The Sim Logic Ruins The Game

Hi Team,

Dynasty mode fan for numerous EA Sports games for over 20 years. From a UX standpoint NCAA Football 2004 is what I consider the dynasty high point. A modern version of 2004 with player transfers and position changes is what I was hoping for. I have enjoyed some aspects of this year's dynasty quite a bit, but I have to agree with op here that the simulation logic is confounding, and is one of the main issues holding it back from being a high-quality dynasty mode, especially for non-online players. It is not only personal frustration that drives this belief, because the issues are bidirectional - for and against the user. Who my teams win and lose to does seem surprisingly arbitrary. As a dynasty fan realism is paramount and upsets are for sure a realistic part of college football, but I can lose a streak of games to underwhelming opponents before beating a top 10 team in a rout, and then the process repeats next season. As a result, the wins do not feel rewarding. Even managing a quarterback to an amazing season as a team's OC does not feel like I accomplished anything - every quarterback I have seems to have an excellent season whether they are level 77 or 87, yet they still will only receive 2nd team all conference, intimating that plenty of qbs are having incredible seasons. Beyond the user-operated team, within 5 seasons Rice had won a national championship, Ball State had lost in the national championship game, UAB had a bye twice in the CFP, Kennesaw State had made the CFP twice, etc. I am all for programs developing or diminishing over time, while keeping the most dramatic of turnarounds in either direction relatively scarce. When playing Football Manager for example, it is always exciting to find out which club or 2 becomes an unlikely title contender during a save, and which major club(s) come across an unprecedented bad run. In this dynasty though, the progression or fall of a program seems rather random, especially when a team like Rice rolls through the CFP with a low 80 overall rating. NCAA Football 2004 also had an interesting quirk where some teams of low overall would consistently overperform, but one could almost always track the overperformance to a novel offensive approach for that era that made the team tricky to play. I have no idea to what degree, if any, my selection of an offensive playbook and adjustment of my aggressiveness sliders has on performance and statistics. Even in 2004 it was evident how changing the aggressiveness sliders was affecting the results/stats. Ultimately this is the point of the flaw in 25 - I cannot track the winning habits or strategies for any team when they are winning in the dynasty, including my own. As such, I am not sure to what degree I affect winning outside of recruiting very high quality classes for multiple years.