The OS Community Crushes It (Volume 2)

I’ve decided on doing “The OS Community Crushes It” each month because I have found I have a hard time fitting in enough of the great work you all do in my “normal” newsletters. I feel like setting aside one newsletter each month to highlight some of the great work you all are doing or just pointing out threads I’m liking is the better way to make sure it stays more in the spotlight. It doesn’t mean I won’t highlight community stuff at other times, but these editions are your newsletter. Let’s jump into things.

EA Sports College Football 25

In Volume 1, I based the entire newsletter on sliders from the community. There will still be more sliders in this one, but I’m not going to be so rigid in what I’m highlighting. That said, I’m going to start off in the same place as I did Volume 1, by mentioning that canes21 did post an update to his EA Sports College Football 25 sliders in recent days. There was a CFB25 patch, and it did change things enough that some tweaking had to happen with those sliders.

The biggest changes here were in service of trying to improve pass blocking a bit, and then also changing the Speed Parity slider back to 50 after keeping it at 100 for most of the year. I’m still loving these sliders on Heisman, and I maintain they are the best sliders out there if you want a challenge in this year’s game that still feels fair.

As our last giveaway winds down, we will be back with more of them in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, we’re going back to a little more “traditional” advertising by pointing out that there is an Amazon “bounty” we ask you to scope out if you fit the specific requirements. It is for those between the ages of 18-24, or any currently enrolled student who has never had Amazon Prime before. It is a 6-month free trial that then converts to $7.49 a month thereafter if you don’t cancel within the 6-month window. If you’re a student who wants to just make sure you get access to the rest of the Thursday Night Football games, this feels like an easy way to handle the rest of the NFL season.

Uniforms are constantly getting updated in this game, but the 2024 Uniform Updates Thread is a great spot to just see some of the cursed jerseys being created for the real college games. I mean look at what Oklahoma State is about to rock out with this weekend (thanks to OS user DonkeyJote for the picture):

To quote Super Troopers, mother of god. I don’t know if we’ll eventually get that jersey in CFB25, but I’m starting a dynasty with them if we do — on principle alone. Anyway, it’s a great way to keep track of everything jersey-related happening in the real college game and the virtual one, and there is plenty of feedback detailing what’s right and wrong with the jerseys currently in the game (which is technically the main intended function of the thread).

Elsewhere, I want to remind people that canes21 has a great playbook tool if you want to go sicko mode and create a “realistic” playbook from scratch (and then go super sicko if you also factor in things like your QB’s awareness rating). When I posted my playbook in the newsletter a couple weeks back, I mentioned that it wasn’t realistic — it was more there to help you find what works for you. What this playbook tool does is simplify things so you know what concepts to target for your playbook if you want to make it relatively realistic. What that means is you only take so many concepts into your playbook, and so you have a lot of familiar looks in the various formations you end up running. In other words, you use the playbook tool to first decide the only “gap run concepts” you want to run are Dive and Sweep. So you would only add Dive and Sweep run plays to the playbook. The easiest way to find plays for your playbook is to then use the CFB.fan site and then search for Dive and Sweep plays.

Team Builder is certainly a bit wonky in year one, but OS has gotten to a place where there is a lot of cool creations in the Team Builder Creations thread. The Mesa Vipers from OS user MellowTheMyth is just one of the various new Team Builder teams that has been posted in recent weeks.

Lastly, I always like seeing more people take a swing at XP sliders in CFB25, and OSfan093 has created a set that you can scope out. It goes with some sliders that are a little more extreme for some positions, but since I don’t think there’s a “perfect” way to handle the XP/progression in this game, I’m always down to tinker with another set and see what things look like over a couple seasons since I don’t think you can really “ruin” a dynasty tinkering with these.

NBA 2K25

As I’ve said before, College Football 25, NBA 2K25, and NHL 25 have settled into being my three sports games of choice in the last couple months. I don’t think those rankings will be changing in the next month, so I’m a little more invested in those particular forums. NBA 2K25 has the most in-depth set of roster creators of any game on our forums, and while a lot of the biggest projects are still in their primordial stages, OS vet MJWizards is out with his first completed Era. He has finished up the Jordan Era rosters, and so those are ready to rock

I don’t think I need to sell most of you on MJ’s work because you probably know him at this point if you play 2K, but he does amazing work each and every year. He will continue to roll along and do the other Eras in the game as we move through the season.

With the real NBA season kicking off in the last couple weeks, Mike Lowe is another vet on the forums, and he does have a new NBA 2K25 slider set up. You can search for MikeLowe47 in NBA 2K25 to find his latest set.

If you’re looking to improve your game, OS user jeebs9 is one of my guys that I always love to chat with, and he has one of my favorite yearly threads that showcases the paint game in 2K. He posts various combos and tutorials for you to test out if you want to work on those aspects of your game.

I can tell you from experience, there is no quicker way to make random people online lose their minds than when you just absolutely torch them with post moves. So if you want to make people rage, head to that thread and learn some of those combos being posted. Alternatively, there’s a thread that just started this week where people are giving some pointers about where to look for dribble tutorials. Content creator Kevin Cruz has already come up in that thread, and he’s certainly someone to scope out on that front.

Everything Else

The smorgasbord of other threads I want to highlight dance all over the place, so we’ll put them all under this umbrella. First off, I love all the NHL 25 sliders I’m seeing. I take that as a sign some other folks have taken the plunge and are playing EA’s latest hockey game after some years off, which I love to see. Again, if there’s going to be a version that wins you back over, this one is as good as any to try because I do think it’s pretty clearly the best version of the game in recent times.

Armor and Sword has taken his slider talents to NHL 25, and I would think these will be a match for others who maybe have taken some years off from the series or are not the biggest hockey fans. Armor also made some recent changes to his Madden 25 sliders. Even after the latest patch, I still can’t get through a season of Madden 25’s franchise mode without getting bored, so I am not the best judge right now, but Armor has been someone I went to for Madden sliders in the past. I do think I will have a “PC winter” and mod the crap out of both NBA 2K25 and Madden 25, but until then, I’m not sure how much I’ll personally be playing Madden in the weeks ahead.

One other new set of NHL 25 sliders comes from OS user voodoo_magic. He’s gone a little more extreme with the aggression sliders being set to 0 as the big change I notice. I have been planning to test these sliders out myself in the days ahead.

We also have some piping hot OS Community Sliders for EA FC 25 from Matt10 and co. He just released the new beta set this week, and the goal here was to make you feel more worried about turning the ball over in bad spots.

Rounding things out, Florida Man (me) gets more into golf right about now. I want to remind everyone that we have an OS Golfer’s thread where you can talk about your game, your clubs, your injuries, your frustrations, and so on. And beyond sports games, Dragon Age: The Veilguard came out in the last 24 hours. I am a big BioWare fan through the years, and I was able to play this game before release and really do think it’s their best game in many years. If you end up picking it up, we have a thread on the forums where I’d love to hear your thoughts as you play through it.

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

-Chase