Road to CFP players - How's it going?

[amp0303]

I love dynasty but I also like the competitive nature of online H2H. I really like the "rank" system of Road to CFP but man, I've never been so bad at a competitive football game before. I play straight up, no spamming cheese plays.

Let's discuss it! How has it been going for you guys? Tired of seeing Georgia and Alabama every game? What were your answers for the cheese plays? Does the player ratings matter more than strategy? Who do you run with?

[DLev4552]

Quote: Originally Posted by amp0303

I love dynasty but I also like the competitive nature of online H2H. I really like the "rank" system of Road to CFP but man, I've never been so bad at a competitive football game before. I play straight up, no spamming cheese plays. Let's discuss it! How has it been going for you guys? Tired of seeing Georgia and Alabama every game? What were your answers for the cheese plays? Does the player ratings matter more than strategy? Who do you run with?

Poorly, for me.

I'm basically the meme at this point. I'm a 36 year old professional with 2 kids (ages 7 and 5) and my 3rd on the way in November. Haven't owned a console since the Xbox 360. Went out and bought a PS5 last Friday just so I could play NCAA again (er... EACFB 25).

On NCAA 06', I was ranked as high as #32 online on PS2. From 2006-2013, I only had to actually buy NCAA twice, as I won tournaments at GameStop the rest of the years at midnight releases where I received a free copy of the game as one of the prizes.

I thought this would be like riding a bike, but it has not been. All my muscle memory is gone because they have changed so many mechanics. I still want to press LB and RB for defensive adjustments (now D-Pad Left/Right). I could just about change the whole defense in 4-5 seconds with my eyes closed, but now I have to think about everything little adjustment, and I'm so slow.

I see "X" receiver open and I instinctively press XBox X (which, surprise, is square on PS5!) and throw unintentional picks at least every other game.

I'm 21-20 in Road to the CFP, just one single game above .500. On previous NCAAs, it would have taken me at least 80-100 games played to take 20 losses.

This must be how Tiger Woods feels playing golf right now, thinking he can just walk out there and smoke these guys like he used to from 2000-2014, but instead he limping around and missing cuts.

Granted, I am 8-0 when using Bama in online H2H (I'm not a bandwagoner. My bachelors, law degree, and masters were all earned at Bama), but that feels cheesy and I don't want to just play Bama v. OhioSt/Oregon/UGA/Texas/Michigan every game.

So I have been sticking with Tier 3 schools (UAB, Jax State, South Alabama, Troy, Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, etc.), and I am probably handicapping myself a little bit by almost always having the worse team in my matches.

My biggest gripe has been the Tiers. Tier 1 is too small (only 11 teams), and Tier 3 is too big.

Some examples: Ole Miss is #5 in the game and is Tier 2. TCU played in the real world National Championship Game 18 months ago and they are Tier 3...

Tier 1 should be like Top 15-20 (88+), Tier 2 should be middle of the pack P5 and upper echelon G5 (80-87), and Tier 3 should be middling-to-low G5 and only the poorest P5 teams (<=79).

Every game I play in Tier 3 with UAB (77 OVR) or Jax State (75 OVR) sees me matched up with P5 teams like Texas Tech (85 OVR), UCF (85 OVR), TCU, Oregon State, Maryland, etc.

P5 teams that regularly have winning records and make bowls every year should absolutely NOT be in Tier 3 with the Sun Belt, CUSA, MAC, and Mountain West teams.

[amp0303]

Quote: Originally Posted by DLev4552

Poorly, for me. I'm basically the meme at this point. I'm a 36 year old professional with 2 kids (ages 7 and 5) and my 3rd on the way in November. Haven't owned a console since the Xbox 360. Went out and bought a PS5 last Friday just so I could play NCAA again (er... EACFB 25). In 2006, I was ranked as high as #32 online on PS2. From 2006-2013, I only had to actually buy NCAA twice, as I won tournaments at GameStop the rest of the years at midnight releases where I received a free copy of the game as one of the prizes. I thought this would be like riding a bike, but it has not been. All my muscle memory is gone because they have changed so many mechanics. I still want to press LB and RB for defensive adjustments (now D-Pad Left/Right). I could just about change the whole defense in 4-5 seconds with my eyes closed, but now I have to think about everything little adjustment, and I'm so slow. I see "X" receiver open and I instinctively press XBox X (which, surprise, is square on PS5!) and throw unintentional picks at least every other game. I'm 21-20 in Road to the CFP, just one dang game above .500. Up through NCAA 14, it would have taken me at least 80 games online to take 20 losses. This must be how Tiger Woods feels playing golf right now, thinking he can just walk out there and smoke these guys like he used to from 2000-2014, but instead he limping around and missing cuts. Granted, I am 8-0 when using Bama in online H2H (I'm not a bandwagoner. My bachelors, law degree, and masters were all earned at Bama), but that feels cheesy and I don't want to just play Bama v. OhioSt/Oregon/UGA/Texas/Michigan every game. So I have been sticking with Tier 3 schools (UAB, Jax State, South Alabama, Troy, Appalachian State, Georgia Southern, etc.), and I am probably handicapping myself a little bit by almost always having the worse team in my matches. My biggest gripe has been the Tiers. Tier 1 is too small (only 11 teams), and Tier 3 is too big. Some examples: Ole Miss is #5 in the game and is Tier 2. TCU played in the real world National Championship Game 18 months ago and they are Tier 3... Tier 1 should be like Top 15-20 (88+), Tier 2 should be middle of the pack P5 and upper echelon G5 (80-87), and Tier 3 should be middling-to-low G5 and only the poorest P5 teams (<=79). Every game I play in Tier 3 with UAB (77 OVR) or Jax State (75 OVR) sees me matched up with P5 teams like Texas Tech (85 OVR), UCF (85 OVR), TCU, Oregon State, Maryland, etc. P5 teams that regularly have winning records and make bowls every year should absolutely NOT be in Tier 3 with the Sun Belt, CUSA, MAC, and Mountain West teams.

