OT: Video Games/Computers/Gadgets/Gizmos

[ReasonablySober]

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YO

[MikeIsGood]

Sports YouTubers are the worst YouTubers - or at least up there with anyone who streams Fortnite, COD. Wanna give a TLDR?

[ReasonablySober]

Sports YouTubers are the worst YouTubers - or at least up there with anyone who streams Fortnite, COD. Wanna give a TLDR?

Coaching Carousel/Staff Hiring and Firing
The coaching carousel is back and you’ll get offers based on your reputation and performance, both as a coordinator and head coach.

A new wrinkle that many fans have wanted is the ability to hire and fire members of your staff. Your coordinators will also have skill trees, which means you can choose to have coordinators that fill in gaps in your skill tree as a head coach — giving you balance but not the big boosts — or you can hire like-minded coaches that will unlock the highest level boosts in those areas.

You’ll also be able to fire members of your staff and go into the coaching carousel and either try to poach coaches from other schools or hire from a pool of free agent coaches. However, each coach will have a “talent tree” of players (which you will be able to look at) that are attached to them from either the recruiting process or playing for them. As such, if you fire a guy, just like in real life, you’ll probably lose some players to the transfer portal.

I'm not wild on coaching "Skill Trees" which sound like a big deal in this game.

But I love the above bolded. It's exactly like real life. Very cool.

Recruiting Process
There is a good bit more detail in recruiting compared to ’14, as you’ll assign hours to recruits. In the offseason, your recruiting hours and transfer portal hours will be one in the same, once again forcing you to make decisions on where to focus your efforts. You’ll also need to be cognizant of leaving roster spots open for portal guys. The early signing period also makes its debut in the game, with the portal opening after Early Signing Day.

The recruiting process will happen in stages, as will scouting. Gone is the ability to get a full scout on a guy in one week, as you won’t be able to get a guy’s skill tree until you bring him on an official visit. You will have to stay above a cut line through the process, going from a recruit locking in his top 10 to top 8 to top 5 and top 3. You’ll divide your allotment of recruiting hours across your recruiting board – the hours we saw on the screen were 55, but I don’t have it confirmed if your recruiting hours to spend are dependent on your staff’s skill trees or not.

Players will again have things that are important to them within the 14 pitch grades and those will impact how interested they are in your school. There will no longer be a way to manipulate recruiting logic to pull in guys that weren’t interested in you by throwing points at them. If they value proximity to home most and live in California, even if your Georgia Bulldogs are No. 1 in the nation, they won’t be interested.

Within that, it will be much harder to rapidly build a smaller program into a national title contender. No longer will you spend one year with a small school and be able to bring in 4-stars and 5-stars, like in ’14. Those top recruits will not consider your school and have you locked out with dealbreakers early on. Instead, you’re going to have to truly build up the program over years, building up those pitch grades to be able to land top tier talent, both in the portal and recruiting, years down the line.

Sounds good to me.

Recruiting Visits
Once a player locks in his Top 5, you’ll be able to bring him on a visit and you will once again be able to design a recruit’s visit to show him the things that matter to him – or hide things you’re not highly-regarded in. What game you bring someone to will also matter this year, with the game’s outcome (win or loss) impacting how well the visit goes. For example, if you bring a recruit to a game against No. 2 Ohio State, a win will move you a lot closer to signing him than if you bring him to a UL Monroe game and win. On the flip side, a loss to a highly-ranked team won’t hurt you as much, but losing to a lesser school will likely tank your chances with that recruit.

Complementary and competitive visits also are back, meaning bringing three quarterbacks to the same game will not go over very well. On the flip side, if you bring a running back and offensive lineman, you’ll get a boost for that visit.

Very nice.

Transfer Portal
The Portal will open after the early signing period and will be part of the offseason process, so it’s a shortened process compared to high school recruiting. The portal section is a tab you can toggle to from the recruiting page (using L1/R1). Service academies can use the portal, unlike in real life – as can Clemson, which Dabo Swinney will surely not like. You will have to manage your offseason recruiting hours for both the portal and the remainder of your HS recruiting. Like in real life, players you were close to landing in high school recruiting will remember that when they enter the portal and you are likely going to end up as one of their preferred destinations in the transfer portal.

