Suggestions for BBCF

[Vegas Vic]

If there is another edition released in the future, here are my suggestions: 1. Have a more realistic model of redshirting freshmen players without having them transfer. In real life, a high percentage of incoming freshmen are redshirted as a standard practice. 2. Allow for neutral game sites in the scheduling (Florida/Georgia, Texas/Oklahoma, etc.) 3. I'm not sure if weather has any impact on the game, but if it does, then the cities/stadiums selected for bowl games and conference championship games needs to allow the user to define whether or not the game is being played in a domed stadium. For instance, if you have the Motor City Bowl in Detroit or International Bowl in Toronto, the game will show these as being played outdoors, typically in harsh weather conditions. Even if weather doesn't have an impact on the game, this could still be added for cosmetic purposes. 4. Rotate the home/away correctly for conference games. Sometimes, a team will play the same conference opponent at home for several years in a row. 5. Too many players leaving early for the pros? I don't have any emperical data on this, but it seems a bit high. This could be looked into in a future edition.

[st.cronin]

[QUOTE=Vegas Vic;348102]If there is another edition released in the future, here are my suggestions: 1. Have a more realistic model of redshirting freshmen players without having them transfer. In real life, a high percentage of incoming freshmen are redshirted as a standard practice. 2. Allow for neutral game sites in the scheduling (Florida/Georgia, Texas/Oklahoma, etc.) 3. I'm not sure if weather has any impact on the game, but if it does, then the cities/stadiums selected for bowl games and conference championship games needs to allow the user to define whether or not the game is being played in a domed stadium. For instance, if you have the Motor City Bowl in Detroit or International Bowl in Toronto, the game will show these as being played outdoors, typically in harsh weather conditions. Even if weather doesn't have an impact on the game, this could still be added for cosmetic purposes. 4. Rotate the home/away correctly for conference games. Sometimes, a team will play the same conference opponent at home for several years in a row. 5. Too many players leaving early for the pros? I don't have any emperical data on this, but it seems a bit high. This could be looked into in a future edition.[/QUOTE] Re: #5, this is something that I would love to be able to edit, possibly via a slider bar. Even if its not editable, it definitely needs to be made position-specific. RBs almost always leave early, even if they're not that good, while QBs rarely leave early, usually only one or two per year if that.

[Rathen4]

I'd love to see, if my players do go pro - a small email about whether they got drafted or in what round would be pretty excellent. This could be done judging by their stats or something like that? I realise it'd probably be difficult to implement but I just figured I'd chuck it out there as a possibility for the future. I hate losing my starlets but it would soften the blow if I knew they actually 'made it' :)

[cjjonesz]

I've been playing this game for some time, and here are my suggestions: - The game shows too much information in a lot of places. A big example is the awards lists pre-finalists milestone. It shows basically a dump of almost all of the players. The top 30 or so would be easier to decipher. - There is a need to filter the not important info from the important info. Currently it is very difficult to immerse yourself in the BBCF world. With gazillions of players out there we need help knowing who are the stars. A weekly newspaper would be an excellent way to convey this and highlight the best players in the universe so we can get familiar with them. Right now, the player that wins the Heisman, the first I usually hear of him is when he wins the award. - Speaking of that, the Heisman finalists list is too QB and RB centric. - A notation highlighting the biggest games each week would be nice. Whether it's TV, game of the week, etc.? - I desire more targeted information in recruiting. Instead of showing the 10 (or is it 8?) schools that the player is interested in, I would prefer to see the top 5 IN ORDER. I know you get the email saying Top One, etc. but that isn't too intuitive. It would also be nice to see that list narrowed down as time went on. In real life players will narrow it down to their top 2 or 3 before committing. Also it would be nice to see who the player has visited. In real life, I think they can only visit 5 schools? Is that true in this game? - There is a big opportunity to increase the robustness of the recruiting portion. With the internet becoming such a huge part of the recruiting world today it would be great to implement that in some way. Maybe a weekly rumor mill or something from the internet. Some of ithe information accurate, some of it not. Also, now that a lot of blue chippers are announcing at the HS All Star games, maybe build a day around that? For a great read on the recruiting process/world where you could get some great ideas look at "Meat Market" by Bruce Feldman. He spent 2005embedded with Ole Miss as they recruited. - Updating the main recruiting screen to show who has signed where. I don't see a way to get that view currently? - A bug is that you can offer a scholorship to a player who has already signed with you. Once he signs, he should at least be notated in a different color on your watch list and the "offer scholorship button" becomes greyed out. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at my watch list and offered someone who's already committed. - The polls are still a out there when compared to real life, but this has been beated to death and the game seems to get it right most of the time at the end, so I'll leave it at that. So there's my suggestions for whatever they are worth. This is a very good game and with some modifications/improvements it could be a great game. I look forward to the next version (hopefully for next College Football season!).

