The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

I've played more NCAA Football 11 than I think I've played of any other NCAA ever. The series has taken a giant leap forward since its rather disappointing introduction to "Next Gen" with NCAA 08. NCAA 11 in my opinion is the best of the series.

That being said....I think I've put together the ultimate "commandments" that most folks would agree would send NCAA Football 12 into the stratosphere of greatness. I haven't gotten it to 10 yet..but feel free to add to this.

1. "Thou shalt not giveth every 5 star RB 91 speed with 71 agility and 73 acceleration". I dig the whole acceleration addition this year...I do. But some of the ratings are a bit off. For example, I've seen probably 80% of the top backs in each recruiting class end up with very mediocre speed/agility/acc combos. If I land the #1 RB in the nation...that kid should be the total package. To piggy back onto this..the #1 Fullback in the land should not be 5'10" and 189 pounds. A 5 star Defensive End should not be coming into school weighing 207 pounds. While the acceleration emphasis was, in my opinion, a smart and much needed addition...more tweaking is necessary.

2. "Thou shalt not make Strong Safeties slower than most O linemen". We've all seen it. Strong Safeties..in a word...stink in NCAA 11. Most folks end up moving them to OLB because no one is going to start a Safety in the secondary with 84 speed and 72 acceleration unless they want to get toasted by the opposing Receiving corps. This is amplified when I see MLBs and OLBs with 87 speed and 99 acceleration.

3. "Thou shalt not have Ohio State be the end all be all in recruiting." Seriously...did a Buckeye program this recruiting logic? Literally, every top player in America has Ohio State in their top 5. All of them. Oklahoma and Alabama suffer from this favoritism as well, but man it feels like Ohio State is the god of recruiting in this game.

4. "Thou shalt have Coach Prestige and Stability adjust." These never change. I've won 4 straight Big 12 titles at Nebraska and my Coaching Stability is still a B.

5. "Thou shalt make CPU Read Option squads competent". It is still far too easy to destroy the Georgia Techs, Navys, and West Virginias of the Digital College Football world because of the lack of ability for CPU teams to run an effective Read option attack.

6. "Thou shalt speed up the QB/FB option handoff animation so that it shall be a viable option". The Triple option is fairly useless in that the animation of the QB faking and or handing off to the Fullback is waaaayyy toooooo slooooooow. This allows your opponent to effectively kill either your FB in the backfield or destroy your QB before he's able to turn the corner. Speeding this animation up would help this greatly.

7. "Thou shalt remember the rules of the game". Where o' where is my long lost Pass Interference Penalty? Much like Haley's Comet or Bigfoot, it is rarely seen in the NCAA world. If you are lucky enough to see this rare feat in a game, tell your fellow gamers. But don't expect them to believe you. By that same token, clipping and holding seem to skyrocket with just a click or two of the slider settings. As Mr. Miyagi always said...must have balance. In addition, the ability to have multiple and/or offsetting penalties during a play would be great. It's quite frustrating to see my team get called for holding on the same play that the opposing middle linebacker rips the facemask off of my tailback and it doesn't get flagged.

8. "Thou shalt make special teams a bit more special". As with Pass Interference, it seems there are no more blocked punts or blocked field goals in the digital college football realm. In a combined 17 seasons of online and offline dynasties....I have seen a total of one blocked punt and zero blocked field goals. While we shouldn't have the superhuman field goal rejections of NCAA 08, even professional football players aren't this perfect.

9. "Thou shalt have Recruits look at depth charts before committing". I'm Nebraska in our online dynasty. I run the old school triple option of the Tom Osborne era and I run it well. I average almost 400 rushing yards a game....and not a single 5 star scrambling quarterback will give me the time of day. If a team is the reincarnation of the 1995 Cornhuskers, 5 star RBs and Mobile QBs should be beating down that Coach's door wanting to commit. If I return 2 defensive backs on my entire team....I shouldn't go to the prospect list and see a total of 3 out of 200 generated defensive backs that have me in their top 10. By that same token, Georgia should not sign 3 of the top 6 Quarterbacks in a single recruiting season....while they already have 3 Signal Callers on their roster. Blatant roster management/recruiting snafus like these are quite common in NCAA 11 and should be tweaked for NCAA 12.

10. "Thou shalt have kids work in the offseason." If I move a 215 pound LB to the defensive line....I'd like to see the kid eat a few more hamurgers in the offseason. Realistic weight gain/loss in offseason position changes would really help out. Having a player only gain 2-3 pounds in the offseason would get most strength and conditioning coaches fired. Seeing a Linebacker pack on 10-20 pounds in the offseason and reach more of a true Defensive End size would be a welcome addition. By that same token...moving an end to tackle should pay off by seeing a 240 pound lineman move to a 280 pound lineman after 2 years of weightlifting and protein shakes.