You also can encourage your own players to enter the portal to clear up your roster. They are also bringing back the offseason step of trying to persuade players not to go to the NFL or go into the transfer portal, with Very Low, Low, Moderate, High, Very High chances of success in stopping a guy from leaving your school.

Players will enter the portal based on a number of factors, most notably how you are doing in holding up your end of the bargain with their dealbreakers. For example, if you land a recruit based off Playing Time and he doesn’t play as a freshman, he’s at risk to enter the portal. Throughout the year, it will let you know who is at risk for the portal, and it will be up to you whether you make adjustments to try and keep guys or continue on the same plan and let a guy hit the portal.

All of this sounds awesome.

There is not NIL in Dynasty mode.

That's a bummer.

[machu46]

Sports YouTubers are the worst YouTubers - or at least up there with anyone who streams Fortnite, COD. Wanna give a TLDR?

Gameplay:
- Playbooks are unique for each school
- You'll really be able to feel the difference between higher rated and lower rated players (which has often been an issue in NCAA and Madden)
- Wear & Tear system may need balancing, but basically, hitting a QB on the throwing arm will diminish their throwing attributes, hitting a RB at the ankles will diminish agility, etc.
- Gameplay is significantly faster than Madden
- AI will disguise blitzes, audible, etc. and pick up on your tendencies
- Plays like WR reverses develop faster than they used to and are actually viable play choices
- If your QB is smart enough, he will diagnose coverages for you pre-snap, identifying the corners he believe will be playing deep zones in Cover 4 for example, but defenses can trick your QB so the pre-snap reads may not always be correct.
- New kicking meter that sounds kinda like how free throws used to work in NBA Live (side to side meter to determine your aim, and another meter to determine your distance)

Road to Glory:
- No high school, you simply select what star rating you want your player to be and pick some attributes and then select a school (not sure if you'll have limited selection of schools depending on rating or not)
- NIL is part of it
- Transferring will reset your coach trust (coach trust = starting job, calling audibles, etc.)

Dynasty:
- Can still start as a coordinator if you want
- Coaching carousel, custom conferences, etc. are still a thing
- Transfer portal will be important
- No NIL?

[ReasonablySober]

Read on Twitter

Another good article.

And here's what's in Dynasty Mode

One thing I'm really disappointed with though:

Exporting draft classes?
To answer a question I received quite a bit, you cannot export College Football 25 Dynasty draft classes into Madden. EA only has players’ license for their college likeness, not their NFL likeness. Although players join the NFLPA and the associated license early the next spring, they’re not added to Madden until the late summer in the new game.

This will still be the case years into your dynasty after all the real players have filtered out. You won’t be able to export computer-generated classes, either. You can, however, export your Road to Glory player to Superstar mode in Madden.

What a massive bummer.

[machu46]

Read on Twitter

Another good article.

And here's what's in Dynasty Mode

One thing I'm really disappointed with though:

Exporting draft classes?
To answer a question I received quite a bit, you cannot export College Football 25 Dynasty draft classes into Madden. EA only has players’ license for their college likeness, not their NFL likeness. Although players join the NFLPA and the associated license early the next spring, they’re not added to Madden until the late summer in the new game.

This will still be the case years into your dynasty after all the real players have filtered out. You won’t be able to export computer-generated classes, either. You can, however, export your Road to Glory player to Superstar mode in Madden.

What a massive bummer.

Can't say I'm surprised about that one given the legalities involved, but it is a bit of a bummer for those that want to invest in both games. Not sure if I'll mess around with Madden once I have CF25 though.

[ReasonablySober]

Also really dumb, and honestly might be a deal breaker for me:

You will not be able to edit the attributes of real-life players in the rosters. You can edit created players, but there supposedly will be blocks to keep you from making a player like Arch Manning, who did not opt into the game. In recent days, a handful of starting players have tweeted that they’d like to be in the game and don’t know how to opt in. I don’t know if or when they will get updated.

So if someone looks like the next Jayden Daniels in October, the game won't let you bump their stats to reflect it. You'll have to wait for a roster update. Dumb dumb dumb.

[MikeIsGood]

Also really dumb, and honestly might be a deal breaker for me:

You will not be able to edit the attributes of real-life players in the rosters. You can edit created players, but there supposedly will be blocks to keep you from making a player like Arch Manning, who did not opt into the game. In recent days, a handful of starting players have tweeted that they’d like to be in the game and don’t know how to opt in. I don’t know if or when they will get updated.

