EA Sports NCAA Football

[Szumi]

Enjoying this so far, although still trying to find/tweak the sliders so the game feels more realistic ie run blocking, catching being awful, ridiculous amount of interceptions, etc. 

The things I am annoyed with are you can't do training in Dynasty with the team, which makes zero sense, and also that you cannot manage substitutions in the packages/formations in the Coaching hub like you can in Madden. I can't fathom why that's not in it. 

[Razohiro Ishii]

A video that is helping  me decide on who to go with. @Twist's pick of UNLV is in there, too.

[Twist]

10 hours ago, Szumi said:

Enjoying this so far, although still trying to find/tweak the sliders so the game feels more realistic ie run blocking, catching being awful, ridiculous amount of interceptions, etc. 

The things I am annoyed with are you can't do training in Dynasty with the team, which makes zero sense, and also that you cannot manage substitutions in the packages/formations in the Coaching hub like you can in Madden. I can't fathom why that's not in it. 

I downloaded the top two sliders on the creation center and I'm having some really great games with it.

[The Buscher]

Recruiting is both fun and frustrating at the same time.  Had a 3-star MLB who had the green diamond so they were actually going to be more like 4-stars and I was decently ahead of Syracuse in recruiting, he was visiting me in week 7 and Syracuse in week 8.  Week 6 passes and I get a notice that he's committed to Syracuse before he's visited either of us, and I was sending the house at him so there's really nothing I could've done  Cuse probably lined up better for his hard-sell points but damn losing him before the visit hurts.

On the other hand, I landed my first mildly funny named recruit to recruit (B.J. Colledge) and he's a 4-star CB from Florida to commit - beat out a bunch of Florida schools for him.  So great to see that commitment pop up on the screen.

[Maxx]

I'm recruiting someone named Boogie Barry, gonna play him at guy on the quad with devil sticks that everyone knows who has been around years.

[Razohiro Ishii]

I've only played some exhibition games so far but I really like it. I fucking suck at defense though, although I've read that defense is a bit shitty altogether. Still I'm not too fussed if every game turns into a shootout.

[The Buscher]

A 5 star OLB, #4 prospect in the entire country.  I decided to take a go at him as he had no strong preferences in the preseason and I figured I could send the house and, if a major school quickly jumped in I'd just bow out and save the hours.

Pumped a ton of hours into him as this guy kept me clearly way ahead at the top of my list through week 8 with other teams being surprisingly not very aggressive on him.  Week 9 suddenly Penn State emerged out of nowhere to take a slight lead on me, and he signed with them the next week.

Way to lead me on dude.    Hope I can recruit a RB to truck his ass at some point in the next 4 years since I'll play them annually with the geographical-based conference alignment I have.

[Szumi]

On 27/07/2024 at 02:39, Twist said:

I downloaded the top two sliders on the creation center and I'm having some really great games with it.

Yeah I downloaded the same one I am thinking. I had to tweak it some as there were still too many interceptions and my passing game was always awful. Run blocking seems to go from awful to amazing 10+ runs every time by just 1 adjustment slider. Still a lot of fun though!

[LL!]

It's funny. Here I was thinking that patches fix the game, but it seems this one has broken it more. I didn't have a problem with the defense getting a ton of interception on me until after this patch hit. 

[ragbag]

The patch broke the score bug in my dynasty so that it no longer shows up in pre-play, making it a tad harder to see what the play clock is at or how far I have to go for a first when I'm jumping into moments.

[Meacon Keaton]

3 hours ago, LL! said:

It's funny. Here I was thinking that patches fix the game, but it seems this one has broken it more. I didn't have a problem with the defense getting a ton of interception on me until after this patch hit. 

Maybe you're just not as hot stuff as you think you are!

 

No, you are. The patch broke quite a bit.

[Meacon Keaton]

1 hour ago, Meacon Keaton said:

Maybe you're just not as hot stuff as you think you are!

 

No, you are. The patch broke quite a bit.

With that said, I did just recruit a quarterback named Joe McBurrow, so I can't be too upset.

