UPDATE 28 August 2024: I was wrong about how the Option controls work.
It turns out that I was mis-understanding how the Option controls work in this game. It's actually not nearly as bad as this blog (and its accompanying video) make it out to be. I will be posting a new blog and video in the coming days to address my mistake and explain how the Option actually works, and also the logic behind why I think EA made this change. I apologize for the misunderstanding.
In my previous post about EA Sports College Football 25, I mentioned that there are 4 big challenges that I'm having, which have caused me to loose the vast majority of matches that I've played against the CPU, on the All-American difficulty, with no adjustments to any gameplay or A.I. sliders. 1 of those problems is my fault, which is that I need to get better at reading the defenses and not turning the ball over as much. I'm still working on it... The second issue is that CPU-controlled defenders do not properly play outside containment and take horrible pursuit routes that give up big plays and scores. That's not on me, since I can't personally control all 11 players on the defense, and am dependent on them doing their assigned jobs. The third problem that I've been having is the same problem that everyone else is having, and was the primary topic of the previous post, which is that the kicking meter is too damn hard.
The 4th major issue that I'm having with College Football 25 is the changes to the Option mechanics and controls. Option controls have been changed, such that the user now has to hold the X button (on PlayStation) in order for the QB to keep the ball, or release the button in order to hand off to the fullback or halfback. More importantly, however, is that the timing rules for the option hand-off no longer lines up with the animations, making it difficult or impossible for the user to execute these plays as they are designed.
This entire post is also available in video format, with demonstrations.
Where is the Skill Trainer?!
Unlike with the kick meter, the option controls at least have a tutorial prompt that appears and stops the game until the user dismisses it. This is in contrast to the kick meter tutorial, which is an easily-missed tool-tip in tiny font in the corner of the screen. However, there is no Skill Trainer or tutorials to teach these revised mechanics, let alone teach the user how to actually read the defense, which defender to read, or when it's appropriate to hand the ball off, keep the ball, or pitch the ball.
The tutorial pop-up appears once, and then will never be seen again.
The lack of a Skill Trainer is, in my opinion, one of the biggest flaws in College Football 25. The Skill Trainer is one of the single best features to ever be added to any sports game ever. Not only does it tutorialize gameplay mechanics, but it also teaches fundamental football concepts. It, or something like it, should be a standard feature in every sports game. Period. No, the shitty Mini-Camp drills do not fill the same role. They are arcade mini-games. They are not gameplay tutorials, and the most definitely are not real-life football teaching tools.
Given how different college football is compared to NFL football, and how many gameplay mechanics have been changed for College Football 25, the need for a robust Skill Trainer is even more important. I expected to see a slew of new Skill Trainer tutorials for college football concepts ranging from how to manage the collegiate game clock, to how to run the no-huddle offense, to how to play college overtime rules, to executing the Triple Option, and to running defensive schemes like the 5-2, the 4-2-5, and the 3-3-5. I also expected to see Skill Trainer tutorials for the new and modified College Football 25 mechanics such as the new kick meter, the new Option controls, and the new "Do It Yourself" reverse plays. None of that is in the game, so gamers are forced to have to botch these mechanics in games, or spend a lot of time in Open Practice figuring these things out for themselves, and hoping they are understanding it correctly. And since the Skill Trainer has been in Madden for years, this would have been a mostly copy-and-paste job, and EA and Tiburon had 3 years to copy-paste it and update it for the college game. There is no excuse for this to not be in the game!
Madden's Skill Trainer is one of the best features in any sports game ever.
The lack of Skill Trainer in College Football 25 also has me worried that this brilliant feature might also be removed from the upcoming Madden 25 as well, which would be a damn shame.
Setting tool-tips to "Always On"
actually permanently disabled them.
There's also no explanation of the Option controls in the Control Summary in the pause menu or game settings. I also only ever saw 1 tool tip pop up that told me that I need to hold the button to keep the ball. Even though I went into settings and set the tool tips to "always on", they are not showing up. So either Tiburon didn't put any tool tips in the game, or this "always on" setting is bugged, and Tiburon needs to fix it. If you miss the tutorial dialogue, or forget what it said, you cannot bring this information up again later.
