NCAA Football 12 (Glitchy) and Madden 12 (Released) Thread

[2GOLD]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread


Pretty sure the bug fucks up Road to Glory as well. If you try to view the depth chart in season 2, it freezes and can't display. Man, EA makes me so fucking angry. They do this with their games every year, always some massively missed bug because they spend more time jerking off over how great it is then beta testing it.

 

[Kageho]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Pretty sure the bug fucks up Road to Glory as well. If you try to view the depth chart in season 2, it freezes and can't display. Man, EA makes me so fucking angry. They do this with their games every year, always some massively missed bug because they spend more time jerking off over how great it is then beta testing it.

Yes, its borked on RTG too. Got to season 2, since I figured it would at least work and it freezes. The whole thing is borked outside of Free Play. Its rediculous.

I definitely was thinking of NHL 12 and Madden 12. Those are now a "wait a month and see" purchases. And they still haven't responded to my question about getting a refund for this broken game.

 

[Mik]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Road to Glory also was glitched in that I broke every single NCAA rushing record in existence and still lost the Heisman... to ANOTHER RB. Their stats was far inferior. What?

Oh well, still love the game.

 

[2GOLD]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread


This is such bullshit. They made the game good enough to get solid reviews but the truth is, it's a fucking mess. Nothing works past season 1. Once again, great ideas and piss poor execution of things.

I don't trust the Madden game at all now.

 

[Kageho]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Hey, EA Sports is offering Season Ticket.

Now 3 days before Madden 12 or any other game goes live, you can download the game and play it fully!

And thusly, you do the beta testing for EA Sports!

I always wanted to be into the process of helping to make games. I'm sure glad this will lower EA's pri-oh wait I'm still paying full price.

...fucking EA.

 

[2GOLD]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Hey, EA Sports is offering Season Ticket.

Now 3 days before Madden 12 or any other game goes live, you can download the game and play it fully!

And thusly, you do the beta testing for EA Sports!

I always wanted to be into the process of helping to make games. I'm sure glad this will lower EA's pri-oh wait I'm still paying full price.

...fucking EA.

Let's be honest, we ARE beta testing these games. NCAA Football 12 obviously completely skipped the deep beta testing phase since half the shit doesn't work. Christ, even OT is fucked up. I mean, rosters fuck up if you name them. Road to Glory doesn't work right (you can become the starting quarterback really fucking easy), recruits are said to be one thing and then come in something completely different. Overtime, you are fucked if the other team starts with the ball in the second or third overtime because they win without you getting a shot. I mean, this is total failure to check anything. This is serious bug shit.

 

[Kageho]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

I was more upset that they are insulting us gamers trying to make it sound like its this great new service that we all wanted.

I think we all wanted the games to work (or at least 90% work) out of the box.

 

[2GOLD]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

I was more upset that they are insulting us gamers trying to make it sound like its this great new service that we all wanted.

I think we all wanted the games to work (or at least 90% work) out of the box.

Last one I had from them was 09 which I stupidly traded in towards this game. I have to wait to the end of the month to hope the patch works and that it doesn't do more harm than good. I mean, this is lazy game design too. Editing conference apparently is epic fail too. God, did they get ANYTHING right?

 

[Kageho]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Apparently the game play (using Play Now, unnamed rosters). Everyone agrees on that.

Its just the rest of the of this game that is broke.

 

[2GOLD]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Apparently the game play (using Play Now, unnamed rosters). Everyone agrees on that.

Its just the rest of the of this game that is broke.

Apparently even the game play has a deep pass flaw where the computer safeties are incredibly stupid. I decided to take a run at it last night and yeah, they have zero reaction time even from the best ones. I don't run a ton of deep routes so I barely noticed before but seam deep routes just seem to be money with the slow reacting safeties. That's a bit disappointing. Oh and they just refuse to block on the option. The WR's and outside linemen are extremely slow to set their blocks always while the defense swarms you dead.

I guess those are fixable through messing with sliders but shit knows what that will do to overall gameplay.

 

[Mazto]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Nah, I had to get run block up to like 85 to get my fuckin' tackle to block properly on Pistol Read Options and that just made pounding it in the middle cakewalk.

Like hand off to my 3rd string half-back on a counter, hide behind the pulling guard to the endzone from 97 yards out cakewalk.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

That was my annoyance even with last year's NCAA. In order to get effective (read: realistic) blocking with the Flexbone Option, you had to jack the run block up to at least 70-75. The offshoot of doing that was of course it made pancakes much easier thus I'd see half their DL and LBs get pancaked leading to easy long touchdown runs.

I also noticed that the sim stats were still fucked up, especially in comparison to NCAA '09 which I've been recently replaying. QBs barely got above 62%, nevermind mirroring real life where IIRC something like 40-60 QBs had at least a 60% completion rate. Same for RBs and the realistic YPC depth.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Some interview notes from the Madden Art Director done in late July...

We not only added linear lighting, but we also added time of day so the shadows are always progressing over the field. The sun is moving through the sky. The first quarter looks different than the fourth quarter. We factored in time zones and Daylight Savings Time, so that was a big deal.
But the linear lighting… really, what it allowed us to do was push our contrast to match TV, but keep our details, the rich details, and keep the accurate colors of the uniforms. If you do a side-by-side between this year's game and last year's game you'd see teams like Vikings where the purples just… they shifted and they really didn't truly represent the Vikings colors. So even though we had the color swatch accurate, the lighting system we had let us down and basically destroyed the image quality.

Well, the big one was, for us, that franchise mode hadn't been touched in two or three years in any significant way. That was the harshest criticism against Madden 11 and it was honestly one of our biggest focuses this year, bringing a lot of the best features from a really deep franchise sim we had called Head Coach '09. We had the lead designer from that game on Madden, and he was bringing really all the hardcore community requests. Things like cut days, expanded rosters, the free agent bidding system, having the teams' draft logic… there's basically over a hundred improvements to franchise, several big ones that had been requested for years.

The whole collision system has been revamped so the way that people interact with each other… there has been attention towards people trying to break the game as far as freakish bodies and super tiny guys with crazy ratings that didn't match. I mean, there's only so much you do to prevent unrealistic matchups from happening. If people try to break the game, I'm sure there's still ways to do it. But we definitely focus more on actual simulation things that can happen on the field versus chasing down the most ridiculous kind of players people can make and aren't putting people in the wrong lineup spot. We have paid attention to it, but… you definitely want to get the base of reality right first before you start trying to make freakish things work.

Also been testing stuff on NCAA 12 in relation to the Aggression and Substitution sliders for simulation purposes with Army...

Not a major difference but there seems to be an inverse. The lower you go, the more players will appear (at 60% Sub I had only 7 guys get 1 carry whereas at 15%, 40%, and 50% I've had 8 players with the most balance being at 50%). There isn't a huge difference in terms of the Aggression slider at least in relation to 4th Down attempts. At 30% Aggression I had 1 more attempt, 9, than the other %'s tested.

First 4 Games Tested Only
30% Aggression/15% Substitution: 10.79 YPC. 9 4th Down Attempts [27]. 2 2Pt Tries.
50% Aggression/15% Substitution: 13.00 YPC. 4 4th Down Attempts [12]. 1 2Pt Try.
60% Aggression/15% Substitution: 12.50 YPC. 8 4th Down Attempts [24]. 1 2Pt Try.
70% Aggression/15% Substitution: 9.75 YPC. 7 4th Down Attempts [21]. 0 2Pt Try.

Just goes to show that the Aggression/Sub sliders don't really make a huge impact on the game simulation stat wise.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Also for fun, I've been recreating coaches for schools in the Edit Coach menu.

Examples: Tom Osborne running Option Run PB at Nebraska, Hal Mumme/Mike Leach running Air Raid PB at Kentucky and Texas Tech respectively, John Jenkins/June Jones running Run & Shoot PB at Houston and Hawaii respectively, etc.

I'll probably start going in and editing in other coaches for the OC/DC positions. Maybe have Dave Wannstedt as the DC at Miami while Mouse Davis becomes the OC at Hawaii with Jerry Glanville as the DC there, etc.

 

[2GOLD]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread


Wait, wait, WAIT!
Didn't these Madden dicks claim LAST FUCKING YEAR that they completely overhauled the franchise system? Now they are saying they haven't touched it in years??

I'm already betting the season glitches in Madden will make NCAA football look like the greatest game ever invented. Big ideas, TERRIBLE execution, the EA SPORTS motto

 

[oldskool]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

No, last year they didn't touch it at all. Madden 10 they overhauled it minimally to go with the PRO-TAK system, 11 they ignored it, 12 they're stealing whatever code C&Ped from Head Coach 09 that won't outright crash.

 

[Kageho]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

What they claimed to do last year was do something with the online franchise.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

http://www.operationsports.com/forums/ncaa-football/498751-ncaa-football-12-title-update-2-details.html

Patch 2 Details Released. Looks like a the custom PB, profanity filter, and most of the freezes will be fixed. Release date estimated for end of August.

Also tweaked: QBs on the Speed Option acceleration wise and WR blocking in general, especially on Options.

 

[Kageho]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

End of August? Really?

Yeah, I'm definitely not purchasing an EA game for like 4 months after its release date (assuming it interests me). That's just ridiculous.

 

[2GOLD]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread


I was willing to get Madden on release this year until this NCAA debacle. Not being able to use the named rosters, the option errors, the general problems with RTG and COACH dynasty and all of that and it can't get a maybe possibly we are hoping cross your fingers this might fuck up solution until the end of August.

All the things they have claimed to add to Madden just seriously make me think about how much could be fucked up on release with the game. Shit, this game is basically crippled, I can't imagine how bad shit will go with the expanded rosters and cut day shit. Watch the cut day be some kind of fucked up system where if Peyton Manning throws 3 picks in the pre-season, he ends up cut for Matt Leinart or some shit.

 

[Kageho]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

You know I'm very worried about that too. I'm also very concerned that the new features of player tendencies in Madden we could actually have the exact same problem as we do in NCAA.

And since the game is banking on this feature and its Franchise mode, I'm very damned worried.

 

[Aero]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Madden demo is out, with Packers vs. Bears.

I played one game, and I feel like there's not much to tell. There's a noticeable difference in playing last year's game versus this one, but the gameplay still feels very much the same, if that makes sense. The difference seems like the gameplay speed is up, again, particularly in rushing and throwing deep (the ball seems like a rocket).

Unless I missed it, I didn't see a specific menu to view the dynamic player tendencies, other than just pausing the game where it showed a few of AJ Hawk and Chester Taylor's (of all players) attributes. I assume this will be accessible alongside depth charts in the final game.

Kicking meter is slightly changed, again. The kicking direction arrow has decreased in size by at least 50%, which might not sound like much, but it'll probably make kicking long FGs a little harder, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Presentation is very good, although in the opening shots, Lovie Smith's head is way too big for his body. 3D grass looks good in automatic replays between plays but gets kind of blurry in manual replays. Could be something that will be fixed in the final, so maybe NCAA 12 can answer this?

 

[HarleyQuinn]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

I'm not gonna be screaming bloody murder at much since it's only a Demo version and may even be from late May/early June in terms of testing/production so it's hard to say this would be close to a final retail version.

With that said... I did not get Madden 11 so here are my initial impressions from game 1.

Game 1: Bears [Me] vs Packers Very Slow Mode with 0 Speed Threshold on Pro Difficulty
- Bears Entrance is cool. Also really neat seeing actual cameramen on the field "filming" the entrance.
- Lots of background smack talk during the opening coin toss.
- Passing is all about timing. Had a very good methodical opening drive basically taking what the defense gave me. Got an "easy" TD throw to Devin Hester on an inside post from the GB 7 since they were aggressive and playing everybody up with no safety help deep. Also had several passes batted down when I didn't make good decisions. A couple would've been INTs on All-Pro probably.
- Running the ball feels very natural. Exploded for a 10+ yard run despite a GB blitz off the edge but it's not been "easy" either. For every good 7+ yard run, I've had several 1-3 yarders.
- Kicking meter will take some getting used to. Crowd roared big after my TD pass, which was cool. Tried a 58 yard FG but pushed it short right.
- Tackling is much smoother. Defensive plays come with a little box saying Man/Zone/Blitz for quick ease of use.
- Little neat detail. Saw a GB LB cheating up on the left (had called HB Off Tackle) so I motioned Bennett over who promptly picked him up. Allowed me to get a decent 6 yard run.
- Ran a hurry up with 0:50 left in the 1st Half. Ran the same play twice for 8 yards then called a deep pass and hit Olsen down the seam for a big gain, allowing me a shot at a TO with 9 seconds left. Got a 6 yard run and burned my last timeout. Made the 38 yard FG to take a 10-0 lead at half.
- Pressured Rodgers with Julius Peppers which led to a Charles Tillman INT and returned it to their 16 yard line. Rodgers/GB looked entirely rattled after the first sack as they started committing turnovers, penalties, etc.
- Scored on a gorgeous 29 yard TD run with Forte after motioning Bennett who chipped Barnett, allowing me the time to get through the hole. #42 of GB fought off a block by Olsen but Bennett veered and immediately picked him up again.
- Got a roughing the passer call on Urlacher on an obvious late hit. Rodgers completed that pass and seemed to be heating up after an initial completion but it was too little too late. Started getting to the point where no matter what I was throwing at him, Rodgers was carving me up. So it was nice to see the Packers struggling in all facets but once Rodgers got comfortable, they started coming back a bit.
Final Score: Bears 20, Packers 10

