400 hours later, final thoughts

[_-King-_]

Played the **** out of this game the first couple months it was out. Took a break. Just played again for the first time in a while. Here are some Friday morning ramblings.

Huge fan of NFL 2K5 and the old NCAA games. Virtual football died for me when those went away. I hadn't played a football video game in 11 years since (not counting buying Madden 19 on sale and playing maybe a couple games before deciding it was junk).

CFB 25 has been some of the most fun I've had in gaming. The nostalgia of having college football back. The joy of learning different playbooks and play styles, building a 1 star school into a contender. Yes, some of extra bells and whistles left a bit to be desired, but the core game was fantastic. I joined an online dynasty with friends I hadn't spoken to in years and re-kindled friendships.

That said, incoming rant. And before I do so, yes 400 hours is a ton of time. I bought a PS5 just for this game and I feel I got my money's worth. I'm not complaining, I love this game. I'm just ranting because I'm bored at work.

A couple reasons I'll probably be retiring this game for good.

One is the updates that nerfed certain aspects. Namely options. I assume this was done for gameplay balancing purposes. At release, option heavy offenses were a lot of fun. Maybe they could be slightly OP, but they tuned it to where a lot of the option plays are totally broken. At best, they're pitch plays with an added step and risk. There's almost no outside/speed options where keeping it with the QB isn't a TFL. It really kills the variety of the game and made every team start to feel the same. My senior pocket QB just left and is being replaced by a scrambler. I was excited to install a new offense to play to his strengths. It doesn't matter. He's noticeably faster, but not fast enough to outrun any opposing Dline with any consistency. He plays basically the same as the pocket QB.

The bigger problem is maybe more a symptom of getting old and breaking the illusion. After enough time with the game, I realize what plays work and which don't. I try to spend some time getting creative and learning new plays, but it's mostly a wasted effort. Certain plays/concepts/routes just have a way higher success rate than others. Every move or formation has a counter. Once you learn those, it takes away all the mystery. It's true for both playing against the CPU and users. There's no amount of slider adjusting you can do. You know what works and what doesn't.

If I buy CFB26 I might move to fully CPUvCPU slow sim.

TLDR: Rant about existential dread of getting older and realizing the limitations of video games. Great game, thanks for the memories EA.

[noarmsduck]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

Devs will always make balancing decisions that people disagree with. I only play offline dynasty, and I did have trouble defending against good option teams early on. I kind of enjoyed the challenge that presented though.

Your second point is definitely a symptom of getting old and lots of older gamers including myself feel it. Not sure I qualify as old. I'm 36 almost 37, and I realize there are guys that enjoy these games in their 50s, but I see a LOT of people who play CFB and Madden mostly in HS and college and in their 20s.

Every sports game has a meta, and certain plays that get used more than others. The first thing I do when I get a new Madden or when I first got CFB 25, is make a custom playbook. The default team playbooks have so many plays that are just a waste of space in that playbook and that are bad plays. Either guys won't be open, the routes are bad, or it's a run that very rarely gets any yardage. So I put in all the plays that look like they'll work, rate them for situations, and then remove and add plays as time goes on based on what actually ends up being effective or not. It kind of sucks because it feels like a chore to sink 4 hours or so into doing that when I first get the game but the default playbooks are so limiting it's a necessary chore for me.

Looking back, I used the same types of plays in past games. NCAA 14 the comeback routes were meta and what I used when I needed a big 3rd and medium type situation. Madden 12 I remember they used to have a shallow slant out route. I would call a play out of shotgun spread, the 2 outside receivers would run streaks, and I would audible the 2 inside receivers who were originally on normal out routes into the slant outs. Most of the time either one of the outside guys would be open, or if the DBs covered them, the slant outs would be wide open. They took the slant out hot route out of the game the next year and it only recently made it back into the game in M25.

And that's just looking at CPU gameplay. I remember back when I used to play MUT h2h lots of guys would use a technique called rocket catching. Basically they would run 4 verts, throw to a speedy WR, then switch to user him and kind of move in a circle around the ball target and the animation that happened when he caught it made it almost impossible to defend. That's one of the reasons I only play against CPU nowadays though.

