I don't get my game until Monday (via Amazon pre-order).

First, thanks for working out all the bugs, fellas. Hopefully the EA folks are tracking all these things down for the inevitable patch(es).

Second, I understand not being able to edit the original roster for NIL but what about subsequent classes?

Is the no editing confined to player appearance only or can numbers and equipment be edited?

I get it Friday

Numbers of future players in dynasty cannot currently be changed, but I think EA has said they're planning on changing that. Weird it wasn't included at launch.

Lonestar_Ag09 said:

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RingOfive said:

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MW03 said:

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I'm getting cooked repeatedly. The only thing I can chalk it up to is the extra decade on my cognition since I moved on to FIFA and stopped playing Madden with any kind of regularity. The pre-snap adjustments alone are ridiculous. On passing plays, there's a hundred things to monitor, and you get about 2.5 seconds to make a decision (especially if you're playing with A&M).

I recognize that I am just flat out bad at this game right now. I'm just hoping I stick to it, improve, and learn how to play it all. Right now I'm just staving off rage quits.....against the computer.

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Dude, I'm in your exact same situation. I have seriously been questioning whether or not I'm just too old for video games.

I've played several exhibition games and spent some time practicing plays in training mode. Watched some YouTube vids that had some tips (especially for defense). But, man, I'm struggling. And I'm playing on Varsity.

One thing that bothers me a bit... I think they've over-complicated things too much. For example, custom stems at the line of scrimmage seems like something no team actually does in real life. I just don't think Weigman makes a pre-snap read and then tells Moose to do a 13 yard out route instead of a 5 yard out route. Heck, I think you can do ridiculously long out routes (or any type of route) of like 40 or 50 + yards. I know I don't have to use custom stems, but why are they there? Nobody is doing a custom stem at the LOS. Again, stuff like that indicates that they've overcomplicated things.

I'm still having a blast playing the game.

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Real offenses and real football teams 100% to that. Especially at the highest level with the best talent. What exactly do you think qb's are pointing at and tapping and saying cadences for?

This isn't 1962 where it's just down set hike to the center

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They're telling a WR to do a 52 yard out route? Ok.

RingOfive said:

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Lonestar_Ag09 said:

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RingOfive said:

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MW03 said:

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I'm getting cooked repeatedly. The only thing I can chalk it up to is the extra decade on my cognition since I moved on to FIFA and stopped playing Madden with any kind of regularity. The pre-snap adjustments alone are ridiculous. On passing plays, there's a hundred things to monitor, and you get about 2.5 seconds to make a decision (especially if you're playing with A&M).

I recognize that I am just flat out bad at this game right now. I'm just hoping I stick to it, improve, and learn how to play it all. Right now I'm just staving off rage quits.....against the computer.

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Dude, I'm in your exact same situation. I have seriously been questioning whether or not I'm just too old for video games.

I've played several exhibition games and spent some time practicing plays in training mode. Watched some YouTube vids that had some tips (especially for defense). But, man, I'm struggling. And I'm playing on Varsity.

One thing that bothers me a bit... I think they've over-complicated things too much. For example, custom stems at the line of scrimmage seems like something no team actually does in real life. I just don't think Weigman makes a pre-snap read and then tells Moose to do a 13 yard out route instead of a 5 yard out route. Heck, I think you can do ridiculously long out routes (or any type of route) of like 40 or 50 + yards. I know I don't have to use custom stems, but why are they there? Nobody is doing a custom stem at the LOS. Again, stuff like that indicates that they've overcomplicated things.

I'm still having a blast playing the game.

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Real offenses and real football teams 100% to that. Especially at the highest level with the best talent. What exactly do you think qb's are pointing at and tapping and saying cadences for?

This isn't 1962 where it's just down set hike to the center

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They're telling a WR to do a 52 yard out route? Ok.

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Obviously not, but they're absolutely adjusting the depth of routes based on down/distance as well hot routing individual receivers. It happens a lot more at the NFL level to be sure but it absolutely happens in college as well.

In my RTG QB in second year I took the Aggies to the CFBplayoff only to lose to Clemson 35-31. For context we were down 21-0 after the first due to Daniels fumbling FOR THE FIRST TIME ALL YEAR. Such an Aggie thing to do lol

RingOfive said:

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MW03 said:

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I'm getting cooked repeatedly. The only thing I can chalk it up to is the extra decade on my cognition since I moved on to FIFA and stopped playing Madden with any kind of regularity. The pre-snap adjustments alone are ridiculous. On passing plays, there's a hundred things to monitor, and you get about 2.5 seconds to make a decision (especially if you're playing with A&M).

