Why no patch for 4 team playoff?

[Locke888]

Quote: Originally Posted by mjavon

Why would a company put its employees' time into a project that nets them $0?

Because they love us
And it would take minimal programming

[jello1717]

Quote: Originally Posted by Locke888

And it would take minimal programming

This is absolutely untrue.

[Locke888]

Quote: Originally Posted by jello1717

This is absolutely untrue.

What? The bcs rankings are already there. The bowl games already set. What would be so hard about it? I take it you are a programmer? How much time/work would it actually take?

[jello1717]

Quote: Originally Posted by Locke888

What? The bcs rankings are already there. The bowl games already set. What would be so hard about it? I take it you are a programmer? How much time/work would it actually take?

There are so many nuances that would have to taken into account that would require a ton of testing to make sure you get everything right. Here are just a few off the top of my head.

Firstly, there is no more BCS poll. The new playoff rankings use different criteria (which would probably be difficult to code anyway). The current in-game BCS poll are simply an average of the media and coach polls and doesn't take into account winning conf. championships, head to head, or strength of schedule, all things that the playoff rankings use. As a bandaid you could certainly rename the BCS poll to playoff rankings and keep the logic. It wouldn't be good, but it'd be better than nothing.

NCAA '14 starts with the 2013 season, which has no playoffs so you'd have to keep the BCS around for 2013 (and everything associated with it) and then switch everything else over to the playoffs starting in 2014.

You'd need to know which bowl games would be playoff games for which year and code them to be chosen for the correct years. Right now it's very basic as, for example, the B1G champ and Pac12 champ play in the Rose Bowl, as long as they aren't in the BCSNCG. This would have to be revamped as sometimes the Rose Bowl would be a playoff game and sometimes it wouldn't.

You'd need to add the capability for a team to play 2 "bowl" games if they're in the playoffs. As it stands now, teams only play 1 bowl game and it's not even possible for a team to play 15 games in a season (outside of using the editor and even then you're tricking the game into allowing multiple bowl games). This gets even trickier because as of now, there is only 1 "bowl week." Early December games and January games are all the same "week" and that wouldn't work if a team is playing multiple games during "bowl week." IE. if someone got injured during the semifinals you'd need to advance the week to know if he'd be able to play in the championship game.

Those are just a few issues that jumped to my mind with implementing a playoff "patch" for NCAA '14.

[jeeper26]

Quote: Originally Posted by mjavon

Why would a company put its employees' time into a project that nets them $0?

Why couldn't they make it an in-game purchase? Similar to buying map-packs in first person shooter games?

[jeeper26]

Quote: Originally Posted by jello1717

There are so many nuances that would have to taken into account that would require a ton of testing to make sure you get everything right. Here are just a few off the top of my head. Firstly, there is no more BCS poll. The new playoff rankings use different criteria (which would probably be difficult to code anyway). The current in-game BCS poll are simply an average of the media and coach polls and doesn't take into account winning conf. championships, head to head, or strength of schedule, all things that the playoff rankings use. As a bandaid you could certainly rename the BCS poll to playoff rankings and keep the logic. It wouldn't be good, but it'd be better than nothing. NCAA '14 starts with the 2013 season, which has no playoffs so you'd have to keep the BCS around for 2013 (and everything associated with it) and then switch everything else over to the playoffs starting in 2014. You'd need to know which bowl games would be playoff games for which year and code them to be chosen for the correct years. Right now it's very basic as, for example, the B1G champ and Pac12 champ play in the Rose Bowl, as long as they aren't in the BCSNCG. This would have to be revamped as sometimes the Rose Bowl would be a playoff game and sometimes it wouldn't. You'd need to add the capability for a team to play 2 "bowl" games if they're in the playoffs. As it stands now, teams only play 1 bowl game and it's not even possible for a team to play 15 games in a season (outside of using the editor and even then you're tricking the game into allowing multiple bowl games). This gets even trickier because as of now, there is only 1 "bowl week." Early December games and January games are all the same "week" and that wouldn't work if a team is playing multiple games during "bowl week." IE. if someone got injured during the semifinals you'd need to advance the week to know if he'd be able to play in the championship game. Those are just a few issues that jumped to my mind with implementing a playoff "patch" for NCAA '14.

Considering the amount of programming & AI that goes into a video game, programming a patch to put the top 4 teams in a playoff (and making sure they rotate on some pre-set basis) doesn't seem like it would be that difficult.

[mjavon]

Quote: Originally Posted by jeeper26

Why couldn't they make it an in-game purchase? Similar to buying map-packs in first person shooter games?

I believe, because they are not legally allowed to generate any more revenue from the product as a result of all the likeness court cases/settlements.

[mjavon]

Quote: Originally Posted by jeeper26

Considering the amount of programming & AI that goes into a video game, programming a patch to put the top 4 teams in a playoff (and making sure they rotate on some pre-set basis) doesn't seem like it would be that difficult.

It may *seem* like it's not that difficult, and years ago, I would have agreed with you. But as I've began coding for my profession (which is infinitely simpler than the cosing that goes into a project like NCAA Football), I've seen firsthand the amount of effort & time it takes to write robust and effective code.

Keep in mind that a team of probably 30-50 (guesswork) programmers worked together on this series for an entire year each year, each edition of which was built on top of the previous edition (read: they didn't rebuild the whole game, just enhanced the existing one annually).

No one in this thread is disagreeing with you just to be a debbie-downer, we are simply pointing out the several (legal & business) reasons why a four team playoff patch makes absolutely no sense for EA to take on. It would be a horrible business decision for them to make, and if they did, whichever business exec moved on the project would almost certainly be fired.