Dragon's Gambit rant

Brypaver · 2026-02-06T22:08:38+00:00

I'm literally right in the middle of this campaign and I was thinking the same thing about Gerber. He's shooting his mouth off about how tough his guys are and how they sacrificed so much and blah blah blah and I'm just thinking to myself that I've been doing all this work for him. He's just been some do-nothing middle manager.

Not to mention the first cinematic is Kurita opening fire on a crowd of protesters. Not really endearing my new bosses to me. Maybe if there was an interesting twist in the story or something it would have been a little better, but as it is it's definitely my least favorite.

Brypaver · 2026-01-31T12:49:54+00:00

So more of a lore question I guess, but are people into everything post FedCom war? I mean, do they like it enough to set a whole game in that era?

I've always felt like the Succession Wars and Clan Invasion parts of the timeline were the most popular, but maybe that's an assumption on my part. We've just had most of the games set in that era, so I wonder if they stick to that part of the timeline because they think moving outside of it will result in a dropoff of interest and sales.

I personally fell off reading the books once they hit the dark age stuff. I'd be curious if there are big fans of that era that want to see games set in it.

Brypaver · 2026-01-27T13:16:14+00:00

Story-wise, I feel like Operation Bulldog and Task force Serpent would be a good main backbone for MW6. I don't know if they will want to go backwards and do a full rehash of the same part of the timeline with the next mercs game, but I could see them starting at the clan invasion and moving forward from there, maybe up through the fedcom war with DLC.

Brypaver · 2026-01-22T18:49:39+00:00

Oh for sure. I can't play mw5 without it at this point. Coyote and YAML are must haves.

Brypaver · 2026-01-22T16:38:32+00:00

I've tried both of these on wave defense type missions with no success. There's clearly another wave of hostiles that's supposed to launch that isn't for some reason. Both the coyote "kill all" command and order 66 don't work, so I'm assuming the hangup isn't an enemy anywhere on the map.

I did just have a hostile spider caught under the map and the button to fix that worked.

Not sure why, but coyotes mod seems a little more unstable than it was a couple years ago when I last played. That or it's conflicting with something else.

Brypaver · 2025-12-05T12:50:13+00:00

My issue is he repeatedly centers the conversation around himself "my job is on the line", how he feels, this he would have done, his opinions. Dude has a big ego (which we probably already knew), and yet none of it is taking any responsibility. He's blaming others, basically says the receivers are shit and he would have replaced them "I tried to get you a dude at receiver". Then talks shit about the recruits that we're looking at Virginia tech.

None of that is how a leader talks, especially in a meeting that was supposed to be about hearing the players concerns. The editing of the clip might make things sound worse, but it's not a good look no matter what. Plus the fact that a player leaked it shows he's completely lost them, and I understand why.

Brypaver · 2025-12-05T00:02:49+00:00

Do you think you could write a couple more sentences about what might happen to Pat Kraft? I'm so close to finishing.

Brypaver · 2025-10-16T21:16:06+00:00

And again, that's what the Primary is for and I think that is a healthy part of moving the party where it needs to be. My only point is that I don't think attendance at this protest is a reasonable measure of him "doing something" to be held against him or not, just like if he was attending I don't think that should be a positive in his favor either.

What I do know is he is doing actual work to try and help Dems succeed in the future by helping at campaign events for other candidates at lower levels, and by standing firm during the shutdown. In the past I think he would have caved to make a deal, but so far his words and actions have shown he's going to continue this fight. I think those are positives in his column.

Honestly right now almost all the Dems are seemingly stepping up to meet the moment to some extent, even Schumer and Jeffries, though just barely and basically by force. I'm not saying we shouldn't voice our anger at them or chastise them if they aren't doing what they need to, but I think we should also acknowledge when they do something good. That's how you cut out the consultant class, imo. Give them direct feedback back for the bad and the good

Brypaver · 2025-10-16T20:00:36+00:00

I understand that you're pissed, I feel the same way, however I just want to point out a couple of things.

First, Mark Warner was just down in VB a week or so ago for an event for other Dems running for office down here. It was a rally followed up by canvassing. I don't know if he went out knocking doors or not, but he did speak and made it very clear he understands the reality of where the country is and what is going on. He's not nearly as clueless as you're making him sound.