[LL!]

3 hours ago, ragbag said:

The patch broke the score bug in my dynasty so that it no longer shows up in pre-play, making it a tad harder to see what the play clock is at or how far I have to go for a first when I'm jumping into moments.

Experiencing this too. Only happens when I press R2 to preview the routes though. 

[The Buscher]

Tried an experiment to see if there's a way you could hypothetically land any open player in recruiting so long as you are willing to put in the points, making a copy of my current franchise before year 2 where I am only recruiting one guy and simming to the next week.  Most of the 5-star recruits obviously don't want to even consider UConn but there are a couple that are at least open because I meet the conference prestige dealbreaker thanks to these new conferences I made.  One such player is a 5-star WR with a superstar name (Johnny Stingley) who had a green diamond so he's essentially a generational prospect and had 99 speed.

A Mississippi kid, he starts with Ole Miss and Miss St as his top choices but nobody with a huge lead.  I use 60 hours to send the house + DM, immediately get to the top of his influence list.  Do that for a few weeks until he properly finalizes his top 5 and I immediately book him for a visit the first week he's available to come in.  After his visit I start hard selling him as my luck worked out that his top three wants are all B or higher for me + friends and family, so 65 hours committed a week.  I'm like 80% of the way to signing him but Ole Miss are at around 50% with him visiting the next week and they have a platinum tier influence based on location.  Somewhat predictably, they get him to commit during the visit.

I try a second time, except cheating this time because I already know his ideal pitch before the game tells it to me so I hard sell him as soon as he locks in the top 5 + booking the early visit again.  Now I'm gaining even more influence on him, and the bar is 95% of the way to commit.  Plus this time Ole Miss are way further behind, like 30% of a full bar and they're not even visiting with him until way at the end of the season, later than the last time they tried.  Surely I'll sign him then.

Nope.  Ole Miss closed the entire gap in one week somehow and signed him without a visit.  Third time I tried it played out exactly like this too.  So in other words, the experiment proved some guys are legit impossible to sign even if you play everything perfectly and are led to think you can close the deal.

Kinda love it because it's realistic.  In real life recruiting, some kids have their hearts set on a place and know they're going there but are OK enjoying the recruitment experience and taking other schools on a ride.  As a coach in the game you have to figure out if a recruit is just stringing you along or if you've got a real shot and it makes for a fun challenge in trying to prioritize and allocate your hours.  The platinum location thing feels especially OP.

As UConn it's pretty much just a confirmation of what I already assumed that I should thoroughly scout and focus on the kids who rank me in the top 10 from the jump, just land 3 stars and maybe the occasional 4 star that way.  Most of the 5-stars have pro aspirations and rule me out because my pro potential is like a D+.  Gotta produce some stars the old fashioned way.

[The Buscher]

 

[Maxx]

Played a little of the Madden 25 trial and anyone who thinks CFB25 is just a Madden reskin should try both.  CFB feels downright incredible compared to Madden this year, there is no contest.  Madden feels like a slow, clunky mess.

I imagine Madden 26 will be very well received because there’s no way in hell they aren’t porting CFB25’s gameplay over.

[Meacon Keaton]

56 minutes ago, Maxx said:

Played a little of the Madden 25 trial and anyone who thinks CFB25 is just a Madden reskin should try both.  CFB feels downright incredible compared to Madden this year, there is no contest.  Madden feels like a slow, clunky mess.

I imagine Madden 26 will be very well received because there’s no way in hell they aren’t porting CFB25’s gameplay over.

Back in the early 2000's the NCAA games were always implementing things a year before Madden, so I hope that Madden starts improving assuming the CFB games do, too.

I haven't paid for a Madden game in nearly a decade. I was considering getting it this year, but I've not heard many positive things from the non-YouTube shilling community. 

Edited August 15 by Meacon Keaton

[The Buscher]

I wasted my money on Madden two years ago because I thought I should have a football game to go with the new PS5 I got.  It was terrible.  If they roll out some of the CFB stuff to Madden next year and they can work a deal to allow class importing that would be cool, though legally not sure it'd work as you're taking actual licensed college players and then importing their likeness into Madden.