[st.cronin]

I would love the ability to edit recruit classes. Or, at a minimum, have the ability to set whether its strong in various positions.

[Vicks]

Bought the game 3 days ago and haven't been able to get through a single recruiting season in 5 trys. Game just crashes and then locks up on intro/menu screen when relaunched. So I guess I am through with it now. With that caveat.... 1) I've never understood why college football sims never allow a full 85-scholarship roster....just as is the case in the real world. This game allows 65 scholarship players, which is better than any others I've played. Yet, most people that play these games are into building and managing a "Program". Roster size affects every other aspect of the game....because it affords control over position depth....which affects success on the field....which affects success for the overall program. The combination of hyper-sensitive 3rd stringers toward transfering...along with hypersensitive 1st stringers bolting early for "the league"...along with an unrealistic roster size (i.e., position depth)....makes it frustrating to try and build/maintain a good program. 2) Transfers are just too prominent. In real life, players are much more forgiving than this sim indicates. Once again, how can you build roster depth if you cannot rely on retaining quality recruits beyond there first year or two? It is perfectly legit to have a small percentage of players expect immediate playtime. However, you should consider making this a scoutable attribute if it is going to remain such a prominent component of the model. Is it more reasonable to expect a star athlete to take a red-shirt and not start until his 3rd or 4th year on a national power team....or to so vehemently expect playing time that they would rather start from day one for a 6-6 mid-major program? Most top recruits understand this dynamic and choose to go to better programs for the chance to shine on the national stage in their 3rd-5th years. Most players that transfer (in the real world) do so because of: a) academic or "character" probs (transfer to a school with lower standards) b) was a starter with mediocre talent...was "jumped" by more talented new recruits and will not play in future c) is talented...but remains low on depth chart (would start for another team but will not be missed by his current one) 3) These sim games are all about "the model," so why not allow much more flexibility with ingame editing. You have a player editor. Why not allow players to tweak the model/global setup as they like (e.g., stadium capacity, coach attributes, recruit pool/attributes, etc...)? 4) I agree with a previous poster regarding more detail with recruit's interests in schools. Fact is, that most recruits these days may be open early in the process, but quickly narrow things down by the end of their season. In fact, more and more kids are committing BEFORE their senior seasons. It would be nice to have some way of numerically evaluating a recruit's interest among schools (numerical value from 1-100)...in more detail than is currently done. 5) In reality, it is VERY easy to find out what a kid is looking for in a school. Not sure how your model is set up, but these "recruit preferences" are usually static and this is the first thing coaches ask them about when they contact a recruit. So coaches basically know the rank and magnitude of these attributes after first contact. Recruits are targeted based on a combination of needs, skills, and fit (how well does a recruit's wants fit what we can offer?). 6) In the real world, recruitment of punters and kickers are often handled differently from other types of players. Coaches do not mind putting P&K on scholarship...but not until it is obvious that they deserve one. Requiring that a team have 2 scholarship kickers and 2 scholarship punters is a bit much...especially with the less-than-real-life 65-man roster. Most teams have scholarship ST players, but they bring a lot of those guys in without a scholarship and then reward the ones that develop well by their 3rd or 4th season. For this game, I think it would be nice to have all 5-star and many higher 4-star ST guys expect a scholarship, but then have the rest offered "grey-shirts" (could probably treat them the same way you treat "transfers" to decide where they wind up). You could increase the potential developmental rate and variability of "potential" for these guys. Teams could then afford to reward scholarships to those that look promising to keep them from transfering. 7) Agree with previous post again regarding too many invalid controls and information in many places. It is very difficult to design windows for games like this....and I think you have done a good job so far. However, it would be nice to have dynamic query capabilities to find/track recruits. It would be nice to search recruits by "interest = 8-10; rank[U]>[/U]500; etc.." When recruiting, it appears to me that I can only recruit a player once ('recruit' control becomes inactive), so why not just not show inactive controls? Once I set a 'recruiting pitch', I cannot change it in subsequent weeks....so why is there a *recruiting pitch change is saved automatically msg? Why can't I change the pitch? Is this a bug, or did you intend for this? Obviously, coaches should be able to change the pitch. Let me just say that I applaud your efforts with this game. It appears to be the best such game out there (although I cannot get it to work on my system). I hope that you continue to develop this project as there is definitely a substantial market for such games (and growing in leaps and bounds as recruiting becomes more and more prominent among fanbases).

