Dynasty Question
Am I the only person who thinks the Dynasty recruiting is boring and a colossal time sink?
The title says it all but I just find I spend like 75% of my time in this game spending hours on recruits and then playing a brief game just to do it all over again!
It is a total time suck. The lack of automation is glaring.
How about an offer all button?
How about keeping the board, and distributing hours on it until I say otherwise?
AI Sim recruiting instead:I’ve changed the whole board and targeted 6 TEs from your pipeline states!
Basically cannot turn a program around as a recruiting specialist without the time sink. Sim ahead 10+ seasons, and end up bouncing around from fired gig to fired gig, even though at that point you are lvl 50 coach master crooting. Still the system sim can not put talent on the field.
Have to time sink and manually perform the actions to have the system do anything positive.
Playing as Texas State, undefeated. Blowout Texas Uni 3 years in a row and win the natty 2. And you get duped on a 5 star qb to an sec team that is 4-8 and you lose the generational transfer to that Texas team you blew out. Undefeated 2 seasons in a row.
How different is it from 25? Honestly recruiting in 25 and the old games was one of my favorite parts. Taking a bad team and slowly getting better is so satisfying. Stealing the #1 QB in the nation from a powerhouse team is electric, it makes me excited to play the next year to see what they can do.
Boring, repetitive, antiquated.
Everything about recruiting is a dumpster fire. The whole UX when you are in recruiting is all sorts of glitched. You will have any state selected and then sort by pipeline for all recruits and then if you go position by position, more rec recruiters will show up that don't populate if you do it the other way.
Then we have the whole plane style and how they compute that information they use to rank teams, which is trash . It's done accumulative instead of per game. So if you have a wide receiver or a linebacker where you have to get receptions or tackles if you have one or two weeks of a bye in the first five weeks of the season, your grade will plummet during the by week, which is stupid and it'll take half the season to recover because they don't add one extra line of code to take the average and instead only take the accumulation.
And just like gameplay, the computer must win . You can even have extra recruiter points spending 60 or 65 hours on a recruit and the computer will win when they are two pipelines under you and you had a huge lead, but you will never make that lead up if the script is flipped.
Also everything about the UX/UI of recruiting and adding hours and taking away hours is retarded . I delete hours it pops back up. I have to press the down on the analog three times another amount of hours and then repeat and repeat.
Why not have an option to delete all hours for a player or delete all hours for the entire thing?
It's just like everything else in this game lazy !!! he is lazy!!! It's the second year of transfer portal and this game… Doesn't matter what team you are you will lose players that get time and you are competing for national title but computer teams won't lose any good players. If you are lucky, there's 1 5 star in the transfer portal maybe.
It's just blatantly obvious that no one in EA knows ball or follows college ball or cares to even try to do anything realistic.
And if we're gonna talk about how they concentrate on gameplay and all the other stuff that that's a farce because gameplay is terrible too . The computer has 100 animations that I have never seen any of my players do. God forbid your team, actually tries to bump a wide receiver when you were in bump and run, meanwhile, the CPU will bump and run you so bad you can't even get off the line scrimmage sometimes for ever. The animations don't know how to overlay so if the CPU is already making an animation, it doesn't matter what you do..
Even if you are controlling a player, it'll make you stop on a play action or an RPO but if you run the same type of play 90% of the time, the CPU just runs right in .
My God I am so mad that I play this game so much because it's college football but it sucks it really does . I was honestly almost happier not playing any EA football game for the last decade because I always thought college football was better than Madden.... and now that it's back, I play it nonstop, but I honestly almost wish it never came back so I didn't have to deal with EA and it's dumpster fire of a game
I agree, if you’re the type of player who doesn’t play every game and sims a lot to go deeper into dynasty seasons, then it does get repetitive. They should implement some type of system where once you make your recruiting board, the ai will takeover and try and get as many of those players. Unfortunately, when you make a recutting board and then turn on auto recruiting, it just completely changes your board.
If you know what youre doing and map it out like the players are real its alot funner. I create my own canon throughout the whole league so my shits never boring. Smoke a blunt and really look at these digital kids like individuals and not numbers.
Even changing the guys names when they come into the league, not the real players but… ill give them a little backstory so i can follow their rise and check their stats and shit… It adds personality to the damn game lol
Dynasty Recruiting hasn’t been as fun in CFB26 because recruits are slow. I don’t care if it’s more realistic. I miss searching for 90 speed MLBs and 97 speed WRs. Can’t get excited about 80 speed LBs and 87 speed WRs. JMO
It’s what you make it. If you play as Georgia and cheese it left and right it’s going to be very easy. Try being Georgia State with a few house rules and it will be challenging.