Negatives
- A.J. Hawk did the leaping swat with his back to Cutler.
- Sacks came a little easy so Pass Block will have to be tweaked slider wise. My DT was blowing up #71 on consecutive sack/near sack.
- GB receivers were dropping deep passes that they should've been catching. Not sure if this was due to DPP or Pro setting or what.

 

[Kageho]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

I would assume its DPP. James Jones is known for his drops, so if a lot were going to him, that would be why. Sounds like this game MIGHT actually have an idea of what its doing.

 

[fazzle]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Well I just noticed that if you pause it the game will give you all the DPPs that are currently active. I've found out from this demo that I STILL suck at throwing the ball, and will probably be running it on 70% of my plays, again.

 

[Aero]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

I'm definitely going to be messing with the sliders/settings for speed, among other stuff, for my next game. One thing I forgot to mention in my other post, it was a really nice touch to see Clay Matthews do his flex pose after getting a sack.

 

[Brooklyn Zoo]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Play the game in All-Madden and let me know if you still need like five guys to take a guy down cause the first four will get their tackles broken. If there is one thing I want fixed, it's every running back being Marshawn Lynch on every play you blow up in the backfield.

 

[fazzle]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Playing as the Packers I just dominated the Bears 41-7, and unlocked some Madden Ultimate Team cards to use in the full game. Does anyone know if there's something specific I did to do that? Is it just winning a blowout? playing a certain number of games?

 

[The Amazing Rando]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

Well I just noticed that if you pause it the game will give you all the DPPs that are currently active. I've found out from this demo that I STILL suck at throwing the ball, and will probably be running it on 70% of my plays, again.

my favorite was Jay Cutler's "Paranoia"

 

[HarleyQuinn]

NCAA Football 12 and Madden 12 Early Thread

For the cards, I think it varies. Some can be unlocked via HR a WR/TE that scores a TD, etc.

Game 2: Packers [Me] vs Bears - All Madden with Slow Speed and 0 Speed Threshold. Note I almost never play on All-Madden so my suck may reflect that.

- 3rd & 8. I motion Finley to the left and he helps double team, allowing the DE to come in untouched and kill Brandon Jackson for a loss.
- The Bears DL was getting off the blocks the second Ryan Grant/Brandon Jackson touched the ball on running plays. On the flipside, the defensive pursuit seemed pretty natural on both sides.
- Urlacher let Randall Cobb make the catch on a 3rd & 8 and then delivered a kill shot to jar the ball loose for an incomplete pass.
- The ball gets jarred loose on tackles after a catch is made far too easily. Thus it results in incomplete passes rather than say a minimal 2-3 yard gain.
- Threw an INT on a stupid decision, expected Finley to go up the seam when he went outside so Briggs nabbed it. Should've hit Nelson underneath.
- Rarely did Forte actually go down on the initial tackle. He'd usually break one and then get taken down by the 2nd pursuing defender or the 2nd defender in on the tackle would be the one to wrap him up. I counted roughly 4 broken tackles in the first half and often had to have at least 2 defenders on him to get him down.
- The Bears crowd got fucking loud when Briggs got the INT and Gould made his FGs.
- Saw B.J. Raji gets flattened to the ground like what happens in NCAA 12 way too much on All-Madden. Very unrealistic.
- Was able to hit Greg Jennings on a 41 yard bomb down the seam into the end zone when I saw him beat his man and knew there was no safety help over the top. Rodgers threw it a good 53-55 yards in the air (including end zone yards) with Jennings catching it over his shoulder in stride... looked gorgeous.

Final Score: Packers 7, Bears 17
Overall Thoughts: Never felt as "fun" as the game I had on Pro difficulty. Felt heavily weighted towards the CPU (of course) and never really "felt" like a fair game on my end. Keep in mind that AM is essentially just harder gameplay, not more realistic. Think I'll stick to Pro and just tweak the Sliders for a better, difficult challenge without feeling hosed.