Operation Sports Newsletter #5 - Not Just Another Roster Update

So What Really Improved In EA Sports College Football 25’s First Major Patch?

Thursday was a big day for EA Sports College Football 25 as we got the first “true” patch for the game since the Day One patch. The patch notes were in-depth (once they released), but you can’t just take any game company at their word when patch notes are this extensive. The patch impacted dynasty mode, gameplay, Team Builder, and more. In these instances, you have to test, test, test. That’s an issue when you want to put out this newsletter a day later.

However, between my own testing and seeing what OS folks have been saying, I now think I have a decent enough handle on at least most of the positives and negatives coming out of this patch. With that in mind, I want to fill others in who don’t want to have to dig through our forums, site, or videos to find some answers.

Any Catches With The Patch?

So the first question to answer is do you have to restart your dynasty mode to get these changes? As the patch notes point out, it depends. I would say most of the “major” changes do not necessitate you having to restart if you don’t want to, but you will miss out on some stuff, including…

• 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.

It’s very funny that some people actually took this patch note at face value and not as the joke it was. But, yes, you do need to restart if you want the FCS teams to be a bit nerfed. For simulation purposes, I’m not seeing as many upsets involving these teams now either. That said, since team ratings between the best and worst teams are not as wide as they could be, upsets are likely still going to happen more than some want.

• Updated Coach Talents on Wyoming Offensive Coordinator.

• Defensive Schemes and Playbooks for the following teams have been updated.

  • USC

  • UCLA

  • Mississippi State

  • Texas Tech

  • UConn

  • Miami

  • Memphis

  • Nevada

  • North Carolina

  • Notre Dame

  • Oregon State

  • San Jose State

  • TCU

  • Texas A&M

  • Troy

  • UMass

Every other change from the patch notes should go into effect in any ongoing saves you have.

What New Issues Were Introduced?

In the world of major patches, you inevitably introduce some new issues, and EA did introduce a couple stinkers. They are aware of the problems and working on a small patch to get to those fixed (hopefully in the coming days):

There are workarounds for some of these new bugs (at least to an extent), so let me get those to you as well.

• For the scheme/playbook change bug you want to go to EDIT COACH if you want to change playbook/scheme without messing up your roster.

• If you want to be able to edit any freshman ATH that was given a position by default, there is a tweet that explains the process I’ll put in below. I do need to mention this workaround does come with serious downsides so I don’t really recommend it. When you change the position of the athlete through this process, you’re doing it blind in terms of knowing what the new overall will be and that does usually impact tendencies/awareness. On top of that, if you try to change back to the original position, the overall rating will remain screwed up and not just go back to what it was at the start.

• With annual non-conference games not rotating, you obviously have some control over how you update your schedule, but this means changing home/away is not working right. Overall, the impact here depends on other factors like custom conferences as well. Since I’m talking about custom conferences, it’s worth noting that the custom scheduling with them still gets funky at times post-patch since things like protected rivalries still can’t be accessed from the menus and do drop off.

Time To ‘Fact Check’ The Patch

I do want to start with the general “sim logic” because touching up dynasty mode was the big hope for a lot of us coming into this patch. In general, sim logic is improved. I’m going to stick with bullets because I just think it’s the best way to handle feeding y’all quick-hitter info.

• Poll logic is way better for the Top 25.

• This also means the CFB Playoffs make way more sense. I have not seen any teams with oodles of losses (five or more) getting into the Playoff.

• Some people are still going to be frustrated by the number of upsets and amount of teams with 0 or 1 losses late in the year (again, probably goes back to team overalls being too close together). You can use the Force Win mechanic if you want to minimize this, but it’s not bothering me as much now that the Top 25 and Playoffs make more sense.

• Sim stats for rushing are improved but still not amazing. There are far more 1,000-yard rushers, but I have still seen that number drop-off through the years. On top of that, I don’t see any QBs hitting 1,000 yards or RBs approaching 2,000 yards.

For general dynasty mode improvements, here’s what I’ve seen:

• No, you still can’t edit numbers.

• The platinum abilities got changed to purple, which is very nice for visual reference.

• Recruiting logic is better but not perfect (and I still need to test more honestly). What I’m seeing is that AI teams are doing less hoarding of positions, but it still does happen here and there. I noticed Alabama had like 6 QBs at one point, for example.

• There are fewer 4-star guys going to smaller schools because fewer 4-5 star players are going unrecruited early in the year.

