Structure:
I’m calling this a legacy mode instead of a traditional dynasty because of my plan on how I’m going to structure this thing.
I’ll be making a player in Road to Glory and playing through the high school season in order to be recruited by schools. I’ll select one from those who offer a scholarship (no walking-on), create my player into the official 2011 roster, and then load that into the regular dynasty mode.
Starting in dynasty mode, I’ll use the existing offensive coordinator position at the school I choose to play for. In game, I’ll utilize the player lock feature on my player and simulate or watch any plays when my player is not on the field.
Once my college career is over, I’ll either simulate a year or two in advance, or sacrifice a bit of realism and start immediately, creating my player as a new coach (with a default D- rating) and taking over as the OC for a school whose job opened up in the coaching carousel that year. From there, it’ll run like a traditional coaching career.
Why NCAA 12?
Though the gameplay is not as fluid as NCAA 14, and there are not as many unique animations, the dynasty mode is much more complete in my opinion.
Coaching contracts with specified goals that, depending on if hit or miss, help determine your coach prestige and likelihood of better offers or being fired is one of my favorite features. The coaching carousel seems to make more sense, and schemes/alma mater play a major role in who gives who an offer.
Recruiting also is more in-depth, with the classic phone call system. There is no scouting system, so looking at the range of attributes, 40-time, bench press, squat, and awareness ranks becomes the best method of guessing how good somebody may be. With this method it is exponentially more fulfilling when you land a gem of a player, and equally disappointing when that highly ranked 4 star you were able to snag is really a bust.
Recruiting:
Because this is somewhat of a blast from the past, I’ll have the ability to create realistic recruiting profiles of some of college football’s recent standouts for a good amount of seasons.
Each year I’ll be making 10-15 real recruits, using a range of players, and try to fit their profile into how they actually stood in their class that year (to avoid having all 5 stars each year recruited by only the top tier teams). Each of these players will have something like ‘Superstar Development’ from Madden, and instead of regular offseason improvement, I’ll bump them up a few extra points depending on where they stand.
Just to give an example, if I were to incorporate Carson Wentz into the first class or second class as a JUCO transfer, I would make his stats poor to reflect the fact that he was not highly regarded out of high school and increase the likelihood a smaller school will land him. Once recruited however, I’ll bump up his ratings to ultimately be among the top quarterbacks in his class.
Players that were top 10 recruits will still get some rating boosts, but obviously not on the same scale. I’ll talk more about this later when I’ve made the first class.