A Reason Football is tough to make Sim

[Matt10]

Yeah, there's pretty much no excuse for a non-sim approach if it has already been done by EA Sports and another company or two. People don't realize if EA would just focus on providing a sim experience, the arcade lovers will still get a great game.

I think we need to stop making excuses for game developers, and start holding them accountable for what is simply the right thing to do.

[Mauer4MVP]

Quote: Originally Posted by thedudedominick

I always wonder to myself if football is too complex of a sport to ever be represented in a video game that would please all of us "sim" players. There are so many little details with football, complex offenses and defenses, as well as tons of different gear. Think about Basketball, Baseball, and even Soccer. Baseball itself doesn't change year to year. You don't have to worry about complete system changes as far as offense and defense go, you just have to make the pitcher/batter interactions true to life as well as the fielding. Going "sim" in all of these areas is much easier to accomplish than it is in a football game. In Basketball there are only 5 players on the court at a time, basketball offenses generally don't have any major changes and from level to level there isn't a drastic difference in the way the game is played itself. In soccer there are 11 players on the field, but at any given time there are only a handful of interactions going on at a time. In football you have 11 players on each team all interacting with each other and responsible for many different things at every second of a play. Each player has so many different responsibilities based on what the other team does it is tough to represent in a video game AI. Hell playing football in real life people have trouble learning schemes and not making mistakes within them. Then we get to the current gen of consoles and the graphics. We all loved NCAA 06, but the lesser graphics allowed us to look past things that we can no longer look past. The graphics getting better and better lead us to complain about things like facemasks, sock length, small jersey inaccuracies. It also highlights the flaws in individual player interaction. Any little awkward interaction is just exaggerated by us having the enhanced graphics that allow us to see that.

I disagree. I think every sport is just as complicated. Defenses in basketball react differently depending on how the players on the court are performing, different offensive sets, personnel, tendencies, if a player is being locked down, or if a teammate is beat on the dribble or a back door cut etc.

[willIam9387]

I think it could be accomplished, take for instance the new revamping passing game which is drawing a lot of praise from people who have the game, or the locomotion system a couple years back. EA has shown with these gameplay additions and refinements that they can present a more sim approach to football, but the problem is especially with football, attention to detail is key. The NBA 2k series and MLB the show for the most part make individual players feel like their real-life counter-part. Serge Ibaka just like IRL can jump through the roof, defend, rebound, but can't do much else. When you watch the Show it's tough to believe at first you are playing a videogame, and with NBA 2k it's been the only sports game I've ever become immersed in.

But with the NCAA series attention is only given to the most interesting aspects of football. There's never been a focus on revamping lineman interactions in the trenches or to concentrate on delivering a true to life pass rush. Quality control is also lacking, as still it seems the heisman CPU FG kicking issue has not been resolved. I remember last year with a couple heisman slider sets on here, I was getting great results to the point where the game turned into a chess match at times, but that was ruined quickly when the CPU decided to kick a 60 yd FG or made a bone-headed playcall. I think creating a more sim like experience can be replicated, but it's really up to the developers and their strategy for the future of the franchise. Are we going to only promote a few features in hopes of attraction customers or are we going to look at our base engine and build a game from the ground up, focusing on every aspect of football. And it's critical they do the latter, because a football game can be ruined if several aspects of gameplay are significantly better than others. Who wants to run on a broken running system? when you can just enjoy a great passing system.

[Hoosier83]

Quote: Originally Posted by Bama_Fan_79

I think some of these folks who think so highly of the old gen games should go back and play them again.

I do. I play 07 on my PS2 everytime I play video games. It's in my rotation with The Show 12 and a few others. I'm in my 6th season and have yet to lose less than 3 games a year in my dynasty, on default AA.
I went from literally forcing myself to like 12 on PS3, to truly enjoying myself on 07.
The AI is still not perfect in 07, nor are the tackling animations, but it plays light years ahead of 12.
That being said, I'm a gameplay kind of guy. If socks and correct uniforms are your thing, you might explode playing a game from 2006.

[GoSpartans11]

It may be hard to capture all the different interactions on the field, but when things are missing/incorrect that are basic football such as:

-All quarterbacks throwing with the same velocity
-Punts only bouncing fowards and NEVER going side to side or backwards
-Piles never formed when someone is being tackled, especially near the goal line
-Runners never held up (always taken to the ground) and/or pushed out of bounds
-Late hit out of bounds, illegal block in the back, defensive holding penalties
-All quarterbacks being able to throw the ball 60 yards on a bullet
-Punting formations used by many teams for years missing (shield punt)
-Not a single reverse or double pass in the playbooks although they have been in previous series
-CPU returners always running straight at instead of around the coverage

Those are some things that many think could be easily corrected, but have not. I do not think drastic changes need to be made, but there are some things that have to to make the game more true to life.

[JerseySuave4]

Quote: Originally Posted by GoSpartans11

-Not a single reverse or double pass in the playbooks although they have been in previous series

i actually never thought about reverse but you're right, there aren't reverses in the game. I guess because of the speed sweep i basically forgot about it but i can't recall of a reverse being the game.

[jeremym480]

I agree that football games are likely the toughest to program. With that said, I think that the current games could be "more sim" if the devs would just fix a few problems that have been haunting their games for awhile now.

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[gator3guy]

Quote: Originally Posted by blkrptnt819

Have you played those games and compared them to current gen? I think the hips need to move during the running motions and the players need to lean more when they change directions. But this gen has taken steps forward in other areas.

Quote: Originally Posted by Pokes404

I have. Much better player movement (real sense of weight and momentum that made players feel different from one another), near perfect passing speeds/trajectories that allowed you to throw any route, realistic ball placement system, better option attack from the CPU, aggressive receivers that tried to "high-point" the ball, non-psychic DBs that could still play sound coverage, realistic swat animations, stat overlays during games, composure system that felt very natural, and better crowd noise/reactions. Not saying the game's are perfect by any means (motion shifting is prevalent), or that there aren't areas of gameplay that the current gen games do better (tackling and blocking AI from the offensive line). But one, why do the old games do anything better than the new ones, and two, how can they do so much better?

Pretty much this. You pop in NCAA 06 on ps2. You run a HB sweep to the sideline. You sprint and you can actually FEEL your HB's momentum pull you towards the sideline. It's night and day between what we have now.

That and the AI was somewhat competent. The CPU could actually sustain a drive.