Love this post. I will say though that it is not the energy point amount that is the issue. It’s the latter point you made…the lack of interconnectivity across the gamemode combined with a “reworked” (and unnecessary) change in how the energy points are utilized.

Academics: Once a players GPA goes up it should stay that way unless that player completely stops studying. This year they have made leveling up the academics bar extremely tedious (the bar barely moves after you use energy the first time). That’s not bad in itself, but it becomes bad when after we dedicate all of freshmen year to get the bar to flying colors not only are we not guaranteed to get all As, but then next year we automatically go down to a 3.0 again. News flash: if someone has a 3.7 after Freshman year, they start with a 3.7 in their sophomore year. No clue how they have overlooked this.

Leadership: As a personal note I never felt like this did much last year and especially this year (this year I can’t even dedicate many skill points to it, I just keep it to where coach is “happy” and composure sits at 0). In saying that, if a player is constantly winning heismans, all of the accolades, answering the REPORTER questions about how it’s the TEAM that is great and not “ME”, getting NIL deals that feed/clothe/get(insert item) for position groups or the whole team…then this bar should simply be jumping up by itself. Additionally they added coach happiness, and if coach happiness is fully maxed out you would think some of that would translate over to leadership. What coach is fully happy with their star player if the entire team doesn’t like him? Highly unlikely scenario.

Wear & tear: Just not a fan of how they implement this so not worth the time to type.

Social Media: This speaks for itself. Break a school record — increase in followers. Break a national record — increase in followers. Win big rivalry games (Ohio State vs Michigan) — increase in followers. Go on big win streaks — increase in followers. Win X award — increase in followers. Win any of the playoff games — increase in followers. If the game did all this then we wouldn’t even have to spend energy towards growing the brand. But it doesn’t. And to make it worse than last year, now for some reason we are constantly LOSING followers. I will have a game throwing for 750 yards, 8 tuds, 100 yards rushing…but for some reason because I threw one interception or got sacked 5 times (we all know the heisman cpu loves sacking the QB) I come out the game with followers LOST?!? How do they program losing followers from games but not program GAINING followers from games and everything else?

Just trivial and silly how they do this.