ball on 4th down out of sportsmanship. They punt because there's a low chance of converting and would rather not risk giving the other team good field position. If teams could go for it in real life on 4th down and convert 80+% of the time, then teams would go for the 1st down the majority of the time. If the video game could accurately represent the difficulty of achieving this, then most people would play the game correctly. This just seems like an unnecessary addition to influence playing the game correctly instead of making the game play more realistically.

And, the other sportsmanship areas that I can think of(excessive onside kicks, running up the score, celebrating...any other ones?) won't be as much of a factor as the 4th down punts.

....oh, and it was nice to see the some of the game in the video.

[stevedrumsdw]

Quote: Originally Posted by prowler

CocaCola must have parked a dump truck full of money in front of the studio for such a small feature to get so much hype.

YES LOL

[boritter]

Did I miss the announcement that NCAA is now a gimmicky game for casual fans? Give us gameplay improvements first, then add window dressing.

[Moostache]

For what its worth, the team selection aspect of SS is a circus sideshow...that is nothing more than Coke Zero marketing and stupidity - I understand why it is there, and how it can be forced onto the developers by the bean counters and powers-that-be; but the other aspects of SS, the ones that players' profiles will display and can be measured against what they are doing in games and how they play, will be very cool. As it is now, I find that about 1 or 2 out of every 10 games I play is against a worth-while opponent...knowing in advance that someone is nothing more than a stick jockey with a bad attitude will be manna from heaven to me and many other online players who are just sick of playing these asshats online.

SS for online play is going to be a HUGE improvement simply by being able to see what a player's score in these areas is before playing them. I can guarantee that the people with big Skills #'s and low Sportsmanship #'s will be avoided like the plague and will make my online experience 1000x better just from that addition alone. Anything that offers us better feedback on players is a big time improvement, whether it should have been there before or not.

Player lock is a chance to make the game play differently and to experience the game from a different camera angle - something that is also a big improvement. Playing as a LB and not being able to shift off of that player makes playing defense a whole new experience - even if you could do this in the past, the added camera angle makes it better than the old opt-in way.

I look forward to using that more than anything else - as long as it is enabled for online dynasty play...hell I might start a Dynasty that looks to get 12 guys together who all sim the offense and play only as MLB or SS for an entire season to see who can win the post-season awards or make the greatest number of user tackles and so on. The point being that it offers us new ways to play the game and is actual innovation instead of a reheated NCAA 2009.5 with different player data.

If I were a developer; and I had to read 1/4 of the bile and immature nonsense in this thread, I would officially make EVERY blog from now until the release nothing but Season Showdown - and I would go into excruciating detail about the most mundane parts of it. Have at it Ben...please make not just the next 2 blogs about the SS, make the rest of them nothing more than full-on in-depth essays on stuff like:

Week 1 - Skills
Week 2 - Strategy
Week 3 - Sportsmanship
Week 4 - Loyalty
Week 5 - Underdog
Week 6 - ESPN Classics
Week 7 - Recap them all with a montage (or just expand on something else...lol)

Hell, I would make them LONGER and more boring just to fuvk with the people on the various forums who are acting like teenage girls who got felt-up at the prom...