Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

[hazey]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

Last year, or maybe the year before, EA tweaked the progression via patch. They are able to do it, hopefully there will be enough cries for them to take initiative to fix it....again.

[mjarz02]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

The best option would be to allow us to edit all incoming prospects. I dont think that this is possible this year, and might ruin the suprise of recruiting prospects, but would solve alot of issues. People could adjust it to their needs because however EA does it, people are gonna be unhappy.

[NEOPARADIGM]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

Awareness progression needs to be greater. Fine if a recruit comes in at 40 awr, but he should at least be a 70 awr by senior year or could progress to 80-90 awareness.

I read the whole thread, but I'll be damned if I didn't miss it: do we have any numbers on this? Are guys with 40 AWR getting up to those kind of levels, or does AWR progress along with everything else (+1, +3, +2, with the random +6, etc.), meaning we're going to see these same players end up with 52 AWR as redshirt seniors?

You know what they should do is correlate AWR with experience in some way. Say, 1 AWR point for every 50 plays he's on the field or something. A four-year starter would stand to gain roughly 48 AWR points over the course of his career; a two-year starter earns 24 AWR points, etc.

[youALREADYknow]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

The best option would be to allow us to edit all incoming prospects. I dont think that this is possible this year, and might ruin the suprise of recruiting prospects, but would solve alot of issues. People could adjust it to their needs because however EA does it, people are gonna be unhappy.

Spending a full day each offseason is not the best option

[Pull n Pray]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

Here is a graph that illustrates how the talent is balanced among teams in NCAA10 and NCAA11 (many years into the dynasty). For the sake of simplicity, the graph groups by the base letter and ignores +'s and -'s.

As much as people complained about there being too many elite teams in NCAA10, the distribution of talent was a near perfect bell curve. It just ranged from A to C instead of from A to D.

NCAA11 does not appear to have this balance. My NCAA11 dynasty illustrated in the graph above has 22 D- teams. Imagine that 10 of these teams would actually be rated F if there were such a rating. Here is what the graph would look like then:


Nearly perfect, right? I think people get too caught up in the letters and numbers that are used to rate players. They don't have any absolute meaning; only relative meaning. Whether your rating system goes from A to D, A to C, B to D, or Q to S makes no difference as long as there is a bellshaped distribution that allows you to distinguish between the good teams and the bad teams. The problem with recent NCAA games is that the curve noticeably shifts onces you get deep into your dynasty. In NCAA10, it shifted to the right. In NCAA11, it shifts to the left. Far enough to the left, in fact, that the very worst teams are no longer accurately represented by the scale (they are all just D-). This doesn't ruin the game, but this does detract from the fun factor.

I've been using Kansas, and I'm in about year 7 of my dynasty (simmed the first 4 seasons). I started off rated a B- team, and eventhough I was pulling in some pretty highly ranked recruiting classes, after 4 years, my grade had decreased to a C+ instead of going up. However, I knew my team was getting better relative to the other teams out there. My first year, I went 6-6. 2nd 8-5, and my 3rd and 4th seasons, I went 9-4. My team increased from 3 star prestige to 5 star, and all my pitches had improved. I started actually playing the games in year 5. Eventhough I was a C+ team, I was preason top 25. I won the national championship and landed the #1 recruiting class. Starting my 6th season, I was finally back to a B-. Got the #1 recruiting class again, and now in my 7th season, Kansas has a letter grade of B; finally better than it started with.

So eventhough I was improving relative to the other teams out there, it didn't feel as gratifying as it should have because the NCAA as a whole was getting worse. The game is still fun to play, and it still plays well. You just have to make a mental adjustment and know that these letter grades don't mean the same thing as they did the 1st year. This takes away from the immersion factor.

Ideally, the aggregate talent level in the NCAA should be the same in year 10 as it is in year 1. There are 2 ways to make that happen for NCAA11:

1) EA patches the game so that incoming recruits are rated higher.
2) We manually edit the rosters and lower the ratings of all the beginning players. Obviously, this would be a ton of work. We'd have to find a formula that, when applied equally to every player in the game, would lower every team's rating by about 1 letter grade.

Creating a recruit/progression system that keeps the aggregate level of talent across the league consistent to where it was in year one is apparently harder than it seems like it should be. Because this is the 3rd NCAA game in a row where things get out of whack as you get deeper into a dynasty. I never did any kind of analysis on this type of thing for any of the games prior to NCAA'09, so maybe this has never been perfect. But it was close enough that I never felt motivated to look into it.

Going forward, EA, you might consider a different system altogether. Hide the numerical ratings of players and teams from the user, and instead only show a letter grade. But you should grade on a curve, every year having the exact same number of A, B, C, D, and F teams and players. It could like this:

A+: #1 most talented team (based on the numerical rating we never see)
A : 2-5
A- : 6-12
B+: 13-22
B : 23-35
B-: 36-51
C+: 52-69
C : 70-85
C-: 86-98
D+:99-108
D :109-115
D-:116-119
F :120

It would work the same with player grades; both their overall grade and their grade in each attribute category.

