Holy crap why didn't I know about stem routes before?
Audible hot route, L1, just change the length of the route with the stick. Game changer.
Wait, I can tell my stupid wide receivers to run routs past the first down marker?
Wait, I can tell my stupid wide receivers to run routs past the first down marker?
There’s a quick version of that — “smart routes” cause the receiver to run a deep enough route for a first down. It’s RB on Xbox controllers.
Yeah yeah smart routes for first downs. And the stems can only be applied to the same types of routes that can be smart routes.
But it just gives you more precision for putting a guy behind one zone defender or in front of another, etc. Really cool. I just didn't know it existed, but seeing a few plays with it gives me a lot of ideas.
Zealand, one of my preferred streamers, is currently playing hte game pretty much Super Sim only, and it's doing my head in.
It's like watching someone go off-roading in a Lamborghini. Sure, it can do it, but that's not really what it's for.
Patch tomorrow morning. Possibly the big one, going by some of the tweets from people at EA. Hope so.
I started a new dynasty where I brought back the PAC 12, Big 12, etc. and reshuffled things around so every conference has 12-14 teams.
Then the PAC 12 refused to play a conference schedule. Didn't notice until week 8 or 9 when I looked at some other standings. Oregon and Colorado are 1-0 and 0-1, and none of the rest of them appear to have played each other. All 0-0 conference records, and playing B1G teams still. It's super broken. Not sure why only that conference is messed up. I did switch it back to 8 conference games from 2, also. Amazing that I happened to notice that, but I did. And still it's broke.
The patch notes are here.
I love this one:
Discovered that FCS SE, MW, and NW were secretly using professional players and passing them off as collegiate players. Gave them sanctions and ensured they are now using properly-rated players.
They do warn that one will only be applicable to newly-created dynasties.
Yeah I loaded up both my dynasties this morning and there was an extra screen and it said it was patched to latest. But certain notes are flagged as needing a new one.
This one should help me in my Texas State dynasty.
Adjusted AI offensive line behavior resulting in less illegal man downfield penalties during RPO style plays.
This should be good. I've seen some crazy shit on sim games. And even in games I played where a safety or turnover TD happens it doesn't display correctly.
Various fixes around score summaries and Box Scores.
These will be nice. Have seen both bugs already in only 3.5 seasons.
Fixed an issue where you could not schedule visits for recruits in certain situations.
Fixed an issue where a visit remained scheduled even if a recruit was removed from a board.
Fixed an issue where the Independents Tab disappeared when removing all teams from Independents
And they created new bugs.
Incoming Freshmen don't appear in position changes anymore.
Scoreboard disappears if you do offense/defense/moments sim. Have to do manual sim to keep it there. Also disappears during game if you R2 to see routes. Can pause to make it come back, but what a pain.
After my QB entered the transfer portal, I learned something that in retrospect should be obvious.
Playing as a QB at Ohio State is easier and more fun than playing as a QB at Marshall.
The detail in the presentation, the stadium, and the talent disparity are intense.
And they created new bugs.
Incoming Freshmen don't appear in position changes anymore.
Scoreboard disappears if you do offense/defense/moments sim. Have to do manual sim to keep it there. Also disappears during game if you R2 to see routes. Can pause to make it come back, but what a pain.
I haven't played in two weeks, not because I think it's bad, but because I began to think the game needed a good 3-4 patches, and it seems my thinking was right.
The season truly kicks off on the 31st, so I'll check back in then.
Well they hotfixed the incoming freshmen thing, but only on online dynasty files. Which they recommended not making the first week in pre-release because there were some bugs... plus I wanted to be able to play when the servers were offline, like they were on Friday night when I wanted to play dynasty.
So it's either online files that get fixed but you may lose, especially when they release next year's game or whatever. Or offline files you can use anytime, that keep bugs until they eventually release a patch, hopefully.
Patch this morning. Think it just hot fixed the things they broke with last one. I know position changes work again because I was in the midst of off-season.
And reports on Twitter say that the scoreboard bugs are fixed too.
