Important Issues Facing NCAA 11 Developers

[kcooper47]

Hey guys. I'm a long time lurker here. Not many posts and even fewer threads. I'm just someone who likes NCAA football and likes to learn from you guys. I wanted to post this in hopes that someone from EA, or someone who's communicating with the developers might read it. I've got one major issue with the game's fantastic online dynasty feature and I think it deserves some serious consideration by the folks at Tiburon.

The most unique thing about FBS football is that the regular season acts as a sort of playoff. While that's a controversial topic, the fact remains that any one game on a team's schedule can decide their fate. If Texas gets beat by lowly Wyoming, then our BCS Championship Game would have looked different. The same holds true if Auburn had upset Alabama. That's what makes college football so fun. Every game is of dire importance.

With that in mind, I think that the developers need to seriously consider tightening up online dynasty play. I've had too many issues with connections going out during important dynasty games. In online dynasty, there ought to be a way for a user that loses connection to rejoin his game (in a timely manner of course). I mean, I can leave a Call of Duty Deathmatch and rejoin it. If my power randomly flickers or my internet gets overloaded, why can't my opponent wait 5-10 minutes and give me a chance to rejoin so we can finish a game in which we've already invested several quarters? Replaying games is frustrating for everyone involved. The developers need to make sure that the integrity of the games is a top priority.

Secondly, there should be an automatic save to offline feature for the dynasty commissioner. Just last night I advanced our dynasty and by the work of some internet goblin, our results were thrown out and all the games had been simulated (dramatically altering the entire season's landscape). I'm not sure what bug causes that (it's the first time I've run into it). But again, the integrity of the season is compromised. We have to reload an offline version and all of our coaching records and prestige has been reset. That's unacceptable.

I want more realistic presentation and game day atmosphere. I want locomotion physics, pro-tak, and top notch gameplay. I want all of those things. But if we're going to use the most popular feature of NCAA '11 (and I don't think it's going out of on a limb to say Online Dynasty is just that...sorry Season Showdown ) then it needs to work seamlessly. That's a lot to ask of a game that has such a short development cycle. But what's the point of Online Dynasty if it doesn't work correctly?

Please EA, tighten up the online component of Online Dynasty so that all the time and energy we expend using it is not wasted or destroyed by power outages or online glitches.

Thanks.

/rant

[Maximus21]

Totally agree, the OD bugs are very frustrating and certainly need to be fixed. The idea about re-joining a disconnected game is a good one and needs to be implemented.