NCAA Football vidya is back - EA announces restart of beloved franchise

[AgriDrThunder]

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/30821045/school-plan-ea-sports-do-college-football

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-is-reviving-its-college-football-series-for-ps5-and-xbox-series-x-but-no-player-names-or-likenesses/1100-6487021/

I know most kiwis are nerds who don't like sports ball but for the cool ones this shit is coming back after a seven year hiatus. EA announced the upcoming title with this tweet today:

One major change that's been announced is one most fans expected; player names and likenesses will not be included in the game due to the same compensation issues that caused the series to be paused in 2014.

Who else is hyped for the return of this game? I used to sink hundreds of hours in to each year's release and when the series died I more or less gave up console gaming. I am so fucking happy it's coming back.

 

[Goyaanisqatsi]

Too bad it's going to probably be just as much of a buggy piece of shit as the last half decade worth of Madden games.

I still might get it on sale, just because of how much I miss Dynasty mode.

 

[Daisymae]

Yea I’m jacked for this. Finally Michigan can win another National Championship.

 

[whatever I feel like]

Technically the announcement never says the word "NCAA". Its likely that they just have agreements with schools.

 

[Immortal Technique]

Guarantee it's just going to be Madden Franchise Mode after you've played 10 years and every real player has already retired. I might be interested unless they have a MUT like scam in the game--you just know there is zero improvements in the gameplay.

 

[OJ Simpson]

Expectations not very high from me.

I get the hype, but this is the 2021 EA, not 2006. Series hasn't been around since 7th gen and I'd bet that most of the NCAA team from that time, let alone the golden age of the series, aren't around anymore. Add to that the fact that EA forces all of their devs to implement the frostrash engine. Add to that, their lack of improvement to franchise since the 2000's, I don't see this panning out to meet people's misplaced high hopes. We won't even touch on the most important aspect, the gameplay. Just look at Madden for the past 8 years, and the two series always share similar gameplay/engines.

It's still EA. I just can't wrap my head around how fickle sports gamers are (just look at OperationSpergs). How one can bitch year after year about EA/their games and other sports games and their respective devs, but buy it year after year only to experience annual buyer's remorse. They might be able to pull off dynasty, so long as ultimate team doesn't touch the game with its poison, but the odds of that not happening are zero to none.

 

[likeacrackado]

How are they gonna make this a yearly release without roster updates?

 

[AgriDrThunder]

How are they gonna make this a yearly release without roster updates?

That's a very good question.

It makes me wonder how far their pledge to not use player names and likenesses will go. IIRC the games never used players' actual names though you had the option of editing rosters to assign them. The extent to which they used player likenesses is also murky, IIRC they would only try to match general things like race and stats of star players, they probably got their heights and weights correct as well. I can't remember if they worked much on the faces. I'd be 100% cool with a game that gives players the option to edit rosters just like before, then it wouldn't matter.

They are going to have to use player likenesses to some degree otherwise the game would be retarded. For example, just for the team ratings they'll have to assign numbers from 0-100 for Offense, Defense, and Overall because you're going to want the game to somewhat mimic reality. Alabama and Clemson will have to be strongly rated vs. the UTEPs and FIUs of the world. How do you do that without some degree of player likeness?

I think people will still buy yearly releases w/o annual roster updates because that wasn't, at least in my experience, the driving factor for most people. My friends and I never bought them simply to get the new rosters, why do that when you can just edit the existing roster from an earlier game? We bought them because of all the other stuff; Franchise and recruiting updates, uniform and stadium changes, and coaching changes. Maybe we were just weird though and other people did buy only for roster changes, I dunno.

I seem to also remember NCAA and Madden being quite different mechanically, to the point that I gave up on Madden entirely in like 2006 and haven't bought or played a copy since. That probably won't be the case now because as others have said the old NCAA team probably left and at least the first couple years of this series are going to be more or less Madden clones.

 

[likeacrackado]

at least the first couple years of this series are going to be more or less Madden clones.

this worries me, because modern day Madden is dogshit and theres no indication this won't be a clone of Madden with colleges' names/uniforms

 

[Goyaanisqatsi]

How are they gonna make this a yearly release without roster updates?

From how it's worded, they have the rights to either 100 or over a hundred teams but it doesn't say every FBS team, so they could easily nickle and dime for more teams, both in FBS and FCS, and uniforms.

Also, when the generation shifted over to 360/PS3, some of the teams had generic stadiums, so that could be another addition with every passing title.

I didn't see any mention of getting rights to bowl games, rivalry trophies (traditions could just mean stuff like Ohio State dotting the I and fight songs), and the College Football Playoff. I remember back when the BCS was still a thing, the addition of those New Year's Bowls was a big deal on whatever the newest iteration was.

If those are a no go, I hope they allow for a customizable postseason at the very least, like NCAA Football 99 or 2000 had with up to 8 to 16 team playoffs.

 

[AgriDrThunder]

From how it's worded, they have the rights to either 100 or over a hundred teams but it doesn't say every FBS team, so they could easily nickle and dime for more teams, both in FBS and FCS, and uniforms.

Also, when the generation shifted over to 360/PS3, some of the teams had generic stadiums, so that could be another addition with every passing title.

I didn't see any mention of getting rights to bowl games, rivalry trophies (traditions could just mean stuff like Ohio State dotting the I and fight songs), and the College Football Playoff. I remember back when the BCS was still a thing, the addition of those New Year's Bowls was a big deal on whatever the newest iteration was.

If those are a no go, I hope they allow for a customizable postseason at the very least, like NCAA Football 99 or 2000 had with up to 8 to 16 team playoffs.

It would kind of suck if they couldn't get all of the FBS in. It would also be a bummer if they failed to feature rivalries, trophies, and bowls. They haven't included FCS teams since 2006 and I really missed that. I still remember taking Hofstra from the FCS all the way up to being a powerhouse in the FBS. That shit was so fun. Customizable postseasons would be cool but I doubt they'll have it. @OJ Simpson 's pessimism is justified.

 

[Crisis Acting Instructor]

There's already a great 2020-2021 update mod for NCAA 14 called "College Football Revamped." A team of modders has been revising/replacing a lot of uniforms (meshes, etc), stadiums (even down to current-day ads and jumbotrons), in addition to updated rosters and even additional teams like Coastal Carolina and App State. If you want to play college football in the current year, it's very easy to use with RPCS3, and I think it's even useable on 360/PS3 as long as you have a USB drive and physical copy of the game. The only thing is they haven't finalized the updates for the Big 10/12/PAC, but they're being worked on from screenshots in the discord. I've played a stupid amount of the NCAA games and that mod has been a godsend for me, no longer just downloading updated rosters while everything else stays the same.