College 27 and beyond
Ok so I replied to a previous discussion talking about some potential gameplay and dynasty features that should be added. Now I want to expand on how to make future college games even better:
it all comes down to these main topics: gameplay, presentation/equipment, and immersion/customization. I think EA devs really do care about making a good game, but we need them to improve on these.
gameplay: respectfully, gameplay in EA football simulator games (Madden and CFB) is just not as great as it could be. Maybe trying a new engine instead of the frostbite engine would help. Gameplay needs to be more realistic for those who choose to play simulation style games. Pass protection is one thing that is severely lacking right now and offensive line play is not great. Please make offensive line play more realistic and allow players to make even more adjustments to pass protection. Receiver play is also very strange to me. They do a terrible job of stacking defenders and going up to make catches. Aggressive catches that should be 50/50 are more like 10/90 if even that. I’m not saying the receiver always has to come down with contested passes but the contested specialist archetype is kind of pointless right now because they won’t catch it anyways. Defensively, some upgrades are much needed for more realistic defensive play. Defenders need to be better in zone coverage and need to travel with receivers near their zones instead of just leaving them wide open because they’re not in a small zone bubble. These are just a few improvements that need to happen for gameplay. I could think of a few more such as the “no eyes no picks” feature needing improvements to make it so qbs don’t throw 5 interceptions a game when trying to layer a football in between zones. There is more but I need to start talking about other aspects as well.
presentation/equipment: presentation is really important for the game because it adds needed depth to the game that makes it fun. First, it’s time to start using AI commentary. Commentary in the game is pretty dry and gets old after a few play throughs. There are content creators who have made demos of what it would be like if there were AI announcers and it is awesome. There’s so much energy and creativity with every line and it doesn’t dry out. Additionally, we need pregame shows like college gameday where other games could be previewed and expert picks are made. I also believe we need a playoff selection show and awards ceremony where the finalists for awards can go and receive their awards when they win in real time. Equipment is also very important because the players in current games just don’t look real at all and the style looks bad. We need more equipment options and improvements to equipment models. There are guys on media who have made amazing images of what equipment could look like and it would make the game look so much better. Along with equipment, player builds needs to be better. Every player looks like 30 year old men with unrealistic hair styles and body types. We need customization for non nil players that are similar to 2K where we can edit all the face details like hair, eyes, mouth, facial hair, etc. we need to also be able to customize body types similar to how Madden 20 worked where you could edit arm size, chest size, belly size, rear size, thigh size, and calf size. Please bring this back and expand on it a little bit to make every player feel different.
Immersion/customization: Our dynast/RTG is our world so we need full customization (for non nil situations of course) to play the game how we want to. Let us choose the weather we want to play in. Let us edit everything about the non nil players, let us add conferences, allow us to add team builder teams without replacing real teams. Add commitment flips that we can turn on or off depending on how we want to play. Add a feature for offline dynasty to force commitments for players who want absolutely stacked teams. Allow us to override players who lock us out because of deal breakers. Allow us to make custom playoffs for people who want 4 team playoffs back or maybe they want a full NCAA tournament. Maybe they want 8 teams or 16-20 teams. Maybe they want to change playoff criteria and they should be allowed to. Bring in a social media tab where we can keep up with all the news going around. Make coaching carousel better and allow players to mass exodus and follow their coach. Add spring games and off season features to make the off season feel alive rather than a bunch of buttons being mashed. Add position coaches. Make a ring of honor for all legendary players so they don’t just disappear and never mean anything again. Allow us to import non nil players to Madden, allow us to save highlights and have player highlights saved to a highlight tape in the ring of honor so we can go back and watch legendary moments from out favorite players. There are so many things that can be added to make the game dynamic and stop it from drying out. This is our dynasty, our road to glory. We should be able to play the game how we want to play it. If any devs are reading this, thank you for your time and I’m rooting for y’all going forward, but we need more from y’all to warrant us paying $70 every year, respectfully. You guys have the technology to do these things and you guys have my full support if you are actively trying to do them. As long as you guys are trying I will continue to support these games. Thank you.