Button conflicts
I can certainly see the logic behind the decision to hold the button for the keeper. It's basically "hold the button in order to hold the ball, or release the button to hand off the ball". That seems like it would make intuitive sense. But in practice, it doesn't work so great. The problem is that this new control flies in the face of all the other established control precedents in the rest of the game, and is also in direct conflict with over a decade of muscle-memory from Madden's controls, and the controls of the old NCAA Football games.
There is no other situation in the game in which the user is expected to hold the button in order to hold onto the football. We don't have to hold a button in order to not lateral or fumble the ball when running. QBs don't have to hold the button in order to not throw a pass on passing plays. Kickers don't hold a button in order to not kick the ball. Receiver don't have to hold a button in order to catch passes and "complete the process" (and not pull a Calvin Johnson), and defenders do not need to hold a button to not drop interceptions. Even tackling does not require holding a button.
Arguably, the "cover ball" button could be seen as a similar "hold the button to hold the ball" mechanic, but it's a very different use case, and I don't really think it counts as a precedent.
Option handoffs are contrary to pass and kick charging, which require holding the button to get rid of the ball.
In fact, the only time you ever hold a button in this game is to charge the kick meter or charge the pass meter. In both those cases, you hold the button to get rid of the ball; not to keep it. So I really am not comfortable with this "hold the button to keep the ball" mechanic. If this were a VR game with motion controls, then yeah, this would probably be a good and intuitive mechanic. But in a traditional football video game played with a standard game pad, it just feels wrong in comparison to all the game's other controls.
When do I hold, and for how long?
Worse yet, having to hold down a button also makes it very unclear how the timing is supposed to work. Am I supposed to hold the X button when snapping the ball, and then continue to hold it all the way through to the point that I decide to hand off or keep it? Or do I press X to snap the ball, release the button, and then press and hold it again in order to keep the ball? And how does this work on RPOs? Am I supposed to snap the ball, then hold the X button to not hand off, and then release X and press the receiver button to throw? Or am I supposed to continue holding X while also pressing the button of the receiver I want to throw to?
After spending an hour or so in Open Practice, it seems like EA and Tiburon couldn't figure out how the timing rules are supposed to work either, because the rules seem to be different for any given Option play. That's not necessarily a problem, since different plays should have different timings. The problem is that these timing rules don't seem to line up with the actual animations for the Read Option "mesh point" (the point in the play in which the QB holds the ball out towards the running back, and decides whether to hand it off or keep it). It is, thus, unclear on any given play, exactly when the user is supposed to release the button if you want to hand it off. In real football, the QB is supposed to make this decision, based on what the Conflict Defender is doing, when he and the running back are at the "Mesh Point". But in the video game, the QB must make the hand-off decision well before this point.
For many option plays with a dive option, the decision to hand-off the ball must be made well before the QB and running back reach the play's Mesh Point. In the case of the Inverted Veer, in particular, this decision must be made as soon as the ball is snapped.
Different option plays have different timings, which are completely dissociated with the animations.
This strict timing leaves no opportunity for the user to read the conflict defender, which means I have to commit to handing off the ball before the conflict defender has even moved, which completely defeats the purpose of the Read Option to begin with. The correct timing for this play (and any Read Option variant) should be able to delay the hand-off until the point in the animation when the QB is actually holding the ball out towards the option runner.
But that isn't the way it works. The user has to just guess whether to handoff the ball or not immediately upon snapping the ball, which is not how this play is designed to work. This needs to be fixed!
On the other end of the spectrum, the timing for RPOs seems incredibly loose, such that if I release the X button early because I want to throw, the QB still hands off the ball anyway, and then the runner immediately dives or hurdles when I press the receiver button thinking that the QB still has the ball. In fact, it's unclear to me if I'm even required to hold the button to keep the ball for RPOs at all. Maybe I don't. Maybe I'm just making RPOs more difficult fo rmyself.
It's all very confusing and counter-intuitive. It's change for change's sake, fixing something that ain't broke, since the existing option controls from Madden have worked fine for years. And as mentioned before, there's no tutorial for this, and no option to change the control mode back to how Madden has done it, or to loosen the timing so that I actually have time to read the conflict defender.
I don't know how the programming works under the hood, but the way I would think it should work is that there should be a set of keyframes for these plays that correspond to the Mesh Point. These keyframes should be tied to the animations of the QB holding the ball out to the running back. All read option animations should be tagged as "Read Option Mesh Points", and have these keyframes applied to them.
The button inputs should be tied to the animation of holding the ball out to the running back.