[Cooleyvol]

I always chuckle when someone says they can't immerse themselves into the game. I know of at least 119 guys that are so into this game that they basically live/breathe it at Gridiron Glory.

[Xenophon]

[QUOTE=Cooleyvol;374229]I always chuckle when someone says they can't immerse themselves into the game. I know of at least 119 guys that are so into this game that they basically live/breathe it at Gridiron Glory.[/QUOTE] Don't forget about those of us in the ACFA that are waiting patiently for our turn in the GG. ;)

[GatorDog]

[QUOTE=Vegas Vic;348102]If there is another edition released in the future, here are my suggestions: 1. Have a more realistic model of redshirting freshmen players without having them transfer. In real life, a high percentage of incoming freshmen are redshirted as a standard practice. 2. Allow for neutral game sites in the scheduling (Florida/Georgia, Texas/Oklahoma, etc.) 3. I'm not sure if weather has any impact on the game, but if it does, then the cities/stadiums selected for bowl games and conference championship games needs to allow the user to define whether or not the game is being played in a domed stadium. For instance, if you have the Motor City Bowl in Detroit or International Bowl in Toronto, the game will show these as being played outdoors, typically in harsh weather conditions. Even if weather doesn't have an impact on the game, this could still be added for cosmetic purposes. 4. Rotate the home/away correctly for conference games. Sometimes, a team will play the same conference opponent at home for several years in a row. 5. Too many players leaving early for the pros? I don't have any emperical data on this, but it seems a bit high. This could be looked into in a future edition.[/QUOTE] I've thought about every one of these five points a hundred times! And fixing them would make the game even more fun for me. Version 1.53, perhaps?

[LongJim]

The bowl matchups are good overall, but a couple of hiccups: Air Force played North Texas in the New Orleans Bowl in my league. Highly unlikely in real life.

[LongJim]

1. Ability from within player editor to sort players by position. 2. Larger, or off-set button for 'View Stage Details' 3. Yearly final standings/results/PF-PA/w-l %'s by conference. (If I'm missing any of these, or they're already included, I haven't found them.)

[huskers]