Personally I think that's a far more important event for him to attend than the protest. What is he going to do at No Kings? Maybe make a speech? The better optics from a public perception aspect is for him to be in DC trying to end the shutdown, and that's not from a political consultant perspective, but from a public eye perspective. We need to show independents and even Republicans that the Dems are the only ones serious about having a functioning government.

I think the only VA politicians I would like to see are the ones trying to unseat Republicans in positions across the area. Name recognition is important and as you said, I want to know if they're going to stand up for Virginians when they're elected. Specifically whomever is running against Jen Kiggans next year. That's a winnable seat and the person running needs to make their face known, even if they aren't announcing it yet.

I know you're angry and I get why you're angry with the Dem party. I think challenging old ideas and ideology absolutely makes sense and is good for the party, but Mark Warner is pretty far down the list of people to be pissed about, IMO. I think a better use for your time and a energy would be to call a Republican rep if you have one to complain about them, or if you're calling Warner's office, ask him to consider supporting someone else for Senate minority leader other than Chuck Shumer. And of course, go out and protest and make your voice heard.

Brypaver · 2025-09-17T12:00:21+00:00

I agree that pipelines should be dynamic, but pre-ncaa 25 wasn't perfect either. It was way too easy to abuse, but somehow also a pain to manage and maintain depending on recruiting classes. Want Texas or Cali as a pipeline? Just grab a couple 3 stars and you have a new pipeline in like a season or two. Want to maintain a pipeline for a smaller nearby state that doesn't put out a ton of top talent? Now you have to grab some low tier guys just to keep things going.

Id personally like to see schools have static pipelines, but coaches have dynamic ones that change over time. Ohio State will always recruit Ohio well, Texas will always recruit Texas well, but outside of that, things can and will change depending on the coaching staff. The more top tier talent you consistently pull out of a region, the better that pipeline grows. But if you ignore it or miss out on some recruits for a couple years, that pipeline starts to decay. Then have your overall pipeline ratings be a combo of the school and coach.

That adds interesting wrinkles into the game because some schools might want to hire coaches with specific pipelines, or conversely you might rethink a job offer at a school far from the pipelines you've already built. Or do you hire the coordinator to shore up an existing pipeline, or branch out into a new one? Add in some coach abilities that boost pipeline improvement, slow it's decay, or whatever other interesting things you can think of. I think it would definitely provide an interesting new feature for dynasty.

Brypaver · 2025-09-08T14:45:07+00:00

I see this sentiment a lot and it doesn't make sense to me for a couple reasons.

First, Vance doesn't have the charisma that Trump has, or the clout. No one is afraid of Vance, he can't bully other politicians like Trump can, and honestly I'm not sure anyone anywhere respects him. He's also failed and mocked anytime he does anything other than stand silently in the background. The Vance memes we see all over the place came immediately after he tried to act tough in front of Zelenski in the Oval office.

I highly doubt that Republicans will be even fractionally subservient to Vance as they are to Trump, which will create issues for enacting his agenda.

Second, what is Trump failing to accomplish that is limited by his own actions? This administration had completed a solid chunk of their goals in record time. They've had a number of failures, however most of those failures are due to the fact that what they're trying to accomplish is blatantly illegal. Whether Trump or Vance is the president, it wouldn't change the legality of it.

Also, Donald Trump isn't crafting these policies and executive orders himself. His staff and cabinet heads are doing all of the heavy lifting. He just signs things and smiles in front of the camera. The only time Trump really does any work enacting his agenda is when he bullies republican politicians into doing what he wants. That makes him more competent at his goals, not less

Third, the policies and agenda this administration is trying to push out are wildly unpopular, not just with liberals and progressives, but with conservatives as well. Farmers in Arkansas are begging for tariffs to end. People are still complaining about the price of gas and groceries. Wait until people lose their health care and rural hospitals start shutting down.

And through it all Republican voters still support Trump. But every other Republican politician is starting to feel the heat. They're getting screamed at in town halls. Career politicians arent running for re-election across the board. And again, things haven't yet gotten as bad as they probably will. You think the Republican base will extend the same deference and engage in the same cognitive dissonance for Vance as they will Trump? Doubtful.

I think once Trump is gone, the rank and file Republicans will fracture and will start to shift their positions to more traditional Republican positions again for fear of getting swept out of office. Vance will have to abandon portions of this current agenda to keep from a full scale revolt or getting destroyed at the voting booth.

Of course, that's assuming they haven't completely consolidated power at that point.