• Certain AI teams using good schools are still not recruiting enough players here and there.

• Custom conferences don’t seem to break as easily. I was able to move Independents around (or make teams Independent). There’s also new functionality where I can see the prestige rating of the conference I’m creating.

• And, yes, the “schedule a visit” bug is fixed. If you still think you’re seeing the bug, it’s likely this instead:

General improvements worth mentioning:

• The uniforms and stadiums mentioned in the patch notes all seem to be there. CFB Kings is a great resource if you want to see those visual changes:

• We also got word that “The Hill” at UVA will get populated in a future update:

• Road to the CFB was changed from three tiers to five. This change also moved around some teams between the tiers, including Oregon dropping a tier for some reason. This is probably a good change overall but eyebrows will be raised in some instances when it comes to trying to understand why certain teams ended up in certain tiers.

Various gameplay improvements from the patch are noticeable (some of these things matter more for online play):

• QB Contains do work much better now. They will do their job and not just stare at the QB if he breaks the pocket.

• Broken tackles are still plentiful, but it seems like you drag guys down from behind more often.

• The spin move did get reeled back in to an extent. It’s still probably the go-to move but it’s not omega busted.

• I still think pursuit angles need work. I can see where they have done some work to minimize some of the long runs, but I would like more work done for defenders chasing guys towards the sideline.

• Most of us had figured out how to contain Wildcat on the whole by reading the tells during pre-snap, but Wildcat is nerfed overall now.

• Allegedly things like “Slow Mesh” and other slow-developing RPOs would lead to fewer downfield penalties after this patch, but I still got a chunk of them. So maybe it’s improved a little bit, but Wake Forest’s Slow Mesh is not viable unless you turn off that penalty.

• You should have more time to hot route before a delay of game.

I think that covers most of the major notes from the patch. Overall, I think what is mentioned in the patch notes is mostly correct.

Holy Smokes, Madden Is A Week Away

Madden 25 comes out on August 16 (and multiple days before that if you have early access)! Maybe because we got college football back this year the release of Madden crept up on me, but it’s here. We got Superstar mode news, Ultimate Team news, and a lot of gameplay. Ultimate Team looks mostly unchanged. I’m in the mode of “Superstar mode is bad until I play otherwise” so I don’t even read much about the changes before launch because it has been such a bad mode for such a long time.

As for the gameplay, ya know, I think it’s looking pretty clean for the first 45 minutes of games. Content creator Eric Rayweather showcased the Eagles vs. Dolphins:

It’s a really fun back and forth game, and you can see the power of the new motion plays in the Dolphins playbook, and I am starting to believe EA has figured out offensive playbooks on the whole. I’m starting to think they will be able to iterate more quickly and get more modern-day offenses into our game. I also really appreciate seeing things like the signature way Jalen Hurts gets lower in his stance during pre-snap.

But you can see how suspect the two-minute drill remains in the game. The AI has a clear chance to tie the game and just botches it.

A separate two-minute drill issue pops up in Bengal’s franchise rebuild (around 29:11 mark):

The insane amount of clock runoff is likely a bug, but it’s a brutal way to lose a game so I hope it gets fixed before launch. Speaking of Bengal’s video, you can get a look at franchise mode in that one. You can also see the new scenarios (time will tell on those bad boys), and also a lot of the quality-of-life improvements in the menus.

Elsewhere, 2K posted about MyCareer and MyPlayer this week. I have been so wrapped up in the patch and the looming Madden release that I did not scope this out as much as I wanted, but I’m also in “prove it” mode with MyCareer at this point. Until I play it, I’m not going to believe some of the improvements.

Either way, I do like that it seems they’re shrinking down the number of badges and putting more focus on the team aspect of things.

A Reminder

We’re running a little long this week, so I’m not going to go too deep into notes from the community this week. Still, with a new EA Sports College Football 25 patch out this week, I suspect we’ll get some people who are ready to start their dynasties. There will likely be others who think the gameplay changed enough to now reassess their sliders. Keep an eye on folks like Matt10, canes21, and Armor & Sword to see if they make changes to their sliders.

On top of that, I always recommend looking at what Funkycorn is doing with XP sliders for dynasty mode. XP sliders are absolutely in the “eye of the beholder” realm, but I think even if you don’t implement these sliders, it’s worth reading about some of the outcomes to get a frame of reference for how dynasty mode tends to play out.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase