The OS Community Crushes It (Volume 1)

Florida Man (me) is dealing with another hurricane this week, so this will be another short newsletter that was prepped well before Friday. That said, it’s been a bit since I highlighted the community. For this edition, I want to highlight all the community sliders I use to get the most out of my sports games right now.

Before I jump into the games, I need to remind everyone that while I use all these sliders, I still might tweak them on my own end after a considerable number of games played. Beyond that, just because I use these sets of sliders as a “base” does not mean there are not tons of other slider sets that are also great. I hop around, these are just the sets I’ve found work for me right now.

EA Sports College Football 25

The slider set I use as a base but have also massaged the most is the canes21 slider set. In part, I’ve massaged this set the most because I’ve tweaked the set two different ways to curate it for my own “personal” dynasty and then the online dynasty I’m playing with friends. I made my own “personal” set harder than the one I’m using for the OD.

However, canes21 recently put out a new version, and it’s actually pretty close to my own personal version. The big thing to deal with in this set is the run game. I find that all slider sets for CFB 25 come down to the run game. People talk about passing being the hard thing to tune, and that’s fair, but AI teams want to run the ball on the whole in this game. If they’re ineffective almost every week, it sort of starts to throw the whole thing out of whack even if you think “robo QB” can go ham.

The same is true for your running attack, and this set might lead to you think running is impossible. I promise it’s not impossible, but it will likely be challenging. A big thing to remember when running the ball is to not press the turbo button until you get past the LOS. In part, this is so you have time to read the running lanes, but another part is how “disengagement” works in EA football games. If you turbo (either as the QB on passing plays or RB on running plays), the game is designed to allow defenders to more easily disengage from offensive line blocks to counteract you. So whether you’re doing a running play or just trying to get away from pressure as the QB, always try to avoid using turbo as long as possible until you have some breathing room.

Beyond the running game, I suspect some people may not like how penalties feel. Penalties can wildly vary from game to game, so just be sure to really play a bunch of games before changing them.

Madden 25

You’ll have to follow the order of operations here, but I use a slightly tweaked version of TNK’s sliders, which are already a tweaked version of Matt10’s sliders. Now, Matt10’s sliders change often enough that these might be more out of sync by now, but the point is TNK’s started as a base of a version of Matt10’s at some point.

With Madden 25, the big things are the pass rush and passing. There might be deeper issues that you might not be able to solve with both these aspects due to underlying bugs/problems that show themselves more in franchise mode, but essentially getting a pass rush and getting the AI to run enough are the main focuses on defense. On offense, it’s trying to get it so both sides are not too prolific at passing the ball.

While I’m 100 percent on the Heisman train for CFB 25, I do think you should poke around a bit with All-Madden and All-Pro if you’re struggling to find the right mix. If you find you have better luck solving some of the aforementioned major issues on one difficulty level or another, stay at that level and just try to make things harder/easier in other areas to compensate.

EA Sports FC 25

It should not come as a surprise that Matt10’s community sliders are the option here. Other folks do post sliders, but I do think FC is the one game where there’s close to a monopoly on what’s at least used as a base for most folks on OS.

I talked about this a bit in my review of a couple of these games last week, but legacy issues like fouling/midfield play remain root problems, and then there’s also the issue with tactics this year. When it comes to FC, I think you need to accept that certain issues might not be wholly fixable, but it’s also a guarantee FC 25 will go through various patches in the weeks and months ahead. So you might not want to give up hope quite yet not only because the game might change, but also because there might be new “tricks” found within the sliders themselves.

For now, the only thing I feel confident saying is I really don’t like Legendary at this point. I’ve been staying with World Class and will continue to tinker from there because I just think the AI gets too “cheesy” on Legendary no matter what I tweak.

NHL 25

This is the one game where I’m currently rocking two different sets of sliders from two different slider makers. The big reason I’m using two different sets comes down to the camera angle.

The first is from PernellKarl. Karl plays on Action with Auto Zoom (you can find it in the Visual Settings). This will change your perspective quite a bit. You also play with position lock on and don’t call for passes. In other words, it’s a form of playing “Be A Pro” but you’re not using just one player, you can change which position you prefer game to game, and so on. It’s a novel way to play the game, and the AI is better this year, so you can trust them more often to make the right reads.

The other set comes from AlTito. As of earlier this week, Al was still making a healthy amount of changes to his set, but that’s fine because I had already sort of gone on my own mini journey with these. The big thing I’ve found with these is trying to up the “sloppiness” and get some more penalties. In other words, while the game is better at not just being an up-and-down affair this year, I still try to get more errant passes and a little more special teams (not uncommon things to be seeking in this series). I also prefer to play on Superstar, and I really believe in using the broadcast camera in this game. It continues to be one of my favorite cameras in all of sports games.

NBA 2K25

Another game that will likely go through lots of patches, NBA 2K25 has felt great to me on the whole out of the box. I do think tendencies/ratings are almost more important than sliders in this game as of now, which is why I like using EccentricMeat’s sliders. Of course, in part I like these because he calls out which tendencies to tweak for now.

Roster projects are a big thing in NBA 2K, and I’m sure we’ll get plenty of them, and editing tendencies plays into that. For now, we’re still in the early stages of those sorts of projects, so getting these sorts of “tips” for which tendencies to tweak is extremely helpful to me.

That said, NBA 2K’s gameplay is more polarizing than usual, so I’m not sure if recommending sliders will be all that helpful in some cases. More than most sports games, there’s not been as wide a consensus about what’s good/bad about the gameplay. In part, this is because what some people think is good about the game, others think is not so good. For example, some think the fast breaks are broken in this game, and others think they’re in a good spot for both teams. In short, you might need to rely more on personal experience than recommendations for this game.

MLB The Show 24

Speaking of roster projects, the sliders I still use tie into the TrueSim Roster Project from Cycloniac and crew. Cycloniac has done similar projects in many games through the years, and it is more involved obviously, but that’s sort of how it goes for me as games age through the year. I tend to want heavier and heavier edits to keep the game feeling fresh in one way or another.

A roster project mixed with sliders is about the best way to find a “fresh” experience, so if you do have a hankering for MLB action with the real playoffs in full swing, I would recommend something like this. You’ll need to set aside a little time, but Cy has a full franchise setup guide in there to follow if you want to put in the time.

I’m hopeful that someday we’ll get a way to share a franchise file so we won’t have to do such heavy tweaking, or maybe SDS could just do a better job with initial roster management, but either way I imagine MLB The Show will always be the one game where I prefer 30-team roster control. The pull of trying to get the rosters to look right is just too real for me.

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

-Chase