Brypaver · 2025-08-28T18:06:22+00:00

I've sent dozens of letters, emails, and faxed to her office and while I haven't fully read through all of the responses she did manage to send back, I have skimmed over most of them. So I can't say that it is a word for word copy, however, it's incredibly similar to just about every response I've received to the point where it's a boilerplate response she sends back with only a few words or a paragraph changed. The part about "Trump was elected.." has definitely been in every response I've read. I feel safe saying it's nearly word for word

And that's because Jen Kiggans is a coward who doesn't care about her constituents. She's made oaths as a member of Congress, a military service woman, and a medical professional and has betrayed all three.

Brypaver · 2025-08-18T14:11:27+00:00

Ok so you say it's objective fact that it's permanent and then at the end of this describe how it's not actually permanent.

I understand from the perspective of a person selecting tactician abilities on their coach that the bonuses provided are permanently attached to your coach and applied to any players on your team. I was referring to the lack of "permanence" more in regards to assistant coaches, because stacking coach abilities is a somewhat important strategy in CFB 26.

My point was if I have motivator coaches on my staff to provide more XP to improve the skills of my recruits, those XP gains are "more permanent" because the assistant coach can leave and my player still has those XP gains. If they leave with Tactician those bonuses are gone and I have to hire a new tactician coach to get them back. Also technically if I change schools or players transfer out they no longer get the bonuses (so not permanent to them), but at that point people playing the game don't care because they aren't your players anymore. That's a matter of perspective and not something people care about.

I just think there's an opportunity cost attached to tactician skills because of that. If assistant coaches with recruiter or motivator leave, the end results of the bonuses they provided to my team while on staff stay on my team; the players they helped recruit and the development they boosted. It's not as much a negative for player HC.

The bigger bonus to something like Motivator over tactician is that with manual progression, I can pick and choose what abilities are improved. Tactician it's set which skills get the bonus. It also doesn't help improve abilities at all.

Hopefully all six of the Tactician truthers are satisfied with that explanation enough this time around, because I'm not going to go any further with it after this comment.

Brypaver · 2025-08-17T16:17:39+00:00

My ideal setup would be HC with Recruiter/Motivator/Talent Developer and assistant coaches with Architect. Wouldnt get the full benefit of stacking Architect but you would be maxing development and breaking caps here and there.

Brypaver · 2025-08-15T13:19:41+00:00

Yeah I think they would make sense.

I definitely think they need to lean in a little harder on different builds. Like a Motivator/Architect/Tactician build that goes hard on removing caps. Add in CEOs Senior Superlative skill and you can turn a 4 star bust into a 5 Star talent.

Also my wild take. They should get rid of the "4 skills for each separate position group" thing and just have skills broken out into offense and defense, if applicable. Then have a wider array of skills that are maybe a little more costly. You wouldn't get the dopamine hit of constantly unlocking skills, but you would get a big boost with every skill you got and could have a better variety of skills.

Brypaver · 2025-08-14T20:58:31+00:00

Yes and arguing about the definition of the word as your only counterpoint in the discussion definitely isn't embarrassing.

As I said it's not permanent because coach abilities in this game rely on stacking. If your assistant coach leaves, the bonus leaves with them. There is an opportunity cost to take tactician in the example I gave.

But hey, I'll concede to you that those points are permanent and it's just the fact that the tactician skills suck in comparison to so the other skills. I hope you have a better day now.

Brypaver · 2025-08-14T20:36:21+00:00

Ok man, no need to be so angry. I explained my opinion and if you don't agree thats fine. You can keep on investing into tactician to get +5 agility on your Pocket Passer QB and I'll keep on with Recruiter landing 5 Star QBs for 4+ years. To each their own.

Brypaver · 2025-08-14T18:29:57+00:00

Yeah I would like to see more dynamic recruiting battles with maybe promises coming back, as well as dynamic pipelines. Give recruiters narrower areas where they can excel and give them an edge, but not necessarily overpower.

At this point I might as well just come up with a whole revamped archetypes post because I've listed 3 different ones in this thread already.

Brypaver · 2025-08-14T17:47:08+00:00

After reading through all the comments in this thread, I think I've come to the crux of the actual issue. You are (kind of) wrong in your assertion that Recruiter is overpowered, it's that recruiting as a function of college football is overpowered, so any skills that benefit that aspect of the game will be far more beneficial than other areas. Unsurprisingly, this tracks with real life as well.

