Beggest complaint

[sanonymousc]

The biggest issue with the game is pretty simple:

It is the development from Freshman to Sophomore year. For example, a true freshman (ex. Sammy Watkins - Clempson) comes onto the 2012 game at probably a 78. He has a ridiculous season including making the All American team. Rightfully so, he is probably around a 92 on the 2013 game.

This progression just cannot happen within the actual game. If you recruit the best overall Fr, say has an 83 rating, start him for the first year and have those same stats. He will progress maybe 4 or 5 points. There are no 12-15 point jumps in this game.

I would not want it to happen very often because that is a lot of progression but in real life true Sophomores can be 93 caliber player.

Just my thoughts.

[dudo670]

Re: Beggest complaint

That's what Madden tried, but its too hard to do in a video game imo. What if a player does nothing? Does he regress or still go up 4-5 points?

[The_Wise_One]

I just wish progression would have a lot to do with on field production

[thedudedominick]

Re: Beggest complaint

I just wish progression would have a lot to do with on field production

At the same time how many times do you see a guy in college who has a successful freshman year take steps backwards going forward?

Then there are other times when a RS SO or a JR come out of nowhere and are one of the best players on a team.

I agree progression should be somewhat tied to on the field production, but you would never be able to replicate those two things that make the college game so unique. Do you want guys to get worse if they play bad? Do you want guys to only progress through production? It's tough to find a balance in a performance based progression system that can replicate what really goes on.

[mattokeol]

Re: Beggest complaint

That's what Madden tried, but its too hard to do in a video game imo.

[jhunt26]

Re: Beggest complaint

Why is it so hard? FIFA does it. If a player plays well (or is in good form), the CPU rewards them by giving them a performance boost, and I believe that European football is harder to judge "good form" than American football. American football has a lot of stats that the Dev team could use in their algorithm (i.e. sacks, TFL, Completion %, rush AVG, etc.), so I find it would be a lot simpler than Euro football which has very few "stats" to go on.

The biggest complaint I have is that certain ratings affect a player's overall too greatly. Yes, I understand that speed kills in sports, but so do smarts, "juke moves," catching, etc. The Devs should fix their algorithm so speed only boosts certain positions' ratings (WR, HB, DB, possibly LB and QB), whereas, with the other positions, it would be just an added bonus that would not boost their overall too greatly. Doing this would help distinguish players from others as ratings would(should) be more distributed.

For example, nobody can say Jerry Rice was not one of the greatest WRs in history, however, he *only* ran a 4.71 40 (which would be about an 83 rating); Randy Moss ran a 4.25 (99 rating). Jerry Rice is known for his great hands and route running, however, EA would only raise Jerry's OVR every 1.5 points of route running gained (per PocketScout's chart). This doesn't seem very fair to players who made their living on being great route runners.

Sorry, if that was a bit jumbled, but hopefully my point was made: Speed is not always the best tactic in football (European or American).

[goalkeepr]

Re: Beggest complaint

In the real world, having a huge season doesn't mean he gets better progression the next season, it means he is making the most of the abilities he already has.

The thought that performance begets progression doesn't seem to make sense when you look at it objectively.

[BenGerman]

Re: Beggest complaint

I don't think it has to be all about on field production, but that should be part of it. I think there needs to be a system set up where you divide up the reps in practice. After that, the development should be based on a mixture of potential and on field production. So something like:

40% potential
30% on field
30% practice reps

So then when a guy like Watkins comes in at 78 with A potential and has a good season with a lot of reps with the first string, he should have a dramatic increase in skills to the next year. I also believe the higher a player is rated, the harder it is to move up in skill. So once Sammy Watkins gets up to a 92 his Soph. year, he probably isn't going to improve more than 1 or 2 points a year.

[thedudedominick]

Re: Beggest complaint

I don't think it has to be all about on field production, but that should be part of it. I think there needs to be a system set up where you divide up the reps in practice. After that, the development should be based on a mixture of potential and on field production. So something like:

40% potential
30% on field
30% practice reps

So then when a guy like Watkins comes in at 78 with A potential and has a good season with a lot of reps with the first string, he should have a dramatic increase in skills to the next year. I also believe the higher a player is rated, the harder it is to move up in skill. So once Sammy Watkins gets up to a 92 his Soph. year, he probably isn't going to improve more than 1 or 2 points a year.

Now this system makes sense, or even just simplify it so EA doesn't screw it up. Let's have a potential for every player. It's the max level they can reach in each attribute. The better they play the quicker they get there. Say a FR comes in at 75 with a potential of 95. If he throws for 3000 and runs for 1000 as a FR then as a SO have him close to his max potential because clearly he is already playing to the best of his ability.

