According to various comments coming out of a ‘community day’ currently taking place for NCAA Football 13 – yet another patch for NCAA Football 12 is on the way. The patch reportedly will attempt to further address the “transfer failed” issue that has plagued Online Dynasty mode since release. The issue has now been identified as having to do with the length of gamertags plus the dynasty IDs. Though attempts have been made to fix the problem previously it has continued to occur in many instances bringing dynasties to a standstill.

If the coming fix happens to take care of the problem completely it will be a welcome one even though it comes far too late for most people who have long since given up on NCAA 12. At the very least it shows an improved level of dedication to the product from EA Sports that has rightfully been questioned all along the way.

Update: EA has clarified this was to be a server side update not an actual patch. It apparently has already gone out too!

When a yearly sports title concentrates more on enhancing gameplay and the existing features rather than introducing big new ones the typical expectation is that it will at the very least be polished and avoid some of the growing pains that befall early-stage innovation. NCAA Football 12 made subtle improvements across the board but despite being theoretically rich in content faltered tragically due to broken and incomplete features and poor communication. 

The ranking of games in the best of 2011 list is based on number of factors including the personal amount of enjoyment had with a particular title, whether advertised features were fully delivered, post-release support, community interaction and communication, overall gameplay experience, feature set, and online play performance. Again this is largely a personal take and one with the advantage of tracking the games beyond just the release frame and does not act as some sort of recap of those with the highest scores on Metacritic. The analysis is weighted heavily towards those high in fun factor while considering them as a whole and compared relatively to the field.

Related: – NCAA 12 causes media outlets to question need to buy sports games on day one – NCAA 12 General Impressions - New features lack necessary follow-through – Tendency Bug - Road to Glory Impressions - Online Impressions - Hits and Misses Review

Coming off a largely successful iteration NCAA Football 12 sought to address some legacy issues (such as suction tackling/blocking) and expand the experience and options within Road to Glory and Dynasty modes. To an extent EA Sports achieved what they were going for – more open gameplay providing better realism, control, and balance – but the elements that came up short overshadowed the positives and rightfully so.

It took three weeks for EA to even acknowledge the bevy of serious problems that plagued NCAA 12. The most touted new feature – Custom Playbooks – was literally broken. This was not a case of just being disappointed or frustrated by a feature’s shortcomings rather it literally had to be avoided if one did not want to risk taking penalties and being stuck with no plays to choose from. SuperSim did not calculate time-of-possession properly making coaching as a coordinator far less appealing – the opposite side of the ball would only spend a minute or two of clock even on very long drives. Good luck as a defensive coordinator when 80% of game time is spent on the field while offense could easily rack up stats to reach season-set achievements quickly.

Online Dynasty began with an “advancement queue”, Teambuilder squads were unable to be used, injuries didn’t carry over from week to week, and “transfer failed” errors were all too common. Named rosters were hit with a bug that caused player tendencies to flip – negating the realism that many look for when facing CPU controlled players.

Beyond that are the areas that are better described as being disappointing. While graphically the game was astonishing in replays and screenshots actual gameplay looked far less impressive. The field was undefined with artwork even appearing pixelated while the first patch damaged things even more. The crowd looked horrendous in Road to Glory and a text blur was added to the screens which gave many people a headache while playing Dynasty mode.

The post-play cut scenes on the field were embarrassing, commentary stale, and atmosphere and crowd noise way off. Loading times remain ridiculously long which has been an issue for the series over the years. Custom Playbooks (when functioning properly) were far too intimidating and difficult to set up to one’s liking and Road to Glory as a whole was a big let down.

NCAA 12 did provide some fun gameplay and continued to deliver on a deep Dynasty mode – it’s just a shame that Online Dynasty was so unreliable. General online play was decent.

Had the advertised features been delivered fully functional there is no doubt that the game would have been viewed in a positive light. Even still five months later some of those promises haven’t been fulfilled. There have been four patches but only two were true feedback-related efforts (one was for release day and another to fix a problem that arose from one of the other patches). The first main one took two months and communication from EA relating to the game was the weakest encountered on such a high-profile title in years.