Anyways, this stuff was always in the games, I remember certain plays being very effective and others not being effective back in NES Tecmo Super Bowl. I think it's just as we get older we notice it more and it becomes more apparent and more boring as our focus dulls. When I was young I couldn't get enough watching football so I'd play the video games and endlessly replay scenarios chasing titles and awards and all sorts of stuff. Once you've done that for 30 years of your life the novelty wears off a bit. I still get a good amount of enjoyment out of these games, but I definitely don't have the vigor about them that I once did.


EDIT: If CFB 26 ends up being release on PC and if you have a gaming PC, I would highly recommend getting it on that platform. The Madden modding community is spectacular, and a PC release of CFB would certainly bring a ton of awesome mods. To speak to what you're talking about, there are several different gameplay mods for Madden that adjust gameplay parameters in a way that sliders just don't.

[TarHeelPhenom]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

I’m playing exclusively on the Day 1 build nd it’s been a blast. It’s a noticeable difference between how the CPU play on the early build compared to the current. My Maryland Terrapins are about to play for the National Championship tonight against Oklahoma. I haven’t played/won a Natty since NCAA Football 06.

[Playmakers]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

If I buy CFB26 I might move to fully CPUvCPU slow sim.

This is definetly a great way to enjoy the game as I've been playing this style for years.

I really wish they would include some classic teams because that would make this style of gameplay even more awesome just to sit back and watch a bunch of former college legends go at it.

[khaliib]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

I’m playing exclusively on the Day 1 build nd it’s been a blast. It’s a noticeable difference between how the CPU play on the early build compared to the current. My Maryland Terrapins are about to play for the National Championship tonight against Oklahoma. I haven’t played/won a Natty since NCAA Football 06.

I went back-n-forth several times between the Disc & the Updated version

Hands down gameplay wise, they’re complete opposite of each other across the whole mode

Because of the excitement for early play, most gamers got the Digital comprising of pre-release gameplay tweaks & never got to play the Disc version

AI QB play definitely stands out immediately, deep shots, scrambling logic& just OVR Pressure Avoidance in the pocket

- Teams Run the ball down your throat
- AI QB Audibles a lot to create Run or Pass mismatches

etc, etc, etc

Folk should go to GameStop & buy a used copy, download it Offline, then return for refund

[BallinVol]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

I went back-n-forth several times between the Disc & the Updated version

Hands down gameplay wise, they’re complete opposite of each other across the whole mode

Because of the excitement for early play, most gamers got the Digital comprising of pre-release gameplay tweaks & never got to play the Disc version

AI QB play definitely stands out immediately, deep shots, scrambling logic& just OVR Pressure Avoidance in the pocket

- Teams Run the ball down your throat
- AI QB Audibles a lot to create Run or Pass mismatches

etc, etc, etc

Folk should go to GameStop & buy a used copy, download it Offline, then return for refund

Gameplay wise, I agree. It felt amazing out of box. I just couldn't get past all the upsets and bad poll logic, etc. to enjoy dynasty.

It's not perfect now, but the polling logic, etc. is much better than it was out of box. The problem is the gameplay doesn't feel as organic as it did. I still play the heck out of the game and got some sliders dialed in to play a very competitive game. It would be nice to have that organic feel again however.

[_-King-_]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

I went back-n-forth several times between the Disc & the Updated version

Hands down gameplay wise, they’re complete opposite of each other across the whole mode

Because of the excitement for early play, most gamers got the Digital comprising of pre-release gameplay tweaks & never got to play the Disc version

AI QB play definitely stands out immediately, deep shots, scrambling logic& just OVR Pressure Avoidance in the pocket

- Teams Run the ball down your throat
- AI QB Audibles a lot to create Run or Pass mismatches

etc, etc, etc

Folk should go to GameStop & buy a used copy, download it Offline, then return for refund

I have the disc, but I'm part of an ongoing online dynasty so I don't think I can delete the updates and continue that.

Is it possible for me to create a 2nd account on my PS5 and play the disc version on that without updates while keeping the updates on the other profile?

[jello1717]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

Played the **** out of this game the first couple months it was out. Took a break. Just played again for the first time in a while. Here are some Friday morning ramblings.

Huge fan of NFL 2K5 and the old NCAA games. Virtual football died for me when those went away. I hadn't played a football video game in 11 years since (not counting buying Madden 19 on sale and playing maybe a couple games before deciding it was junk).