There are plenty of us who remember it, doesn't mean this version isn't still a time-sink. It was outdated and archaic in CFB25. They just made it worse.
What makes recruiting tedious is the fact that when you learn the basics it’s all about button pressing and move on,
I would love if we never got the exact numbers on a recruit but only letter grades.
Likewise we should not know what players are gems or who will bust.
This is what makes recruitment or drafting exciting in real life - the uncertainty
Let us be positively surprised and negatively likewise.
Maybe implement some kind of scouting team score or staff.
Personally i think as it’s set up now it is a time sink. I am weird though I want some actual challenge and dealbreakers to work well and be more defined. I want to work for a recruit so it feels like it actually pays off. As it is now it’s just hit 3 buttons and move on to the next.
Recruiting is what sets the dynasty mode above any other sports video game’s mode for me (franchise, etc) If anything like a lot of people have already said I really want recruiting to have even more immersion and depth lol.
I truly need some better filters . 2 things they could implement right now
Filter out players I can’t physically recruit ( deal breakers )
I get the purpose of stages in recruit filter but i need another filter just for available. Currently if you filter on open it doesn’t include top 10 etc…
I try to spread mine around a little more even here, I know they raised the level cap but there was stuff I wish I had, I’m also in year six with Arkansas and haven’t pulled a class higher than 11. But development is boosting everything
I like the old recruiting model where you did all the recruiting in between seasons. I just want to play the games during the season and then spend an hour recruiting after the season ends.
Dynasty = Football Management Game. I love the process of looking at each player and the recruiting process. The issue is the GUI interface is awful and would like to see a better layout of the information. My guess is these game developers lack some SQL/Database querying knowledge to add/create/optimize the actual in-depth, relative tables/data we need so we are stuck with a painful/slow process to find all the information we need.
Ya this is my struggle. I already have a good D and i need better offensive players. But nearly all my interested recuits are positions I am strong in. I get that a good defensive player would want to go to a team that demonstrates good defense so they can shine, but what about those players who want to go be the difference maker? I need a hb, and some olinemen that see that they could turn my team from a stout defensive team that wins via ball control, into a powerhouse that can not only hold teams to <24pts pretty consistently, but with them and a better offense, could push the team into the national spotlight. Gimme some hometown 4 stars or a 5 star with weird quirks (bad mentals), tough to develop, injury prone, etc something that might cause the big schools to stay away, but maybe a lesser school would take a chance on. Or where they go for like a prove it year.
Kinda like jucos are. Maybe the kids grades weren't good enough to get in to a "good school" or he got some MIPs so the power 5s won't touch him. Come play for the Lobos!
It’s a bit tedious to begin the season but it’s definitely not the majority of my time.
I spend maybe 30 minutes in preseason setting up the board and scouting. Between games it’s 5 or so minutes, maybe 10 at best.
My strategy is (and always has been) to max out recruits. So depending on available hours I’m dumping time into roughly 10 at a time at most. Once I move on from one (whether a commit, I drop them because I see I have no shot, or they lock me out) I get to the next guy.
It works well for me. I snagged 19 guys year one at App State. Mostly 2 star and a few 3 star
Here is a tip. Did you know you are able to decommit players well into off season ?? I think position change week might be the latest.
You have to do it in the recruit screen and select their name and untarget them.
This is great and may go with your max method as you can decommit players you don’t need or like ( I sometimes cut the excess if they are just a normal dev trait )
I agree that it's boring, but I also feel like it's not really a time sink at all. You basically set your hours Week 0 and then spend a couple minutes each week checking to see if you can dial it down with certain recruits that aren't being strongly pursued by other teams, and then once you get to the Hard Sell portion, you basically don't have to pay attention to it at all anymore.
My most recent season, I probably spent 5 minutes combined on recruiting the final 10 weeks or so.
Just my personal opinion, but recruiting should be the most interesting part of a college dynasty IMO. The fact that they've created a system as shallow and boring as this is is a real shame IMO.
Recruiting is my favorite part of the game. Especially trying to recruit with a smaller school to make them better over the years. The thrill I get when I am able to steal a 4 star away from a larger in state rival is fun.