NIL in the game: I’m a local restaurant and I will give you +2 spin moves and I’ll feed your position group this week.
NIL IRL: I can’t legally drink but I make more money than all the grad students at this school combined!
Ok so my secondary dynasty where I started a new coach as an OC, I finally took my first HC job today. Ok St.
The job carousel opens in bowl week 1. You get 4 offers. Then you get 4 more in bowl week 2. If you're in the playoffs you can accept the job and you get to finish the games with your current team. You can hire coordinators after you accept the job, and find out the next week if they accept the jobs.
The one quirk is that when your current school gives you an extension near the end of the season, you get 0 job offers then. There's no way to reject the extension. So for most people that's year 3. Which is when I was really ready to move on. But I mostly simmed season 4 and finally got some good offers.
Oklahoma and OK St both offered in week 1, plus Tulsa? And some other coordinator spot. Then I saved just in case and went to the next week. UGA, LSU and Nevada all offered HC, while Texas offered OC. I looked at all the rosters as they stood after 4 seasons, and LSU was pretty tempting. They had very fast QB and RB and I've been running option and RPO like crazy. I finally decided to go back and accept OK St, as they also had some good skill players. And the recruiting pipeline should be close to Texas still.
That second dynasty has been at Texas St the whole time and it's been a blast. The QB and RB to start are fantastic but one of the young RBs is a stud too. By year 4 he was a 99 senior and in the Heisman preseason. Sadly, in week 2 he dislocated an ankle or something and was out 7 weeks. I didn't notice because I was simming a bit and didn't want to redo 2 or 3 weeks of recruiting to get back to him uninjured. Still he's been a beast since he returned and I expect to win the playoffs with him tonight.
Veer and Shoot is a blast. Option, read option, and RPO in almost every shotgun formation. And the wide and stack formations are pretty unique and fun. Plus one wildcat set just in case. I'm gonna keep running this as HC for a while.
Speaking of playbooks, I found two sites that have all of it linked. They both show which books include that play or formation. It's pretty convenient if you are looking for something out of the game or want to strategize.
CF playbooks has a clean interface, no ads. Seems to work well.
CFB fan is searchable and probably a little more robust. But it's got a ton of popups. Use Firefox if you want to check it out.
It's pretty interesting seeing some of the key plays I run a lot are only in 8-10 books. So that's another reason I'm sticking with Texas St for a bit. I could make a custom one I guess but this feels almost perfect for what I'm wanting to do right now.
So, wait, is teh patch retroactive, or do you need to restart a dynasty to get all the bonuses?
So, wait, is teh patch retroactive, or do you need to restart a dynasty to get all the bonuses?
Mostly retro. There were a few things from that big patch, like the FCS team fix and some playbook stuff, that you had to start a new one for because it was tied to existing coaches or players and they couldn't just change that stuff on your current dynasty. Like they might not be there anymore.
I might start one more fresh dynasty after the next patch to be safe. If you've looked into coach builds and XP at all, you'll see that the coach max level is 50, only gets 500XP and you can't respec, and there's not nearly enough points to get everything. So you have to pick and choose trees a bit. But there is a HC top tier skill for 18 points that lets you or coordinators get skills for 1-point cheaper if another coach on the team has the same skill. So if both of the others have it you can get a 5-point skill for 3. Some people talk about starting as HC and rushing straight for that, don't buy any other skills. Although I think it's under the "win 5 playoff games" or "win 2 titles" lock, plus it costs 18 points. But in theory you could save quite a bit and have a few extra skills that way.
But the other trick... only Georgia and UNC have that existing skill on their default starting HC. So if you start as OC/DC on one of those teams, you can rank up a bunch of early skills for only 3 points instead of 5, and then long-term end up with a better build with more skills. I may make one final coach, starting as UGA OC for 2 seasons, and build up all the base skills I can for 3 points before taking on a bigger job, and min/max a coach the best I can.
I'm mostly just considering whether I should restart my dynasty.
