Today EA Sports further detailed improvements to Dynasty mode in NCAA Football 12 while providing the first look at the enhancements made to Road to Glory career mode. Check out brand new screenshots in the gallery and continue on for a video preview of Dynasty mode and full breakdowns of the new features in both.
Dynasty will receive the “Coaching Carousel” and custom conferences. Remember those Online Dynasty web features of advancing weeks or simming games? Those aren’t free, each one will cost $3 to utilize. Road to Glory mode will include expanded time in High School with the ability to play a full senior season and there will be an element of “Coach’s Trust” to determine position battles and on-field opportunities. Credit to GameInformer for the full breakdown.
Custom Conferences
•Instead of just being able to swap teams between conferences, now you can expand or shrink conferences from four to sixteen teams
•You can set conference rules from allowing Thursday games, protected rivals, division names/alignment, scheduling of conference games, location of the conference championship game, and more
•You can also edit the bowl tie-ins, so the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl could not include the Big 12 or remove tie-ins altogether and just go off of straight BCS rankings. You could even make it so independents like Notre Dame don’t have a tie-in to any bowls, which sounds like a great plan
•No conference creation or BCS playoff-style tournament
•Conferences can be changed from year to year
Create a Coach/Coaching Carousel
•Start out as either a head coach (use an existing coach or one create one from scratch) or coordinator. Coordinators naturally only call and run plays for their side of the ball. Coordinators will still recruit, however
•Can edit any coaches/players that are existing on the disc. This can be posted as a file online for others to download
•The game wants to replicate the coaching carousel of the NCAA, so your contract status and goals will be closely monitored from year to year. Depending on the school, you’ll get goals like getting a bowl birth, having a top recruiting class, winning a national championship, and much more. For coordinators, goals will be stat based
•Your coaching prestige and job security change from week to week, so you’ll have to ride the rollercoaster all season, and this also affects your recruiting. If you’re on the hot seat, for example, players may be less inclined to sign onto your program
•AI coaches will retire, get fired, and hop from job to job, and this will affect the entire coaching landscape. The AI will hire coaches based on things like whether a candidates is an alum or not, coaching style, etc. You will also get offers while you are currently employed
•Although you can start out as a coordinator, when you are a head coach you do not hire your coordinator positions
•In online dynasties, the commish sets what level everyone is at, whether that’s one-star defensive coordinators or full-on high-caliber head coaches
Online Dynasty Web Browser
•Commish can advance the week from the web – but only if you pay a one-time fee of $2.99 or 240 Microsoft Points
•You can super-sim your games versus the CPU on the web – including calling plays, modifying your depth chart, and more. You can also pause the game at any time, sim forward a quarter, etc. Again, however, this will cost you a one-time fee of $2.99 or 240 Microsoft Points
•Both of the above browser features can be bought in one Commissioner Pack for $6.99/560 MP, and the pack also includes the ability to be commish to up to five dynasties
Misc.
•Custom Playbooks: Add remove plays and formations at will. You can set up exactly how you see your playbook, from grouping all medium passes to putting all play-action plays together, and more. This is not sortable via your NCAA browser page
•Recruiting in Dynasty mode has been tuned, but not changed greatly
•Explores your high school years more in depth, so you’ll play a full senior season and gain recruiting points that are based on your stats
After each game you’ll pick three local schools of varying prestige that are interested in you
•Your recruiting board shows which schools you’ve picked and how far you are to earning a scholarship for each one. You can walk on to any school, but if you have a scholarship, you’ll be able to transfer your recruiting points into XP for college
•You’ll play and be recruited on both sides of the ball
•You can edit your HS senior season from seven to eleven games, and can import online browser-built Team Builder teams as your opponents. This lets you recreate your real-life high school team’s schedule if you want
Coach’s Trust
•You work your way up the depth chart by earning Coach’s Trust Points, and even when you have enough points to catch the player who’s higher than you on the chart, you can then only take that position by winning a Position Battle – which is a glorified practice session
•Non-starters will earn Trust Points through practices and occasions when you see the field during mop-up time, etc.
•Coach Trust Points extend to your on-the-field power. QBs won’t be able to call audibles or hot routes until they have earned the coach’s trust
•Earn enough points and you can have the chance to call plays from “Extra Plays” – an extended selection of plays than what the coach has already called. This is available in varying frequency during a game the more Trust Points you earn
•The development team is also working on improving the AI play calling
XP and the Upgrade Store
•XP you earn during your college career is spent on item packs in the Upgrade Store. These packs are built around groups of attributes for specific types of players. For example, the scat back pack boosts your acceleration and juke ability
•There are 600 item packs total, and they’ll be six different ones available each week. Rarity, cost, and duration vary, but they will all be based around your position
•Upgrade Store items cannot be bought via micro-transactions
Misc.
•Calendar system scrapped, and the Road to Glory presentation is similar to the Dynasty Mode’s menus
•The mode’s menus, replays, montages, etc. will be centered around your player
•Practices are now 25 reps per practice
•Can save all your Road to Glory replays onto your NCAA browser page
•No more study sessions on your calendar