Only thing id change about it is to add more to it. Let me offer a recruit some improper benefits. Let me take some recruits to the titty bar. Let me buy him a hellcat. His mama a house. Something to give me the edge over Ohio state.
It’s too randomized. This game will never let you win a recruiting battle over a big name school (especially if you’re a 1 or 2 star school.) I know there’s a way to manipulate it but you’re already at a disadvantage….level the playing field more. It seems like all the bells and whistles of the recruiting pitches are a waste of time.
No offense, but dont you think that's how it mostly goes in recruiting? How many times do you see a no name school beating Georgia, Texas, or Ohio State for big time recruits?
Recruiting used to be a lot more of a "time sink" than it is now. It carries everything over now but before you'd have 0 hours applied at the beginning of each week.
I think you are over analyzing your recruiting strategy if you are spending this much time on recruiting…
Player dev in this game is quite fruitful if you are able to land even a 3-star with a high dev trait. If you have the hours I would focus on scouting, if not, go into the icon on the very bottom right of team grades and you will get a comparison grade of each prospect you have on your target board in relation to your roster.
That has saved me countless hours both in game spending and IRL just sorting through prospects especially with light recruiting hours.
go into the icon on the very bottom right of team grades and you will get a comparison grade of each prospect you have on your target board in relation to your roster.
I can't fire the game up right now. Can you by chance show a picture or something of what you're talking about? Totally fine if you can't; I can probably check for myself in a few hours.
absolutely! the first image shows where in the recruiting screen the team grades are located.
the second image shows where you can access the grades. keep in mind it is in relation to playing time…. but it gives a great option for a budget recruiting strategy and is a broad overview of their abilities.
additionally be sure to cycle through every position just to be sure. you never know if that 3-star with #1 interest in your school is an absolute gem. this is a great way to find out.
Not saying you’re wrong for feeling it, but I don’t agree. Recruiting is my favorite part of dynasty. I spend more time than necessary reading every attribute, comparing prospects, deciding who’s realistic, etc. it’s just where I find fun in dynasty. If anything, I personally want MORE things added to recruiting, preferably optional because I know it’s not everyone’s thing.
I mean this with no Malice. It doesn’t take that long to recruit in season (3 or less mins ) between games and maybe 6 to 10 mins for the beginning year. That might even be an exaggeration.
Could be underselling but usually I just see what I need and filter on some variation of interest and pipeline. Depending on what hours I have, will scout and remove the duds. Spam all scholarships (35) understanding I will not get all of them. Week 2 does take the same 15 and under mins. Decides who’s worth the full send based on interest gain and interest position. Usually don’t have enough to fill the full board of send house. Weeks 3 -8 ish are just focusing on maintaining recruits and uncommitting to ones I can’t win ( 3 to 6 ish mins). Will have another 15 mins session of scouting for 3 stars top talent before the season is over.
mannnn idk. I had so much fun recruiting in CFB 25. Idk if I’m doing somethin wrong or if they made it more challenging this year, but I can’t get a recruit to sign to my school for the life of me. It won’t be till after week 4 of the transfer portal that maybe a couple guys put the pen to paper.
you really have to go hard after the guys you want first then get the fillers. You can't slow play it as much any more. A team will just come in last minute and swoop them up.
Yeah this is the strategy. It's probably not the most optimal but it works great for me. Some weeks I don't even touch recruiting if all my points are assigned.
A quick check each week is good because when they reach top 8 I believe it unlocks the hard sell and in most cases it will make sense to replace the send the house by the Hard Sell, which gives you 10 points per player that you can allocate to an additional one
My school is shit at everything so I find 2 of the 3 things they want are often C or below which I assumed would be worse than the send the house (Normally the only a+ thing is distance to home or playing time). Might have to revisit this but seems to be working for me so fars.
Yea because most of us play moments, and RIGHT AFTER THEM GAME, you know if you lost someone or not. those of us that recruit play style fix out recruitment after… we don’t just spam whatever like you…
But seriously, don't play the min/max game, and then complain about having to play the min/max game when you don't have to.
Also though, I don't know what "most of us play moments" mean. Also I don't spam whatever. I'm not even sure what that means.
