All Posts by Ben Haumiller

Season Showdown: Sportsmanship

So far we have covered the Skills and Strategy elements of Season Showdown. This week wee will focus on the third major component, Sportsmanship. Before I go into the details for what's considered good and/or poor sportsmanship I'd like to go into why we chose sportsmanship as a component for Season Showdown.

For the most part, the last remaining barrier preventing people from enjoying online games vs. someone they don't already know is the quality of play by your opponent. Everyone has been matched up in a game where the fun is completely lost because your opponent has never seen a 4th down they won't go for, and the only chance their kicker has of seeing the field is on a kickoff. Even worse, you sometimes find yourself baited by this behavior and the next thing you know your rationalizing your poor play as "well they did it first, I'm justified", or "everyone random online person is a cheeser, so I'm gonna cheese them before they have a chance to cheese me". It's a vicious cycle.

One thing we learned last year with Online Dynasty was the multi-game restart warning proved to be a very good cheat preventer. The simple act of calling someone out for restarting their game was often enough to prevent someone from quitting a game vs. the CPU if their star player went down with an injury. We applied that same concept when coming up with Sportsmanship. Let's call people out when they are acting like jerks, and reward them when they do the right thing. Now when you choose to go for that onside kick when you are up by 28 just to annoy your opponent, not only will it hurt your school, but it will also tarnish your image in the eyes of the online community as the more you do these things the more of a "bad sport" you will be considered.

Sportsmanship is the only category that you can gain and lose credits during a game. If you earned 400 credits in all of the other categories, but finished with -200 in Sportsmanship, you are going home with 200 credits for that game. Before you start to think that I've just shown you the way to tank a school just by signing up for them and losing as many credits as possible, we cap the number of credits lost at zero for the school, so you can never remove credits from a school. You will, however, go into the negative for your own personal sportsmanship rating. And then everyone will know what type of player you really are.

Before heading into a game with someone make sure to check out their Season Showdown ID card, here you will be able to see the school they are representing, how many total credits they have earned, and their Skills, Strategy, and Sportsmanship levels. These levels will let you get a good indication as to what type of player your opponent is, and what type of experience you can be prepared for if you play them.

Alright, enough about why Sportsmanship is in, now let's talk about how you can display good and bad Sportsmanship. First I'll start with the positives:

Punting on 4th down

I know, this is a foreign concept to some, but it is true, punting is a part of football. This is the single biggest gripe among gamers, you hold your opponent to a 4th down, and they go for it, regardless of distance, score, location on the field, etc. So this one is pretty simple, if it's a situation where you should punt it, do so.

QB Kneel

Pop quiz, outside of a Punt, what's the least used play during an online game in NCAA Football 09? If you said QB Kneel I'd venture to say you are correct. Even with a 1-point lead I've seen countless number of people risk a turnover to keep running the ball, or worse, passing the ball, when all they need to do is knee out the clock. Do this and you will get some easy Sportsmanship credits.

Chewing the Clock

One of the new additions this year is the ability to "chew the clock". This feature allows you to speed up the game and play clock to 12 seconds left on the play clock. This means when you are trying to preserve a win, instead of just sitting in the play call screen waiting for the time to tick down, you can call your play and have the time tick off automatically. Since the point of doing this is to run out the clock, you will need to wait until there are 5 seconds or less on the play clock before snapping the ball if you want credit. Also, if you are on the losing end of a contest and just want to get it over with you can turn on Chew Clock to help speed up the end of the game, you will get credits for doing this too. Remember, Chew Clock only works when the game clock is running, so if you turn it on before the start of a drive, it won't work on 1st down since the clock is stopped.

Concede Defeat

This one couldn't be simpler. If you just want to end the game cause you are getting waxed, waive the white flag and concede defeat, you will get credits just for doing that. If your opponent accepts they too will get some credits for being a good sport.

Now let's talk about the negatives. One thing to remember is that these are all situational based, so just because you can lose credits for going for it on 4th down doesn't mean that every situation would be considered poor sportsmanship. If you are losing in the 4th quarter, go for it as much as you want.

