I've been thinking of posting this for a while and just haven't gotten around to it. These are just random thoughts.
Pre patch---- Score fest, No defense, bad play , ......however, this was pretty much as advertised "wide open gameplay". Newbs (new to the game) could pick it up and not really know any of the little things in the game of football and just have fun.
^ To the people who do know football, all of it's in's and out's and live ,breath, and work all year for college football, the above pre-patch addition was horrible. (worse)
Two months later, we got the second patch, and while I cannot speak for everyone, to me, it was totaly different game. Much better. Not perfect, but better. So I had a thought, maybe ea isn't so dumb. Pre-patch for newbs...post patch for hard core.
Something else that I don't think is ever taken into consideration with this sim.....sliders.....etc.......is the progression of dynasty.
Let's say your just an average player, decent stick skills but won't win any tournaments.....and you take a horrible team like (insert team here) and play in a good conference on Heisman. Default sliders. Chances are , you are going to get your #$% handed to you....as it should be. Maybe you can put together that perfect game where you can do no wrong (we've all had them) and beat someone. When you do, I assure you, it feels awesome.
I guess my point is, after the patch anyway, I am finding I had to move from AA to Heisman because my team progressed so much that it just got easy. (unless I had a brain fart) Which leads me to this post. I had sliders adjusted for this, that and the other, but what I have found is....give the game a chance. Default sliders on Heisman. Couple of reasons.
1) I don't care who argues with me, I know I'm right about this. The instant you screw around with sliders, your players "getting hot" "warm" etc..are affected. It's noticeable and not in a good way.
2) You miss A LOT of features of the game by messing with sliders. Mainly , Believe it or not, on Defense. When I went from AA to Heisman, and default sliders.....all of a sudden I was getting sacks. Corner Blitz's, Linebacker blitz's, even saftey blitz's.
3) The way you play the game .......you will either somewhat agree with me, or think I'm an idiot. If you play smart, tough-d (bend but don't break,,,,blitz at right time, not every play) and have good play calls, AND UNDERSTAND THERE IS A MOMENTUM ENGINE IN PLAY, you will have a great experience on Heisman, default.
Now, just in the off chance EA reads this: Here a just a couple of beefs I still have with the game. AI Playcalling. Deep ball by CPU. And next year the QBA (or arm strength) needs to be cut down in the engine by about 10 points, but the slider needs to still show 50 if that makes sense. To many easy 50+ bombs by human vs cpu. Oline and Dline need to be addressed.
Again, after playing many seasons and re-thinking everything, I believe this is the best edition yet. Can't wait to 2010, .....at least post patch .