The Ratings Matter Slider Project (2024)

The “Ratings Matter” Slider Project

A Slider Set Focused on Making Ratings Matter While Achieving Realistic Gameplay

College Football is my favorite sport. A large part of what makes the sport great to me is the variety in skill levels that are on the field at the same time. That is the basis for which this slider set was created. I was tired of playing as Akron and having a consistent opportunity to beat teams like Ohio State and vice versa. (that’s not to say those upsets are impossible, but they are significantly more unlikely to happen.)

Another great part of college football is that the athletes are college kids. Meaning, they make mistakes! Penalties, drops, misthrown passes, missed tackles and blown assignments are all on display in each and every game on Saturdays. Why shouldn’t they happen in CFB 25?

Before you read the set, here is an explanation for a few of the settings. If anyone wants anything else explained, ask, and I’ll add it to this section.

Classic Passing - I love the new Revamped Passing, however for me, the “bad throws” using it are less bad, and overall I can be a little too accurate with it. (For NBA2K players, think of it as the shot stick, while Classic Passing is Real FG%.) Using Classic Passing, the user has no input on the accuracy of the ball, allowing the ratings to fully take over. You can try out the different throwing modes if you’d like, but I’d expect completion %s to go up a few ticks.

Speed Threshold 45 - Since the launch of the game I’ve gone pretty much all over this scale. With that experience, I subscribe to the theory that’s been said on here in other threads that the Threshold impacts the zone around two players that allows/forces them to interact. Lowering it 45 opens up the running game through the line of scrimmage, which was needed for the CPU running game.

All-American over Heisman - Speaking of the CPU Run game, on default settings All American feels a lot more “realistic” to me in just about every other way. The CPU run game was just not nearly aggressive enough. Which is why this set started out as a Heisman set. I felt like the first half of every game with the Heisman set was perfect, but there’s undoubtedly some sort of rubber banding happening in the second half to keep games competitive. (It can be overcome, but it’s there) So I switched back to AA, and focused on improving the cpu run game. It’s not quite as good as the Heisman run game, but it’s good. (The Heisman sets final numbers weren’t super far off what they are on AA, mainly dropping CPU Passing down to match the User number and some other small tweaks)

Fatigue 90 - I keep Auto Subs at default, because things can get a little weird, so having fatigue at 90 forces a rotation at running back, wide receiver, and on the defensive line, which are the majority of subs anyways. This rotation is important, because depth is one of the bigger differences between the great and bad schools. I’d love a few more reps for the backups, but it’s good enough for me.

The Penalty settings - Unfortunately, the penalty sliders do have a fairly significant impact on gameplay, so the sliders are not at the ideal setting in terms of number of specific penalties called. Also DPI is still broken. You will likely get called for a few too many holdings. The only tip I have is to not Sprint until you're at the line of scrimmage, it helps reduce the likelihood, but again, it’s not perfect, but increasing Holding, makes the Line interaction better so it’s a necessary issue.

CPU QB Accuracy - 36 I want to see the QBS throw misthrows, but going any lower seems to really impact the CPU’s willingness to throw downfield. I wish I could go to around 20-25 to see a few more misthrows, but it just makes their offense super vanilla.

House Rules

This is kind of an unknown for me, because I only know how the sliders work with the way that I play the game, so let me know if you think something should be added here.

The only thing I can think of is to say that I mainly User a pass rusher. So if you’re talented in playing pass coverage, you might have to make some tweaks.

Also, I’ve taken bits and pieces of information from a variety of slider makers on here, as well as reddit, to help in the creation of the set. I, by no means, take credit for all of the discoveries that have helped shape the set into its current form. Credit to, in no particular order: Playmakers, Matt10, canes 21, and jkits.

With all that said, here is the set, if something isn’t mentioned, its User Preference

Game Settings

Difficulty - All-American

Passing Type - Classic Passing

Pass Lead Increase - Small

The Ratings Matter Slider Project (2024)

References