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA 12
 

I agreeth with all of these!

Some of those 5 star backs will have like b or B+ speed across the board, but when I'm looking for that Lamichael James type gamebreaking speed, I sort by the 40 times...

Hey look, this 5 star RB runs a 4.24 40!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *presses y for more info*

Speed: A+
Agility:C
Acceleration:C-

Me= :,(

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA 12
 

It is hard to find a speed guy with all A's in accel, speed, agility and find a power back with A truck or B strength.
Unless they are JUCOs

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA 12
 

"Thou shall give the user the ability to fully edit players inside dynasty mode." All the issues we see with recruits could be fixed if they would give the gamer the power to do so. No I don't want to edit hundreds of players but if it improves the game then I will. I hate the way they tried to do ratings in NCAA 11. I have yet to find the pure speed guy. My best back had 84 speed but 97acc and 91 agl. Not my back with 96spd but 70's for acc and agl. He got killed every time he touched the ball because it took him so long to get up to speed. I could have fixed that but for some reason we can't edit players inside dynasty mode. I forgot to mention that player 1 with 84spd was 6'2" 235lbs and player 2 with 97spd was 5'9" 187lbs. I'm sorry but a kid the size of player 2 that can't get up to speed faster is not playing SEC football.

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA 12
 

Make team style mean something. You can do this with a coaching carousel of some sort. It gets old controlling FSU and playing Ga Tech and dominating the option every time. 20 years down the road, the head coach should be gone and a new coach with a new system should be there.

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA 12
 

I will seond that and has been needed for years now.

Thou shalt not have 235lb 93 speed or 188lb 80 speed running backs. (need power and scat back classes, along with running and pocket qb classes)

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

Agreed on all points AA.

About the recruiting, it is ridiculous how good Ohio State and Alabama are. I'm in year 2023 of my dynasty and Ohio State & Alabama are dominant every year. I don't expect them to fall off the face of the earth, but to maintain top 5 status over the course of a decade is very difficult. It would make dynasty more interesting to have teams rise and fall more often.

And to add, Thou Shalt not have teams schedule OOC opponents in week 14 and week 15. I do want to see Ohio State end the season playing Bowling Green, that's blasphemy. The last game should be Michigan. Rivalry OOC games and the independents would still be scheduled, but 90% of teams schedule OOC games to end the regular season in NCAA 11.

I'll add...
Thou shalt not have the CPU teams recruit 8 QBs, or excessive amount of players at any one position. I hate seeing teams not filling their needs and ending up with an absurd amount of QBs or HBs.
The depth chart issue is kind of included with this.

Thou shall allow full web capability for the entire Online Dynasty (including all off-season duties). All you need to turn the game on is to play the game.

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

I saw one time 3 kickers had temple as there #1 team...:58:

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA 12
 

Stuff has always been bias in NCAA for years now.

1. Best passing QBs always come from California.

2. Best lineman always come from Texas.

3. Speed guys always come from Florida.

4. Ohio St, Florida and Alabama is always in somebody's top 5 no matter what their position is or play style is.

5. Smaller schools always have the worse ratings for players, never mind the fact the guy was an all american, we will give him a 50 overall with 50 awareness, we don't care if he is a senior, he goes to Arkansas St, therefore by default he suck. It shouldn't be like that.

6. Make weight actually matter. Why the hell do I see DEs with 88 speed ? But yet scrambling QBs with 70 speed ? Hell I even seen some WRs with 76 speed.

7. Stop thinking Army, Navy and Air Force suck in all aspects of football. Stop thinking their QBs can't throw or aren't accurate. Stop thinking they don't have good pass rushers and CBs. In reality this season each of those schools had a DL in the top 10 for most sacks in the NATION.

8. Thou shouldn't make punts automatic. This is COLLEGE. Where is the bad punt snaps ? Missed punt kicks ? Punt BLOCKS ??????? And in bad weather it should be even more bad snaps in the punt formations and shot gun formations.

When you playing in a hostile stadium that is rated in the top 25 toughest places to play, if you losing or the momemntum is going against you, then damn it your center should be messing up every once in a while, like snapping it over your head, skipping it a long the ground, snapping it too wide, etc.

9. Make weather effect player morale. IF you got a school like Florida playing at Wisconsin or Michigan during the fall when it is cold outside, the coldness should effect the warm weather team, like it does to teams in REAL LIFE.

