Alabama doesn't have #'s on helmet ncaa 10!

[bama]

In looking at gameplay from E3 it apears during gameplay bama still doesnt show #'s on helmet during gameplay like last year!!!!

[Cdenz]

I guess only a few items was fixed this year...because they had to put so much massive time into Season Showdown they left a lot of things unfixed. No telling what else will be broke when the game ships.

[Dr Death]

Originally Posted by Cdenz

I guess only a few items was fixed this year...because they had to put so much massive time into Season Showdown they left a lot of things unfixed. No telling what else will be broke when the game ships.

Seriously? They seriously don't have numbers on 'Bama's helmet? I need to seek out the video. What next?

[irish103]

In looking at gameplay from E3 it apears during gameplay bama still doesnt show #'s on helmet during gameplay like last year!!!!

I don't know what you're talking about man, I thought I distinctly remembered this question coming up during a Q & A session with the producers and they confirmed Alabama's #'s on their helmets?!? I don't know maybe I am wrong, but please post the link to the video!

[gschwendt]

They're not on the helmet during gameplay, however they are on there during zoomed in scenes.

http://www.ncaastrategies.com/utopia...ad.php?t=67475

[hayvis]

Originally Posted by Cdenz

I guess only a few items was fixed this year...because they had to put so much massive time into Season Showdown they left a lot of things unfixed. No telling what else will be broke when the game ships.

The NCAA team is an absolute embarrassment to themselves. This really underlines how little effort they put into this game. When a simple little bug like this can't be fixed it suggests that no-one gives a shit about this franchise that's working on it. It was clearly a major complaint last year when this detail was noticed.

I don't put it past the audacity of the team to come on these boards and suggest that this was far too complicated to do with the time they were given.

[gschwendt]

Originally Posted by hayvis

The NCAA team is an absolute embarrassment to themselves. This really underlines how little effort they put into this game. When a simple little bug like this can't be fixed it suggests that no-one gives a shit about this franchise that's working on it. It was clearly a major complaint last year when this detail was noticed.

I wouldn't call it a bug. I would assume it's likely there to make sure the framerate doesn't drop during gameplay. During zoomed in sequences, framerate isn't as important.

Now, could they fix it? Likely, but how much time would they have to spend on it in order to fix it? I'm not an Alabama fan, but regardless, this would be very low on my priority list.

[hayvis]

Originally Posted by gschwendt

I wouldn't call it a bug. I would assume it's likely there to make sure the framerate doesn't drop during gameplay. During zoomed in sequences, framerate isn't as important.

Now, could they fix it? Likely, but how much time would they have to spend on it in order to fix it? I'm not an Alabama fan, but regardless, this would be very low on my priority list.

Are you serious? You think a number on a helmet causes a framerate drop? Much as I do respect you gschwendt; this is a ridiculous answer.

And I know it's not a priority, but it's something that a hell of a lot of people noticed last year that should have been fixed. It's indefensible, and completely reflective of a bigger situation.

[Makaveli_Reborn]

The problem, Gschwendt, is that that appears to be EA's answer to everything.

Correct rosters? "Ahh would have taken longer"
Formation subs? "Too many dev hours"
Correct graphic depictions of teams? "Not a priority"
Referees? "Nah, don't need em."

That's a fair argument UNTIL you hear them whoring a feature like season showdown that doesn't add anything substantial to the game yet must have taken up substantial development time that could have been devoted to much more realistic priorities.

[gschwendt]

I don't argue with that Mak. I've been extremely frustrated how they've handled the marketing for Season Showdown and curious how much time was spent on the feature. Unfortunately, as we've seen for years now with the NCAA series, the marketing wizards standing over the shoulders of the developers seem to require some sort of tag line to hold onto. This year Season Showdown, 09: Wide Open Gameplay, 08: Leadership Control.

We're at a definite disadvantage because marketing seems to think that it requires features like this in order to sell the game. Whereas Madden has become a cultural icon that can pretty much sell itself.

[bipolar]

Originally Posted by Makaveli_Reborn

The problem, Gschwendt, is that that appears to be EA's answer to everything.

Correct rosters? "Ahh would have taken longer"
Formation subs? "Too many dev hours"
Correct graphic depictions of teams? "Not a priority"
Referees? "Nah, don't need em."

That's a fair argument UNTIL you hear them whoring a feature like season showdown that doesn't add anything substantial to the game yet must have taken up substantial development time that could have been devoted to much more realistic priorities.

Why can't everyone see this? It's not one or two problems every year that get fixed the following year, I could deal with that because as an educated human being i understand that everyone makes mistakes and nothing is perfect..

This is just another slap in the face in the abusive relationship we are all in with EA..we get beat around year after year with the same issues and problems and nothing ever changes..when you buy the exclusive rights and charge $60 a year for a game you don't let things like this or the roster issue happen

[Makaveli_Reborn]

Originally Posted by gschwendt

I don't argue with that Mak. I've been extremely frustrated how they've handled the marketing for Season Showdown and curious how much time was spent on the feature. Unfortunately, as we've seen for years now with the NCAA series, the marketing wizards standing over the shoulders of the developers seem to require some sort of tag line to hold onto. This year Season Showdown, 09: Wide Open Gameplay, 08: Leadership Control.

We're at a definite disadvantage because marketing seems to think that it requires features like this in order to sell the game. Whereas Madden has become a cultural icon that can pretty much sell itself.

