I’m just passionate
So I’m hoping the appropriate people reads this. I put a lot of thought into this. Now just like last year and NCAA’s of the past,this is pretty much all I play. I prefer this over Madden because I enjoy the sport of college football over the sport of the NFL. With that said I feel like I have enough playtime on last year and this year’s iteration of the game to formulate a real opinion on it. With having played 168+ days of straight play time on CFB 25 and over 90 days of playtime on CFB 26 currently, I feel like I know the ins and outs of this game. I can overlook a lot of things and I don’t expect this game or any game to be perfect. But some things just cannot be overlooked. I love college football and I consider myself a loyal fan of EA’s version of college football, but if things continue to progress in a direction in which they have so far from CFB 25 through CFB 27, I will no longer be able to play the game, unfortunately 😔. Issues I have with this game that I would love to see fixed, on next years game are as follows.
Blocking and run fits:
I can give credit where credit is due by saying, the blocking has been much improved from the beginning of CFB 26 release. But there are still many occasions where I find myself getting frustrated with a potential big play that is cut short because one of my AI blockers decided to run right past an obvious block, and instead block someone else, or worse turn around to run back towards me. For example,I’ll look at my run fits before I even snap the ball. In a 5 man box,the edge defender will not be recognized and instead,my tackle and guard will target the corner or a safety that completely out of the play. And no matter how I set up my blocking,who I ID,who I untarget,who I double team,or where I slide my line. Nothing changes. There are also many situations where running the ball against a defense like the 3-3-5 stack,the 3-2-6 defensive formations, or other defensive formations that only require three down lineman, to be a hassle to run against, because of a linebacker that is unblocked after the ball is snapped. I see this happen so often that it sometimes makes the game unplayable. I understand that the 3-3-5 is designed to keep six defenders in the box at all times, but when I come out in an offensive set that has 6+ offensive players in the box to block the other 6 on defense, and a defensive player still comes in free, to me that is a problem. Before I even snapped the ball, I always check my run fits to make sure everyone is accounted for, and a lot of the times against some of these defensive formations that I have mentioned above, someone is un targeted. Even when I ID the un targeted player or even shift someone to the other side of the field, or shift my entire defensive line to try and pick up that player, that player is still on targeted and is just a free rusher. There are also many times against the 2–4 load nickel formation that can be a hassle to run against because the edge defender on the loaded side of the defensive line typically goes unblocked against a spread shotgun look. No matter if I put a double team tag over that player or do any of the adjustments I’ve mentioned above, that player goes unblocked.
Passing the ball:
I know there was an update earlier in the year about drop passes made by receivers. Well, a lot of those drop passes still happen and I feel like it happens more often than it should. Even happening to good players. Now I understand that if a good player is going up against another good player that has the appropriate abilities to cause those knockouts, drops are going to happen. But when my 93+ WR is lined up against a much slower and less talented. 77 OVR DB with lesser to no abilities,you would think that the better player would win that match up. No matter the abilities that those respective players acquire. I also see this happen a lot when playing in Dynasty and you have recruits on a visit. There are also many situations where I would throw to a wide receiver, and that receiver just drops the ball for no reason and doesn’t even attempt to catch it. There are also times where a receiver or running back might run a route and my quarterback throws the ball to that target just for them to turn around and get hit in the head with the ball, and that ball fall to the ground as an incomplete pass. I also see many situations where instant sheds still happen, and defenders run right past my offensive line. This will occur, even if a stunt isn’t called. I didn’t see situations where one of my offensive lineman is not engaged in any block at all, and a defender runs right past him to tackle my quarterback. I also don’t like the fact that my scrambling quarterback, whether he is a pee runner or a door threat, with 94+ speed is being chased down by a defensive event that is much slower. Maybe it’s a speed balancing issue, I don’t know but it does get annoying. I also feel that if I throw a perfect pass, that pass should be in catching range of the receiver, not overthrown. And in the same token, I feel like the game doesn’t call enough defensive pass interference, because there is quite a bit of pass interference done by either the user or the CPU and it goes uncalled. There are also times where a defensive lineman will jump up and swap down a pass before I’ve even decided where I’m going to pass it. Almost as if it knows what I’m about to do before I do it, which kind of seems a little unfair. This also happens when a defensive lineman is being double teamed, and somehow that defensive lineman will split the double team and still swipe down a pass, which sometimes leads to a pick.