Going for it on 4th down

I guarantee that if you are reading this, you would score at least a 9/10 on a quiz called "Should I go for it on this 4th down". So you know what you should do any given situation. For the borderline cases, we will only hit you with a warning that lets you know when you are cutting it close.

Unnecessary 2-point conversions

Every coach has that little card that tells them when they should go for 1 or 2 based on the score. If you are up by 5, what's one point going to get you? You want to go for 2 to get your lead to 7. If you are up by 34, does going up by 36 really put you in a better position to win? No? Then kick the extra point.

Onside Kicking

Simple, if you have the lead, kick it off.

Calling a timeout just to get one more play

As the game is winding down and your win is secure, if you call a time out on defense just to try and get the ball back to pad some stats, or if you are already on offense and call a timeout with 2 seconds left just for one more stab at the end zone get ready to lose some credits.

Continuing to Pass late in the 4th quarter with a comfortable lead

This one is not an affront on the Texas Tech's of the world, but if you are passing on 1st or 2nd down in the 4th quarter with a 3 score lead, then you are going to lose some credits. Even Mike Leach would be fine with you running the clock out here.

Well there you have it. That's what Sportsmanship is all about. One last note, the situations and scores are all tunable after the game launches. So if we missed a situation, or need to make an adjustment to the scoring we will be able to do that automatically and not through a patch, which will allow for very quick turnaround if an issue comes up. And if one does, I have no doubt you will let me know.

To read this original blog post and make comments, visit the Inside EA SPORTS Blog.

Season Showdown: Strategy

It used to be that you could sit back, call the same play over and over again, and just "out athlete" your opponent. It used to be that you could hop around the playbook jumping from I Form, to Ace, to Shotgun without a care in the world for creating an offensive identity. And it used to be that you could know exactly what your opponent was going to know, know exactly how you would stop it, but didn't have a way to tell your players that that without a doubt the next play is going to be a run to the right, go shut it down.

Thankfully those days are behind us. With NCAA Football 10 strategy takes on a huge role with three new gameplay features that put the emphasis on out thinking your opponent instead of just out maneuvering him on the sticks. By gameplanning, setting up plays, and keying in on what you think the offense will be running you can affect the outcome of the game just based on your coaching decisions.

And you are going to need to strategize your opponent like never before. With the inclusion of Adaptive AI CPU controlled defenses will learn what you are doing, and focus on shutting it down. Rush up the middle for a few big gains? Good Job. The next time you come to the line you will see that the defensive tackles have pinched in to take away the running lanes. Found that route you love to run if you need to pick up a first down? Be careful, you run that route too much the defense will be looking for it and blanket your receiver. Even if you try and get sneaky by calling the same route from a different formation, the CPU will be watching for that route, not the play, and shutting you down.

It's not all about defensive upgrades for the CPU either. While on defense the CPU is going to test you deep to try and open things up. If you are the type of guy that likes to press all of the time, you're now going to be the type of guy that also likes to chase a receiver down after they got past your DB and got hit wide open on a streak.

Gameplanning

The first feature we will talk about is Gameplanning. This feature is all about determining how aggressive, conservative, or balanced you want your team to play during certain situations. There are six defensive situations and five offensive situations you can adjust at any point during the game, based on your preferred strategy for that moment.

The Gameplanning screen comes up automatically after the coin toss, and at the start of the 2nd half, as well as after any timeout. You can also manually bring up the screen any time you are in the playcall screen (pressing LT/L2). From here you will be able to adjust your gameplan as you wish. While you may want to play more aggressive at the start of the game, if you are protecting a lead you will most likely want to ease off the throttle a bit and play more conservatively.

