NCAA 08 Tests Gone Wild
A few things after messing with stuff today, both in season play and in practice mode.
First off — the sliders aren’t “switched”. The Knockdown and INT sliders are not somehow magically “reversed.” Seriously guys, every year I hear that about either Madden, NFL 2K, or NCAA. Yes, I tried it just for giggles (I’m a sucker for a conspiracy theory) and go ahead…bump that INT slider and watch what happens after a few games. (I’ll wait…)
……….
See?
Also, you need to understand, and this is a big, big reason I don’t post slider stuff anymore — you cannot play one game and then come back with a set of gameplay sliders. There are just too many variables at work. Testing this Interception thing takes a hell of a lot of time and patience. One game with no INTs (something I still haven’t seen) wouldn’t prove any sort of hypothesis. If I ever get the game to behave the way I want, after playing them for at least a season, I’ll share them. Otherwise I’m wasting my time and yours and you already waste too much reading our shit anyway.
With regard to the tests, my current theory is that in order to limit the INTs, be it on All American level or Heisman level, you need to keep an eye on a few select settings. The WR Catch slider appears to be a huge, huge deal. (Not as key as QB Acc…but still)
I thought that that that slider simply dealt with catching the ball; it would appear after sitting in practice mode and playing 3 games with this, that the slider also impacts how aggressive a player is in going AFTER a ball. A lot of the silly INTs in this game are because the defender makes a break on the ball and the WR keeps running his pattern. I have this slider at 100. I think you can play with the Human Defense AWR bumped up a bit, but you really don’t need to (especially on AA level).
My current set is back to AA level;
CPU Accuracy around 75; catching 100
Human AWR at 10; INTs 0; Knockdowns 100
The game I just played was encouraging. OSU 30 Akron 7
The Akron QB: 22/32 188 yards, 0TD 2 INT
2 Drops (even with 100 catching..)
5 Deflections (if the sliders were reversed, explain the 2 ints and 5 deflections? Wouldn’t I have picked off a ton of passes with the INT slider actually maxed out? Against Akron?)
The INTs in that game: On a deep post 1-1 coverage, a bad throw that my CB just caught in stride. The other was on a quick out and my 99 rated CB jumped the route and ran it back 55 yards.
2 INTs against Akron..I’m fine with that. I’m trying to get those 3, 4, and 5 pick games cut down to a minimum.
I also want to talk about QB Accuracy. If Practice mode is any indication, this slider does a lot more than just force the cpu to make more accurate passes. More importantly, it forces them to make better decisions. Try it. Go into Practice mode with Acc set to 45 or 50. Find a play and a defense that the QB is throwing a high number of picks. Change the Acc now to around 80. Notice how the QB checks down now, and finds a safety valve or finds an open seam rather than forcing the ball into the spot it kept trying to find earlier.
Hell, look at that QB line again from the Akron game. When was the last time you played NCAA against the AI, saw it complete *22* passes but only for 188 yards? 9 yards per completion? In NCAA? The last time you saw that was never. By raining the accuracy, the QB is looking underneath; yes they will still make mistakes and yeah…with that Accuracy that high you won’t see too many horrible off target passes — most incompletions are knockdowns, drops or a breakup when a DB clobbers a WR as he catches it. But I’ll live with that if it means a better game out of the AI as the whole.
I’m spending this much time with it simply because there is a great, great game in here. It just needs help in getting out. It’s still as unpolished as a soot covered nickel, but there are gameplay elements that have been sorely lacking in this series that are IN NCAA 08. Like YAC. I don’t mean a WR catches a crossing route and runs for 10 more yards. I mean that you can now actually make a MOVE on a DB after catching a pass…a TE can run OVER a corner. That kinda stuff. When I see OSU WR Ray Small juke a CB out og his shoes on a curl and take it 45 yards up the field…that makes me want to test the game to get it to play the way I want it to play.
July 28th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
These tests are great, Bill. You’re really coming on to something, I think. That was a great line for that Akron QB.
July 28th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
I think so too Mike. No time to play more today (grass needs cut…house needs cleaned a bit..) but I want to play another OSU game ronight and see how it plays against a better team. I think I have Kansas State, who is a B team OVR in year 2 but they have like a 94 rated QB.
July 28th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Before I get to my rant, let me make one concession: I hate EA, and I have boycotted their crap ever since they bought the exclusive NFL license. Onto my rant:
Why is it that sports games get a pass when dealing with unrealistic results, just by including a slider set, while other games would get torn apart?
For instance, if you had ememies in a FPS that auto killed you every time, but included a slider set that allowed you to change their accuracy, would that be ok?
That is how sports games are treated. As long as their is a way to change the behavior, then the default is ok. I think this is bullcrap (censored for the kids
).
I should not have to tweak a sports game so that is behaves semi-realistically (which I believe is 0 - 2 interceptions for a normal game).
Having said all this, APF 2K8 is great (I have seen a 4 pick game, but that was an extreme rarity).
In one of the previous posts, someone said that the corner route was a gimme in APF 2K8, but I have not experienced that (but I have a silver QB and a silver WR, so it is not like Joe Montana throwing to Jerry Rice). Please post the players you were using to have the great results you claim.
July 28th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
I forgot one thing: If you set a slider to 0, it should mean none, zero, zilch, nada, etc. Interception slider set at 0, should mean that their are no interceptions, regardless of the circumstance.
Otherwise, what does 0 really mean?