Anyway there's definitely some recruiting quirks that need to be ironed out with the dealbreakers.  Playing Style is a big one.  I do like that they force you to either balance your play style or simply commit to players who don't have that dealbreaker if they don't work to your strengths, even if it means you get punished if you have elite skillsets in certain areas.  If you have a god-tier rushing game and lean on it, it makes sense top WRs won't want to go there.  If you have an elite level pass rush it's easy to see why the ball hawk CBs will get bored without any passes to intercept.  But there's probably too much week-to-week volatility.  I've had a RB lock me out because my RB playing style plummeted multiple letter grades after one single game where I basically didn't run as my only hope of winning was to match in a shootout.  Some guardrails on how much sway one game could have would be good.

Pro Potential is the one I see the most complaints about on the subreddit.  I'm nowhere near this point on my UConn save but there's people who are way better at the game than me that have been able to get into title contention or even win a natty with a mediocre roster and still see their players rushing to transfer because the game simply looks at OVR ratings when deciding who should be drafted.  So the game decides you had no players drafted despite great stats and it gives you like a D pro potential rating, instantly locking you out of half the 5-stars the next season.  You get punished for over-performing.  Again it's not a horrible idea but likely needs to be nerfed or re-work the algorithm that determines who would've gotten drafted.

[LL!]

1 hour ago, The Buscher said:

I wasted my money on Madden two years ago because I thought I should have a football game to go with the new PS5 I got.  It was terrible.  If they roll out some of the CFB stuff to Madden next year and they can work a deal to allow class importing that would be cool, though legally not sure it'd work as you're taking actual licensed college players and then importing their likeness into Madden.

Anyway there's definitely some recruiting quirks that need to be ironed out with the dealbreakers.  Playing Style is a big one.  I do like that they force you to either balance your play style or simply commit to players who don't have that dealbreaker if they don't work to your strengths, even if it means you get punished if you have elite skillsets in certain areas.  If you have a god-tier rushing game and lean on it, it makes sense top WRs won't want to go there.  If you have an elite level pass rush it's easy to see why the ball hawk CBs will get bored without any passes to intercept.  But there's probably too much week-to-week volatility.  I've had a RB lock me out because my RB playing style plummeted multiple letter grades after one single game where I basically didn't run as my only hope of winning was to match in a shootout.  Some guardrails on how much sway one game could have would be good.

Pro Potential is the one I see the most complaints about on the subreddit.  I'm nowhere near this point on my UConn save but there's people who are way better at the game than me that have been able to get into title contention or even win a natty with a mediocre roster and still see their players rushing to transfer because the game simply looks at OVR ratings when deciding who should be drafted.  So the game decides you had no players drafted despite great stats and it gives you like a D pro potential rating, instantly locking you out of half the 5-stars the next season.  You get punished for over-performing.  Again it's not a horrible idea but likely needs to be nerfed or re-work the algorithm that determines who would've gotten drafted.

Agree with these points. It also becomes difficult to be a master recruiter when schools like Oregon are seeing 35 players committing (almost 30 4-star recruits and 5 5-star recruits!) despite the fact that they've not been able to do much in terms of winning their conference let alone a national title in literal years. 

First,  it's crazy that you're signing that many to begin with. Second, where do they all go? Cause surely the roster cap is going to be incredibly excessive.

If I am able to get 20 guys committed then I feel I had a good recruitment haul but the game won't rate it anywhere near the top 5. And already with 20 I struggle with the roster cap.

[Maxx]

I crushed those numbers as an OC for Miami, top class two years in a row with at least 7 5-Star Recruits each time, full 35 players.  Miami is a very appealing destination, you should visit it sometime 

As for where they go, it was a lot of just cycling the worst players off the team to make room for new ones.   Some tough decisions there because sometimes the worst at a position was someone who was like 80 overall.