10. THOU SHALL NOT RELEASE, RELEASE DAY PATCHES ANYMORE. They should wait a week or two after release day before they release a patch. That way they can get all the info and feed back they need from the retail version of the game.

Last year they jumped the gun and killed the cpu QB scramble AI right off the bat with their release day patch. It is a shame too because being it was a release day patch, 98% of their customers probably didn't even know that the CPU QBs scrambled a good amount by default before that patch.

So hold off a good week or 2 after release before you start releasing patches.

11. Thou shall record all new commentary.

12. Thou shall give us a pre game, halftime and post game show, along with a dynasty show.

13. Thou shall give us injury reports in a timely manner. I shouldn't be hearing about my star guy got hurt 2 plays later.

14. Thou shall fix the kick off and punt return game for both human and cpu. I have yet to have the cpu return anything more then 10 yards. Return rating don't mean jack.

15. Thou shall give us either a scramble slider or scramble attribute. And what ever that rating is, shall dictate how often that player scrambles.

16. Thou shall give us a priority attribute for players. The higher the number is, the more passes and touches shall come that player's way. Slot WRs shouldn't be the number one receiving yards leader on the team.

17. If I sack you 3 or more times in the 1st half, that should make you more fearful and therefore you be more quicker to scramble because you don't want to get knocked on your butt anymore. Just like if I pick off your passes too many times in the 1st half, the coach should change the game plan right there and start having his team run the ball a little bit more for his QB can calm down.

Thou shall FINALLY return multiple playable camera options such as user-defined cam, overhead cam, blimp cam and our favorite BROADCAST CAMERA !!!!

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

Thou shall allow us to schedule neutral site games. I hate that the MU-Illinois game isn't at St. Louis, that the MU-KU game isn't at Kansas City, etc... I wanna be able to schedule those games at those places and maybe an occasional game at Wrigley or in Yankees stadium.

And to backup what someone had said previously, I hate that the MU-KU game isn't at the end of the year except in the first season because I'm stuck playing some other conference game instead.

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA 12
 

Here I have a few:

"Thou shalt not come to a complete stop when catching a pass." When your receiver or back catches the ball, he almost always kills his momentum during the catching motion. In real life, QBs hit guys in stride all the time, without them needing to stop to catch the ball.

"Thou shalt add a student section, and the crowd noise shall intensify as you get close to it." The student section is the loudest part of the stadium, always.

"Thou shalt correct recruits speed/accel/agility ratings." Come on, no running back in real life has 95 speed without a good burst. Just not realistic.

"Thou shalt tweak in season progression, so that players having a monster season will see their stats increase by a noticable amount." If my QB throws for 50 TDs in my dynasty as a sophomore, he shouldn't come into his junior year an overall 82 with 84 THP and 82 THA. Great seasons should be rewarded.

"Thou shalt tweak special teams, so that blocking punts and field goals is possible, if rare." Happens all the time in real life, but never in the game without mega cheesing.

"Thou shalt fix the zone read play so that the exchange point is faster." Speaks for itself, the exchange point takes WAY TOO LONG.

"Thou shalt make wildcat viable again." Please?

"Thou shalt eliminate the jumping linebacker, as he is better suited for the Olympics." No linebacker on planet Earth can jump 5 feet in the air to swat a pass.

"Thou shalt make zone defense viable again, and eliminate psychic corners." Zone defense is very broken in this year's game. Man coverage is very overpowered at times. The corner or LB knowing the route the receiver or back is running is very unrealistic.

"Thou shalt finally add in missing fight songs." Seriously, I'm tired of hearing Tiger Rag everytime I score in my Auburn dynasty.

"Thou shalt add a coaching carousel to dynasty." Coaches come and go every year, this needs to be in the game. Coaches also retire after a certain period of time. No way JoePa is still coaching at Penn State in 2020.

"Thou shalt fix dynasty school ratings." If I win a national championship, my coach prestige should go up, and championship contender should go up. A coach's experience rating should also go up over time.

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

Another one: Thou shall give us more options with custom conferences. Let us customize them IN the dynasty and not just before it. Let us rename them if we please. Let us expand them by 1 or 2 teams. Etc...

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA 12
 

This and improvents to RTG and coaches I probably wont even think about playing Madden 12

Thou shalt not have such GLARING omissions.......

such as a halftime show. (C'mon...its 2011)

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

I like a lot of what I have read so far, and I have one to add.

Thou shall give the user ability in both online and offline dynasties to chose which tuner set will be used for that dynasty.

This may be more of an system thing, but I would love to be able to chose which patch to use as well without having to play offline.

