Recruiting Has to Be Great in EA Sports College Football 25

[Steve_OS]

It feels like this may be the "final" moment to wishcast a bit since EA is...

Written By: Chase Becotte

Click here to view the article.

[georgiafan]

A great article and also cool that the thread I created got mentioned. I'm willing to overlook some flaws if recruiting is done correctly. I could talk about this subject forever. The turnover that happens in college football sets it apart even more so with this game having the transfer portal

They were some big flaws in NCAA 14 which i got reminded of when I simmed a few years recently. You rarely saw guys over 300 lbs, athletes were to WR heavy. Once you get to a 6* school you never had to recruit a 3* unless it was a specialist. The house rule on the 25% less recruited was easy enough to fix.

I like how Madden's draft added some mystery when drafting over what NCAA 14 did. Where you just hit a button and knew specific grades. In Madden the QB may have A arm strength, but that could be 95 or 99. How does the scouting work because you can't wait till after the season to do it. Do we have a certain amount of visits for a camp in the preseason?

Matt Brown has said they want you to get more attached to the players you recruit. Which sounds good at the surface and tells me it could be more time consuming. Kinda like the phone call type system where as NCAA 14 you just rearranged the points. I have noticed on youtube some players don't want the "grind" of that and want a simple process. I liked the old phone call system where you could negatively recruit using school grades.

What's going to put it over the edge is how in depth it is when it comes to making promises like playing time. Will 5* QB's demand a starting job as a true freshman and what happens if you lie just to sign him ? Do we see 3* with 68 overall yet superstar development so they end up as 95 overall

[blwall1416]

I loved the recruiting in College Hoops 2K8. Being able to contact freshmen and sophomores, the ramp it up when they were junior & seniors. You could potentially land a big recruit if you had been with him since his 9th grade year. BUT, that highly rated 9th grader could also turn out to be a 3* by his senior year. It was such a great risk/reward system...and it didn't take a lot of time to do it.

I would love to see something like that in CFB25. It doesn't have to be a copy and paste, but something that brings the risk/reward to that level. It could be huge when trying to take that small school to the CFB Playoffs.

[GoDucks1224]

Quote: Originally Posted by georgiafan

A great article and also cool that the thread I created got mentioned. I'm willing to overlook some flaws if recruiting is done correctly. I could talk about this subject forever. The turnover that happens in college football sets it apart even more so this game with the transfer portal They were some big flaws in NCAA 14 which i got reminded of when I simmed a few years recently. You rarely saw guys over 300 lbs, athletes were to WR heavy. Once you get to a 6* school you never had to recruit a 3* unless it was a specialist. The house rule on the 25% less recruited was easy enough to fix. I like how Madden's draft added some mystery when drafting over what NCAA 14 did. Where you just hit a button and knew specific grades. In Madden the QB may have A arm strength, but that could be 95 or 99. How does the scouting work because you can't wait till after the season to do it. Do we have a certain amount of visits for a camp in the preseason? Matt Brown has said they want you to get more attached to the players you recruit. Which sounds good at the surface and tells me it could be more time consuming. Kinda like the phone call type system where as NCAA 14 you just rearranged the points. I have noticed on youtube some players don't want the "grind" of that and want a simple process. I liked the old phone call system where you could negatively recruit using school grades. What's going to put it over the edge is how in depth it is when it comes to making promises like playing time. Will 5* QB's demand a starting job as a true freshman and what happens if you lie just to sign him ? Do we see 3* with 68 overall yet superstar development so they end up as 95 overall

We just gotta have variance. Like if there is a 5* freshman QB generated, maybe he's like Arch and is willing to sit and learn for a year or two before he gets his spot without hitting the portal. Or guys like Raiola, who choose a different school because they can play immediately. Or guys like Rashada and Dante Moore, who went one place to play right away, it didn't work out, and they transferred to new schools where they will sit and develop for a year or two to become the starter. Variance is key. If every single 5 star QB demands a starting role immediately, it will be robotic and unfun.

[illwill10]

Recruiting definitely needs to be great. While Transfer Portal should be a viable roster building tool, Recruiting needs to be a major emphasis have the balance of being a challenge, but rewarding. In the past, I spent the first couple seasons of a dynasty/team primarily recruiting only. Nothing beats putting the time into recruiting, building a team out in your image, and competing with that team. Now, we have the added challenge of keeping those guys out of the Transfer Portal lol. It's a great feeling to land that "Next" QB or Playmaker that you have to get on the field ASAP

Without making it wishlist-y, it can't be like NCAA14. That was too streamlined. I get that NCAA 12 and 13 might have been intimidating for casuals. But, I feel with a niche title you have to focus on the hardcore crowd before you can focus on attracting the casual crowd. If you want to make recruiting more approaching, either give options to simplify it or improve the auto-recruiting option. Best way to handle Auto-Recruiting would be to be able to set your Positional priorities and player archetypes preferences and tie the success of your auto-recruiting based on your recruiting skill grades(and your staff). So, if you have a C or worse recruiting grades, then you're running the risk of bad auto recruiting. But, if you have an A grade, you can sit back and trust the Auto Recruiting.

[Pokes3828]

Honestly, recruiting is going to make-or-break this game for me. I have very little hope that the gameplay will be anything enjoyable for me. But if they can knock Dynasty mode out of the park, I’ll have tons of fun building up my own program. But if the recruiting is dull, and Dynasty mode is on the same level of bland as Madden Franchise, I don’t know that I’ll be turning it on very much after that first week.

I’m trying to be optimistic though. We’ll get to see a taste of what they’ve got later today.

[KSUowls]

The roster turnover that you get in college sports games helps to keep things fresh season to season far more than what you get in pro sports games.

[mattynokes]

For me, it all starts with Program Prestige. It'd be nice if you'd actually have to work your way up if you're a G5 program, instead of simply getting 10-win seasons against podunk schools improves your prestige. For example, if I emulated Ohio U's success with Frank Solich from 2009 to 2012 (4 straight winning and bowl bid seasons), my prestige would be much higher than a 2-star program that OU still was on NCAA 14. If Conference Prestige was tied into/capped Program Prestige, it'd go a long way to adding realism.

I liked recruiting better when there were a lot of unknowns with either less information or letter grades. Like back on NCAA 06, you could scout players and figure out their Speed, Strength, Awareness (range), Jumping, Squat, and maybe a position specific attribute. There was still a lot left unknown. Maybe the HB had great straight line Speed, but without knowing Agility or Acceleration, it might not be as appealing as it looks.

On NCAA 14, scout 'em and you'll know right where every important attribute lies. Sure, you could have some house rules to limit your information on a recruit, but if you see a Possession WR with A Speed and D Catching, it doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to know that it's VERY likely that his Speed will go down and his Catching will go up.

I also think Player Progression goes hand-in-hand with recruiting. Going back to NCAA 06, it was nice to see (I think because of Potential) that some players would hardly progress, while you could have a ho-hum 3-star recruit that you thought was just going to be depth have Breakthrough after Breakthrough and become a starter. This would also allow for freshman phenoms to emerge and become Day 1 Starters.

On NCAA 14, it felt like every player was destined for +4/5 progression every year. It was easily predictable for how your future depth chart would look and freshman instant starters were rare and seemingly only happened when you had a player leave early at a position that was already thin. With the amount of freshman/sophomore stars in today's college game, I'm hopeful that young players jettisoning atop the depth chart will be more prevalent.