I was part of a select group invited to play EA Sports College Football 25 in Orlando in May and got a sneak peek at Dynasty Mode. Now that EA Sports has released the Dynasty Deep Dive, I’ll tell you what I know.
Here’s what I wrote from my May trip:
– Gameplay experience: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5523815/2024/05/29/ea-sports-college-football-25-video-game-features/
– Dynasty Mode details: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5525517/2024/05/29/college-football-25-video-game-dynasty-mode/
– How NIL is in the game: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5525588/2024/05/29/ea-sports-college-football-25-video-games-nil/
– Reader mailbag 1: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5544173/2024/06/06/college-football-25-ea-sports-fan-questions/
– Reader mailbag 2: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5545482/2024/06/07/college-football-25-dynasty-mode-details/
How many protected rivals can you have? And can you choose which weeks the protected rivalries are played?
Can’t wait to create a dynasty mode with the best football coach of all time, Ted Lasso.
Can we have more than one user in offline dynasty?
Hi Chris do you know if you can coach games in dynasty mode? Pick a play and watch the cpu runs it! It was an option that was in all previous ncaa games
How you play it, you don’t even have a real following
Lol. Madden re-skin just with college.
Just to confirm, you cannot set protected matchups when customizing conferences, correct? I know you could do this in '14, and I thought a few of the guys who went to EA when you did mentioned you could add "protected matchups" in custom conferences-but apparently this is false…
I'm mainly asking for people like myself who want to import enough Teambuilder teams to make their own conference, which will mean the set games that EA programmed in won't matter in that conference. (I know you said you don't know much about Teambuilder.)
For created players can you transfer them offline like play now or would you have to create another player
Brand exposure is literally just "TV Exposure" from the old games. Nothing wrong with it, just surprised nobody seems to have made the correlation yet. Back then it actually mattered how many regional/national TV games you played and it even tracked your record in them in later games. I do wonder if Brand is now calculated based off more than just said TV appearances.
The only new thing about custom conferences is the # of conference games you can play. While I appreciate being able to change this finally, I'm worried that this feature was created at the expense of being able to protect rivalries. Nobody actually likes divisions and there is only one conference that still has them, but even the real conferences have their rivalries protected IRL and in-game. Apparently they couldn't figure out how to have divisionless custom conferences with protected rivals; is it possible at least for custom conferences with divisions?
Meanwhile, what's up with static pipelines? It seems awfully simple even with the new pipeline levels to base your level of pipeline or if you have one at all based on the # of players from that region on your roster. 3 players = Lvl 1 pipeline, 5 = Lvl 2, etc. So why are they choosing to not let pipeline creation and destruction be fluid? If I'm Miami and I refuse to recruit S Florida and eventually have 0 local players on my team, why would it still show me as having a pipeline there, let alone Lvl 5?
Lastly, I like the intricacy. I like it better here than I did when they added it to Madden, because it always felt like it was half-assed in Madden–why should I care about my coach abiliities when you don't care about the rest of the mode? This seems like a product of being current-gen exclusive and I hope they do add a financial aspect to being a ball coach in future games. Ex. Raising funds, engaging boosters, pushing through stadium and facility renovations, reacting to campus events beyond your control (like the board of regents redirecting funds to/away from your football program to boost academics). And then whatever NIL does settle on. The college football manager games on PC do these things and they're led by developers dwarfed by the size of EA. The more intricate the better imo.
Could you edit the prospect names, equipment, etc.. ?
Hey Chris, have you heard if you can edit autogenerated players like their numbers? Or names?
Quick question, have you seen/played a game at South Carolina in CFB 25? Just wondering if 2001, the new light show, and the sandstorm pregame show will be in the game?
Just earned a sub….I only read the Athletic for the CFB staff and sports media w Marchand and Deitsch