CFB 25 has been some of the most fun I've had in gaming. The nostalgia of having college football back. The joy of learning different playbooks and play styles, building a 1 star school into a contender. Yes, some of extra bells and whistles left a bit to be desired, but the core game was fantastic. I joined an online dynasty with friends I hadn't spoken to in years and re-kindled friendships.

That said, incoming rant. And before I do so, yes 400 hours is a ton of time. I bought a PS5 just for this game and I feel I got my money's worth. I'm not complaining, I love this game. I'm just ranting because I'm bored at work.

A couple reasons I'll probably be retiring this game for good.

One is the updates that nerfed certain aspects. Namely options. I assume this was done for gameplay balancing purposes. At release, option heavy offenses were a lot of fun. Maybe they could be slightly OP, but they tuned it to where a lot of the option plays are totally broken. At best, they're pitch plays with an added step and risk. There's almost no outside/speed options where keeping it with the QB isn't a TFL. It really kills the variety of the game and made every team start to feel the same. My senior pocket QB just left and is being replaced by a scrambler. I was excited to install a new offense to play to his strengths. It doesn't matter. He's noticeably faster, but not fast enough to outrun any opposing Dline with any consistency. He plays basically the same as the pocket QB.

The bigger problem is maybe more a symptom of getting old and breaking the illusion. After enough time with the game, I realize what plays work and which don't. I try to spend some time getting creative and learning new plays, but it's mostly a wasted effort. Certain plays/concepts/routes just have a way higher success rate than others. Every move or formation has a counter. Once you learn those, it takes away all the mystery. It's true for both playing against the CPU and users. There's no amount of slider adjusting you can do. You know what works and what doesn't.

If I buy CFB26 I might move to fully CPUvCPU slow sim.

TLDR: Rant about existential dread of getting older and realizing the limitations of video games. Great game, thanks for the memories EA.

Not sure if you’re only talking about under center options (which I don’t run) or if you’re including spread options (which I run a ton), but I find spread option options very effective (but not too effective).

I only use scramblers, so my slowest QB was 82 spd, but I’ve had QBs with 92 and 94 spd, and the difference between those dudes and my 82ish spd guys is very noticeable. If I run a speed option/load option/wr motion option and the pitch read goes with the pitch man, my qbs can easily turn it upfield and he’s only getting tackled by a DB and definitely not getting chased down by a DL and prolly not by an LB.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

Disc version definitely vastly superior. IMO when they patched an update to the pursuit logic, because for some reason people were complaining, the entire game took a nose dive after that. Pursuit became too good, AI got dumbed down. Unpatched version, which on Xbox is 1.005 option game is deadly, you get wild over and under throws by the QBs. DBs are aggressive and jump routes. More importantly, which is needed for a college game, big plays happen more often. You will see the CPU return kick offs and punts back for TDs because low and behold they block better in the unpatched version. INTs be taken to the house way more often.

Patched version damn near everybody is able to catch up to you, big plays rarely happen. Sure there are ways to make the patched version fun, but you won't get the unpatched version level of fun. Unpatched version really captured that anything can happen on any play feel. Might be a big play, might be a loss of yards. Patched version, feels way more scripted and predictable. Fakes don't work, which pretty much killed the option game and RPOs.

It is like they forgot this is college and not Madden. College is full of mistakes and big plays on Saturdays. They patched it too pursuit and play recognition is just way too good. Add that to the made the CPU AI dumb, then yeah, it took a couple steps backwards compared to unpatched.

[noarmsduck]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

This is definetly a great way to enjoy the game as I've been playing this style for years.

I really wish they would include some classic teams because that would make this style of gameplay even more awesome just to sit back and watch a bunch of former college legends go at it.

Would be very hard to do. It's one thing to get the rights to a handful of legends, it's quite another to get the rights to entire teams full of classic players. Even NBA 2k always has some holdouts and basketball rosters are way smaller than football rosters.

I think a reasonable alternative would be a legends section of the roster. Depending on how many they get the rights to, they could have them either all in one place or have an all conference team for every conference. Not sure how that would work for Notre Dame legends, or how they would handle like USC or Oregon legends for example who played in the Pac 10 but those teams are now in the Big 10.