Are I you without the 2 kids?! Bro, I was ranked as high as #6 from 2008-2011 on Madden but I can't win consistently on this. I feel like my brain has slowed down, I feel old lol

[redpanda]

It's really frustrating how they have the Tiers of teams. It almost seems like a mistake. Why is 73 OVR Air Force a Tier 2 team, and 85 OVR Texas Tech a Tier 3 team? I think it's a little ridiculous and lazy to separate 134 teams by 3 Tiers. Regardless, if it stays at 3 Tiers just separate it by OVR to make it make sense.

[_-King-_]

I was having a ton of fun with it but now that I've worked my way up the ranks it's unfortunately losing a bit of the luster. I'm finding a lot of players at the higher ranks know how to exploit the game which just takes the fun out of it for me. Like even when I know exactly what they're about to run, sometimes it's just near impossible to stop it 4 straight plays.

Also finding lower tiers to be almost unusable at this point. If I'm a tier 2 against a tier 1 sometimes on defense I can call the perfect play, hit them behind the line of scrimmage, and then just watch helplessly as they slip through 4 tackles on the way to a TD.

[_-King-_]

Alright, yeah I'm retiring. I make the perfect play calls and make the perfect adjustments, knowing exactly what they're running, and 50% of the time the broken cheese plays will go to the house.

I looked up the top ranked players in the world and all the best players play like this. Master exploiting 1 play and you can just run it the entire game.

Luckily offline is still fun. I wish there was a way to make a well balanced football game that could be played competitively but unfortunately that may not be possible.

[IlluminatusUIUC]

I play H2H exclusively because I hate playing AI and don't have the free time for an online dynasty, and Road to the CFP is a decidedly mixed experience.



I like the aspect of playing a "season" where you are trying to build up a record to make it into the "playoffs," and I (sort of) like how the game incentivizes playing with weaker teams by giving you larger ranking bumps if you choose them. I also kind of like that it limits you to stock playbooks, so you don't end up seeing Army running the 4 wide spread or whatever.

However, the fact that it doesn't allow you to pre-set audibles, uniforms, or depth charts feels very limiting. Every game I have to spend the first defensive drive resetting the audibles because EA picked literally the most useless 4 and made them the same for every formation. Which leads to the bigger problem: Turbo No Huddle is absolutely broken. Even if the guy wants to sprint to the line, the ball auto-spots instantaneously whereas you should get multiple seconds while the refs sort that out. And they can do it off incomplete passes and OOB plays, which is ridiculous. Once I climbed to All-Conference it felt like running into a brick wall of cheese plays and nonsense, to the point that I'll intentionally tank rather than play out the season and risk remaining in that tier.

As for the tier system, EA really missed an opportunity here. Online teams should be placed in tiers based on their online record. If people are winning high % of games with teams like Tier 2 Oregon and Tier 3 USC, both of whom are too low, then the teams should be rebalanced into the higher tier the following week or month or whatever. Treat it like the AP Poll.

[PowerofRed25]

I've been playing a lot of Road to the CFP recently because I feel like the last patch broke a lot of things that I want to see fixed before I jump back into dynasty; however, the inability to use a custom playbook, or even a different default playbook, is a borderline deal breaker for me.

With NCAA 14, I exclusively played online and the only time I played the computer was when a non-human opponent was on my schedule in an online dynasty. Playing the computer simply was not fun for me because no amount of slider tweaking made it competitive enough and, more importantly, I loved the draw of designing an offense and defense around my personnel AND using it against another human. The chess match of it was fun for me.

I no longer have the time during the day to play human vs human online dynasty games so I thought I would really like Road to the CFP because it felt like it would give me a goal to work towards without having to worry about scheduling games, but the fact that I can't use different playbooks makes it really tough. Especially when your school's playbook is not even remotely close to anything your school runs. I have enjoyed playing with lower tier schools that happen to have playbooks I enjoy (UNLV) but as you go up through the levels, the fun is really taken out of it.

I also find that Road to the CFP games are just too short for there to be any meaningful strategy. As someone that runs the ball a lot, it seems like I get one drive per half in Road to the CFP. That same time constraint is also why you see people running nothing but cheese nonsense instead of trying to run any sort of offense.

I really wish there was just a simple Online Versus lobby mode. Ranked, unranked, I don't care. It'd probably be far more fun unranked. Let me pick uniforms, my own playbook, my own depth chart, my own audibles. I think there would be a huge group of us that have "aged out" of human vs human online dynasties that would play a ton of just unranked lobby games like that.

Once some of the blocking issues the last patch introduced are fixed, I'll probably be back to offline dynasty full time and only play online when the urge hits. Offline is incredibly competitive now, I've probably lost more games to the computer in a month of 25 than I did in 5-6 years of playing NCAA 14. Road to the CFP has a ton of potential though so I hope they keep developing it. It could be a good mode once some of the quirks are worked out.