EA and ESPN: What Happened?

[VitaminKG21]

So I was watching ESPNU last night and they had a special on the newly released ESPN 150, which for those that don't know are their annual recruiting rankings.

Right off the bat one of their recruting gurus, Tom Luginbill, said something very interesting. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, "we decided to go with the star system that we know is fan friendly, and combine it with our numerical rankings, so that you can really get a feel for the differences in one four star recruit from another".

I almost literally fell off my couch. EA is supposedly partnered with ESPN in all this right? If that's the case, why the hell don't they call up Luginbill and the other scouting/recruiting types and get some input before they release a piss-poor dynasty mode like they did? I just don't get it.

On top of that, look at the rankings:

http://insider.espn.go.com/ncf/recru...0?&season=2010

Notice something? That's right, only 12 5-star players and not a single one over 88 in the ESPN ratings. I would absolutely fine with high rated, impact freshmen in the mid to high 80's like that if there were only 12 in an entire recruitng class, that would be fantastic.

And look at the rest of the 150. The highest rated 4-star is an 84, probably a little too high, but if there was regression and the hidden potential ratings actually worked and held some kids down instead of letting them grow consistently every year, it would be fine.

The only issue I have is the lowest 4-star on the list is still an 80, but if things worked like I described above, I could live with it.

I bring this up mostly though to ask, what the hell is EA doing not tapping a major resource like ESPN and Scouts INC when they sitting there right under their noses?

Thoughts?

[sois]

I believe the ESPN contract is for the radio feed into the game while you are playing, nothing more. I don't remember where I read that, so forgive me for not providing the source.

[fistofrage]

Unfortunately every thread is turning into how EA has bungled recruit scores and progression.

[VitaminKG21]

Quote: Originally Posted by sois

I believe the ESPN contract is for the radio feed into the game while you are playing, nothing more. I don't remember where I read that, so forgive me for not providing the source.

Is it? So the fact they have ESPN announcers and Erin Andrews in the game would be the only other ESPN tie this game has?

If that's the case it's really too bad because they're are seriously missing the boat. And even if it is the case, they have a connection with ESPN, they could at least spend a little time picking the brains of Luginbill and others, I doubt it would be that tough to do.

Here's another interesting thing I came across:

http://proxy.espn.go.com/ncaa/recrui...ory?id=2105482

[VitaminKG21]

Quote: Originally Posted by fistofrage

Unfortunately every thread is turning into how EA has bungled recruit scores and progression.

Yeah, sorry man, but I had to bring this up. Can't help myself sometimes.

[fistofrage]

Quote: Originally Posted by VitaminKG21

Yeah, sorry man, but I had to bring this up. Can't help myself sometimes.

I don't care if you bring it up, but it all revolves around the same issues:

Lack of a decent rating system for incoming recruits
Unreasonable progression in dynasty
Stale presentation
No formation subs
Fatigue is broken
AI run game logic is brain dead
AI dual threat QBs are more of a liability than a dual threat. They run for negative yards every option play and are crappy passers.
Stat engine is messed up in relation to WR stats and RB stats.
Online Dynasty games freeze at a regular rate when playing a human.
Online dynasty will sometimes assign random scores to played user games.

If they addressed and fixed all this, they would have a winner. But anyone can argue that any of the following issues could be a game killer.

They need to fix alot of things with this game. I'm sticking with my original score of a 6, but its getting closer to being a 5 than a 7 the more I play.

[CurryStorm]

Quote: Originally Posted by fistofrage

I don't care if you bring it up, but it all revolves around the same issues: Lack of a decent rating system for incoming recruits Unreasonable progression in dynasty Stale presentation No formation subs Fatigue is broken AI run game logic is brain dead AI dual threat QBs are more of a liability than a dual threat. They run for negative yards every option play and are crappy passers. Stat engine is messed up in relation to WR stats and RB stats. Online Dynasty games freeze at a regular rate when playing a human. Online dynasty will sometimes assign random scores to played user games. If they addressed and fixed all this, they would have a winner. But anyone can argue that any of the following issues could be a game killer. They need to fix alot of things with this game. I'm sticking with my original score of a 6, but its getting closer to being a 5 than a 7 the more I play.

Has anyone from EA, like Adam, ever stated why they haven't done more with the presentation, etc.? I can understand having to drop a lot of older options that very first year of progressing from the older consoles to the newer ones; I don't understand being 3 years in and still having major stuff left out. It would seem that they would incorporate the older stuff into the newer versions before they add stuff like Mascot Games and such. I'm just wondering if Adam as ever said why some of this stuff hasn't been added, like programming issues or something.

[Solidice]

Quote: Originally Posted by CurryStorm

Has anyone from EA, like Adam, ever stated why they haven't done more with the presentation, etc.? I can understand having to drop a lot of older options that very first year of progressing from the older consoles to the newer ones; I don't understand being 3 years in and still having major stuff left out. It would seem that they would incorporate the older stuff into the newer versions before they add stuff like Mascot Games and such. I'm just wondering if Adam as ever said why some of this stuff hasn't been added, like programming issues or something.

it's more of a time issue than anything, since they didn't just take the old-gen game and move it up to this-gen, they had to remake pretty much all the features as new. '07 was the base game, had few features, etc... '08 added campus legend, a redesign of dynasty mode, ability to upload pic/videos to the web, '09 added online dynasty(which likely took a lot of work), 10 had a redesign of campus legend(road to glory and it's presentation), TeamBuilder. (listed the "main" additions, all of them had smaller changes here and there)

problem just seems to be that they are trying to cater to all crowds, which ends up hurting us(the minority hardcore gamers) the most.