Keeping your Dynasty fresh

[grabursock55]

Hey guys, I was wondering what you do to keep your dynasties fun and rewarding. I like the challenge of playing on Heisman mode of this years game, but after I lose one game in the season, I feel like I'm not playing for anything anymore, as Nationalchampionship hopes are about 90% gone and you are on the outside looking in for your conference title. What do you all do to keep your dynasties fun and rewarding even if you are having a bad season?

Its not that I dont like losing, I just feel like I'm wasting my time playing the rest of the games in the season when there isn't really anything to play for lol

[GruffyMcGuiness]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

Online dynasties, my friend. Get some of your good buddies in it and it becomes 100% more fun!

[The_Wise_One]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

Online dynasties definitely help. Find new recruits or fight hard for blue-chips. I always enjoy writing my own stories about the season as well.

[GruffyMcGuiness]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

Also, I really like doing OD's with Hawaii. It's cool and unique. I give my recruit from Hawaii Hawaiian names and it makes it a lot more fun.

[The JareBear]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

Online dynasties, my friend. Get some of your good buddies in it and it becomes 100% more fun!

I agree with the post above me. Something about user controlled dynasties makes the whole experience that much more interesting.

Personally, I don't even do it for the user games. Just the fact that another person is recruiting against you, managing a depth chart, carrying out their own vision of a direction they wanna take their program. Little things that add up. I like to write recruiting breakdowns and scouting reports

I would gladly do a coach mode dynasty if I could find one.

Offline wise, I'm hoping someone posts good ideas here. Especially knowing from that interview that CPU depth chart logic has not been fixed

[buickbeast]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

There was a thread created about this problem years ago and I can't find it =/

Basically, each region of the country has 3 conferences. So, for example, the eastern part of the US has the ACC, AAC (formerly The Big East) and Sun Belt.
After the first year concludes, the teams with the highest # of stars (not players, the actual stars at team choices) would go to the highest ranking conference, in this case it would be the ACC. So, the ACC would have all of the 5 and 6 star programs and the highest ranked or rated 4 star programs. The AAC would get the middle level teams (3-4 stars) while the Sun Belt gets the 1 and 2 star programs. If a team moved up to the required stars for the next tier, they would get moved up, likewise the opposite would happen if they lost enough stars. Of course not every team moved each year. Sometimes only 1 or 2 teams from each conference had to be moved.

I guess it could be done online, but that would take a lot of uniformed minds to make it work flawlessly.
On the other hand, I ran this during my offline with '13 and it worked beautifully. It did take about 20 minutes during each off-season, but it paid off tremendously. Out of 8 seasons, I think their were 2 teams that went undefeated and maybe twice did a team sneak into the top 10 from a mid-level conference (AAC MWC etc etc) In fact, 2 teams won the NC with 3 losses each! It kept each conference competitive, vastly increased replayability and most of all, FUN!

If anyone wants help with this, just PM me and I'll be happy to help =)

[grabursock55]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

For everyone saying I should do an online dynasty, I agree that is more fun in theory. But I would have to find the right group of people to make it work. I have been in a few corrupt dynasties where the other user players use money plays exclusively and that just takes all of the fun out of the game. But you are right, If you find the right people, you can really have a blast online.

To buick beast,

That was also a thought that had crossed my mind. There are several floating around this site currently and it would be something that I would like to try. However, This year, with the WAC conference being dissolved, that system will need a little bit of tweaking to work smoothly again. But it is still on the table. I think Colt .45 made a promotion relegation system just recently that was divided into regions, but I didn't get a chance to really look in depth at it!

[The JareBear]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

Yes, there lies the problem. It's hard to find a group of all sim like-minded players.

There are a couple on here that are year-around, no switch, emphasis on strategy type leagues but they are hard to get into.

Offline wise I usually enforce noise rules like I can't convince players to stay, I can only recruit 15 a year, stuff like that

[dcgc5]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

In NCAA 12 (I didn't play 13) I had a 15-20 year career starting at Baylor as OC and ending as HC at Arkansas. To me it was simple...I chose to recruit realistically. I changed a lot of the equipment year in and year out. I focused on progression of my team. Treated off season recruiting as realistic. I pretty much made a list of 30 guys every year and thats all I recruited. IRL teams take about 30-40 guys seriously and get what they can from them. Then in the off season they try and late sign any of the original 30-40 left and also throw in a few depth guys. Maybe a 3 star RB with 4.3 speed is left go hard after him ect. I would even try and set up new pipelines for recruiting.

As for the games themselves when I would sign a 5 star RB or QB. I would always manage to get him on the field. I would make up story lines as I went along like telling myself *this kid has too much raw talent to sit the bench* ect ect

Also I would in my mind hire and fire DC's and when I would I would completely change the philosophy and recruiting area. For example when I got to Arkansas I want to implement the 4-2-5 as its my favorite D so I recruited a lot of speed and from the South East. SC FL GA Bama LA ect. When I realized I need bigger players to stop the run of LSU and Bama. I "fired" my DC and started recruiting TX LA Miss a lot harder. Did it actually change the caliber of players I was getting...not really but it kept me interested because I felt like I was adapting as a coach and leaving my pipelines to go after guys who would fit my scheme better.

To me its all about getting invested in your Dynasty and deciding to make it more of a story than just recruiting playing recruiting playing over and over.