Each gameplan option has its own risks and rewards. For example, if you want your defense to always attempt to strip the ball, you will see the strip ball animations play on almost every play, and the chance of successfully stripping the ball increases. However, the more the defender is going for the strip, the more likely they are to get a hand up a little too high and grab hold of a facemask. If you don't mind tacking 15 yards onto a play every now and then in order to force a turnover then you can set your strip ball gamplan to aggressive. You can also go more of a conservative route and tell your defenders to focus on making the tackle instead of stripping the ball. In this case you will get less facemask penalties, but you will have little chance of ripping the ball out. If you don't want to play one way or the other you can set this option to "normal" which will allow for the defenders to choose how to play on their own (as they have in previous versions of the game).

All of the options for both offense and defense default to Balanced. You will be able to see what your current setting is by looking at the color checkmark next to the each option. Green means you are set to Balanced, Yellow is Aggressive, and Blue is Conservative. Based on your Gameplanning settings, you will earn Strategy Credits for Season Showdown when your Gameplan settings were successful on the field.

Setup Plays

The next new Strategy feature is the Setup Play. This feature allows you to run one play successfully in order to "setup" a variation of a similar play. The easiest example of this is to run the Power O play to setup the play action pass based on the Power O play (PA Power O). At the playcall screen you will be able to tell which plays set each other by the chain links that connect the two plays. Here's a screenshot of the Power O example:

While the play action off of a run play is the easiest example, Setup Plays are not limited to just this type of playcalling strategy. There are pass plays linked to other pass plays, where one play may have a "mesh" route where the receiver streaks across the field, the linked version of that play involves the same receiver cutting that mesh route off and instead running a hook route. Another example is how a draw play can be used to setup a HB screen.

You can run either play to setup their linked play, so you can either setup the PA Power O by successfully running Power O, or you can setup Power O by successfully running PA Power O. As you run one play, you will see how close you are to fully setting up its linked play.  Once the linked play is at 100% setup, the defense will be at its highest likelihood of getting faked out, increasing your chances of successfully executing your setup play. The chance that the defender will get faked out is all based on their individual ratings, so a top rated defender will still be less likely to fall for the play action than some walk-on freshman. The Setup Play just means that the defenders have the highest chance of getting faked out when you run that play.

The Setup Play only works once before you need to work on setting it up again, and if you run a play you are setting up before it's reached the 100% Setup status, you will need to start over again as that play will be reset to 0% Setup.  Here is a screenshot showing a play in the process of getting setup:

There is no time limit on how long a play will be setup for. If you setup a play in the 1st quarter, and never run it again, the play will still be setup and ready to go in the 4th quarter.

The speed at which a play is setup is based both on the success of the play as well as the difficulty level. If you want to get a play to 100% setup on Heisman you will need to do a lot more than a couple of 5 yard gains.

If you are able to run a play that is 100% setup and either get a 1st down or a touchdown you will earn Strategy credits.

Defensive Keys

If you have ever been in a game and you knew, without a doubt, that your opponent will be running to the strong side of the formation, or its 3rd and 1 and you know a run up the middle is coming, or if you know your opponent will be throwing to a specific receiver on the play, but you have never been able to shut the play down based only playcall/defensive shifts alone then Defensive Keys is what you have been waiting for. During preplay while on defense you will be able to bring up the Defensive keys menu by holding LT/L2. You will then be able to choose what you want the defense to key on for that play. Here is a screenshot of what this looks like:

With the right stick you will be able to pick your defensive key for that play. If you choose Run Right, at the snap of the ball you will see your defensive players flood toward the right, and if you guess correctly, the ball carrier will have nowhere to go. Now, if you guess Run Right, and your opponent instead runs a toss to the left, well you've just opened yourself up for a potential big gain by the offense. Selecting to play the pass will basically prevent your defenders from getting faked out by a play action play (which is a nice counter if you know your opponent is going to run a setup play action play).

In addition to this you can also choose to spotlight a specific receiver for that play. When you bring up Defensive Keys the camera goes into Coach Cam and each of the offense's receivers will have a button callout over them. Select the receiver you want to spotlight, and the defense will make that player the focus of their pass coverage to make sure he doesn't get into any open space. Since you are focusing on one guy the potential is there for another receiver to get into some open space and burn you.