I recognize that I am just flat out bad at this game right now. I'm just hoping I stick to it, improve, and learn how to play it all. Right now I'm just staving off rage quits.....against the computer.

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Dude, I'm in your exact same situation. I have seriously been questioning whether or not I'm just too old for video games.

I've played several exhibition games and spent some time practicing plays in training mode. Watched some YouTube vids that had some tips (especially for defense). But, man, I'm struggling. And I'm playing on Varsity.

One thing that bothers me a bit... I think they've over-complicated things too much. For example, custom stems at the line of scrimmage seems like something no team actually does in real life. I just don't think Weigman makes a pre-snap read and then tells Moose to do a 13 yard out route instead of a 5 yard out route. Heck, I think you can do ridiculously long out routes (or any type of route) of like 40 or 50 + yards. I know I don't have to use custom stems, but why are they there? Nobody is doing a custom stem at the LOS. Again, stuff like that indicates that they've overcomplicated things.

I'm still having a blast playing the game.

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Ditto. 7-11 so far online.

My biggest issue is throwing too many picks because the defense can make some pretty insane moves when the ball is in the air. Not uncommon that I throw 4 or 5.

I did take some advice and started moving in some screens. Also starting to work in RPO after spending time in the open practice mode.

Is the Ultimate Team mode basically Diamond Dynasty? I messed around with it a little and from what I can tell you get packs to get better player to play online.

Ok, so bumping it up a level a difficulty and yeah, WTF? It's like everything is just random now. I can beat the breaks off one team and then the next my line can barely block against no bodies and defensive backs randomly break off their coverage? Is that how they make it more difficult?

For example, I'm playing the horns (who are 4-4). They went up 21-14 and I had to turn it off. They had 151 yards of offense with 149 coming on 2 plays where my DBs just randomly decided to quit coverage as Arch did a 3 step drop on both times and just chunked it deep. But the rage quit was I snapped the ball and it magically went like 20 yards past Conner, I thought the game had done a glitch but then it rules a fumble and the horns pick it up to return it for a TD. Meanwhile Conner, can barely get a pass off because either someone on my line decides to do just not block someone on a 4 man rush (and I mean just plain not block them) or the horns someone pick a max blitz on almost every time I do play action, even though I run the hell out of Owens (who's a 99 rated back and should be really respected by the computer).

I don't mind things being more difficult because the computer makes better decisions, but I HATE games where the difficulty is just that it's harder for you to do things that are normal.

Maybe this is an outlier, but damn it's so random and they picked the wrong game to have it go extreme.

Oh also one more thing that I've noticed across the board. Does the stadium environment thing only effect human players? I've had it happen twice where I was in a hostile environment and Conner ran the wrong play, something else doesn't go right. But I have yet to see Kyle field (even in the texas game where I'm ranked #1) cranked up all the way do jack squat against the computer.

I was expecting like one false start or something.

Agreed! If I even breathe on a kicker it's 15 yards

I don't even try to rush the kicker anymore

I take control of the edge rusher and stop him

Quote:

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One thing that bothers me a bit... I think they've over-complicated things too much. For example, custom stems at the line of scrimmage seems like something no team actually does in real life. I just don't think Weigman makes a pre-snap read and then tells Moose to do a 13 yard out route instead of a 5 yard out route. Heck, I think you can do ridiculously long out routes (or any type of route) of like 40 or 50 + yards. I know I don't have to use custom stems, but why are they there? Nobody is doing a custom stem at the LOS. Again, stuff like that indicates that they've overcomplicated things.

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Welcome to modern college football offense. Crazy thing is, a single play call could end up with (usually) 4-6 different plays when the ball is snapped. Man/Zone is one element, defensive "strength" from an alignment perspective is another, and defender leverage on receivers is yet another (inside leverage = out route, outside leverage = cross in).

Oh, and it all can change in a second once the ball is snapped. And most of the time there won't be any confirmation from each player about what they're doing.

What you're describing is literally what makes our new head coach so good at defense, he is a master at showing one thing pre-snap, causing the offense to make a call to favor what we show pre-snap, and then completely changing it after the snap.