Then have a guy that's your number 2 QB from his FR to JR year and takes over as a SR. He started at a 70 and has a 85 potential. He gradually improved every offseason despite not getting time and finally as a SR is at his full potential.

[MWit28725]

Re: Beggest complaint

I don't think it has to be all about on field production, but that should be part of it. I think there needs to be a system set up where you divide up the reps in practice. After that, the development should be based on a mixture of potential and on field production. So something like:

40% potential
30% on field
30% practice reps

So then when a guy like Watkins comes in at 78 with A potential and has a good season with a lot of reps with the first string, he should have a dramatic increase in skills to the next year. I also believe the higher a player is rated, the harder it is to move up in skill. So once Sammy Watkins gets up to a 92 his Soph. year, he probably isn't going to improve more than 1 or 2 points a year.

I really like this idea. I just hope that if (and hopefully they do) put a potential rating in, that they make it hidden so that the user can't see it. Because no one would ever sign guys that have bad potential, or if they accidently did sign one, they would just cut them right away.

One of my biggest complaints about dynasty is that the progression is so uniform for each player. You know that each player will gain on average 4-6 points each training period. Progression needs to be more dynamic somehow.

[montesixpac]

Re: Beggest complaint

I agree a lot with the above post on potential, on field performance, and practice reps. This is pretty similar to what I have had in mind. I would love to see a player's height and weight determine more in the game (shorter, smaller players have a higher chance of being faster and more agile for example). Also, players with a more ideal size should have a better chance of having that high potential (a 6'7" 290# lineman may have a higher potential than a 6'1" 320# lineman). The weight should also be something that could fluctuate, a player could lose weight to become faster and more agile or gain weight to add trucking, strength, etc. Then similar to the player reps that was mentioned, I had in mind that you could choose certain places that you want to focus on position groups (such as speed and agility for your wide receivers), and possibly have certain players that could be your focus which makes them increase more and you would also have more control over the specific abilities that you are going to improve.

EDIT: How much a player improves throughout the duration in college should be more variable than it is in the game. I can pretty much count on everyone on my team increasing 4-6 in overall rating each year when in real life there are some players that really don't seem to improve from year to year. I would say that in most cases a 3-6 ratings bump is probably about right, but there should be some that just do not improve much from one year to the next especially if they are not getting experience on the field.

When it comes to a player improving due to on field production, I was thinking a little differently. Players should be rewarded by getting experience on the field which in my opinion would effect awareness type (awareness, bc vision, route running, play recognition, etc.) abilities the most. From what I remember about first playing football is that when I first played varsity football the game felt extremely fast at first, but after I got experience the game slowed way down and I really picked up the smarts and game recognition that allowed me to play fast, so with that being said, I would keep game experience as an awareness thing, practice to things you would learn in drills, and offseason to your speed and strength. Some of these definitely run together as you will pick up awareness abilities in practice and etc etc, but hopefully everyone understands where I am going with this as I feel that I've rambled a bit.

To add to everything that I just wrote, they should put in weekly practices in which many players won't change, but some will increase and some may even decrease (haven't put a whole lot of thought into this yet, but it would go well with the progressive injuries that I would like to see added into the game)

Jumping around a bit here, but I was also thinking about being able to have so many points to give out to all of the different players on your team for training and practice. The higher the points, the more likely that they are able to improve. The higher the points and the higher the player's potential, the more they could improve. If a player has a low potential which you wouldn't know for sure, but you give them a lot of points, they may still not improve much. The more points that you give to your impact players, they may improve less since they are nearing their potential, and you are taking points away from your future prospects and your backups which could really hurt if there is an injury to your starters. I just feel that there are a lot of different ways that could make this a fun addition to the game.

[BenGerman]

Re: Beggest complaint

I love everything I'm hearing. It's amazing that EA hasn't been able to implement small things like this. It's what is keeping the series from being in the upper-echelon of sports gaming.

[DavonBrown]

Re: Beggest complaint

It won't happen because the video game world and the real world are totally different. The game uses set numbers while the real world is almost left up to judgement. In the game a player has set ratings that are visible. In the real world a player pretty much has a skill set, but it seems like he came out of nowhere because he is just getting the chance to showcase his abilities. He didn't go from a 4.6 to a 4.3. He didn't gain a tremendous amount of explosion. He had those skills all along, but we are just noticing it. In the game it's hard to showcase the underrating of players or surprise players because we have numbers to show abilities instead of just our judgement.