For any Read Option hand-off animation, the game should simply check if the user is holding the X button at the start keyframe. If not, then branch into the hand-off animation and hand-off the ball to the running back. If the user is holding X, but releases X anytime before the end keyframe, then also hand-off the ball. Alternatively, if the player is allowed to revert to the old Madden style controls, then you simply have to check if the X button is pressed or held at any point between those keyframes in order to trigger the hand-off.
By tagging all Read Option hand-off animations as a quote-Read Option hand-off-unquote, and applying this logic to all animations with the "Read Option hand-off" tag, you have a universal solution that does not require manually setting the timing window for each individual play, and which ties the timing of the user input to the actual animation to which that input is relevant.
If EA wants, they can add difficulty adjustments that widen the window in which the user can hand-off the ball. Allowing the button to be pressed later could cause problems with animations, so most (if not all) of any additional buffer period would probably have to go before the hand-off animation. Hell, I'm even OK with making the Read Option hand-off harder by adding an option for mis-timed button presses to result in a fumble! Just like a mis-timed Option pitch can be fumbled. Again, my problem isn't that running the Option is "too hard"; my complaint is that the timing windows are not clear to the user because they don't line up with animations. As long as the timing of the button presses is actually tied to the animation, so that it is clear to the user when the button input needs to be made, I'm OK with the Read Option having a narrow window and being harder to execute.
Preferred play-style
This may seem like a minor problem, and aside from the Inverted Veer giving no time to read the conflict defender at all, it is a much more minor problem than the kicking meter in the grand scheme of things. If you're not comfortable with the Option controls, then you can simply not run an Option-based offense, and avoid calling Option plays. It's a lot harder to avoid kicking. You can choose to be more aggressive on 4th down and with 2-point conversions, so that you can avoid kicking like the plague, but there are still going to be situations in which you really should be punting or kicking a field goal. And you're going to have to kick off at least once in every match. So if the kicking meter is a deal-breaker, then it's a much more significant deal-breaker because it will affect every match you play. Problems with the Option controls won't affect every match you play.
I love to watch and play the Army-Navy game because of their Option-heavy schemes.
That is, unless you are like me, and you build your entire offensive gameplan around the Option scheme. I run heavy Option-based offense, especially in college football. In Madden, it will depend a lot more on which team I have and who the QB is. With Justin Fields as the starting QB for the Bears the past few years, I ran a lot of Option and Triple Option in Madden. I will probably still run the Option with Caleb Williams, but probably not as much as I did with Fields. If I have Matt Stafford or Derek Carr, then I'm probably not running any Option.
And sure, whether or not I run the Option in College Football 25 will depend on my roster. If the best I can do in Dynasty is recruit a pure pocket passer, then I probably won't be running much Option. But even in that case, and with the larger college roster sizes, I would probably still make an effort to recruit an athletic QB to rotate in for Option plays. So the Option is still going to be a part of my playbook and scheme, no matter what.
The Option is a staple of my offensive play style, and not be able to easily understand how to control and execute the Option in College Football 25 comes close to being a deal-breaker for the whole game.
Establish the Option game
Just like with the Kicking Meter, I'm going to keep giving it the ol' college try. Hopefully, it clicks with me, and I can continue to call Option plays and enjoy the game. But Tiburon definitely needs to fix that Inverted Veer, because that play is un-usable as it currently stands. And I still think they should add an option to revert to the old style of Option controls, in which the player presses or holds the X button after the snap in order to hand-off. I would also like to see options to tighten or loosen the timing window for option handoffs, and maybe even add A.I. sliders for how aggressively defenses attack Option QBs.
Option pitch containment logic is also broken and needs to be fixed.
As I've mentioned before, defensive containment and pursuit angles are also a big problem with this game. I frequently see multiple defenders go after the QB and leave the pitch man uncovered, instead of each defender sticking with his assigned role. This problem has the potential to make executing the Option become too easy for users, while the user can simply manually control the force players in order to contain the Option Pitch. So this needs to be fixed by Tiburon so that it doesn't negatively affect the balance and challenge of the game.
I'll be posting a full review of EA Sports College Football 25 soon. And I may make additional posts about things that I like about this game. I wanted to get these complaints off my chest ASAP, so that hopefully the developers can address them, and I can start enjoying the game more. In the meantime, I hope you're enjoying College Football 25 more than I am. Good luck to you in your games, and thanks for reading!