I am happy to report that my RB in RTG we n UTSA we upset #10 tu 26-20 in overtime

Got to mess around with some of the sliders in the settings last night. Definitely encourage people to go in and tweak them a bit. Just dropping the CPU Interceptions down to 25 from 50 stops the 4-5 INT games. Can also adjust run blocking for both sides, etc. It really helped even out the game for me.

Also found a playbook I really like - Kansas. Good mix of regular shotgun (2 backs, 5 wide, some wide trips formations) and pistol formations (diamond, two TE, 3 wide) along with some wildcat formations for fun.

This game feels like NBA Jam in the arcade back in the day (which was rigged).

Blow out the CPU in the first quarter or half and then they start running wide open down the field and stopping your plays like they know.... on varsity.

I was up 28-0 on Arky on varsity and they came back and took the lead... lol

I am like some on here, maybe I just don't have it anymore.

Holy crap, guys. Thank you all for explaining football to me like I'm 5. If you had any idea of my history/experience with football, you would find that as hilarious as I do.

Maybe I didn't make myself clear. That's my bad. My point was that this game has a near infinite amount of possibilities at the LOS with the custom stems. My argument was that's not realistic. No QB is telling his z receiver to do a 54 yard curl instead of a 5 yard out. You can do that in this game. Combine that with a 4 wide receiver set, a standard route tree with 9 routes and 75 yards to go (assuming you're starting at your own 25) and you have a near infinite amount of possible changes that can be made at the LOS. There are not enough verbal commands or hand signals in the world to cover those because 98% of those possibilities aren't realistic. But they are all possible in this game.

Maybe that's more clear. Maybe not. But I'm enjoying everyone telling me how football works.

Warning for those planning on starting at a different team and then transferring to A&M. The transfer screen shows the current roster for that year, not the one you'll be playing on. It told me in year 3 I would be 2nd string behind Weigman, but he was no longer on the roster that next year.

I do agree with you that no QB is going out with the ability to give any of his 5 WR any of 8+ routes at any depth, which I think is what you were saying. Sure they have reads. Sure they have some ability to hot route. But the full free form nature of the game is a bit excessive in that regard.

I agree with you, not sure where the confusion was for the other posters. Feel like it should be obvious that it's not realistic to be able to tell a receiver to run any route at literally any depth, the precision isn't reasonable. At least not while lined up at the LOS. And "smart routes" which modified a receiver's route to be just beyond the first down have been in games for a while, it was definitely doable in '14, so they pretty intentionally deviated from that which was a realistic feature.

That being said for a video game I think it's a cool and fun feature. I do worry it will get abused as people figure out the recurring holes in different zone concepts and just have all their routes adjusted to those depths every play, but I think it's fun for now.

The transfer portal is out of control.

I saw that too and laughed my ass off lol

JobSecurity said:

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The number of roughing the kicker penalties I'm getting is ridiculous

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Holy crap, multiple games in a row on critical quarter FGs. A couple on misses

AgsMyDude said:

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JobSecurity said:

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The number of roughing the kicker penalties I'm getting is ridiculous

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Holy crap, multiple games in a row on critical quarter FGs. A couple on misses

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Found a way to shut that penalty off in the sliders

What difficulty are you guys playing right now?

Varsity seemed a bit too easy after a couple games, now I am on All-American. Lost like 3-4 games in a row but finally beat Vandy 50-3. Mixing in more runs definitely seems to help against the CPU…I think I was calling way too many pass plays before and it was adjusting.

Play action plays with Weigman is almost too good.

I'm playing All American as well. I think I am starting to get used to it on Offense a little and finding a rhythm. It takes me a bit to find the right approach for each game but once I do, I can start to click.

Maybe they can't account for this, but it feels like momentum matters. When I only play offense in my games against lesser opponents for example, my defense usually does a much better job of getting stops than me and I always perform much better on offense. However, when I play defense and offense, and the CPU has some things that work, I feel like offense becomes more challenging. Maybe it's in my mind.

I think there seems to be a momentum factor as well. Like in that blowout win against Vandy, I was up 14 and got a pick 6 before halftime. After that it seemed like my offense couldn't be stopped unless I forced a stupid pass in coverage.

So far that's the one time I had big momentum on my side. Otherwise it's been close games.