Here are some more :D BBCF is a great game, but there's also definitely tons of untapped potential. Some of what we say is feasible, some is not...anyway, here are some more of my thoughts on things that haven't yet been beaten to death, such as redshirt/transferring... 1. 85 scholarships. I think this actually has been mentioned quite a few times, but it deserves a re-mention. Having too few scholarships is especially frustrating during recruiting time. 2. A better model for busts? Currently, when I get a great haul, one or two of the players turns out a bust, and I mean a *real* bust. For instance, his speed might drop from 75 to 45, along with everything else, going from a potential of 80+ to a potential in the 40's. Such large drop-off from hype and result does occur, but: a) such drastic changes in their physical characteristics are a tad unrealistic, and b) they don't often get figured out so quickly. It's more like players fail to develop after a few years, or sink in ratings as time goes on as they lose focus, etc. However, you can find the busts in the very first stage of training camp. If a 5-star recruit has a "very low" probability of transferring, almost always, he's a bust and you can look at what happened to him under "edit player." You also get a hint by the CPU-suggested depth chart. When you see that QB rated 60/80, then hit the button 'suggest' and he gets placed 4th, below that guy rated 50/60, then you know something's up. Which leads to... 3. Less numerical player information. I think we as users should only have access to so much information about a player. Ratings for everything that are so precise are absurd. You can't, in a realistic model, say "Okay, well this guy has 2 more agility points than that guy..." Obviously, it's fine for the game, because that's how the information gets churned. But as far as what we can see - I would like to be able to see coaching staff evaluations only. I took a look at the PC NFL head coach demo, which made it seem like an awful game in execution but an excellent one in concept, particularly the way players were rated. I think BBCF should follow that model a little more closely than the Madden model. Some things off the top of my head: -More subjective to totally subjective. In the player card, there might be a tab marked "Evaluations," and there you might see various coaching staff's takes on a player, and a final grade. For instance, a quote from the running backs coach - "Best hands on the team" for your star RB. Followed by a quip from the OC, "Needs to work harder in practice, struggling to make plays against the 3rd team." Followed by staff-assigned grades for various categories - for example, work ethic, route running, athleticism, to name a few. You *could* have a lot of additional subjective input from positional coaches under each category, but that might be impractical. It'd also probably be impractical to log this data. It seems the game has enough trouble handling the database as it is, and it doesn't need to be exacerbated exponentially. -Practice reports and summaries. Every week, before the game, it'd be nice to have an idea of how your players are doing and how things are coming along. Maybe that's not necessary, but some important things that I think are would be spring and fall camp. I'd like to be able to come out of those with a lot more subjective reports and user control. For example, you can decide to have a wide-open QB battle or designate a starter to beat early on; if you have a battle you can see the staff reports and recommendations. Of course, how they actually perform in the game is not going to correlate perfectly with these reports. -Media hype and fan expectations. The media and fans don't actually know too much of what's going on, naturally, but the hype and expectations are there, and they can weigh or motivate a player. This could be an important factor in the game, and it's interesting for us especially, since we are fans, and it would highlight the differences in how players are expected to do and how they are really performing under the staff's microscope. This game is all about team-building: more depth should be devoted to individual player growth. Whether it's from unknown recruit to media stardom or heralded recruit to average player, things like that. -Other teams. For other teams' players, we should have only a) our own staff's scouting results from watching film and so on, and b) media stuff for teams we don't bother to watch film on. For example, if my Huskers aren't playing New Mexico St. this season, or in any year in recent history and the future, there's no reason or plausible explanation that as coach I can say, their starting quarterback is rated 50/61 with 94 adaptability, 52 arm strength, etc...This is where scouting should come in, IMO. You can only know so much about these other players; more within conference for obvious reasons and drastically less outside. 4. Work ethic, durability. Maybe I'm out of touch with reality, but I think the work ethic overall of players is too low - there are way, way too many stars with ridiculous work ethics (sub 40/100) but still seem to perform well. Most frustratingly, it's not something you can scout out, or affect. In reality, coaches with passion and leadership ability inspire discipline and work ethic from all or most of their players. Maybe they do in BBCF as well, but it's not visible to me. Also, too many players have too low durability. What does it mean to scout a high school player with 38 durability? How do you know at that point that he's probably going to be injured extensively for every single year of his career in college, even under very low injury settings? It's kind of unrealistic. Players who've never missed a game through two years can hit a major injury and slow their development or ruin their careers completely - they might come back not even close to being the same instead of just being held out of games for a certain amount of time. And the ones that are seriously injury-prone, that's often hard to detect and only becomes aware after they take one or two big injuries and lose their durability, along with their skillset. All I can think of for now. Cheers!