NCAA Football 10: EA Answers Your Questions

Earlier this week, we put up our first look at EA Sports' upcoming NCAA Football 10, after seeing the game for the first time the week prior. The press demo focused on the upgraded create-a-school mode that will let players go into as much details as they want when creating the school of their dreams (or simply recreating their old Pee Wee squad), as well as the new Season Showdown feature.

After the demo, I had a chance to sit down with NCAA Football 10 designer Ben Haumiller and ask him questions submitted by GameSpot readers, covering everything from the presence of FCS schools in the game to the future of NCAA infractions. Here's the results:

On the presence of FCS programs in the game (Submitted by DKHardee, Remjan and many others):

"With the addition of Team Builder this year, it's given us a great way of getting FCS schools into the game. Users can go on and create their schools to the degree that they want to, as in depth as they want to for them and be able to download those and be able to use them again."

(Note: Haumiller confirmed that no FCS schools will be included on the NCAA 10 disc)

If I recruit a huge Defensive Tackle to clog the middle, will other teams be inclined to run more sweeps and avoid taking that DT on? Will users be able to finally create defensive minded squads to combat the onslaught of offense we've seen for the past few seasons? (Submitted by SheikLives)

"With the addition of adaptive AI, you're actually going to see the teams adjust to your personnel and adjust to what you're doing. So, [if] you're going to have a big space either up the middle, that's clogging up the middle, they are going to run some plays that will be more effective for them. And, virtually, if you're on offense and you're running the same route that's killing them every time, they're going to adjust to that and do things to try and shut down that route."

I just wanna know if there will be any new tackle animations because the ones from 08 and 09 are not that cool lookin (Submitted by sunshine_12)

"There are ton of new tackle animations in this year. You've got collisions in the air that will lead to a tackle. When you're trying to attempt to strip the ball, while he's making the tackle, [your player will be] getting in there and really trying to rip that ball out of the ball carrier's hands. There's a ton of new big hit animations. You'll see a lot of new tackles as they're on the sidelines, big hits going into the sideline, that sort of thing."

On creating stadiums (Submitted by bearer2814 and others):

"[When creating a team in Team Builder] you'll be able to select any of the stadiums that we have in the game. So, that's any of the [FBS] stadiums we have, as well as any of the ball game stadiums we have and there are generics as well. So, you can go in and take a generic stadium. The crowds we palletize based on your team's colors. You'll have the field; we will customize fully to have whatever you want on the field there. So, there are abilities to customize what you want your stadium to look like."

When the quarterback drops back to pass can you see the entire field? Especially, the flats because I'm tired of throwing to my 'rb' or 'wr' in the flats, and not knowing that the cornerback stayed in the flat playing zone and he picks the ball off. (Submitted by GrndHard14)

"Cameras have been redone this year... If you have all the receivers on one side of the field, or a majority of them on one side, you'll be able to see more of that side of the field, the camera kind of tilts that way. So, it does dynamically update based on where the players are on the field, so that you will be able to see those players in the flats."

Have the players exclusiveness levels been modified? Nothing annoys me more than when a player particularly the 'star players' or those with insane speed - duck, spin, stiff arm, and dodge 4-5 of my players all in close proximity and take it to the endzone. DOES NOT HAPPEN! I don't care how good they are, in real life, someone is going to get them 9/10 times! (Submitted by GrndHard14)

"Your true stars are going to be true stars, but we want to make sure that they stand out in that regard. We made a lot of work with the other [non-star players] as well in updating how those players are created, you know, how the rosters are done. We have a whole new guy doing rosters this year, that has a whole new philosophy of how they should be done and we feel we're getting a lot better overall quality with what we've got this year."

(Note: I had follow-up questions to Ben's response answer, transcribed below)

Brian: Are you still using impact players?

Ben: We still do have impact players, yes.

Brian: Can you explain what you mean by a 'whole new philosophy'?

Ben: You're never going to get the same rosters, you know, if I did them compared to you, compared to anyone. Everyone has their own different feel for how they should be. And, so [we wanted to get] some kind of fresh blood in there and some other concepts of what they should be. It is a collaborative effort though, it's not like just one guy runs and does it. We all sit together and talk about where players are rated, where teams are rated and work on them that way. But, the guy is really very knowledgeable. You can talk to him about just about any school in the nation, he can go in depth on anybody. So, it's great to have him on the team.

Will NCAA 10 have progressive lighting... like there was in NCAA 07? (Submitted by Olsor)

"Progressive lighting is back, yes."

Will we be able to convert Online Dynasty from 09 to 10? (Submitted by MrM3th0d)

"That's not something that we can [do yet]. It's on my list of things to add and just not hasn't made it in yet."

Can they bring back infractions for your team for missing things like class or getting in trouble off the field? (Submitted by mikejd27)

"We're in discussions of how to do that again. We want to re-visit that system. The problem that we had with the current system was: it was just reactionary. So, all of a sudden you go into a big game and there's this [phenomenon of], 'Oh, great, my starting kicker is out because of something I had no control over.'

"So, rather than just implement that same system again, we're going back and saying, okay, what elements do we want to do, that you can kind of effectively stop this from happening? Or if a problem player keeps getting in trouble, how you can boot him off and all those sort of things. So, we're looking at doing a more in depth version of it, we're not ready to do it yet. So, it's in the plans, but not in the schedule."

On working with the NCAA regarding the in-game presence of problem players and infractions:

"It's a lot of fun to work with them in a lot of regards, because they do like that stuff, because it does show off the penalty. You must run a clean program or else suffer the consequences. As long as it's done in the right way. If we had a system where you could go and run afoul of the NCAA and giving players money and cars, stuff like that, and never get in trouble for it, they'd have a big problem with that. But, the fact that you have to face up to the problems of what you do, then they're totally fine with it."

For online leagues, can they give us the ability to have more people involved in the league? (Submitted by mikejd27)

"This year we'll still have twelve, we're hearing more and more feedback from people saying they want to have more. We're really looking into seeing what it's going to take to do more, versus how many people really are out there that want that much. So, it's something that we're looking into, we haven't set a timeframe for it yet, but I don't see any real hindrance of us being able to increase that at some point."

--

Thanks to Ben for taking the time to answer these reader questions and hopefully we can do another round of these soon.

Got more questions about NCAA Football 10? Put them in the comments below and I'll try to get them answered the next time I'm in touch with the NCAA crew.

On Monday, I'll post the answers to reader questions for Madden NFL 10.