The part I don't understand is that isn't that EXACTLY what the FIFA guy, in the "don't bash EA" thread said that EA DOESN'T do?

[gschwendt]

Originally Posted by Makaveli_Reborn

The part I don't understand is that isn't that EXACTLY what the FIFA guy, in the "don't bash EA" thread said that EA DOESN'T do?

Yeah, that's what he was saying about Peter Moore and his relationship with the FIFA team. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to have been carried over to the NCAA team at this point.

[Makaveli_Reborn]

Which leads me, again, to believe that all EA sports titles should be handed over to EA Canada. They do good work there, and apparently the marketing suits and gimmick supporters leave them to their own devices.

[hayvis]

Originally Posted by gschwendt

We're at a definite disadvantage because marketing seems to think that it requires features like this in order to sell the game. Whereas Madden has become a cultural icon that can pretty much sell itself.

Although Madden sells more copies, I would say that NCAA football has a lower percentage in the casual fan demographic so what they are doing makes no sense to me. For a start NCAA is only on sale in the US, which cuts it's casual fan base massively straight off the bat. I've always thought that EA got this completely wrong.

[rhombic21]

Madden doesn't have a ton of gimmicks either (particularly not this year). FIFA and Madden are the two flagship EA Sports titles. My guess is that marketing believes that NCAA needs something to grab people's attention.

In terms of season showdown, I will re-post what I said elsewhere.

Originally Posted by rhombic21

The thing about season showdown that's difficult to determine is that it appears that they really added the strategy, sportmanship and gameplan stuff and housed it under the "Season Showdown" feature, even though there are major components of those additions that really aren't related to SS. And I suspect that those additions are what ate up the bulk of the dev. time related to SS. The user stuff from the stick skills portion was basically already in the game, so adding that portion was just a matter of adding a stat tracker and some new pop-ups. Madden already had a system to give users points based on certain accomplishments during the game, so I'm sure that the stick skills component was not very taxing from a programming standpoint.

I agree that SS is basically worthless in concept, but I think that people are now latching onto it as an attack phrase (like "Wide Open Gameplay" from last year). They added a couple things under the SS banner that are legitimately decent additions to the game. Had they packaged those things in a different way, from a marketing standpoint, I have a feeling that people, at least within the sim/hardcore community, wouldn't be as negative about SS.

Just to re-iterate, I agree that it's a dumb concept. I don't care about OU winning SS at all, and so in that sense, all the profile points that you earn are basically meaningless as far as I'm concerned. But I also think we have to at least acknowledge that they did bring in some worthwhile things under the banner of SS that, had they simply added those things on their own, people would be talking about as great additions to the game.

While the Sportsmanship stuff doesn't actually affect online rank (which I'm disappointed in), at least it does give a visual indicator of playing style/cheese to help sim oriented players pick out the cheesers to avoid when they go online. The gameplanning stuff, though kind of un-sim in design, is still a cool risk-reward setup and I can see how it would be useful to have in certain situations (end of game in particular, where I would want my guys to go for turnovers, or to be conservative and hold onto the ball). The setup plays is actually a much better feature than people are giving it credit for. First, it's actually fairly realistic in terms of design. Certain plays set up other plays. The other thing is that the feature is designed in a way that helps casual users understand how to use it, which is good. This helps people who don't know that much about football learn more of the strategy element, and encourages folks to use more of their playbook. I think it's a good feature for the game.

I also think that a lot of people are really discounting the impact that things like adaptive AI could potentially have on changing the way the game plays. It forces people to mix up their playcalling, and that's always a good thing (either offline or online).

[goillini413]

I say next year their slogan should be "The Most Realistic Game Yet" and then they simply spend ALL of their dev time checking off the wishlists that his huge community has compiled. I think the game would sell itself and would be a better game down the road because they will have gotten that stuff out of the way. I thought they made good progress this year by getting in Teambuilder and Mix n' match jerseys, as well as the team specific endzones, photography, and goalpost nets. But I think if they just spent one year working on all the little things, the game would not take much of a sales hit, and would have a solid base for future games.

[Makaveli_Reborn]

I don't think we're necessarily "discounting" the potential impact of the enhancements they have made, there's just isn't a whole lot of faith right now. The more I think about it, the harder time I have coming up with the last thing NCAA did that really took a big stride as far as gameplay goes. Most of the best things they did over the past 3-4 years was remove broken features.

And I'm also not sure that being the flagship title is the only thing that exempts you from the marketing gimmicks. It's my understanding, thanks to Fluff, that the NHL series sells slightly fewer copies per year than NCAA, and that's quite possible the best playing, least gimmicky product in the EA lineup. Their one gimmick was "be a pro," which was a huge success both online and off because it actually added to the game and it was fully functional.

[broganreynik]

Their slogan for the next game should be "We finally got it right" and they actually take time to make sure they don't fuck up, since basically all they've been doing on next-gen is introducing features that are fucked up, then the next year fix the feature, and maybe fix a couple of gameplay bugs, which should've been working to begin with.

[Makaveli_Reborn]

I agree, it's just infuriating that there isn't a company (at least in sports) that ever takes that approach. "Forget the bullet points on the box, forget the lame whoring of features, just make the game right."

Once you get the gameplay sorted out, then you can add all the fluff you want and no one will care. You can have online Mascot Dynasties for all I care, as long as the gameplay is fixed.