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

thou should have off setting penalties.....we should have multiple penalties on any given play...sometimes the penalty is on both teams not just one team ea sports .......

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA 12
 

Definitely agree. I just got done playing a game against Michigan and on one play where my receiver was running a 15 yard out, the DB covering him made the cut on the route BEFORE my receiver even did! Then the DB went on to pick off the pass. If the DB and my WR switched jerseys, I'd say the play was a success. You'd think my WR went up to the line and told the DB he was gonna run a 15 yard out. :brickwall

Good write up, I sitll play this game more than any other I own. One thing that drives me nuts is in the Stat screens. When I go to stats and look at the players it always shows the symbols behind them first....then eventually the team. So when I am trying to look at guys stats I gotta wait for the star...the hotstreak.....the the awards they won, the all american signal....then FINALLY the TEAM they are on! Please change it so the team logo shows up first!!!!

And fix the dang lock up issues!

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

Hey now, I turned down Max Hall and now he's shining in Lubbock so technically I only signed 2 sir.

How about when I couldnt sign a WR to save my life?

I still have nightmares of Alabama stealing my croots while I'm sleeping.

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

Great list and comments all around.

Only thing I can think to add is Thou shalt allow the play-action pass to be useful once again. Even if I've been killing thy CPU with the run, it's defense completely ignores any threat of a run, breaks through thy offensive line in less than 2 seconds and commences to take down thine QB before he can even execute a fake. I've stopped using it all together

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

A big yes sir to the whole list!!. The whole OSU, ALA, OU, TX, FL recruiting bias gets sickning on each dynasty I play. With playing in my Michigan dynasty right, week 10, I have landed 5 recruits, all 4 stars!! 2 visit opportunites with everyone, 2 wins, A+, A-, & A grades and nothing!! And this is freshman recruiting. So I am all for getting this recruiting issue corrected

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

"Amen." Quality list.

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

All the patches did that. I deleted my patches over a month ago and it is a different game. Most people never played the game without a patch since one came out release day. I played the game for 2 weeks after release before downloading the first patch. One of the things it did was made the DE's react better to stop QB's from running all over you. Stuff people griped about from the demo. Without the patch I can run play-action a number of times during the game without a DE dry humping my QB.

Gotmadskillzson said it best that no game should be patched before it even comes out. Two weeks should be enough time to determine what is an issue and what is people just griping.

Thou shalt not tell us "We're been working really hard", then say we didn't have time to do that.

Thou shalt not exclude ESPN/CBS presentation for a 3rd year after having exclusive rights.

Thou shalt not exclude a Broadcast Camera view again.

Thou shalt not prevent gamers from having greater Editing abilites for Offline play.

Thou shalt not limit gamers to using only 12 Team Builder Teams/Slots in a Franchise.

Thou shalt not touch the engine, add touch up paint and expect the community to excited and happy.

Thou shalt not treat "Offline Franchise" as the ugly step-sister because Online seems more popular.

Thou shalt not have WR/TE's catching every pass with their hands only.

Thou shalt not use 0-99 scale for Jump, Strength, Juke, Spin because these abilites are very, very, very small in degree of separation in real life and these animations look gimmicky (sliding/warping/super-jump etc...) when trying to play out the scale during gameplay.


Why is the Dev for the game that comes out a month after this one communicating weekly with the community, but it is "Too Early" to have similiar communications with this game that is so close?

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

+1

Last year was a little better, but I do not understand how I can know more about a game that comes out a month later than this one. I just hope because the team made some good improvements in 11 that they can sit back and just repackage the same game with a couple of vanity improvements.

agree that NCAA 2011 is not as flawless as many would have us believe ESPECIALLY in the Dynasty mode. In an Online Dynasty all the problems that you guys have are way worse when another player has one of those teams that are great at recruiting.

Here are my ten Commandments for NCAA 2012.

1. Thou shall not be able to see the entire field at the snap of the football thus being able to immediately figure out the coverage and pick defenses apart.

2. Thou shall not be -1 behind a crappy computer team in recruiting even though you negative recruited them for hundreds of points.

3. Thou shall not run the counter like its the basic run thus defeating the purpose and design of the play.

4. Thou shall be able to throw a post route against man coverage.

5. Thou shall not be able to turn on conservative ball carry and still break tackles.

6. Thou shall make awareness matter for all players not just QB's

7. Thou shall make recruiting interest make sense in some kind of way.

8. Thou shall make Heisman and other award voting make sense.

9. Thou shall not make Vince Young every other season, a 70+ speed quarterback should be able to run the read option adequately if you consistently make good decisions.

