EA College Football 26 Must Fix Wear and Tear Before Launch

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Despite the fact that College Football 25 has been praised extensively and rightfully so, there’s one aspect that requires adjustment or complete elimination for a better gameplay experience.

This summer, EA officially announced the upcoming release of College Football 26 in January. Given that College Football 25 broke records as the top-selling sports video game in U.S. history, it’s no wonder the series maintains an annual release schedule.

The much-anticipated return of College Football 25 was highly praised as it ended an 11-year hiatus due to a legal disagreement. Despite some questions about the game’s quality, many enthusiasts were eagerly awaiting this new college football experience.

As a gamer, I’ve gotta hand it to EA’s developers for pushing the boundaries and delivering an outstanding sports title, a fact clearly highlighted in our review. But now that the initial excitement has worn off, it’s up to EA to seize this momentum and offer us compelling reasons to make this an annual must-have in our gaming library.

For me, that all starts with removing or reworking wear and tear.

Why wear and tear needs to be reworked in College Football

In College Football 25, there’s an innovative addition called wear and tear that precisely records the effects of every tackle or fall on your players. For instance, if your running back suffers a heavy hit to his knee or lower leg, he’ll experience the aftermath of such contact, and it will affect his performance stats accordingly.

If a quarterback is hit frequently while in the play area, it may affect their abilities unfavorably. Electronic Arts introduced this feature to motivate gamers to swap out players to prevent long-term harm to their top talents.

Furthermore, it promotes players to exit play areas safely by running out-of-bounds rather than absorbing hits close to the sidelines or instantly falling after catching passes in open field scenarios, mirroring real-world safety practices.

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Nevertheless, there seems to be an issue with this feature, as it doesn’t consistently function as planned. For instance, College Football 25 content creator Throne shared a video where Joe Burrow appeared to sustain significant damage on the opening play of the game, following just one hit in the pocket and without even losing balance.

In the heat of the game, I took quite a few hits, which cost me some serious stats. Specifically, my Speed dropped by 11 points, my Throw On The Run by 10, my Throw Power dipped by 7, and my Throw Accuracy fell by 2. And to make things even tougher, those attributes seem to worsen with each successive hit I take.

please take wear and tear out of online game modes man 😭😭

— Throne (@Throne_YT) March 5, 2025

To clarify, a single Joe Burrow card rated overall as 98 (Joe Burrow’s Ultimate Team card) will set you back one million coins. This makes him the second most costly player to acquire in this specific gameplay mode.

It’s disappointing that a high-quality card, boasting top-notch features all around, gets damaged or worn out so swiftly. It’s frustrating, too, that such an expensive item can become almost worthless due to wear and tear.

In both Dynasty and Road to Glory modes, it’s not only the issue of sudden appearance that matters, but also the cumulative damage from repeated play, leading to negative effects on players even after just a couple of small collisions.

Fortunately, you can disable certain features during offline games; however, this is not possible in online contests. If your top player suffers an injury unexpectedly, it could significantly impact the outcome of the game.

The frustrating aspect of this game is the wear and tear feature, and it’s high time for Electronic Arts (EA) to either tone it down significantly or eliminate it completely. If they don’t, we may encounter similar problems when College Football 26 rolls around.

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2025-03-06 02:29