One potential problem with this rating system is that it could mask an excessive amount of parity. But unrealistic parity isn't the problem. The on the field results in this game are pretty solid. This type of grading system would eliminate what is essentially a cosmetic problem.

[JJ_Bills9]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

We don't need the progression fixed, the ratings of the incomin recruits need to be fixed.

I keep seeing posters say that there are a ton of bad teams every year. No, there are a ton of average teams every year, and a few awful teams.

The vast majority of college football teams should fall between the B to C- range in this game. Only 12 to 18 teams should fall into the D categories every year.

In reality, there are 8-10 teams with a real chance at winning the title every year. Then there about 70-80 more teams who are fighting to get the remaining bowl slots. The on-field play suffers as well as imported draft classes because of the low ratings.

[mjarz02]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

Random teams:

Arizona
QB - 68 ovr, 58 awr, junior
HB - 75 ovr, 63 awr, 87 agi, senior
WR - 72 ovr, 67 awr, 60 agi, junior

Auburn
QB - 78 ovr, 69 awr, sophomore
HB - 91 ovr, 64 awr, senior --- 92 spd, 82 agi, 88 acc
HB - 87 ovr, 56 awr, junior --- 91 spd, 98 agi, 86 acc


Immediately I can tell you some of the issues:

#1- The 1*/2* recruits are rated too low. I think 50 needs to be the floor of the recruits.
#2- Agility for WRs/CBs is too low across the board. Highest agility is 87 for WRs. Speed is fine though, two 99s.
#3- Awareness for HBs/FBs/WRs is too low.
Top Awareness:
HB - 89...then drops to 80
FB - 76
WR - 83...then 76

LE - 67? Seriously? 67? That's the TOP in the country!!!
RE - A rare 76 lol...he's a redshirt SR...then it drops off to 69
DT - 83
LOLB - 67....yes a 67. He's rated a 94 OVR and has 67 awareness.
MLB - 66?...66? These are the quarterbacks of the defense...a 67 awareness?
ROLB - 79
CB - 86
FS - 98...then 86. This guy is a rarity
SS - 88 - 85 - 80 - 78
K - 89
P - 87


Ok so on second thought it's pretty f'd up...well the awareness is.

Damn

Here is a report on awareness

[MattUMD224]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

Spending a full day each offseason is not the best option

Shoot if we were able to edit players in dynasty I would spend a whole week after every season to edits players based on performance and potential alone.

[youALREADYknow]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

Shoot if we were able to edit players in dynasty I would spend a whole week after every season to edits players based on performance and potential alone.

That's a great feature, but it is not the fix to a design flaw. They need to correct the design so we don't continue to have this problem in future games.

[JJ_Bills9]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

That's a great feature, but it is not the fix to a design flaw. They need to correct the design so we don't continue to have this problem in future games.

Exactly, this has been the problem with basically every next gen sports game. There are too many design flaws in every released game. Really, it should be every companies goal to not have to patch their games. Why is so hard to get good QA people. This is something that would have been noticed early on if they had gamers like us working for them.

[joejccva71]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

So tell me guys, does this potentially ruin your dynasty because you know that your lower tier team will always be just average no matter how well you recruit or how well you think you are building your team up?

[Manmade Disaster]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

It would make offline much easier if they allowed the attributes of players to be edited in franchise.

[youALREADYknow]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

So tell me guys, does this potentially ruin your dynasty because you know that your lower tier team will always be just average no matter how well you recruit or how well you think you are building your team up?

It's actually going to result in the opposite. Recruiting isn't all that hard on this game, so your seemingly "average" 2-3 star school will be able to manhandle all other CPU controlled competition with the exception of the truly elite schools.

[JJ_Bills9]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

So tell me guys, does this potentially ruin your dynasty because you know that your lower tier team will always be just average no matter how well you recruit or how well you think you are building your team up?

That's not necessarily the problem, as if you continue to win, you'll get better and better recruits every year.

The problem comes from the fact that winning may become impossible if your team is so awful because the recruits you get your first 3 or 4 years are going to be flat out bad.

[ghettoqball]

Re: Is Dynasty ruined down the road?

So tell me guys, does this potentially ruin your dynasty because you know that your lower tier team will always be just average no matter how well you recruit or how well you think you are building your team up?

I don't think it will ruin it for me... but it could. They definitely need to make some changes. It definitely doesn't seem like it will be as fun knowing there are a whole bunch of bad teams with bad players. Plus, half the time I'm just doing sim dynasties, where i take a crappy school and recruit and build them up to a powerhouse. I don't think I'll enjoy building a crappy team up to a mediocre team. And I'm really interested in seeing what this will do to Madden draft classes.

Put back in-season progression, and have awareness progress more in each offseason... and I think they problem should be solved. That would be my solution anyways.