So if someone looks like the next Jayden Daniels in October, the game won't let you bump their stats to reflect it. You'll have to wait for a roster update. Dumb dumb dumb.

Thanks for all the summaries!

This one is monumentally stupid.

[ReasonablySober]

So it turns out after all these years adding real players to the game ends up being a huge mistake.

[machu46]

Also really dumb, and honestly might be a deal breaker for me:

You will not be able to edit the attributes of real-life players in the rosters. You can edit created players, but there supposedly will be blocks to keep you from making a player like Arch Manning, who did not opt into the game. In recent days, a handful of starting players have tweeted that they’d like to be in the game and don’t know how to opt in. I don’t know if or when they will get updated.

So if someone looks like the next Jayden Daniels in October, the game won't let you bump their stats to reflect it. You'll have to wait for a roster update. Dumb dumb dumb.

This part is so unimportant to me personally. I don't personally care that we have real players in the game at all, much less having the ability to edit them. The fun part for me is getting deeper into Dynasty Mode when none of those players are in the game anyways. As long as the gameplay is at least on par with Madden, recruiting/transfers is fun, and I can edit conferences between seasons, I'll get a ton of mileage out of this game. I so badly want to re-create my promotion/relegation system that I had in NCAA 14.

I'm a little disappointed we can only go 30 seasons though (but realistically, I don't know how likely it is I'll complete 30 seasons in one run-through anyways).

[MVP2110]

Also really dumb, and honestly might be a deal breaker for me:

You will not be able to edit the attributes of real-life players in the rosters. You can edit created players, but there supposedly will be blocks to keep you from making a player like Arch Manning, who did not opt into the game. In recent days, a handful of starting players have tweeted that they’d like to be in the game and don’t know how to opt in. I don’t know if or when they will get updated.

So if someone looks like the next Jayden Daniels in October, the game won't let you bump their stats to reflect it. You'll have to wait for a roster update. Dumb dumb dumb.

This part is so unimportant to me personally. I don't personally care that we have real players in the game at all, much less having the ability to edit them. The fun part for me is getting deeper into Dynasty Mode when none of those players are in the game anyways. As long as the gameplay is at least on par with Madden, recruiting/transfers is fun, and I can edit conferences between seasons, I'll get a ton of mileage out of this game. I so badly want to re-create my promotion/relegation system that I had in NCAA 14.

I'm a little disappointed we can only go 30 seasons though (but realistically, I don't know how likely it is I'll complete 30 seasons in one run-through anyways).

Yep. The 1st year or two of a dynasty for me are actually a little boring. Once I start getting my own recruits in is when I really get into the game. I'm with you in that I add a promotion/relegation system into the game which also spices things up after a few years

[ReasonablySober]

Watch on YouTube

This looks really good.

[MikeIsGood]

Excited for an actual Astro Bot game. The controller showcase it originated as is extremely cool and I was always hoping they'd make a game out of it.

[jschligs]

I'm excited for NCAA Football 25, I have learned not to overhype games (looking at you No Man's Sky and Starfield, and others). It's sounding like it's going to be legit.

Wasn't too excited with Sony's games. When does Microsoft do their version of this?

[ReasonablySober]

Watch on YouTube

[machu46]

Watch on YouTube

Can’t link to it right now but they also published an article breaking the gameplay down and it is far more in depth than the video.

[jschligs]

It certainly looks a lot less forced animations like Madden. Seemed faster and more fluid. God damnit my excitement keeps rising.

[Licensed to Il]

It certainly looks a lot less forced animations like Madden. Seemed faster and more fluid. God damnit my excitement keeps rising.

Im a youth football coach and avid Madden player. Madden has been trash for a few years, the DB coverage physics are non sensical (they can break immediately on a ball they had their back turned to?). Also the game would noticeably slow your runner down if you caught a shallow crosser or approached the goal line. This new game is coming at the perfect time, Madden needed competition. It also looks like its going to be almost impossible to play defense. And that feels right, for a college football sim.

[WRau1]

Valheim : Ashlands, is fantastic.

[MikeIsGood]

Valheim : Ashlands, is fantastic.

Yo welcome back.