10. Thou shall bring back the 4 play 4 button play call screen instead of the 3 play one button one.

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

This please, the play call screen from last year was great. Please bring it back. Without the "hold trigger to bluff" garbage too.

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

THou shalt not let CPU CB's and LB's run the passing routes before the receivers do on Heisman.

Thou shalt call pass interference on CPU CB's

Thou shalt let Human controlled QB's complete passes to wide open receivers on Heisman.

Thou shalt allow realignment, playoffs, and player attribute edits during offline and online franchises

Thou shalt allow editable recruiting classes

THou shalt incorporate coaching carousel

THou Shalt allow coaching attributes. Great players are on bad teams, but the only way to make a team worse is to destroy player ratings. Players who make it to the next level don't always graduate from Ohio State, Alabama, and for the fifth year in a row Florida State

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

I agree 100 % on the intial list :y220d:

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

The Commandments need to be e-mailed to the game developers ASAP!

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

Smarter DB's in zones.

Harder hitting Safetys to break up passes.

Overall tighter coverage.

Height/weight actually mean something.

Better pass coverage... Even poor scrambling QB's can get outisde the pocket and make crazy throws on the run.

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

This post along with post #32 is why i think they include Sliders......

Post 32 states just the opposite of what is listed in your post. That's why i don't think EA can really make everyone happy because one states the coverage is bad and the other guy states the coverage is too good

Personally I don't really see an issue but kinda use the options available to customize the game and remedy the situation to a certain extent.

I think the reason why somethings were touched with the original patches weven if the game was fine was because of the conflicting information EA gets by reading these boards

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

Agreed. I have always said that the game should play as realistic as the game allows with all sliders on 50 and then users can adjust to their knowledge, ability, and style from there. The problem we have now is that the game is no where near realistic on default. I am currently playing in a dynasty with QB accuracy at 50 / Human Pass Coverage 50 on AA and the CPU, who was an 80 overall with 84 accuracy was over 400 yards on 20 completions. He was 20 - 25 and the only two of those incompletions were due to my defense the others were dropped balls and one overthrow. My defense is not great, but that is a little out of hand when a QB with 84 accuracy is putting it in between 3 or 4 defenders, and when talking about 50 human pass coverage; my guys would be within arms reach and just watch the receiver catch the ball. It gets very frustrating, but this also causes everyone slideritus; where the person is continuously trying to change the sliders for the game.

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

The special teams argument. It's a good one, I think that it shouldn't be as automatic and we should see more blocks and botched snaps. You should be able to control the snap accuracy and power, kind of like the kick meter on Madden 11, then proceed with the kick the way you kick on all of the NCAA games. I also say that CPU jumped snap shouldn't be so strong.

Zone coverage is really bad and man coverage is too good. Sliders only say pass coverage so . . . . . what now?

Re: The "Commandments" of NCAA Football 12
 

I wanna see...

* Offline recruiting fixed - Tired of seeing top recruits always going to Alabama, Ohio State and Florida...there are other teams. Also fix how CPU teams recruit i wanna see teams go after players that fit their styles Ex. Alabama - One back "should go after a Top RB" Georgia Tech - Option " Mobile Quarterback" stuff along those lines and PLEASE!! don't let CPU teams stack up on players at one position!

* Height/Weight Playing a factor - This is a big issue for me. If i have a 6'5 WR who has a big frame ( Something like mike Williams of the seahawks) i would like to see him take advantage of that against a small corner. Ex. if i had my receiver on a curl out. I should be able to throw up a jump ball and my Receiver should come down with it if he matched up against a corner that shorter then he is. Now focusing on the Weight issue. I would like to see this applied to both offense and defense players. i wanna see big behemoths doing battle in the trenches like in the 3-4 defense the NT majority time if a big man so he can draw more attention to himself and free up the linebacker to bring pressure on the QB.

* Coaching Carousel & Coach grades - I really like this idea of having a coach loose his job for not getting his team were it should be. Also coaches staffs should take part in the game " behind every great coach lies even better staff " lol. Now onto coaches grade which i think would be great for dynasties. IMO i think if they add coaching grade it would help out progression in the off-season like if you have a great Wide-Receiver coach the WR should get a little bit of a boost from the way they are getting coach or like a defensive linemen that always bring pressure to the QB should get abit of a boost because the coach help polish up their techniques.


* Bring back some of the old stuff - I would like to see the Dev. bring back some of the other game play from previous NCAA that we liked and implement them into Ncaa'12. If they could do that i bet it would be a game ten times better then any of the other versions.