The addition of Defensive Keys adds a new wrinkle to the chess match that is playcalling. If you are too predictable in your playcalling your opponent will be able to pick up on your tendencies and shut you down. Or you can try and out think your opponent by always running on 1st down only to surprise them by calling a deep bomb out of the blue when they are expecting another HB Dive.
You can only choose one key per play. If you select to spotlight a receiver, then select to key on a pass, you will no longer be spotlighting the receiver.

If you don't want to key in on something, but you do want a quick way to mass shift your defense in a direction you can use the left analog stick towards the direction you want your players to shift. This will not change their assignments, only shift where they line up.

If you key in on a run and stop the play for a loss, or break up a pass play through a sack, swat, knockout, or interception you will earn Strategy credits.

Well, that's a rundown of the three new gameplay features that make up the Strategy component of Season Showdown.

NCAA Football 10: Season Showdown

Hey Everyone, by now most of you have started to hear some details about Season Showdown, and some of you got uncomfortably close with me as I talked with Pasta Padre and cdj about Season Showdown couple of weeks ago. This week's blog will focus on the format of Season Showdown, and in the coming weeks we will go in-depth on the Skills, Strategy, and Sportsmanship components that make up a lot of what Season Showdown is all about.

Before I dig into the feature I wanted to mention that the seasonshowdown.easports.com site will not go live until we launch on July 14th. If you try to access the site before then you will just get redirected until the site is live.

Selecting your school

First let's layout what Season Showdown is all about. This is a competition combining all Xbox 360, PS3, and EA Sports World members to put their school pride on the line to try and prove their school is the best. All you need to do is select the school you want to represent, and from that point forward every game you play will help your school's cause. Your school selection is permanent, so make sure you're picking the right school or else you might find yourself repping Miami of Ohio instead of "Da U".

Schedule Format and Phases

Since there is a little over a month between NCAA Football 10 hitting the shelves and the start of the college football season we will treat that time as the Season Showdown pre-season. During this time you will be able to earn credits for your school by playing any game vs. the CPU or vs. an online opponent. We will track the number of credits each person has earned individually as well as how many credits each school has earned. Your goal is to try and get your school at the top of the leaderboard by August 31st, which is the start of our regular season. In addition to playing the game, you will also be able to earn credits by logging into seasonshowdown.easports.com and playing the NCAA Trivia Challenge. The credits you earn for showing off your college football knowledge will be added to your school's total as well as your own personal credit count. Since the trivia game is completely handled on the web, you don't even need to own the game to play trivia and help your school.

The reason you want to get your school at the top of the leaderboard is so you can make your school's path to the championship as easy as possible. Since Season Showdown replicates the real world season, we will have our own weekly polls based on the outcome of the Season Showdown games. The initial poll rankings for week 1 of the regular season will be where each school finished on the leaderboard at the end of the pre-season.

Once the regular season begins, each matchup will last the entire week, and your school's opponent will be the same as their real world opponent. So in week one Bama fans will be squaring off with Virginia Tech fans and Cal fans won't have to wait all week for their chance to get some revenge over Maryland. Every week of the season you will have a new opponent, and a new poll will be released every Monday letting you know where your school stands in the overall competition. Once we hit the first week in December its conference championship time. This is the first time we will part ways from the real life season. The schools that will be battling it out for their conference titles are the schools that win their divisions in the Season Showdown regular season. So while the real world SEC championship game might be UF vs. LSU, if Ole Miss fans and Kentucky fans fight hard enough, they will be playing for the SEC title in Season Showdown. And if you didn't finish #1 or #2 in the final rankings of the season don't sweat it, cause the top 32 schools will be placed into a single elimination tournament to crown the Season Showdown champion. Each round of the tournament will last one week, just like the match-ups during the regular season, and the Season Showdown Championship week will be played out the same week as the real world National Championship game.

Once the champion has been declared, we return to the pre-season format where you will battle for leaderboard positioning.

How does a school win their match-up?

