NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable (UTC)

[jpdavis82]

UTC has posted their NCAA Football 14 Dynasty Mode roundtable, which includes discussion from a couple of guys from The Gaming Tailgate.

In the Game Management skill tree, there are skills like “Antifreeze” to prevent your kicker from being “iced,” “Setup Artist” to help set up your play action pass plays more quickly after successful runs, and “Clutch” where your team gets performance bonuses in high-pressure situations. Each of the skills has three levels of development, with different perks at each level. What is your take on having Coach Skills which affect on-field performance? How do you feel about such perks affecting player-versus-player games in an Online Dynasty?

I really like the idea of Coach Skills affecting the on-field performance, though I am a little bit wary of it for a few reasons. Obviously in user-versus-user scenarios, there’s a chance that the playing field might become unbalanced if the Coach Skills are too easily built up by certain players to the detriment of their competition. I do also wonder, however, whether or not the CPU players in an offline Dynasty might build these Coach Skills up quickly as well, lending an artificial feel to playing against the AI. I think it’s definitely something that can be managed to avoid issues, but it remains to be seen until the game is out in the wild.

[stratospaly]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable Under The Code

Wow its nice to see some highly respected guys who are almost as excited about the game as I am. Every year it seems the Debby downers come into this forum bashing the game as it is not up to their expectations.

I love the game for what I make it to be. What EA puts in front of me is a set of guidelines that I use to make it my own.

[Colt45]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable Under The Code

Wow its nice to see some highly respected guys who are almost as excited about the game as I am. Every year it seems the Debby downers come into this forum bashing the game as it is not up to their expectations.

I love the game for what I make it to be. What EA puts in front of me is a set of guidelines that I use to make it my own.

Yep. Totally agree.

[merchant1874]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable Under The Code

Also agree, really like the look of what they have done.

Although nothing major it just looks a better experience all around.

Can't wait to get it.

[TheBleedingRed21]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable Under The Code

I just feel people saw the dynasty trailer and forgot about the neutral stadiums, the small fixes that was covered in the podcast (The scheduled visits, etc.)

My biggest problem with NCAA was the recruiting was not even fun, I never could take the time to do it. The coaching was pointless because you did not get rewarded for being a good coach and the carousel did not make sense.

They have revamped recruiting, added the coach skill tree and fixed the logic for the carousel. I am super stoked for this NCAA version, fixed all my problems I had. (For the record, I am a bigger Madden player than NCAA)

[BenGerman]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable Under The Code

I really like the changes. I was expecting a little more, but hey, I'd rather them do it right than throw a bunch of stuff at us and do it wrong.

[BenGerman]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable Under The Code

They pose a good question: Will the CPU also have built up skills? It would be cool playing Alabama and having to worry about the play action as much as you would with them in real life. If not, it puts a major damper on the whole thing. I don't want to have skills the CPU is unable to attain.

[Colt45]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable Under The Code

Yes, they do, and you can check the computer's skills somewhere in the menus. It was mentioned in the podcast.

This also plays into (not) being able to hire/fire your own coaches. While you can't hire whoever you want, you can take the points that the coach that you end up with and use them to build him up any way you want. So it's kind of a middle ground on hiring the guys you want.

[moylan1234]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable (UTC)

good stuff. recruiting has me very excited after reading this I agree it got very time consuming last year. Also, thank god for OneEighth our lone offline voice.

[jfsolo]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable (UTC)

I really, really like the Dealbreaker feature. I hope that it wasn't somehow watered down at the last minute to help User teams out. If you're a new coach, at a lower tier school, with no tradition of success there should be a lot of players that you literally have no shot at getting. This will also help the CPU by providing some guaranteed checks on it's decision making in recruiting.

[Strategizer]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable (UTC)

I really, really like the Dealbreaker feature. I hope that it wasn't somehow watered down at the last minute to help User teams out. If you're a new coach, at a lower tier school, with no tradition of success there should be a lot of players that you literally have no shot at getting. This will also help the CPU by providing some guaranteed checks on it's decision making in recruiting.

Hopefully the frequency of deal breakers is tied to recruiting difficulty (seems obvious it would be). The one guy in the roundtable who tested as Akron made it sound like he was prevented from recruiting high ranked players due to deal breakers quite a bit, so let's hope it stays that way.

[Brandwin]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable (UTC)

So if I play as a coordinator (which I love to start off as) will I not be able to unlock the recruiting perks? Even as a coordinator you are the one doing all the recruiting, so that may take some of the fun away and strategy away and may have my lean towards being a head coach only.

[Colt45]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable (UTC)

No, you can't. But when you become a head coach, your points as a coordinator carry over to the head coach tree.

Though it is an interesting question of if your head coach has recruiting boosts, do those work with a player doing the recruiting?

[DorianDonP]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable (UTC)

3 questions.

1. Year one in dynasty, will the coaches already have skills unlocked? For instance, if I play as Alabama, all of those elite levels of skills already be unlocked? Or if I don't play as Alabama, will the Bama CPU coach have all of the elite skills unlocked so that Bama is a beast in recruiting and on the field? Or does every coach start from the bottom?

2. How much of a ratings boost are we talking? My worry is that for some teams, the ratings boosts in addition to quick progression in the off-season will make the team play like every player has a 90+ overall rating. Will be 82 guy get ratings boost from his coordinator to bring him to 85 and a ratings boost from his HC to bring him to 90?

3. Can these skills be lost? Or once they are gained, they are always unlocked, even 25 years into a dynasty?

[Colt45]

Re: NCAA Football 14 Dynasty RoundTable (UTC)

Though it is an interesting question of if your head coach has recruiting boosts, do those work with a player doing the recruiting?

If anyone was interested in this, I asked it to the guys over at TGT. The answer is yes, which is nice.

1. Year one in dynasty, will the coaches already have skills unlocked? For instance, if I play as Alabama, all of those elite levels of skills already be unlocked? Or if I don't play as Alabama, will the Bama CPU coach have all of the elite skills unlocked so that Bama is a beast in recruiting and on the field? Or does every coach start from the bottom?

They will have skills unlocked, probably at random, though. However, you can edit the starting skills when you edit the coaches' names and information. This was mentioned in the podcast.

2. How much of a ratings boost are we talking? My worry is that for some teams, the ratings boosts in addition to quick progression in the off-season will make the team play like every player has a 90+ overall rating. Will be 82 guy get ratings boost from his coordinator to bring him to 85 and a ratings boost from his HC to bring him to 90?

Not sure about this one, but I do know you can control how fast XP is gained (or maybe how much bonuses cost).

3. Can these skills be lost? Or once they are gained, they are always unlocked, even 25 years into a dynasty?

Since they haven't mentioned anything about this, or anything related to losing XP, I seriously doubt it.