Subscribe
Follow Us
The EA Sports College Football 25 Ultimate Team Deep Dive released today, as the developers are showcasing tons of new content before the game launches next week. We all knew for a long time that Ultimate Team would be in College Football 25, but today's Deep Dive gave us more information on how it works. Although Ultimate Team is the most controversial mode in EA Sports games, it nevertheless finds its way to College Football 25. Instead of arguing about it, let's just take a look at everything revealed in the deep dive.
Everything You Need To Know About Ultimate Team in College Football 25
Which Ultimate Alumni are you adding to your Day 1 lineup?
Pre-order the Deluxe Edition of #CFB25 or the MVP Bundle to get one of these players on your Ultimate Team.
Learn more about CUT | 🔗: https://t.co/oaR0iJb3cU pic.twitter.com/PIqeuEqXSw
— EASPORTSCollege (@EASPORTSCollege) July 9, 2024
EA Sports College Football 25's Ultimate Team Deep Dive released today, focusing on various aspects of the mode. For those unfamiliar with Ultimate Team, it works like a card-collecting mode. You start with a base team of players, typically with low OVRs and no abilities. The overall objective of Ultimate Team is to collect new cards, upgrade your team, and even complete sets.
Throughout the year, EA Sports will release new player items, which include:
- Active College Football and NFL players
- Retired NFL Legends or former College Legends
When you first start CUT (College Ultimate Team), you'll select your favorite school, which will influence what player items you start with. You'll have a choice of playing Solo or H2H, just like in Madden NFL, with some other content to explore.
Challenges and Objectives
In College Football 25 Ultimate Team, Challenges are scenarios with different requirements to complete. They vary in difficulty, and offer players a chance to learn the game more. Completing these challenges also grants you rewards like Packs, player items, and/or coins to improve your team. College Football 25 will have over 100 Challenges at launch in CUT.
Additionally, players can also try their hand at Objectives, which is another way to improve your lineup. You'll receive daily and seasonal objectives, some of which require you to play specific modes. Completing them earns you XP for your Field Pass, which earns you more rewards. If you've played any modern game with a Season Pass, you'll feel familiar with the system here.
Like Challenges, Objectives require you to complete certain actions. This means winning with certain lineups, getting specific stats, etc.
Earning Players With Coins
When you've earned enough coins, you can visit the Marketplace and acquire packs. Every week, new players will release. Or, you can try your hand at the Auction house, and exchange your coins for specific players you need.
Chemistry, Playbooks, in College Football 25 Ultimate Team
When creating your lineup in College Football 25, you'll need to consider both your player OVRs, and your chemistry. Specifically, you'll need to focus on both your Team and Scheme Chemistry. But before we get into those, let's briefly explain what Chemistries are.
In CUT, Chemistry is a part of the team-building process, which you increase by reaching higher tiers. In order to do so, you need to match players in your lineup with matching chemistries. This will increase your player attributes, and make your team better. In total CFB 25 features 134 Team Chemistries and 19 total Offensive/Defensive Chemistries.
Scheme Chemistry is broken up into offensive and defensive schemes. Overall, you need to select the playbooks and playstyles that fit your team. All player items and playbooks associate with one of the schemes, counting towards your scheme chemistry. Thee two types of schemes works as follows:
- Offensive Scheme
- Defensive Scheme
Additionally, your Playbooks play a big role in your team's structure. The game features playbooks from all 134 schools, along with some scheme specific playbooks. These 19 schemes add more ways to catch your opponents off-guard on offense and defense. In the Challenges menu there'll be trials for bot types of schemes to help you learn how they work.
Team Chemistry, on the other hand, represents the chemistry of players, a “default” of the school they represent. Therefore, you could build an entire team of Ole Miss players. But thankfully, you can also replace your current Team Chemistry when you unlock a Team Chem bucket. Overall, team's full of players with matching chemistries will receive massive attribute boosts.
Player Items – Rarities, and Abilities & More
Like other variations of Ultimate Team in other games, there will be player rarities in College Football 25 UT. These rarities include:
- Common – Gray
- Uncommon – Green
- Rare – Blue
- Epic – Purple
- Legendary – Gold
If you switch to the other side of the player card, you'll see their abilities. We already learned these back during the gameplay deep dive. However, there's a few things you might want to know about them heading into CUT. Over time, you'll be able to replace your current abilities and equip new ones if you like.
Abilities turn active by allotting the required AP amount, though lineups can't exceed that limit. To unlock new abilities, you need to spend “training” in the upgrades tab and unlock buckets. These buckets contain the different abilities you can equip to player items. All buckets dedicate themselves to different abilities, both mental and physical. In order to earn Training, you can quick-sell items from the binder.
Programs & Live Events
Like every other version of Ultimate Team, EA Sports will release new Programs with new challenges, cards, players, game modes, rewards, and store offers. Some of the upcoming programs at launch include:
- Ultimate Alumni
- Conference Stories of the Week
- ICYMI
- Legends
Furthermore, CUT will feature a Live Events, where you can see everything new going on in the game. This is especially useful if you want to learn about new programs in one spot. It also includes details on your Field Pass.
Field Pass
Like Madden NFL, College Football 25 Ultimate Team will feature a Field Pass. Overall, you upgrade your Field Pass via Objectives, earning rewards for each time you level up.
Sets
Sets let player take low OVR players and exchange them for a higher rating. Say you have a Michael Penix Jr. item that can't keep up with your new players. With Sets, you can potentially exchange that card for a better item to improve your team.
Solo & H2H Play
Lastly, College Football 25 Ultimate Team is adding new ways to play with Solo Seasons. This mode lets you play a Season format with your team against AI opponents. The regular season consists of five games before the playoffs and ensuing championship. This mode is repeatable and offers better rewards each season.
Furthermore, Ultimate Team offers Solo battles, where you earn Battle score for each win. You'll also earn new rewards as you make progress. However, if you prefer the more Traditional Modes, check out H2H Seasons. This mode also includes your season-playoff-championship structure, but you move up divisions to earn better rewards.
If you like playing with Friends, Squads Regular Season offers an assigned role to each member of the team. Play as an offensive or defensive captain, or control everything as the head coach.
Gauntlet, Champs & House Rules
The final modes to be mentioned in the CUT Deep Dive include Gauntlet, Champs, and House Rules. Here's how each works:
- Gauntlet – Every Friday, attempt the challenge by earning 10 wins. However, losing two games ends your Gauntlet run.
- Win 16 games in Champs to earn a Gauntlet entry
- House Rules – play games with unique and traditional football rules. These rules rotate throughout the season. One example:
- Touchdown Tango – 25 yard first downs with 14 points rewarded for a touchdown. Score 28 points to win!
Overall, that includes everything we learned from this massive College Football 25 Deep Dive on Ultimate Team. Regardless of how you feel about the mode, it will likely be a huge money-maker for EA. If even just a small fraction of the playerbase spends real money on it often, EA stands to make a lot of money. But don't worry, you'll still have Dynasty and Road to Glory, the latter of which we'll learn about at the end of this week.
Check out yesterday's gameplay first look if you haven't. Michigan RB Donovan Edward faced against YouTuber Bordeaux in a couple of CFB 25 matches. Safe to say Edwards absolutely cooked Bordeaux through both games.
For more gaming and NCAAF news, visit ClutchPoints. Furthermore, subscribe to our gaming newsletter for more weekly info.