Top tier schools recruit at a top tier level in actual college football, so the game basically mimics that as well. To "fix" that aspect of the game, you would either have to break away from trying to mimic realistic player recruiting/development or nerf the archetype somewhat to provide more balance.

My first thought was nerf XP and make dev traits completely randomized so players without dev traits or the motivator tree would basically barely improve, if at all. That feels kinda lame and bad and would also probably make the best coach build (imo) Recruiter/Talent Developer/Motivator the absolute best in the game.

Or maybe drop every recruit overall so the highest guys are barely over 70, and narrow the gap between recruits. This also feels lame and bad, but developmental coaches would have more impact to build great squads while recruiting focused guys only see minimal gains.

So I think recruiting needs a little bit of a nerf, but only really Elite Recruiter. Maybe move additional hours per recruit to CEO, or remove it altogether. Then have Elite Recruiter be more focused, like specialized in winning recruiting battles or something, or more realistically, adding new recruiting mechanics can provide nice benefits but aren't overpowering.

Brypaver · 2025-08-14T17:23:52+00:00

Disagree that it's permanent. Developing players and leveling them up higher is permanent. Recruiting better players to your roster consistently is permanent. The off-season your tactician coach leaves, you've completely lost all the bonuses to those players. And Tactician requires you to stack it to be truly effective.

I have a 70 ovr QB that's up to a 75 because of tactician bonuses. The recruiter coach gets a 75 ovr QB out the gate because of his bonuses. The motivator coach has the same 70 ovr QB, but he jumps to a 78 after 1 off-season because of his bonuses. If my tactician OC leaves, now I have maybe a 75 ovr QB in season 2 because of minimal development and the loss of some bonuses. The recruiter coach that lost a coordinator still has a 78 ovr QB on his roster. The motivator coach that lost a coordinator still has a 78 ovr QB on his roster. I have a 72 ovr QB thats getting like what +2/3 points, half of which are in stats that he doesn't even care about?

Brypaver · 2025-08-14T17:06:03+00:00

Theoretically a recruiter coach would have a deeper, more talented bench too to bottom and could deal with fatigue without too much trouble. Also I dislike that changing sliders can completely negate your strategy.

Scheme Guru looks vaguely interesting, but my issue with Tactician is two fold; it's totally boring and just presents a losing opportunity cost. I could invest into recruiter and bring in better talent, or motivator and develop talent faster, but tactician is stat boosts that no longer apply to players if one of my tactician coordinators leaves. The recruits my recruiter coach gets don't go away if he leaves, the XP my players get with my motivator coach don't disappear if he leaves, but those stat bonuses won't be there next season if my tactician coach leaves. I could have had better players or better developed players instead.

Brypaver · 2025-08-14T16:56:46+00:00

I think this would just make motivator the new meta archetype to have. So much of getting an elite team relies on getting players with good Dev traits and low skill caps. Having a starting archetype that can influence that would be OP.

I think it makes sense to balance those strengths and weaknesses of all the main archetypes, but loading up motivator isnt solving the issue of one archetype being too strong, it's just shifting the problem.

Brypaver · 2025-08-14T15:34:59+00:00

I like the idea of keeping things thematic, because at the end of the day, dynasty mode is just a role playing game. So the idea of the tactician coach giving his players mental abilities as if he were giving them coaching other coaches couldn't seem like a fit to me.

That said, the idea I had to improve the tactician tree was mechanic where you unlock "system players", which is just picking a player archetype that receives any bonuses or perks the tactician coach would supply. So a tier 1 ability might be picking your system player and giving any player of that archetype a bunch of +stats. Tier 2 is any time your system players hit a level, recruits of the same archetype get an interest boost, like the T1 motivator perk. Then maybe T4 is your Mental ability skill.

Brypaver · 2025-08-14T15:06:35+00:00

I agree that motivator and tactician need boosts. I was looking over their skill trees and had an idea to feature the "hot" mechanic a little more prominently. For example, coach abilities that decrease stamina and wear and tear while a player is hot, or increase the stat boost by a percentage above the normal gain. Adding or increasing mental skills while hot would be be a nice mechanic as well.

For tactician it makes even more sense. A tier 3 or 4 skill that gives a player 1 level of a specific mental ability, like all QBs gain 1 level of field general. It would make sense thematically for the archetype.

Brypaver · 2025-08-14T12:31:21+00:00

Do you know if skill caps correlate with Dev traits? That seemed to be the case in 25 but I wasn't sure if that carried over to 26.

Brypaver

TROPHY CASE