That's all semantics for what I want this for though. I mean I guess they could let people play quick play games with the all conference legend teams against each other or against the CPU. The main purpose of this at least for me would be the ability to import the legends onto any team in a roster file, or into a recruiting class in a dynasty, or directly onto a team in a dynasty.

Any legend they have the rights to (which means any player that shows up in ultimate team) should be available for something like this. I doubt it happens though because people have been asking for a form of playing with legends in franchise in Madden for years and they haven't done anything with it. I suspect it's because they want to keep the full list of legends that they have rights to under wraps so that they can build hype for certain ultimate team promos. Dynasty/Franchise players get screwed over again to cater the the UT whales.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

They could do it if they wanted far as classic teams, EA definitely has the money. NHL does this. I mean sure it might be 1% of legends asking for mega millions, but majority wouldn't. It would be so fun playing with the track stars of the Oregon and Florida teams from decades ago.

[Playmakers]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

They could do it if they wanted far as classic teams, EA definitely has the money. NHL does this. I mean sure it might be 1% of legends asking for mega millions, but majority wouldn't. It would be so fun playing with the track stars of the Oregon and Florida teams from decades ago.

Bingo

I don't think that many people realize that EA has classic/Alumni teams in NHL for every franchise.

These are full squads

That's why I don't buy the excuse for Madden and CFB

It's already being done in another one of their sports titles and been happening for a few years now in NHL.

CFB doesn't need full 80 man squads just give us 15-30 legends for about 20-25 Schools

If you can do more than that awesome but that's basically the extent of NHL rosters and fans are still happy to have them.

The rest of the rosters can just be fake generic players or just players with jersey number only

[noarmsduck]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

They could do it if they wanted far as classic teams, EA definitely has the money. NHL does this. I mean sure it might be 1% of legends asking for mega millions, but majority wouldn't. It would be so fun playing with the track stars of the Oregon and Florida teams from decades ago.

Bingo

I don't think that many people realize that EA has classic/Alumni teams in NHL for every franchise.

These are full squads

That's why I don't buy the excuse for Madden and CFB

It's already being done in another one of their sports titles and been happening for a few years now in NHL.

CFB doesn't need full 80 man squads just give us 15-30 legends for about 20-25 Schools

If you can do more than that awesome but that's basically the extent of NHL rosters and fans are still happy to have them.

The rest of the rosters can just be fake generic players or just players with jersey number only

I was just responding to the suggestion of having full classic teams. Again NHL teams have 23 man rosters. NBA teams have 15 man rosters. An NFL roster has 53, college even more.

All they really need to do is the all time all conference team thing, and let us import those guys onto rosters, recruiting classes, and dynasty teams. They already have the rights to all these guys, there isn't an excuse not to do that. Other than not wanting to pay to code it in, and of course favoring the ultimate team modes so they can keep certain legends a surprise to build hype for that. And neither of those is a good reason.

[Hooe]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

I personally have trouble getting on board with the idea that the speed option game in CFB 25 is nerfed when the pitch key defender and the rest of the defense still freezes and/or crashes the quarterback for a step any time the ball is pitched, even with the option pitch key defense coaching adjustment set to key the pitch man and not the quarterback. It has been a major pain point for me in keeping things in front of me on defense.

And while it's not exactly an option play, Rocket Toss from flexbone (typically an option-heavy offense) is still a bitch and a half to defend if you're not looking for it.

I've actually been running more option plays the further we've moved away from release. Admittedly mostly zone read and power read, but still.

I would be curious to know what settings you all have been playing on because what you describe with the speed option being ineffective has been the exact opposite of my experience. Containing the edge is priorities #1, #2, and #3 for my defense out of necessity because it's way too easy for the offense to take it otherwise.

[Hooe]

Re: 400 hours later, final thoughts

To add my own final critical thoughts about CFB 25 (which I have played a ton of and have enjoyed more than any football game EA Sports has released in many many years, but I still have some pain points):

- as previously mentioned, please fix the defense false-stepping towards the quarterback any time an option pitch happens.

- I really hope foremost the AI of pocket quarterbacks (and player AI in general) is brought up to parity with modern Madden NFL games. The constant retreating of CPU pocket quarterbacks bails me out of far more games than it should.