While NCAA Football 12 appeared during development to be a valiant effort that would satisfy the hardcore fans of the series it was so poorly executed that it could go down as one of the bigger failures from EA Sports this generation. Those who could look past, or didn’t care about, the areas that were inflicted by huge problems could easily enjoy the game and maybe even perceive it to have been better than the year prior. Evaluating the title on the whole though makes it one of this year’s most disappointing.

Earlier Year-in-Review Pieces
#7: NCAA Football 12
•#8: NHL 12
•#9: Fight Night Champion
•#10: MLB Bobblehead Pros
•Vote for the Community Choice Awards

One of the few new features for NCAA Football 12 that actually worked properly (outside of some scheduling issues) was Custom Conferences. With the instability of some conferences and the building up of others the continued shifting of schools in the process has turned the feature into a necessity. This will be especially apparent with NCAA Football 13 as the development team is already expressing frustration in designing for all possible scenarios and facing a deadline that may be reached before next year’s conference structure is fully determined. 

Kotaku has posted an interview with producer Ben Haumiller who described some of the hurdles currently being faced. Some notes of interest as summed up by author Owen Good:

• They’re working on a scheduling logic that accounts for a 22-team conference.
• They may include it in the game even if C-USA/MWC does not merge. It depends on space and other budget considerations.
• They’ve had to develop multiple contingency plans for their scheduling logic.
• They would probably never include the ability to rename or remove a conference in Dynasty set-up, for obvious reasons.
• They would likewise never insert AI that realigns conferences midseason, independent of the user.
• They won’t try to predict future membership changes, as the TCU/Big East lesson this year bears out.
• They don’t want to hear their Madden colleagues bitching about schedule changes, that’s for sure.

It’s definitely a difficulty for the NCAA Football team to deal with this instability – but one would suspect most consumers don’t want to hear excuses or complaining about anything this early in the development cycle particularly when NCAA 12 released in the unfinished state that it did. Still, it makes for a worthwhile read, and provides some insight on the process so check it out and leave any thoughts in the comments.

The patch that was announced last week for NCAA Football 12 has arrived early for the PS3 with it still planned to go out for the 360 tomorrow. Post-release support for NCAA 12 has been reasonably strong but unfortunately it has been forced to primarily concentrate on fixing serious problems rather than being able to take the opportunity to improve the game from where it should have been originally.

In this patch some of the “Transfer Failed” errors for Online Dynasties are supposedly being addressed (a server-side update also coming), play-calling in Road to Glory has been tweaked, and a specific desync issue online has been fixed.

Today EA Sports laid out details of the upcoming patch for NCAA Football 12. Expected to release for both the Xbox 360 and PS3 on Tuesday November 8th this will represent the fourth (and likely final) patch for the game. In terms of post-release support it really is more like the second, as the one ready for release day is essentially the shipped product and the last one was just fixing a problem that the earlier introduced.

This next patch will attempt to address three issues with the main one being continued work on the “Transfer Failed” stumbling block many Online Dynasties have hit. Continue on for the full explanation from EA of what to expect in next week’s patch for NCAA Football 12. 

•Online Desync fix: We’ve fixed a desync that was occurring when performing pre-play adjustments from the 3-4 Under defensive formation.

•Road to Glory: We’ve fixed an issue with the playcalling AI where running plays were called too often in situations where a passing play should be called. This was most noticeable when trailing late in a game with a running back RTG character.

•Online Dynasty – Transfer Failed: There are a few different issues that are causing Transfer Failed notifications in Online Dynasties. The majority of people ran into this error when attempting to upload data (i.e. game result, recruiting info, etc.). The fix for this issue involved more than we could do on the server side alone, and that fix is included in this Title Update. There will also be a server deployment necessary to complete the fix for these Transfer Failed issues. At this time, it looks like that server deployment will happen shortly after the Title Update is available. Once we know the exact date of the deployment we will be sure to pass the info along. As for the remaining Transfer Failed issues, we are continuing to investigate server side fixes for these issues.

