Who's Still Playing?

[rudyjuly2]

NCAA '09 is either a horrible football game or the best college football game ever created depending on whose posts you read. I'm still having a lot of fun with this game and am playing it regularly. It's been a couple months since the last patch and almost 4 months since release. Who's still playing?

I included 3 options in the poll. Yes means you are playing it regularly. I wanted to include the middle option for those that still occassionally play it. Of course the No option is for the unhappy crowd who may have already traded it in.

[deucepoppi17]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

I'm playing it more now than ever and i havent played another video game since the release. I'm addicted to building a program!!!!!!

[N51_rob]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

I'm still playing this only because of Online Dynasty. Other than that this game would get no play from me. Without any kind of defense and the huge speed disparity, I get bored playing the CPU.

[youALREADYknow]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

Still playing regularly, but I also did not play regularly before the 2nd patch so I have put less effort into dynasty overall than some people.

Based on the feedback we've seen from the NCAA staff, I'm not too optimistic about this franchise's future improvements in the gameplay engine. There just seems to be far less creativity and out-of-the-box thinking in terms of AI and gameplay than over on the new Madden team. If you go over to the Madden forum and read the dev threads it seems like Madden's gameplay engine will be light years beyond NCAA's for next year and beyond.

The one thing that the NCAA team has always done better is dynasty mode and features. If Online Dynasty can be enhanced with more features, a lot of the obvious bugs can be fixed, and coaching AI can be improved then I'll be a content NCAA customer next year.

[Slimshoom]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

I am still playing it without any patches, and I am absolutely loving how challenging and fun playing on Heisman is. Three instant classics in one season is a new personal record.

[Solidice]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

I'm still playing this only because of Online Dynasty. Other than that this game would get no play from me. Without any kind of defense and the huge speed disparity, I get bored playing the CPU.

same.

[mudtiger]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

Nope. I'm entirely an offline dynasty guy and couldn't take the idiotic cpu play calling and various other issues so I gave up months ago.

[mercalnd]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

Still playing but I recently moved to the PS2 version which has much better CPU AI playcalling.

[rudyjuly2]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

I'm still playing this only because of Online Dynasty. Other than that this game would get no play from me. Without any kind of defense and the huge speed disparity, I get bored playing the CPU.

same.

People say they like online dynasties and then say they don't like offline dynasties seems hypocritical to me. Unless you are playing an online dynasty where everyone is in the same conference and there are a ton of human vs. human games, you are essentially playing the majority of your games against the cpu. I don't see that being much different than an offline dynasty other than head to head recruiting.

Furthermore, I think online dynasties become problematic because so many people have different abilities that the sliders and/or difficulty level may not be very fun for those cpu games. I'd rather just stick to my offline dynasty.

I guess I just don't fully understand why online dynasties are considered so great.

[Solidice]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

People say they like online dynasties and then say they don't like offline dynasties seems hypocritical to me. Unless you are playing an online dynasty where everyone is in the same conference and there are a ton of human vs. human games, you are essentially playing the majority of your games against the cpu. I don't see that being much different than an offline dynasty other than head to head recruiting.

Furthermore, I think online dynasties become problematic because so many people have different abilities that the sliders and/or difficulty level may not be very fun for those cpu games. I'd rather just stick to my offline dynasty.

I guess I just don't fully understand why online dynasties are considered so great.

i like it because i can play with my friends, and the recruiting battles.

[Fluffhead]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

The poll is inherently flawed as most who don't play this game anymore aren't checking out a forum for it.

Anyway, once the patches came out I was all ready to roll with my offline franchise (online franchise of course fizzled out with no participation at all), but once I started reading about the horrible recruiting / depth charts years down the road I stopped playing. Seriously, what's the point of even playing a dynasty when the CPU teams become crippled due to serious AI flaws?