[buickbeast]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

Their are some great ideas in this thread!
I think Colt. 45 was the guy with the conference idea, I'll try to look it up tonight =)

A few other things that I remember doing that worked out well was:

- Look up the fball history of the school you're playing. Find out their retired #, do they have any special # they give certain positions? Do the Captains get to wear special equipment (dark tinted mask cover?) I think every great starting HB for Syracuse wears Jim Brown's #. One school out there has their kicker wear #1 and the placekicker wear #2 lol

- Have your team and your biggest rival wear a certain custom uniform each year. I made an offline with Army and every year for our game against Navy I made sure I did that that, which made it even more special.

- Each Senior Day, every one of my seniors came in for my first offensive and defensive drive of the game. I didn't care if they were replacing a JR stud, I was going to reward them for not transferring or going into the NFL early.

- If your school doesn't have a tradition that you think is cool, make one! My best Senior Safety wore #42 in honor of Pat Tillman and my best LB wore #52 with dark tint to honor Ray Lewis.

- If your in an online dynasty, start a tradition with another user that you think is chill. Me and this one guy had to have our first game of each season against one another. We rotated who had to visit each year and we called it the "Cougar Hunter Kickoff Classic"

[BearsNVA]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

Hey guys, I was wondering what you do to keep your dynasties fun and rewarding. I like the challenge of playing on Heisman mode of this years game, but after I lose one game in the season, I feel like I'm not playing for anything anymore, as Nationalchampionship hopes are about 90% gone and you are on the outside looking in for your conference title. What do you all do to keep your dynasties fun and rewarding even if you are having a bad season?

Its not that I dont like losing, I just feel like I'm wasting my time playing the rest of the games in the season when there isn't really anything to play for lol

I've done several things.

1) Redo the conferences:

-Big 12 is all Texas Schools
-Sun Belt is all FL schools and UGA, GT
-etc
-etc

Some conferences have a mixture of states obviously, but they would border each other. (Big 10 was Ohio, PA schools)

That makes things interesting simply because it's different.

2) I switch schools at the end of my contracts. You start fresh and it's almost like you are starting from scratch except your coaching prestige is up.

3) I got into team builder and take a powerhouse school. I make every starting position that's a Junior and make them seniors. It makes recruiting more interesting, and the next season more challenging.

It's not about making the team a powerhouse, it's about keeping them one. With no returning starters it makes season 2 very challenging. If you want a real challenge, do it with a school like Vandy or Kansas; or a school that's not good, but plays in a great conference.

This year I think it will be easier to keep Dynasties going because of the coaching skills tree. It will give me more to play for/adds layers to the game that weren't there before.

[BallinVol]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

I've been an offline dynasty player for as long as I can remember. I do however plan on getting into an online dynasty sometime this year. As for offline, I always like to do dynasty reports, but the game has lacked severely over the past several years to keep me immersed. Playing the demo, if a few things are fixed, I could see myself spending alot of time doing dynasty reports this year.

Recruiting should be fun this season. I like to come up with storylines for the recruits. As weird as it may seem, it's nice to recruit a stud player, and sort of "develop a relationship" with that player. Then come his junior or senior year, it's kind of sad to see him go.

Although dynasty reporting can be tedious, i feel it's rewarding, as I can always go back and read my dynasties and just reminisce on what I've accomplished. I will definitely be reporting this year, just might not be as fast as some that report very often. I live a pretty busy life.

Sometimes you just have to get creative in order to keep yourself immersed into your dynasty. I've seen alot of creative ideas in dynasties over my 10+ years here at OS. If reporting is something you would like to do, I suggest heading over to the Dynasty pages and just read some of the posts over there.

[JoshC1977]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

.....but after I lose one game in the season, I feel like I'm not playing for anything anymore, as Nationalchampionship hopes are about 90% gone and you are on the outside looking in for your conference title.

Only lose one game....heck, I have seasons with some crap teams where I am lucky to win more than one game (and I am good enough on the joystick to go to BCS bowls nearly every year when using good programs).

The ABSOLUTE key is to find a slider set that is realistic for you. It should be balanced that if you are playing as South Alabama against Alabama, that you get your butt kicked; but if the roles are reversed, you win just as easily. More even matchups should feel more even. When a set is so hard that you have to be on 'upset alert' every week even if using a powerhouse against a D-level school, playing will just get frustrating.

I also do a few other things:

1. Create myself as a coach so I start with crap ratings.
2. Pick a crap program in a crap conference. Even better, load in a Teambuilder FCS school and put them in a conference like the Sun Belt or C-USA (or even the AAC at this stage....as sad as that is)
3. Put together tough non-conference schedules and learn to enjoy getting your butt kicked...but those rare games when you actually compete will be so much fun....
4. Recruit realistically.....do NOT go after four/five star recruits when using a one star school. One exception, if there just happens to be a high-level recruit out of your school's town, you have an option to do that....it would probably happen in real life too. As someone else said, pick your list of 30 or 40 guys and that is it.
5. As soon as you get decent (like a three star), move to a power conference so you can rack up more losses.

Once you have endured a few seasons of this....you will really begin to enjoy the small victories week in and week out. And when your program really starts to get good, you will enjoy the fruits of your labor even more. It is incredibly rewarding.

With all that said, if you only like to use powerhouses...well, this doesn't help much. In this case, I like to use alternate alignments. This one was my favorite from NCAA 13.

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...ion-final.html

Using a big school there (particularly in the PAC-12 - TexMex or Big10 - Rural) is brutal. Unfortunately, the dissolution of the WAC screws this up for NCAA 14....will have to find another system.

[buickbeast]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...ion-final.html

Josh, thanks man. I was looking all over for this guy's realignment!!!

[JoshC1977]

Re: Keeping your Dynasty fresh

Josh, thanks man. I was looking all over for this guy's realignment!!!

I bookmarked it many moons ago....I have used it so many times that I have nearly memorized all the divisional alignments