The follow-up patch for NCAA Football 12 went live last night for the PS3 and today for the Xbox 360 to address an issue introduced in early September. No-huddle has been fixed after the last patch inadvertently resulted in severe limitations of play selection for both the offense and defense. There have been no indications as of yet whether this patch represents finality for NCAA 12′s post-release support. (Update) I’ve now been informed a third patch is in the works but when it will come and what it will entail remains unknown.

The upcoming patch for NCAA Football 12, which last week was confirmed to have reached first party certification with Microsoft and Sony, has been approved and is scheduled to be pushed out on Friday October 7th for both systems. With it comes a fix to the issue with no-huddle that was introduced in the first major patch. Essentially only one set of plays from each formation were available to select from affecting both the offense and their ability to make calls on the fly and limiting the options for the defense – arguably where it may have been the most damaging though hampering the flexibility for both sides significantly.

The patch is said to have been “rushed out” and because of that includes nothing more than the no-huddle fix. No indication given whether this signifies the end to post-release support for NCAA 12 however stating that this patch was rushed could imply that other fixes would have been included if not under time constraints – or it could also signify a patch that had not been planned but had to be completed due to having created a problem with the last one.

Regardless it’s been a rocky ride and maybe now NCAA 12 has stabilized but it comes at the cost of the first three months of release. News on Madden NFL 12′s first patch is expected to come sometime later this week.

EA Sports announced earlier today that next patch for NCAA Football 12, which will address at least the no-huddle issue introduced in the last patch, has cleared internal certification and is now in the hands of Microsoft and Sony. In general the expectation at this point in the process would be for approval and going live in the next two weeks. It is unclear if what, if any, other changes are being introduced in the aforementioned patch.

Unfortunately the time it has taken to develop and deliver the patches has been lengthy – the first occurring after the release of Madden NFL 12 and the second now coming after NHL 12, FIFA 12, and NBA 2K12′s arrival. The game released with a long list of serious issues and many consumers grew frustrated not just with the release product but having to wait around for advertised features to work properly. With so many other choices on the market many have probably moved on by this point but that doesn’t negate the need for EA to get the fixes out there.

After arriving with a myriad of issues EA Sports released a patch two weeks ago that was meant to address many of them. Unfortunately that patch introduced a new issue as it created a playbook bug while running no-huddle that affected both offense and defense.

Today the company announced that another patch has reached internal testing – after which it will need to go to Microsoft and Sony (meaning it’s probably around three weeks out). The patch’s intention is to fix the no-huddle bug. It’s unclear if this is the only problem taken care of with the upcoming patch but it appears to at least have been the primary focus.

While the well-publicized lawsuit against EA Sports, the NCAA, and the Collegiate Licensing Company steams towards a trial set to begin in March 2013 (see the details on that here) a ruling has come down that offers insight into the legalities and could even have a greater impact.

EA has won a dismissal in a case brought originally in 2009 by former Rutgers QB Ryan Hart in New Jersey, reinforcing the idea that video games are artistic works rather than commercial speech – and therefore protected under the First Amendment. That would mean creating characters even if based on real life skills and appearance would be permitted seemingly as long as names weren’t used. 

While it may not directly influence the pending Sam Keller/Ed O’Bannon led suit in California it goes to show the momentum being built regarding the interpretation of the law considering video games to be expressive works of art. That was established recently by the Supreme Court and supports EA’s argument – as other forms of media such as movies have never been subject to judgments based on incorporating someone’s name or likeness (which happens all the time).

Given that the judge in that case had already dismissed EA as a defendant only to bring them back in when the plaintiffs made additional allegations, and now adding in this latest ruling, the company appears to be confident in their standing. There is a long way to though and with the potential ramifications it is something that will be continually monitored.