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Assuming "Live Tuning" is EA's fancy name for a patch, they've released info.

Hi NCAA Fans,

It's Russ Kiniry here again to add some more details about our first Live Tuning Package (LTP) from Roy's "Thank You" blog on last Thursday. We continue to work hard on all the feedback we've received from the community, but I wanted to provide an update on our progress and offer some insight on the questions we've seen surrounding the LTP's.

THE FIRST LIVE TUNING PACKAGE FOR NCAA FOOTBALL 11 WILL INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING UPDATES:

? Increased the default starting values for all Recruits.
? Slightly increased progression for low and mid tier teams.
? Tuned CPU recruiting to prevent teams from signing too many players at any one particular position.
? Increased CPU's focus upon needed positions in recruiting.
? Top schools will sign 5 star prospects earlier in the season.
? After a recruit Soft Commits, any CPU team that is not ranked in the top three will spend significantly less time calling the recruit.
? Addressed an issue with big lineman jumping too high and deflecting passes.
? Tuned ESPN U Top 150 Players to be more in line with actual top 150 recruits by decreasing the number of Fullbacks and Kickers.
? Tuned Field Goal, Kick Offs, and Punting in Super Sim.

WHAT DOES THAT ALL MEAN?

For gameplay you should notice that larger players cannot jump as high to swat down passes making things look and feel more authentic. In Dynasty mode, it means two things. First, the majority of the teams in Dynasty will be slightly better than before due to having access to higher rated Prospects and slightly better progression. Second, CPU teams will do a much better job of accurately filling their rosters.

Let's take a closer look at the details behind the Dynasty changes and what they actually do. *Caution* Lots of charts and numbers inbound. Skip ahead to ?Going Forward' if you don't like math.

This first charts shows the players in Dynasty Mode (by Overall rating) and compares the before and after of LTP 1. In the first Line Graph you can see a sample of one sim of Dynasty (each year is a line) where Players would end up being rated significantly lower than the default roster, which is shown as the Red Line.

1.jpg


On the second Line Graph, in future years the Players are now shifted forward to be more in line with the shipped Rosters. These are all averages of a number of Sims we ran over the last couple weeks. Again, the Red Line is default and the rest of the lines are averages of future years (since one Dynasty can always have some different highs and lows depending on the recruiting classes). The biggest reason why the above charts are important is they show how much the Overall ratings of players change in a Dynasty as it advances. The closer the future year's lines are to the red line (default year 1) the less deviation you'll see from years 1-3 and 4+.

Next let's take a look at what the actual numbers look like for different Prestige Teams.

2.jpg


You can see these changes, on average, had an increase on the top end teams (6 and 5 star) and a much larger impact on the lower teams. A big reason why you'll see the top teams increase in Average Overall is that they are getting slightly better Prospects AND, more importantly, they are doing a more efficient job at recruiting in general. Remember the CPU teams are not wasting as much time on players they can't get and are filling their needs better. The lower teams get the benefit of better recruiting logic and better Prospects like the higher teams, but also slightly higher Progression than they had before LTP 1.

What that means is on average lower prestige teams will end up being rated higher in future years of Dynasties before LTP 1. Basically, less D rated teams, which you can see in the next chart:

3.jpg


The left side is a sample of data before LTP 1, and the right is using LTP1. You'll notice a big shift in the lowest teams (previously 46% down to only 24%). And we moved a few teams that were close to being A Rated before into that elite range. There is only so far we really want to go with these numbers as it will soon start to impact the top end Players too much. These LTP are a little limited in what they can control, but just being able to make the changes above without a patch is a huge step forward for the NCAA Football franchise.

GOING FORWARD

The goal of these Live Tuning Packs is to fine tune the game using both your (community feedback) and our own internal testing. We want to continue to make adjustments to the game where they make sense, and not use this to make large sweeping changes, given how much of the game is "just right". Continue to tell us how you feel and what you'd like to see on our forums.

Some additional LTP changes will not be put into place until after Title Update 2 (currently estimate is in Mid-August). More details to follow, but we expect to address items such as Kicker and Awareness Progression.

Let me also clear up a couple of common misconceptions about NCAA 11 and the way progression and awareness work "under the hood":

? Teams do not get progressively worse in extremely late years, for the most part what you see in years 6+ will be consistent over the long run due to the fact that the entire NCAA is taken over by our generated Prospects at that time. To put it simply you won't look at year 10 and everyone in the NCAA is rated 60 Overall or lower.
? The Awareness of a player does NOT affect his ability to Run Routes, Play Defense, or Block. Each of those have their own ratings that drive how good the player is:
- Route Running (RTE)
-Defense: Zone Coverage (ZCV), Man Coverage (MCV), Play Recognition (PRC) and Pursuit (PUR)
-Blocking: Run/Pass Block Footwork (RBF, PBF), Run/Pass Block Strength (RBS, PBS). And the assignment each player gets is based on the offensive play vs. the defensive play.
? Every Kicker (no matter his ratings) CAN kick a 30 and under yard field goal. Granted accuracy can causes misses as well, but they do have the distance.