Since the Season Showdown isn't about the school with the most members or earns the most total credits for the week automatically wins, you will need to divide your credit earning into five categories. You can view the progress of each matchup by selecting the game from the schedules screen. Here you will see the match in progress screen, that shows each of the 5 categories, and who is leading. For the vs. Showdown Opponent category, we don't show who is leading until the week is over, since this is the one instance where if you know you are in the lead for the category, you can guarantee your school wins the category by no longer playing any Showdown games for that week. The school that takes three of those categories gets the win for the week. These categories are:

Games vs. CPU - anytime you play a CPU opponent the credits earned from that game will count towards this category.

Games vs. your Showdown Opponent - This category is all about taking on someone that represents your school's opponent for that week. So if it's week 1 of the season, LSU and Washington fans will play against each other in an online game; and the credits won during those games count towards this category. There are a few ways to find a Showdown Opponent, you can search for one from the schedules screen, head to your match-ups lobby room, or take a look at someone's Season Showdown ID card which is displayed in the top right corner of the screen whenever a player's online info is displayed on the screen. Here you will be able to see which school they represent, how long they have been a member, their total credits earned, and their skills, sportsmanship, and strategy levels. By taking a look at these levels you can get an indication as to what type of player the opponent is before heading into a game with them. If their Skills level is off the charts, then expect that person to be a gameplay master, if they have a lot of total credits but their Sportsmanship level is low you can probably figure that their punter hasn't seen much action.

Games Online vs. the Nation - These are games played online against anyone that is not representing your current showdown opponent school. So using the example above, if an LSU fan takes on someone representing Ohio State in week 1 of the season, the credits earned will be awarded to this category.

NCAA Trivia Challenge - Just like the pre-season you will be able to earn credits for your school by showing your college football knowledge. In addition to historical questions, we will also be adding questions during the year about the current college football season. Only your top score for the week will count, and your goal will be to finish in the top 50 for your school that week. At the end of the week we add up all of the credits earned and declare the winner for the category. If you are outside of the top 50 your credits will still count for your individual score, they just won't be added to the team score for the week. The trivia challenge will be accessible from seasonshowdown.easports.com, and as stated above, can be played even if you don't own the game.

Allies & Rivals - this category is 100% decided by your votes. Every day of the week everyone that logs into Allies & Rivals will have 5 votes to use however they want. At the end of the week the votes are tallied and whichever school in the match-up has the most votes takes the category. We track and display which school are your allies (who's been voting for you to win) and your rivals (who always wants to see you lose). It's up to you how you spend your votes each day, If you are an FSU fan it's a pretty safe bet that one vote will go to FSU (you want to win right?), and one vote will go towards whoever is playing Miami and Florida that week, and with the other two votes, you can either try to help take down the top ranked school, or help an ally defeat their opponent. Once we hit tournament time, even if your school is out of it, you will still be able to have a say in who wins, as your votes will count towards who wins this category. Just like the Trivia Challenge, Allies & Rivals is accessible from seasonshowdown.easports.com and can be played even if you don't own the game.

How do I earn credits during a game?

There are a number of ways you can earn credits by playing the game. With Season Showdown, how you play the game is as important as winning the game. No matter if you win or lose, you will still earn credits just for participating, however you will be able to earn extra credits in a number of categories (Skills, Strategy, Sportsmanship, Loyalty, Underdog, and ESPN Instant Classics).

We will go into great detail in the coming weeks about Skills, Strategy, and Sportsmanship, so for this blog I'll focus more on the other extra credit categories.

Loyalty - When you are choosing a school to represent, all credits you earn go towards that school, but that doesn't mean you have to use that school in every game you play, you will still earn credits for Notre Dame even if you wanted to start a dynasty with Kent State. However, when you do play with the school you represent, you will earn an additional loyalty bonus.

Underdog - Without fail, whenever you go online you find that a majority of the people use the same top ranked teams whenever they play, instead of sinking to their level, take a lower ranked team and beat them to earn Underdog credits. The larger the gap between schools the more credits you will earn.

