The Stagnation of Teambuilder - JohnDoe8865's Blog

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JohnDoe8865's Blog

The Stagnation of Teambuilder Stuck

Posted on August 8, 2013 at 01:00 AM.

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On June 1st of 2009, EA Sports released Teambuilder for NCAA Football 10. EA described it as follows: "TeamBuilder is a web-based create-a-school feature that allows anyone with Internet access to log on to teambuilder.easports.com to create and share schools with the rest of the NCAA Football ... community".

At the time, this was a real innovation in the EA football series. Over 100,000 user created teams were available within a month of Teambuilder's launch. Teambuilder was a huge success and a big hit with fans and critics alike. On June 20, 2013 Teambuilder was once again released for NCAA Football, this time for NCAA Football 14. Unfortunately, teambuilder was and is basically the same untouched "feature" that released over four years earlier.

Teambuilder has been crying out for innovation and feature set improvement as much as any part of the game and in this blog, I hope to shine a little light on this fact and point out some areas that need to be updated. In NCAA Football 12 and again in NCAA Football 13, EA added the additional high school stadiums and uniforms in Road to Glory mode and that's it. Expansion of Teambuilder is what is needed most of all. Four years with the bare minimum of upgrades is enough.

Expansion

The community of creators that use Teambuilder have managed to do an amazing number of things with the limited layers and uniform options available. The time has come to open this area of the game up.

- More Logo options with room for Nike/Under Armour/Adidas as well as conference patches and logo variety for the fields. The workaround to get realistic brands on Teambuilder jerseys shouldn't be needed. We should simply have many more logo slots available.

- More number and font style options. This should be a given. If EA Sports can't give us more options here, allow custom scripts and lettering to be uploaded.

- More jersey combinations/options. Look at teams like Oregon and Maryland to see just how many different helmet/top/bottom combos are necessary to create those type of schools authentically. Home/Away/Alt1/Alt2/Alt3/Retro/Special. I think expanding to just six jerseys would be a huge starting point. Obviously we could still mix and match as well, giving us plenty of options. We also need an option for mesh/textures on our jerseys, especially for next-generation consoles.

- Let us edit team equipment INSIDE Teambuilder. This way, we can fix helmets, elbow pads, sleeves, etc before downloading them. Equipment in future EA College Football games needs a major overhaul but that's for another blog.

- No more roster templates. The time has come to allow us to create our own rosters, if we choose, without the restriction of basing it off of a current FBS school. Let us determine how many QBs, HBs, FBs, etc are on our team's roster. Let us choose hometown, race, height, weight, etc as well as ratings within Teambuilder.

- Allow us to choose our Top 3 rivals and allow us to input school records (All-Time W/L, retired jersey numbers, etc.) WITHIN Teambuilder.

- Allow us to choose our individual pipeline recruiting states, instead of having them tied to whatever school's roster template we were forced to use when we created the team.

- Give us more than 12 Teambuilder slots out of the box. Can we get 16 or 20? With the talk of 16 team super-conferences, it only makes sense to give us a few more Teambuilder slots without having to buy the expansion to 120 schools for five bucks. For those that do buy the 120 slots (perhaps make it 124?), allow them to swap out the entire list of schools for Teambuilder teams if they so desire.

- Give us the ability to choose helmet texture. With more teams using glossy finishes, matte finishes, special metallic finishes and more, we need to be be able to adjust this and have a mixture on one team if we choose.

Innovation

It's also time to step outside of the tools currently available in Teambuilder and give us some completely new options.

- Stadium Creator. Let us mix and match different stadium parts to create our own unique home field. Open it up to at least give a choice of turf style and color (red, blue, etc), track or no track, how each end zone will look (bowl, open, hillside, buildings) and how each side of the stands will look. We need the option to set the size of the stadium and how many fans it will seat. Custom seat colors, background colors, scoreboard placement, banners, etc should all be options as well. Having to use pre-existing stadiums with other teams' logos present is not acceptable. And no, the generic stadiums are not a good answer.

- Let us create our own end zone art and upload them, the same way we can upload real logos to go on helmets and jerseys. End zones in Teambuilder have poorly spaced words and have a generic look in general. The same for sideline art. Allow us to upload custom sideline art for a richer experience.

- Create-a-Mascot. This feature is needed for created schools. I don't know exactly how this would be accomplished, but EA Sports needs to come up with something here.

- Custom Fight Songs. Allow us to upload custom fight songs, that can be downloaded with the Teambuilder teams. This would be separate from the in game stadium sounds feature.

- Allow us to add teambuilder teams to dynasty mode WITHOUT having to replace a current school. Before each season, during the preseason/offseason allow users to add between two and eight teams into dynasty mode. This would allow users to update the schools to match real life moves or simply create fantasy scenarios.

- Expand Teambuilder to Madden NFL. This seems like an idea for another blog, but give Madden an NFL specific Teambuilder with a list of popular cities to start with so the commentary can stay in tune with the team.

Could we get even a few of these expansions or improvements for next year? I don't know but I feel like these suggestions are sorely needed, especially with next-generation College Football 15 coming in less than a year's time. Be sure to add your suggestions in the comments section.

Comments

# 1 OmahaKnights @ Aug 8

Sadly, I think the odds are better that they resurrect the NCAA Basketball franchise and stick Ed O'Bannon on the cover than implement any of these. I really want to be wrong, but I think Teambuilder's as good as abandoned.

# 2 herropreese @ Aug 8

I could see it being updated for next gen. Jersey patches, equipment editing would be awesome.

# 3 kidzer0918 @ Aug 8

great read i second all your opinions

# 4 bigdoc85 @ Aug 8

@OmahaKnights -- I got a chuckle out of that.

# 5 phenom2311 @ Aug 9

Bravo! Such a shame that a great feature like Teambuilder is being ignored basically by the developers. So much promise and greatness just waiting to be tapped. They may feel it's not getting a lot of play by NCAA gamers, but that could be because they haven't really added anything to it since it's inception. My friends and I run an all Teambuilder online dynasty. We've been doing it since NCAA 2010 when TB was first introduced. Our online dynasty is virtually ongoing. So when we play the last season of our OD in one game before starting our OD in the new game, we take those final rosters of our Teambuilder teams and transfer them over for the new game/dynasty via Teambuilder. We love creating uniform sets for our teams, but the lack of improvement and options is starting to get to us. The staleness and stagnation has us thinking about putting the game out completely.

# 6 JibberSkin @ Aug 9

These are awesome ideas, but EA is too lazy to implement them.

# 7 RandallB21 @ Aug 9

"- Allow us to add teambuilder teams to dynasty mode WITHOUT having to replace a current school. Before each season, during the preseason/offseason allow users to add between two and eight teams into dynasty mode. This would allow users to update the schools to match real life moves or simply create fantasy scenarios."

I've been wanting that since before teambuilder. Especially now that the FBS keeps expanding.

# 8 JohnDoe8865 @ Aug 10

@phenom2311 - I couldn't agree more. One of the reasons that Teambuilder's use has declined since it's inception is the fact that it has been largely neglected. However, even here on OS we have a dedicated group who attempt to make every FCS team yearly. It is a feature full of wasted opportunity.

@RandallB21 - There is no reason that this shouldn't be in for next season. As you said, the FBS is expending yearly and we should be able to carry over this reality into our dynasty mode.

# 9 brent3419 @ Aug 11

this is what should be in the game, its been limited for all these years. why cant i add montana montana st north dakota..etc..to conferences i would love to have every conference with 16 teams