I made a new one with Wazzu (Charlotte was fun, but then I realized I'll never be able to put them in a stadium that doesn't look like it's for a NAIA team), and got into Season 2 before I took my break, so I'm just trying to figure out if I should keep it going or restart with Illinois or something.
The reason I started a 2nd dynasty is because on my first one I just picked Louisville and kept the existing HC. Seemed more realistic, as they wouldn't be hiring a rookie HC. And it was nice having some skills built in already, made it pretty easy to recruit still even though I was learning what was different from 14 to 25. But the thing is, you cap at 50. My coach hit that near the end of season 3. And then I was just like, what am I doing? I guess you can "retire" a coach and start a new one or something. But I just wasn't sure I wanted that. And I wanted to try building a lower school up a bit. And I wanted to run more option. So I browsed rosters for a good running QB with a good HB... both North Texas and Texas State were 2 of the best I found. But I liked Tx St playbook better, so that's what I went with for that. I didn't restart for the patch. In fact I think I started it 4-5 days before the patch?
I’ve just started a new dynasty with Navy, trying to run the triple option. First few years will be rough…but it’s very fun so far.
I’ve just started a new dynasty with Navy, trying to run the triple option. First few years will be rough…but it’s very fun so far.
Looks at the quote... looks at your location... wonders why you hate Touchdown Jebus?
firesloth wrote:I’ve just started a new dynasty with Navy, trying to run the triple option. First few years will be rough…but it’s very fun so far.
Looks at the quote... looks at your location... wonders why you hate Touchdown Jebus?
I'm trying to figure this one out for everyone 
What happens if north texas or whoever Stele picks schedules Louisville? Do you lose on purpose?
I got knocked out first playoff game in my Texas St dynasty year 1. So I force simmed 3 seed Louisville to win it all.
Year 2 I beat them in the finals
Year 3 I lost to them in the finals
Year 4 I beat them in the semis on my way to title.
My first, and second, kickoff TD returns.
Video on Twitter.
Speed really is everything. I probably was using the wrong player on some of my earlier teams, going by the return rating instead of pure speed. This WR has 97 and just turns it on.
I think I'm realizing that I just don't care for the Dyansty mode. Maybe if I watched some videos the whole recruiting thing would be interesting, but what I really want is just a plain old season mode. And then I restart it and play it again with maybe a random new schedule.
I don't want some AI generated RB (even if he's a 5* recruit).. I want Jaydn Ott in my backfield for 1, 5, 100 games. My coach rating doesn't matter because I don't let Cal lose. I just want to play an entertaining12,13,14 whatever it is now, games of football that culminates in a Rose Bowl and a 40 point beatdown of stanfurd. I can just do that in manual games, but I do want a season of stat tracking so I can have Jaydn Ott win the Heisman every year.
And even when I think about recruiting.. a year from now (is there goign to be a NCAA '26?), i'll just want our updated rosters then, and I would completely abandon my fake recruited roster.
I think a great deal of my problems with dynasty mode (and the game in general) is that it is slavishly tied to a naive view of what college football is.
Don't like the conferences the way they are now? Rebuild them like you had them as a kid? Do you hate your team's new uniforms? Go to the CAS website and fix it (the only thing the CAS is good for). Create your player in RTG and go to any school you want! (Sure, you may not be on scholarship, but that doesn't really matter).
It feels so sanded down that it almost feels like a WWE video game. By that I mean everyone knows WWE is scripted and that sometimes the slimy behind-the-scenes real stuff is more interesting than the on-screen product. But every wrestling game is forced to pretend that the fights and the on-screen product are real.
The fascinating parts of big-time college football to me are how sceezy it can be. And all of that is sanded away.
There is a boardgame called "Envelopes of Cash" that probably is exactly what you're looking for TBH, It's actually not a very fun game, but it is available on Board Game Arena! If you have an account there let me know and we can play a game.
My issue with Dynasty mode, for myself, is simply that everything on the field feels like CFB 25, while everything off the field feels like it's NCAA 15.
Hell, it's not dynasty mode, that's my issue with the entire game. Everything on the field is great, everything else is barely changed from NCAA Football 14.
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