NCAA Test #2
I decided to say, “Screw Blue” and move on to the Fiesta Bowl for this round of tests. First off, Texas made the title game despite a loss to Ark State and Florida and LSU played in the SEC Champ. Game but both were rated below 2-loss Tennessee, which is the team I played in the BCS game…who also LOST to Florida. NCAA 08 makes the real BCS look like the perfect way to handle college football.
As I wrap up the year, I see more and more “little things”. Usually people say that when they love something. Here, it shows a lack of polish; they clearly ran out of time again this year. Just little stuff. The play by play gets behind like a full play from time to time. When you get to Bowl Week you can’t just sim that first week of Bowls (there’s like 5 of them). There’s no option anymore to do that. You have to manually sim all of them or SIM ALL BOWLS. Wow, thanks for screwing that up, guys. Why do they keep telling me the stats for the LE every other play? I get it. The Vols LE has 4 sacks and 50 tackles this year. I’ll never, ever forget it. Now, there are little things that they got right — there are more on the field injuries this year and I already mentioned the CPU missing FGs among other positive strides but the game just has a “boy we needed another 90 days” feel to it the more I dig. How is there Clipping on a HB Dive? How can I catch the CPU AI to jump offsides 5 plays in a row?
Back to the test. I bumped it up to AA lvl after my Varsity Blues test — keeping the 100 CPU ACC and ZERO for Human AWR, INT, and KNDWN. OSU beat UT 28-3. Here’s the funny bit. The UT QB (Ainge, right?) threw the normal AI rate of 3 INTs but 2 of those were literally on the first 2 throws the AI made. 2 passes - 2 picks. Then in the 3rd he threw another. He ended up 23/33, 247 yards, 0 TD and 3 INT. Note — that’s with 100 ACC (and only 35 WR CAT, and they did drop a few). Take away those first 2 throws…and hey…
I think AA lvl deserves some additional games with the 100 CPU ACC and zeros across the board on human defense. Despite its unpolished feel and pretty silly ranking AI, if I can hurdle this INT thing, it’ll still be very much worth playing.
EA Sports just never makes it easy, though. I gotta work to earn that $60 trust.
July 27th, 2007 at 6:52 am
Bill,
Here are Playmakers latest sliders..found these over at the forums of sportsgamer.com
ALL AMERICAN-(Modified set as of 07/27/07)
HUMAN/CPU
QBA-50/50
PASS BLK-35/35
WR CATCH-50/50
RB ABLTY-60/70
RUN BLK-35/35
DEFENSIVE SLIDERS
AWR-0/100……..(Human Players with high awareness still perorm)
KNDWS-20/20
INT-5/5
BRK BLK-20/10
TKL-35/75
Are these close to what you’re using?
July 27th, 2007 at 7:02 am
Why is he leaving INTS at 5? That is the main concern, yet he doesnt minimize the value? Hmmm.
July 27th, 2007 at 7:58 am
No, mine are more dramatic, Marc.
100 CPU Accuracy, 0 Human Awareness, INTs and knockdowns.
I’m TRYING to make them extreme to see if anything will fix it. I’m gonna try these on Heisman. My goal is to have ONE game where the CPU does not throw multiple picks.
July 27th, 2007 at 11:45 am
This bugged me in last year’s Madden as well, INTs out the wahzoo no matter what the slider settings. It made superstar mode unplayable (that and the poor camera dynamics) since even if Peyton Manning was your QB, he was bound to throw 3-5 picks per game (5 min qtrs no less).
I am getting fed up with developers (EA is a bad offender but there are others as well) who seem to think balanced gameplay dynamics are unimportant as long as they include loads of slider. F*** that, do your job, don’t expect the player to do it.
Besides even if I take the time to “tune” some aspect of gameplay closer to realistic (which I shouldn’t have to) it invariably unbalances some other aspect of the game.
I guess that’s why I’ve been looking more to statistical SIMs these days rather than 3d engine games, even though the 3d counterparts are more (or have the potential to be) fun & immersive.
July 27th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Playmakers has apparently discovered that EA got the Knockdown and INT sliders BACKWARDS…at least on the 360…so INT controls knockdowns and vice versa…not sure about other console releases but it seems to work that way on mine!!!!
July 27th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
uh, no.