Draft Day Sports: Pro Football 2024

Not the first time Iv tried a Wolverine Studio simulation game and im starting to see a trend. The product is not complete and shouldn't have been released. I felt the same about the last game they released. It takes a solid 1-2 seconds each time you want to change screens in game. I dont mean switching from the game to windows.. im talking about IN-GAME screens that you need to cycle thru in order to play the game. All i wanted to do before learning how to play was change the generic team names to real life names. Wolverine has made it so annoyingly impossible to change the team names unless you go into each specific team page one by one and then into the team settings, and then another settings, and then FINALLY you can change the name. After spending 55 minutes in-game going through each team making sure they have real life football team names... I realized any new game I create after this will make me do the team name changes again and again and again. No thanks! Refund my money please. Wolverine Studios if you want to improve your game... Front Office Football allows players to change all the team names off one single screen within a minute. To accomplish the same on yours it takes at least 30 minutes. No one wants to do that.

Buggy mess

If you're searching for the "Football Manager" or OOTP Baseball of (american) football like I was, this is it. BUT! You should know about the agonizing lag. Each click between menus takes 2-4 seconds and the animated play-by-play in actual games is so laggy it's almost unusable. A quick search shows this has been an issue for this brand of sports management game for a long time, and there has been seemingly little to no improvement. This may very well be a deal-breaker for you, so if it is, this is not recommended. However, if you intend to sim through the games and can tolerate a few seconds delay constantly, this is the game you're looking for.

So many bugs and things not working correctly. Worst of all it's so slow... each page needs 2-3 second to load. Selecting a new play during the game can also cause the game to freeze for 10+ seconds.

First off: the game is very fun if you know what you’re doing. However, knowing what you’re doing is the hard part. Documentation covers only very high level details, leaving the rest to discover on your own through trial and error. The problem, however, is that in this game (as well as the real sport) there are so many variables and options that it’s hard to isolate if your changes had any meaningful impact that weren’t due to the inherent randomness of the game itself. Devs are scared to divulge any additional info in fear that people will break their engine (instead of welcoming it to build a more robust one). Second: Loading time between major screen changes. It may be 1-2 seconds, but it starts to add up as you’re going back and forth between menus Third: broken UI elements the devs have no intention of fixing this version. Transaction pages are all out of order, highlights page only loading 1/4th of the screen and 2 big ones that stand out in my head immediately. Very early on the devs said there weren’t going to be any more patches except to fix “critical” issues, which I’m assuming only included crashes. I have reviewed this game as a thumbs down, however there are two types of people I WOULD recommend the game to: People solely playing single player, who just want to sim games until the cows come up and clap when they win without truly understanding why they won. And People who want to play multiplayer who want to put in the hours to try to decipher how the engine works to compete against other high level players by building complex strategies and counter strategies (this is the unfortunate camp I fall in). The aversion of the devs to actually share any meaningful information outside of the bare-bones “help” pages on their website in fear of somebody breaking their engine, as well as their overall dismissive demeanor on discord have left a bad taste in my mouth that make me question if I’ll be buying the 2025 version.

You can tell its a small team that is dumping out a ton of games without putting love into them. This is a good core to a game however I'm afraid the devs will move on to Draft Day Sports: College Football or Draft Day Sports: Basketball or Draft Day Sports: Pickleball and so on... Biggest issues I've seen is there is no dead money, so sign everyone you want on backloaded contracts and then cut them when they dont fit your salary cap any more. There is also no instruction whatsoever, literally just clicking around learning things with no help. Example, you have too many players on your team after the preseason so you get a warning that you cant progress. However instead of saying you are 4 players over the roster limit it just leaves you to do the math to figure out how many players above 53 players you are. Third problem I've started to notice is that the computer doesnt care about their star players, Bryce Young is a 89 QB who lead the Panthers to 4 straight NFC championships only for his team not to want to pay him, so I ditch my 84 Jordan Love to make room for him and sign him to a back loaded contract saving me money to improve the most important position in the game. I would pay $50 for this game if they loved it, they have not proven to me that they do yet!

Initially, after playing the demo, I was not going to upgrade from my 2022 version and that was mainly due to my continued frustration with the speed (or lack there of) with screen loadings. It's awful, there's just no other way to describe it. Up to 5 seconds running Windows on Parallels for Mac and still 1 - 2 seconds on a native Windows gaming rig. But eventually I caved, got over my deep frustration with the loading times and decided to see the game for what it is and what it does well. What it is and what it does well is provide (in my estimation) the best all round, in depth, fully featured American Football sim game on the market. I own all the football sim games available and enjoy them all. But at the end of the day I always return to my DDS football titles and when you add in the NFL mods and face pack mods there's no better game IMHO. I typically play "offline" so my Steam hours are not representative of my actual game hours. I'd say I'm now fully 300+ hours in to this 2024 version and enjoying it immensely. PROS: -Ability to customize the league and play in online leagues if that's your thing. -Real world mods and face packs add to the immersion. -Ability to upload your college football draft class to the pro game if that's your thing too. -A dev team that listens, is active and keeps moving the franchise forward. -A franchise that makes steady, if not always rapid, progress year over year. -A good trading system (there's always room for improvement but the baseline is decent). -Excellent update this year to the depth chart and packages system. -Excellent game planning and strategy systems. -Ability to customize plays. -Excellent statistics and continued improvements to the game engine. -Ability to copy data tables with one button and paste to spread sheets etc. for more detailed analysis. -Ability to export data to csv files from multiple screens. -Good draft system -Improved coaching team dynamics -Improved scouting and recruiting system. CONS: -Screen loading times - I just can't flog this dead horse enough. -Still a lot of opportunity for QOL improvements. So much scope for live links and many other quick links to be implemented. There's too often the need to navigate multiple screens in order to get to a screen you need. They are slowly improving this but it needs to be an area of focus. Anyone who's played Football Manager or even OOTP baseball will probably be pulling their hair out after a few minutes. -The new game play graphics "actual players". It's new, it's badly executed but at least they let us choose the dots instead! -Did I mention the load times? MEH: I was not a fan of the new game screen. As a player who tends to play each game - play-by-play, rather than sim each game, I was not liking the new zoom in feature as the play is executed. I also found the play by play detail did not hang around long enough either. However, like most new things, it's probably more a case of adapting to change, because with a few hundred hours in the game I'm not finding the zoom feature so bad after all. Anyway, overall, I love this game and it's college football cousin and if you love football management and sim games give it a try. But don't take my word for it. Head over to Wolverine Studios and download a demo and try it for yourself.

Not sure why this has zero reviews.. not even one negative? I enjoy this series. I can understand that the people that need sexy graphics not liking it. But, where are the people that like management sims?

It looks fun but it DOESNT have steamdeck support "/

Haven't played this game since 2020 and I am glad I upgraded. The UI is WORLDS better than what it used to be, but there are a lot of small quality of life things that still need updating. All in all, the game I already loved to play looks even better. Just wish that the loading screens weren't a thing, but it really doesn't impact my enjoyment all too much.