ESPN Instant Classics - If the game you have just completed is considered an ESPN Instant Classic you will receive credits for playing a thrilling game.

Quit Penalty - one of the goals with Season Showdown is to improve the quality of play online, and there are few things worse than an opponent that quits on you. With Season Showdown, you will actually earn credits for ending a game early the right way (by granting mercy, conceding defeat, etc.) that you don't need to just pull your connection anymore. If you do, you will get docked 50% of your total credits earned the next time you play an online game.

Following along with Season Showdown

On the console as well as on the web you will be able to follow all of the Season Showdown action. There will be daily audio podcasts hosted by the Thompson Brothers that fire off automatically when you enter the Season Showdown feature in-game as well as weekly video podcasts that will wrap up the last week's action and get you ready for the big match-ups ahead. Every Monday the latest polls will be released that ranks all 120 schools based on their season showdown performance, conference standings, credit history for that tracks the credits earned in each category for each player as well as each school, and leaderboards that allow you to see which player and which school are the best at any category.

There's a lot that went into the creation of Season Showdown, and a lot to discuss here. Please feel free to post your questions about the feature in the comments.

For a complete look at this blog iand to make comments, go to the Inside EA SPORTS Blog Here.

-Ben Haumiller

Hey Everybody, I'm Ben Haumiller and I'm a designer on the NCAA Football series. I've been at Tiburon since 2000, starting out as a tester in QA, and I've been a member of the NCAA Football design team since NCAA 06. Since joining the team I've primary worked on our career modes (Dynasty, Campus Legend, etc.) our Online features, as well as a lot of the features you'll find when checking out the My NCAA and Team Management sections of the Main Menu. You would be hard pressed to find a more passionate college football fan than myself, so working on the NCAA Football series has been a dream come true.

On NCAA Football 09 I was the designer for what had been long considered the "Holy Grail of NCAA features", Online Dynasty.   I couldn't have been more excited to get this feature into the game. Dynasty is without a doubt my favorite feature in any sports game, and bringing that experience online brought a tremendous amount of life into an already great game mode. Based on the feedback from the community I was not the only one that was able to resurrect gaming rivalries with old college roommates that now live on the other side of the country, increase my desire to sign the recruits in the nation for no other reason than to force the other dynasty members to settle for a 3 star prospect, and feeling the pressure of knowing the result of your head to head game will mean the difference between a BCS berth or finishing your season in December.

When it comes to any Dynasty (online of offline) it all starts with which team(s) will be human controlled. One of the most difficult decisions to make is which conference will be used. If you are all about the head to head games and want that BCS tie-in then the PAC-10 and Big East are great options since you know for sure you will play everyone each year. If you have a full 12 members and want to decide the conference title in a championship game, or if you want the challenge of taking a "mid major" and turning them into the next powerhouse you have a number of options.

However, sometimes it's not that easy, sometimes it can be next to impossible to find a conference with the right mix of teams to make everyone happy. Well in NCAA Football 10 we have made life easier on commissioners across the nation with the addition of Custom Conferences. Now you will be able to swap any school in or out of your conference and replace them with another FBS school.  Each conference will keep their current number of members, so if you feel it's about time that Notre Dame joins the Big Ten you've got to decide which school will become an Independent. Since there are 120 FBS schools in real life, you will need to keep 120 FBS schools in your dynasty. While Michigan fans won't be able to prevent Ohio State from ever playing football again, they can take pride in relegating them to the MAC.

Custom Conferences will allow for increased flexibility in your dynasties. Now it's entirely up to you how the college football landscape will look in your dynasty. If you can't play with anyone but your Cornhuskers, and your friend feels the same way about Clemson don't just duke it out in a non-conference game, put a conference title on the line.

Wanna create a super conference with the top schools in the nation? Go right ahead. Do you miss the days of the old Southwest Conference, dust off the old wishbone playbook and put them all in the WAC, Mountain West, or Sun Belt. In NCAA Football 10 it's up to you how you want to set it up.  To read this original blog post and make comments, visit the Inside EA SPORTS Blog.

-Ben