Pass Defense:
I understand that players in real life make big play sometimes. And in this game, I understand that abilities and overalls are what drive big plays. But to me, I feel like there is no place for anyone to be able to throw into double and triple coverage consistently and still make passes consistently. There are also many different routes and route combos that can be seen all over YouTube that can and will exploit different defensive pass coverages. For example, I played someone with a lesser team than I had in a Dynasty. This person ran the same couple plays all game. One of which was a five verticals play. One of his slot receivers was set to run either a slant or deep cross, and I was in man coverage shaded to the inside. The ball is snapped, and that slot receiver runs his inside route and my slot corner (which by the way was a field corner and a better one) backs off of the route entirely and step to the opposite side of where I shaded him, causing him to be 4 to 5 steps behind that route, and obviously it turns into a big play. I also have a few clips where I send an all out, blitz against the CPU quarterback, or even a user, and the blitz gets home, but instead of the free rusher getting to the quarterback, he shifts his route to avoid the quarterback purposely. Thus allowing the quarterback to complete a pass. There have also been situations where a pass is thrown, or a run is ran, and I as the user attempt to make a conservative tackle on that ball carrier, and my arms run across the ball carrier, as if the game didn’t recognize my user trying to make a tackle. I also see quite often running zone, where a zone defender will be playing his own, but will not play the receiver/pass catcher entering that zone. Then it turns into a big play or a touchdown. Specifically in the redzone. I know, awareness and pass coverage ability plays a big role in how the defensive player plays the pass, but some of this stuff is blatantly bad. Something else I noticed is it’s really difficult to press my analog stick in while trying to cover a receiver, in hopes of telling my underneath defenders to crash in on a scrambling quarterback, without accidentally switch sticking. I also see a lot of illegal man downfield on certain trick place that involve the running back, passing into a receiver, or just on some RPO‘s. Now I know that stuff is going to happen because it happens in your real life, and I’m OK with that. But for it to happen consistently makes it really frustrating. One of these places that I am referring to is in the Tennessee Venice shoot playbook. And it involves a running back, throwing a trick play pass to a wide receiver. Every time that play is ran, it is a penalty. And speaking of that playbook, The Jets sweep out of the iPhone formation, never works. Nor does the other jet sweep that that playbook has out of the tight set. Anytime these players are ran, a defender crashes in and blows it up every time.
TD celebration:
This is somewhat of a short one, and doesn’t really break the game for me, but it is still annoying. There are situations where I will score a touchdown, and attempt to do a specific celebration, but that celebration does not trigger consistently. For example, I was playing with LSU, and scored a touchdown. I tried to do the low grab celebration, and it worked. The very next game, at the same stadium, which was in Death Valley. I scored a touchdown and tried to do that celebration again, and the player instead does the gritty. I have also only seen the Trump dance done once in my entire time playing the game, and I have no idea how to make it happen again. I have played the game on freshman and tried to score as many points as possible, and no matter what, I cannot make that animation happen after a touchdown.
Run Defense:
there are many situations where I may encounter someone running out of the full house offensive set, the Maryland offensive set, the I-Form off offensive set, or maybe even the pistol. Upon shifting by defense to the side, I know the run is coming to, often times it still turns into a big play from the offensive standpoint against some of those formations. I find myself having to get more creative against these formations than I feel is necessary to have good run defense in this game. These formations clearly do not follow the same rules as other formations that implement run plays. What would help out here is balancing how these run plays happen. So if these offensive senses are going to block the way they do against defense, then I feel every formation should be able to do that in the game. It makes gameplay more consistent across the board. And on the other side of that, if I know which way the ball is going to be ran, and I stacked my defense to that side, and my opponent runs to that side anyways, I feel like I should be able to stop that play, especially if I matched my defensive formation with the offensive formation they were coming out with.
Dynasty:
For the most part, I do enjoy Dynasty, but would help make it a lot better is for one, allowing me to bring recruits on a visit without worrying about my team playing dramatically worse than they would against a lesser team. There are so many situations where I see my players running slower than they should against another team, but then that other team having the advantage because I have recruit on a visit. An example of this is when I played against a user who had a lesser team, and he had this 84 speed wide receiver, and there were so many situations where he would throw the ball deep, and beat my 99 speed corner, and this player had no ability to do such a thing, but it’s almost as if it didn’t matter. In another game against the CPU, the CPU team was again, a lesser team than the team I was using. Therefore should have been an easy win, but instead my team is slowed down and played dramatically worse than they normally were on a regular game day. This running back that the CPU had was maybe a 90 speed 91 acceleration running back, and when he broke loose, he out ran all of my safeties and corners who were dramatically faster than this player. This happens consistently in game. And it’s more evident when I am playing against someone or the CPU while having a recruiters on a visit. There are also many occasions where your team is held back against another team that’s your rival. Overall, I just dislike the inconsistencies of gameplay overall. It also sucks to have a recruit interested in you from the transfer portal because you have at least a B grade for his deal breaker,just to get to week 3 and 4 and see you have a F now. Therefore you get locked out…
Something else that can help out dynasty is when I am in a recruiting battle with another school, I feel like there should be things I can do to interact with that recruiting battle. It would made for a much better experience if there were something to do as opposed to just watching the screen after every advance, seeing the recruiting battle and not being able to affect that recruiting battle at all. Instead of just waiting out your time and hoping for the best.