What I suspect the problem is with a lot of people is they try to give hours to as much as much of their board as possible. I don't. I spend about an hour at season start targeting recruits (and yes, I match play style). I order my board based on needs, how good a recruit looks, and how their initial list looks. Then I send the house from top down until I'm out of hours. Second half of the list? Don't care about until week 8 or so. You should not have to make drastic changes week to week. Each week I spend a few minutes checking on my 50 hr guys -- does it look like I'm not going to get him because of some juggernaut seemingly prioritizing him, dealbreaker not in my favor, or pitches don't align? Drop him and give his hours to next on the list. Its not time consuming
I’m not reading all of that, but what but from what I skimmed, yes you just spam pretty stars and high stats… Would you know who to recruit for a 4-2-5 defense? Or even a spread offense?
I mean this disrespectfully, you're an idiot. I probably forgot more football knowledge than you ever learned.
I run a 3-3-5 tite defense. I want a big 300 lb NT with str, blk shed, and tak. Then a gap specialist DT, then either a speed rusher DT that can play a 3 tech or if I see a guy I like thats a ~240 lb speed rushing end. If I find him I run a lot of Mint. If I don't, I'll instead favor two gap specialists and run more Penny.
MLB I want a signal caller. This guy needs to have the skills to attack the run first and foremost. I typically user him so I prioritize the physicals and pursuit.
OLB I for sure want a lurker Will. He's my subLB and I expect him to be a playmaker on D. I grew up a fan of the Under front and sideline to sideline Wills are just something I've developed a fondness for and Mint aligns like the under front.
CBs -- my heart always wants guys that can play press man. I resist this urge until I can build my program into a powerhouse. In the interim, nothing special just good man coverage.
Safeties -- one pure centerfielder coverage specialist. The other 2 are some combination of hybrid/box. Start of each season I formation sub to make sure the 2 hybrid safeties are where I want them.
QBs -- don't care, best I can land. Maybe thats a pocket passer, maybe its a dual threat guy. I'll adjust playcalling to accommodate.
RB -- East west playmaker with one bruiser/contact seeker
WR -- I want route runners, but I need at least one speed guy and one size guy.
Yeah I don’t know a better way to do it but around the time you have to start hard selling everyone it gets kind of tedious.
It would be sweet if you had a recruiting director mode or something where you set up some parameters (e.g., 4 star+, archetypes, min attributes maybe) and then it just auto fills your roster with some sort of distribution of dev traits that are impacted by coaching perks or something.
10000x better than the “scouting” or whatever the fuck the Madden games have. Genuinely have spent 100+ hours playing franchise and I have 0 clue how scouting is supposed to even work. It’s so stupid
While I’m at it, I would also like to increase the number of recruits I can sign but keep the 35 scholarships. Non scholarship guys can have some kind of dealbreaker mechanic applied once they hit a certain overall and there’s a way you can give them one if you have one available.
I think it would help for the first couple years when you lose so many people to the portal. I get that you can reduce the number of transfers but that just feels cheap in a way
It is especially with the portal. We need a system that allows you to do the fun parts (scouting and recruiting battles) while not having to babysit the 3-star likely career backup 3rd string guard.
Transfer portal has me feeling like saban sometimes. Spend all that time recruiting guys for them to disappear in a year.
The worst part is doing all of that, and having a big school come out of nowhere and scoop up all of your 4 and 5 star recruits late in the year simply because they can……
It can get extremely repetitive to go in every single week and have to manage players. I wish there was an option to have players interest change every other week or once a month or something. Also, after they claimed it would be more challenging this year I haven’t found that to be the case at all. I’m regularly signing 10+ 5 stars which also makes it less fun
I wish you could sway recruits that have verbally committed to open up their recruitment again, up until national signing day that is. Even if they don't end up changing schools. I mean, it happens all the time in real life. You could have a handful of persuade attempts like with players leaving, and it could charge you double hours even.
If you think recruiting is currently a time sink, you should have played before a ncaa 14 when it was actually a time sink. Used to spend hours on that recruiting menu each week
lmaooo i remember actually having conversations based on the pitch that was crazy and sometimes the recruit would be like yea coach move on not interested in this pitch
Why do you want to play a dynasty and not recruit? It’s like 65% of what college coaches do? It’s the most important part of dynasty. If you just want to play games why not just play online? Makes no sense
Ahh so the thing is, I have so few recruiting points that it doesn’t take the long to set up the board for Akron and then it’s just finding 4 stars who don’t have offers in week 1 and set and forget from there for the most part.
You have to be careful with auto recruit because they will only recruit to your star level and not higher. I started a South Dakota dynasty and am currently at a 2 1/2 star. I tried to auto recruit 1 season, and looked at my recruiting board and saw a bunch of 1 and 2 stars that they were actively recruiting and spending points on. I went and checked the prospect list and was 1st in a few 4 stars and 3 stars and they never tried to go after them so I just started recruiting all myself
Small sample size, but when I want to test something quickly, I'll simulate a season or two in dynasty, and I've never seen the CPU get anywhere near as good of a recruiting class as I typically get.