- for the love of everything that is good, please Tiburon give us more match coverage options against 3x1-strong and quads. At minimum, please bring back the ability for us to hot route in push calls for Quarters and Palms. I don't feel like I have any good answers of defense right now for offenses that start mobile quarterbacks and spam Shock / Hoss out of 3-strong and quads. You can't play Cover 3 Match / Cover 3 Buzz Match / Cover 3 Buzz Mable against Shock because the slot cornerback plays with terrible technique against the slot fade and consistently concedes a one-play touchdown, you can't play Quarters / Palms / Cover 6 because match turns off for those plays against 3-strong and quads, you can't play spot-drop because a crossing #3 in four-verticals breaks wide-*** open, you can't play man because the quarterback will just take off. Maybe I'm not thinking hard enough about this, but that doesn't take away from the point that we need more options on defense to oppose spread offenses that pain unbalanced formations with mobile quarterbacks.

- recruiting is probably too easy. I haven't see CPU teams don't using the "Send The House" action at all following the early title update which was released in response to the community complaint of the CPU leaving too many 4* recruits on the board without any offers. The ability of CPU teams to "stick and move" in their recruiting strategy is also fairly limited. I've been able to stack top-10 recruiting classes at Virginia without too much trouble, and I haven't even invested heavily in the recruiting coach skill tree.

- player editing is wonderful and I would not take it away, but a common exploit of players in my online league is to move any player with high SPD / ACC to DE to instantly unlock platinum Quick Jump. That probably should not happen.

- player progression being as random as it is I have mostly enjoyed but in some cases can be pretty frustrating. The pocket quarterback with Star development and no accuracy skill caps who I was counting on to take a step forward this past offseason apparently spent all his time running ladder drills, as he didn't gain a point in any accuracy rating but now has AGI 99. I also have a OVR 90 Man Coverage CB who continues to develop every skill except his press coverage rating, which remains in the 60s. More broadly, basically every starting DB in the nation has Gold or Platinum House Call because they all have Catching 90+. By year 5 in dynasty, the nation is littered with players with SPD 95+, ACC 95+, COD 99, and JMP 99; if everyone is an elite athlete, then elite athleticism is no longer special. I would just like to see player progression smoothed out just a bit.

- More personnel management tools for power users would be nice. Be it out-of-game formation substitutions, custom package substitutions, better depth charts to properly identify positions in specific defenses (SAM / MIKE / WILL, different DL techniques, etc.), auto-subs based on Wear and Tear levels (more on that later), or what have you.

- The coach skill tree is one of my favorite components of Dynasty mode, but probably needs some rebalance. There's still not enough incentive in the game to not just blitz the recruiting skill tree, even after splitting up the benefits of the tree into different position groups.

- The Revamped passing system, on All American at least, does not penalize quarterbacks with bad accuracy ratings much if at all. I would like to see some heavier influence of player ratings here. Possible that I just need to jump to Heisman or halve the Human QB Accuracy slider, and I want to do that, but the people in my league would rather run up the score on the CPU so I keep getting shot down.

- Wear and Tear is a good idea with incomplete execution. The imbalance between how much wear-and-tear I accumulate in games vs. what the CPU accumulates in simulated games is something I have never solved (especially with CPU offensive linemen and halfbacks). There are no auto substitution options for wear and tear, so not only am I managing it myself in-game with cumbersome in-game formation substitutions, but also the CPU has no ability to pull their own players for elevated wear-and-tear which results in an increased number of injury timeouts.

- I am a bit surprised we've gone the entire cycle with non-functional player archetypes in Dynasty mode (Speed Rusher OLB, Slot WR, Strong Arm QB). Those need to either work, or be removed.

- The way some plays are authored bothers me. Why can't I put a man in motion when I call Power Read? Why can't I run a jet touch pass towards the weak side from a 3x1 trips / trey open formation? Can we get a read option play with combines Jet Pass Fake Zone and Zone Fake Jet with a read key, as opposed to having to lock in that decision of who gets the ball before the snap? Is there a reason why I cannot call Cover 3 Cloud with the cloud flat to the pass strength side?

- please add The Good Ol Song into the game lol.

That's all I have for now. Again, I've actually enjoyed CFB 25 very much, but it's not a game without warts.