We hope that you will enjoy these changes to NCAA Football 11. Your continued feedback and enthusiasm for the game is greatly appreciated. Keep visiting our Forums for the most up to date information.
Thanks,
-Russ Kiniry
Designer NCAA Football
 
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i don't think it got worse.....i just don't understand how they never tested the dynasty. give the game to 5 college kids and you'll have all the bugs in a day. they'd probably do it for free just to get the game early.
 
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Whobebubba3;1742945; said:
Ok, sounds great EA, but.....

WHY DOES EVERY TEAM STILL GET WORSE?!?!?!?!?

Is it really that difficult???

To answer your question:

Russ from EA said:
So if you look at the OVR line graphs you'll see that the recruits are still not 100% on par with the default rosters as you get to future years (but still WAY better than what we shipped with). I really didn't want to make too many drastic changes as I feel the top end (in player Overalls) is really good and if I messed with it too much that got broke.

-Russ

I'm glad...I don't mind all the teams dropping that much because not every team is at the top year in and year out. Just my opinion. And also the original rosters for the teams, the OVR's of every team is inflated
 
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Reading through the thread on OS about the tuner release...many of the members there are seeing better but not good results in teams OVR in year 6.

OS said:
My final count is:

Default roster
12 teams A- or above
19 teams D+ or below
0 D- teams

With tuner year 6
2 teams A- or above
35 teams D+ or below
14 D- teams

Dynasty i started pre-tuner, year 6
1 team above A-
49 teams D+ or below
25 D- teams

The tuner is definitely an improvement in terms of teams' letter grades and progression is better. It still strays far from the default roster though. I also still see the computer doing things like loading up on QBs and other annoyances. So some good things, some things still bad. Looks like it'll take a few tuners/patches to get the dynasty to stay in line with default rosters.
 
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With tuner year 6
2 teams A- or above
35 teams D+ or below
14 D- teams

Dynasty i started pre-tuner, year 6
1 team above A-
49 teams D+ or below
25 D- teams
And that is undoubtedly with a simulation through those seasons. With 12 smart users plucking superstar recruits, the balance may be even worse.
 
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I don't understand how the recruiting got this F'd up by just implementing the new system of HOW to recruit? Why touch how the recruits are created/their ratings/and teams progression?
 
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Year 1 recruiting (simming)

17 3*
1 4*

ranging from 60-75 OVR (most around the 68 OVR)

Got fired after year 2 :lol: So I took Colorado State (2* team)




I really don't see much wrong with the recruiting to be honest...at least nothing like the guys at the OS board are reporting
 
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Like it's been stated on OS many times, it's most likely due to the inflated default rosters. I mean Bama A+ year in year out? I don't think so. I don't see this as big of a problem as you're making it. But I agree not EVERY team should drop.
 
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I really don't see much wrong with the recruiting to be honest...at least nothing like the guys at the OS board are reporting
Did the WRs learn how to juke, spin & be elusive since these "tuners" came out?

Or are they still painfully low (30-50) for the most part?
 
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jwinslow;1743052; said:
Did the WRs learn how to juke, spin & be elusive since these "tuners" came out?

Or are they still painfully low (30-50) for the most part?

The EA dev said that the corners tackling is low, so it evens itself out. Even if you time a juke/spin at the right time you'll still get by the defender.
 
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BuckeyeMac;1743141; said:
The EA dev said that the corners tackling is low, so it evens itself out. Even if you time a juke/spin at the right time you'll still get by the defender.

Riiiiiiight.

That's why the default roster, even true freshman, have much higher ratings in those categories hunh?

Does EA really think we're that dumb?
 
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So far, through 2 seasons of my dynasty, I'm finding that I can dominate with my LE players. First it was Heyward that set a school record with 17 sacks, and went on to win every major DL award (Bronko, Nagurski, & Lombardi?). Then I moved Solomon Thomas over to the LE position, and just ended the season with a new sack record of 20.

I can do fairly well with the DTs, and I have had some success with Williams at the RE position, but nothing like I do from the LE spot. I'm not sure if it's just that the LTs are usually better pass blockers than the RTs, or if it's the way EA has implemented it's blocking patterns. It might just be the moves I try to make that work better from the LE spot... I'm not sure.

After offseason improvements, I expect Fellows will be upper-80s or low-90s or so, so he should be fairly dominant this upcoming season as well.

So far my defense has dominated the annual awards, but I haven't had much of any thing going in terms of offensive awards. Torrence won the Thorpe award in the first season, then Christian Bryant (my nickel back) edged out Evege in season 2. Evege started off strong with picks in all of the early games, but Bryant got a number of sacks on CB blitzes throughout the season and ended up with a number of picks at the end of the season.

I downloaded the LTP thing last night, and changes appeared to be pretty subtle in the game I played last night.
 
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