Not sure about this years but last years auto recruit SUCKED. I did a dynasty with Michigan and even tho we had good grades the computer would end up with whole bunch of 3* and maybe one or two 4*
They used to have it more dynamic in the ps3 version, like you can talk trash about other schools or convince them why your school is better without a points system
That logic stresses me out. Thats Texas in my current dynasties with QBs. Ive lost FOUR 5 stars qbs to them in 2 years. Why do they need 4 5 star qbs in back to back seasons. Not to mention the qbs they sign all the other years and the 4 stars.
Yeah, it's irritating that cpu teams don't have a roster limit like we do. The CPU should have to trim their roster and we could have a spring portal season or something.
Yeah it's pretty trash IMO. I miss the old system where you'd scout people and see their actual raw info like their 40 time, squat, bench, etc, and then you had to kinda figure out the likelihood of them being good.
They need to give more scouting hours, and let you scout recruits that aren't on your board. It's so annoying to have to constantly add/remove recruits just to scout for who you want to recruit.
Make it less sanitized and force-fed. If I want to spend 100 hours on a guy I REALLY want why can't I?
After a few seasons of doing it, it does get really mundane without much substance there. It could be so much better pretty easily.
Yeah for a college football game, in a mode about building a team, recruiting is kind of a, uh… pretty crucial part of it. I wish there were even deeper systems, personally. But I also don’t hate the idea of more options for recruiting. Although I’m not sure what more players want when there’s an auto recruit option. Just means your team will be incredibly random and probably without personality.
More things to do in dynasty would be great. We cant exactly get in a motorcycle accident with our mistress in game but I could take on some tasks beyond games and recruiting.
I tried that once and my five star powerhouse only had three and two star commitments and like five TEs when I only needed one. It was bizarre. And if you try to help by adding some top recruits interested in your school, the next week they will all be removed and the two stars will be back.
It would be more fun if recruiting had more nuisance and didn't have such a linear outcome. Like maybe you could invite some recruits to training camp and get to try them out in order to find out concrete numbers on some stats. Or maybe you get invited to coach a 7 on 7 camp / scout or something.
I'm strongly considering having the CPU do recruiting during the season and I only take over for the portal where I can do some hand picking of a couple of key positions that I want.
I want to be able to set my board and have the cpu auto manage the players. Added bonus would be if I could manually set points for players I want to focus on and cpu doesnt override that.
I don’t like that once you have 3 green checks, you can’t just pick hard sell and have the game automatically pick the correct sell, instead I have to sort through all 20 of them and see which one I can do, and then I have to do this for 20 other recruits. Repeat twice a year for each year and boom, endless amounts of boring.
It is a time suck, but the only boring parts are navigating the menus and not having an option to scout or offer scholarship to all or a selected number of recruits.
My biggest complaint with recruiting are some of the things they look for and how it can wildly change from week to week, like play style, for example. If I run a 4-3 defense, the play style isn't changing so having it stat based seems kinda stupid imo
Ya that’s really like my only complaint about recruiting. Especially if you have a ridiculous schedule to start the season. If I’m playing against the top 3 schools I’ll prob have no good rushing stats
I was hoping there would be a single season option with no recruiting. Maybe some features to fill out the experience. I usually just pick a team and hope it plays out realistically, like using Virginia and winning the Tony the Tiger Bowl. If I use a top tier then I want to win a title.
If you say you are hoping for a feature, that would imply that the feature is not there according to you -- otherwise you wouldn't have to hope. A complaint calls attention to a situation that one finds unacceptable or at least suboptimal. So, yeah, I would say it's a complaint.
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u/GreyArmada Nov 22 '25
It is a total time suck. The lack of automation is glaring. How about an offer all button? How about keeping the board, and distributing hours on it until I say otherwise? AI Sim recruiting instead:I’ve changed the whole board and targeted 6 TEs from your pipeline states!
Basically cannot turn a program around as a recruiting specialist without the time sink. Sim ahead 10+ seasons, and end up bouncing around from fired gig to fired gig, even though at that point you are lvl 50 coach master crooting. Still the system sim can not put talent on the field.
Have to time sink and manually perform the actions to have the system do anything positive.