Another thing that would help out with Dynasty is having more immersion. I know during my play test of CFB 26, I mentioned something about seeing an AI cut scene of other games during the halftime show. Well that happened to pop up in Madden. So therefore I’m hoping to see that come over to college football 27 as well. But in potentially adding that, what would provide a much better experience for immersion would be the EA Studios creating their own branding. So obviously there is no ESPN license with this game. But an ESPN license is not needed when you can just make a generic brand/studio. Adding things like, Kirk’s pick to win the game, or even some type of AI cut scene that explained who they felt would win the game would be a nice addition.
Now things I feel could really help the game and would be cool to see is being able to see what type of weather the game is going to have before I load into that game to play. So if it’s going to snow I can see the forecast,and can then redress my coach and my players to match that environment, or even have a feature that allows the game to automatically dress all of my players in warmer gear. Things like that would help out a lot with immersion.
Stadium is being emptied during a big-time blowout. So if a team is being blown out at home, and we get into the fourth quarter, I feel like fans should empty the stadiums,at least a little bit.
The user experience overall is OK, but there situations in game where neither player can pick a play. The only way to pick a play is to go to the pause menu and come back. This happens more often than I feel it should. Something else that would help out with quality of life is for the people that are in multiple online dynasties. If I have multiple off-line dynasties, then I can click on the dynasty menu and load up all of those dynasties and be able to see their respective logo for each team. I control in those off-line dynasties. But when I play online Dynasty, and those online dynasties have custom conferences, the team logo disappears, making it a little difficult to figure out which Dynasty is which. Allowing those team logos to remain on their respective dynasty slots would make for a much better experience when searching for a dynasty to load up, no matter what conference alignment is set in place. This does not happen when the dynasty has the regular conferences that the game shipped with. This only happens when a custom conference is made, and said Dynasty.
The coaching carousel could use a big time overhaul as well. No reason why I become a successful coach at a program, that is winning national titles, or having one or two lost seasons every year, and I can’t get any good school offers. As I mentioned earlier in the year, it would be really cool to be able to do a small interview for schools that are not considering you, with a chance to land that school. But also having many other schools have interest in you being their next head coach/coordinator.
Some things I would like to see different with practice mode, is being able to play practice mode, but also have sustain drive mode too. So I can play against my Dynasty difference and work my way down the field, or defend against my Dynasty offense and practice mode. And another feature that would be nice to see and dynasty, practice mode, or any practice mode for that matter, is being able to see the last play that the CPU called. If you call a timeout, instead of trying to find the formation that was ran against you when practicing against random CPU picked plays.
Auto recruiting didn’t work at all. It would be nice if I could turn on auto recruiting and the CPU recruit players that I would recruit, or at least recruit the players that I put on the board, instead of replacing those players with little star players. And even when recruiting players, auto recruiting still doesn’t do a very good job at signing players.
I know, customization took a step back, but allowing us to customize the faces of generic players would help out a lot in immersion.
Something that would be cool to see is players having different personalities and different reasons for why they want to play football. So for example, a player could be really good out of high school, but always gets in trouble. And when he gets in trouble, the game will let you know that that player got in trouble, what he did, and therefore cannot play in (x) amount of games. Sort of like team management. Adding an element of team morale to it. Then on the other hand, you have that lower overall 3 star player that was under recruited, but comes in and has a chance to be a good player, and really helps your team play better together.
Being able to upgrade my coordinators with what I want them to be good in would really help out with dynasty as well. If I want all my recruiters to be really good at player development, then I should be able to spend their points on their development, or at least have a setting that allows me to let them know what I want them to focus on while they’re at my program.
Road to Glory Dynasty would be nice to see aswell. So a road to glory that you and your friends can participate in, and compete against one another. So if someone is a half back and the other user is a linebacker, then they play Dynasty the same way you would if it was a solo Dynasty, and if and when those teams play each other, it could be a linebacker versus running back in that game.
