Chaotic Conference Calls Scramble NCAA Football 13 (Kotaku)

[Steve_OS]

Ben Haumiller talks to Kotaku's Owen Good at length about how the realignment uncertainty affects development of NCAA Football 13.

Here are some of the bullet points, but you should definitely read the detailed article, right here.

• They're working on a scheduling logic that accounts for a 22-team conference.
• They may include it in the game even if C-USA/MWC does not merge. It depends on space and other budget considerations.
• They've had to develop multiple contingency plans for their scheduling logic.
• They would probably never include the ability to rename or remove a conference in Dynasty set-up, for obvious reasons.
• They would likewise never insert AI that realigns conferences midseason, independent of the user.
• They won't try to predict future membership changes, as the TCU/Big East lesson this year bears out.
• They don't want to hear their Madden colleagues bitching about schedule changes, that's for sure.

[psychicDB]

How about they fix the damn broken gameplay first.

[Flithy]

How about they fix the damn broken gameplay first.

yup exactly man exactly

[Steve_OS]

Re: Chaotic Conference Calls Scramble NCAA Football 13 (Kotaku)

How about we stay on topic and wait for gameplay details, broken or fixed.

[wallofhate]

Yeah I feel for Ben and his team its definately a cluster **** that is not only hindering video game college football but ruining college footballl imo. Most of these teams that will compete will have no history,no games to reflect upon..no revenge factor! Having teams in the same region just makes sense. Kids play harder against known foes or schools that didnt recruit them and we would still have decades of rivalry games! I know some people will say create new rivalry's but why destroy the nastalgia??!!! Money rules I accept that but it doesnt make all these moves suck less

[The Yurpman]

Sounds like a perfect (first) excuse for when the game doesn't work properly.

[PowerofRed25]

Re: Chaotic Conference Calls Scramble NCAA Football 13 (Kotaku)

I mean, I like that they are doing this. They need to. By the time the final version of the game is out, who knows where some of these teams are going to be and what the logos/divisions/etc will be. At the same time, it sounds like they are overthinking the topic. They couldn't even figure out scheduling logic to give some teams a full 12 game schedule if you edit the schedules of other teams. This will end up costing me a bowl bid in one dynasty, because I'll end 5-6 with no way to win a 6th game as I only have 11 games (took over midseason).

This sounds incredibly complicated and with too many open variables to write a code without inherent problems. And even in the event the code is completed, the amount of time spent on this will no doubt take away from parts of the game in dire need of help.

Why not set a firm date (say April 1) for conferences to decide what they are doing. If it isn't done by then, program the game as the conferences are set at that point and then keep the custom conferences as programmed now, up to 16.

[khaliib]

Since he mentioned their code in this article...

"Haumiller said his team is "Building CODE" for NCAA 13 that tries to accommodate scheduling in a 22-team.

They just admitted that they have serious issues with tampering with their code in patch #4.

Now they're going to build on top of this same code for scheduling?

How quickly NCAA 12 is scraped to the side in preperation for the next marketing injection.
I'm sorry, but the guy acts like there were no issues with NCAA 12 in this article.

I hope gamers really take a scalpel to NCAA 13 before they buy!!!

[canes21]

Re: Chaotic Conference Calls Scramble NCAA Football 13 (Kotaku)

I wish they'd add the ability to add/delete conferences. I don't really want to have a 4 team WAC. It'd be nice to take those last 4 teams, spread them out in other conferences and lose the WAC altogether.

Just an example.

[Solidice]

Re: Chaotic Conference Calls Scramble NCAA Football 13 (Kotaku)

I wish they'd add the ability to add/delete conferences. I don't really want to have a 4 team WAC. It'd be nice to take those last 4 teams, spread them out in other conferences and lose the WAC altogether.

Just an example.

They likely are not allowed to do that because of the license.

[patsfan1993]

Re: Chaotic Conference Calls Scramble NCAA Football 13 (Kotaku)

I wish they'd add the ability to add/delete conferences. I don't really want to have a 4 team WAC. It'd be nice to take those last 4 teams, spread them out in other conferences and lose the WAC altogether.

Just an example.

I would too, but according to the article it won't happen.

"But even with some leagues' existences in doubt—the Big East, notably, and whatever becomes of the Mountain West and Conference USA—Haumiller can't foresee ever giving users the ability to rename, delete, or change the symbology of existing conferences. Such a feature could diminish or insult a critical licensing partner."

[Gotmadskillzson]

So basically......they already have a good excuse in place for when something doesn't work in NCAA 13

OR

An excuse for not putting something in the game or improving something in the game.

I can hear it already, we ran out of time because we had to do all this coding for all these possible conferences realignment.......By the time the conferences were finalized in real life, it was too late in the cycle to improve this or that, or add this or that.

Therefore the only thing we really worked on in NCAA 13 was dynasty scheduling.

[TheRegan]

Re: Chaotic Conference Calls Scramble NCAA Football 13 (Kotaku)

I'm surprised they let him use language like that in an interview. The way he talked about the Mountain-USA merger, perhaps they could use conference mergings as a way to get rid of conferences.
I love how people love to hate this game every chance they get. I'd rather be able to fully edit everything in Dynasty mode and have only a few minor tweaks to gameplay, I can spend hours editing and tweaking everything how I want it before I ever play a game.

[bigbob]

I'd just love to have the ability to merge conferences and the biggest thing for me when it come to custom conferences, the ability to add extra teams. Even if it's just 10 free spots where we can add
team builder' teams because we all know teams like Villanova are going to make the move within the next couple of years and it sucks not being able to add them in.

[MNgoph]

Re: Chaotic Conference Calls Scramble NCAA Football 13 (Kotaku)

I understand about not being able to delete conferences, but can we get rid of the independent conferences. I would like to move BYU to the PAC 12 but I have moved the other non independents already. That one bugs me a lot for some reason as well as other issues.