I really wanted to give it a go this year as I haven't played a dynasty since the 06 version. The good thing is is that after three years of disappointment and dust collecting on the boxes, I don't think I'm a slave to buy this game anymore on an annual basis. My NCAA addicition is broken! Hopefully.

[rudyjuly2]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

The poll is inherently flawed as most who don't play this game anymore aren't checking out a forum for it.

You have a good point lol!

Anyway, once the patches came out I was all ready to roll with my offline franchise (online franchise of course fizzled out with no participation at all), but once I started reading about the horrible recruiting / depth charts years down the road I stopped playing. Seriously, what's the point of even playing a dynasty when the CPU teams become crippled due to serious AI flaws?

Why do people blindly trust others without playing it themselves? If I would have listened to some blatantly over the top negative early reports about NCAA on this site I wouldn't have bought this game. Instead, I'm in my 5th year with Colorado and I don't see any major problems and having fun at the same time. Maybe ignorance is bliss but when I play a team better than me, I still lose a lot of the time. I don't see a bunch of crappy teams out there. At the end of my 4th year, Texas and Florida were both A- teams rated 92 to 96 and they both beat me. They certainly weren't crippled. Don't worry about the recruiting and depth charts. They aren't game killers to me, at least in my 5th year anyway.

Nobody can guarantee you will love or hate this game. But why don't you see for yourself?

[StormJH1]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

I still play the game and because of my lack of time, still feel like I would really get into it more if I just had more time to play...and this thing was released in July!!! It doesn't help that there are so many other huge releases since then, including NHL 09, Fallout 3, and now Gears 2 and other games.

I also prefer NCAA to Madden, even though I fully recognize that Madden is a much more polished (and perhaps even realistic) form of gameplay. The reason is that Madden games for 7th-gen consoles (360 and PS3) have failed to incorporate any of those fun Franchise elements and depth that were pretty well done in the PS2 versions. You could argue that NCAA has taken a step or two back in terms of Dynasty depth, but they've also taken several steps forward with online dynasties and the phonecall recruiting system. NCAA, with all its flaws, is just more fun to me.

[kindella2]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

i play everyday if i have time...online and offline. Love it the smack talking between my friends is epic. its 4 of us, 2 in ACC and 2 in SEC, so its highly competitive.

[mercalnd]

Re: Who's Still Playing?

Why do people blindly trust others without playing it themselves? If I would have listened to some blatantly over the top negative early reports about NCAA on this site I wouldn't have bought this game. Instead, I'm in my 5th year with Colorado and I don't see any major problems and having fun at the same time. Maybe ignorance is bliss but when I play a team better than me, I still lose a lot of the time. I don't see a bunch of crappy teams out there. At the end of my 4th year, Texas and Florida were both A- teams rated 92 to 96 and they both beat me. They certainly weren't crippled. Don't worry about the recruiting and depth charts. They aren't game killers to me, at least in my 5th year anyway.

The recruiting issue as I understand it results in lower team ratings because of a lack of depth at certain positions. On more extremem cases, there can be rbs or wrs playing on the O-line. There are also reportedly way too many players at skill positions. Not having played it through myself, I imagine that the impact of this is mostly limited to numerical ratings (or alphabetical in this case) and has very little effect on the way games play out on the field. On this I think you have a point and I do believe that very few people, if any, actually observed a significant difference in actual gameplay due to this issue.

I can however imagine that for people who dig much deeper into the dynasty experience than me (I don't really ever look at other teams' rosters/depth charts, I just play my games, recruit and look at standings stats) by scouting their opponents depth charts for potential mismatches and things of the sort this issue is a major deal breaker when it comes to immersion.

As to your general point of blindly trusting others' reports, I certainly agree. While almost all the issues we read about on these forums are genuine, the impact of many of these issues is greatly overstated. This goes for every sports game too and is not limited to this game or games from any specific company. For each great piece of info as I've found on this forum over the years that has improved my enjoyment of games, I've probably learned about 2 issues that I might never have known about had I just played my games the way I normally do.