For years, many of Operation Sports’ hardcore community have been constructing slider and options projects in order to make your sports games more realistic and challenging. And with College Football 26 now out, the OS faithful are at it again to make the already-beloved franchise even better for players who want to fully immerse themselves in the awesome world of college football. First up, we have OS veteran Matt10 with new CFB 26 slider settings catered to the two hardest difficulties in the game: All-American and Heisman.
In a nutshell, Matt10’s Heisman and All-American Sliders are an attempt at creating a more realistic and challenging experience for players who are already very good and/or experienced at College Football 26. This is accomplished by making needed tweaks to general settings such as the game clock, accelerated clock, Wear & Tear, and the Player/SPU Skill settings. Obviously, we’re early in the game’s cycle, and things will likely have to be tweaked depending on further testing and game updates. But, according to the community, these seem to serve as a great baseline.
Below is a list of the sliders developed by Matt10, listed by category. Also, if you love these slider projects and wish to see more, be sure to check out the Operation Sports forums, which — for my money — boasts the greatest and most helpful sports game communities in the world.
Matt10’s College Football 26 Heisman Sliders
Required Settings
These settings are imperative to ensure the sliders work correctly.
- Difficulty: Heisman
- Quarter Length: 11 minutes
- Accelerated Clock: On
- Minimum Play Clock Time: 15 seconds
- Injuries: 20
- Fatigue: 55
- Player Speed Parity Scale: 48
Optional Preferences
These options aren’t exactly necessary and mostly pertain to controls and/or assists. But they do help boost the performance from a realism standpoint. For the sake of the sliders, we suggest you use the following settings at first try and enable/disable certain things at your own discretion.
- Kicking: Tap & Hold
- Passing Type: Revamped
- Pass Slowdown: Off
- Pass Lead Increase: Small
- Reticle Speed: 7
- Reticle Visibility: User Only
- Meter Visibility: User Only
- AI WR for User: On
- Ball Hawk: On
- Heat Seeker: Off
- Defensive Switch: Off
- Passing Cam: On
Wear And Tear Sliders
These settings are designed to more accurately trigger injuries in-game and adjust them so that the mechanic works in a more functional, realistic way than it does at default settings.
- Normal Tackle: 85
- Catch Tackle: 85
- Hit Stick: 85
- Cut Stick: 85
- Defender Tackle Advantage: 85
- Sack: 85
- Block: 85
- Impact Block: 85
- Per-Play Recovery: 35
- Per-Timeout Recovery: 35
- Between-Quarter Recovery: 35
- Halftime Recovery: 35
- In-Game/Week-to-Week Recovery: 50
Weather Sliders
These settings are designed to better simulate games when they’re being done in inclement weather.
- Catch Chance: 65
- Pass Accuracy: 65
- Pass Strength: 60
- Broken Tackle: 65
- Kicking Accuracy: 60
- Kicking Strength: 60
- Movement Penalty: 60
Penalty Sliders
While penalties occur pretty much in every real-life football game, video games simulating football don’t often get them right, at least when it comes to how frequently some are called. These settings are made to make certain penalties occur at a much more realistic rate.
- Offsides: 50
- False Start: 85
- Holding: 85
- Facemask: 45
- Illegal Block in the Back: 50
- Roughing the Passer: 45
- Defensive Pass Interference: 50
- All other penalty options should be set to “On”
Player And CPU Skill Settings
OK, now it’s time for the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Player and CPU skill sliders! These are what dictate pretty much everything that happens in a game, from passes being caught/dropped, to how stingy defensive backs can be in pass coverage.
Matt has all these listed as universal sliders, so be sure to set the following values for both the Player and CPU.
- QB Accuracy: 40
- Pass Blocking: 50
- WR Catch: 45
- Run Blocking: 50
- Ball Security: 45
- Pass Defensive Reaction: 50
- Interceptions: 45
- Pass Coverage: 50
- Tackling: 45
- FG Power: 50
- FG Accuracy: 45
- Punt Power: 55
- Punt Accuracy: 50
- Kickoff Power: 50
Optional Adjustments
As with anything to do with sliders, these are ongoing projects, especially this early into the College Football 26 cycle. Therefore, some trial and error will be required. Here’s some of the feedback provided by the community in the comments under the original thread.
- Holding penalties may be too prevalent: OS user TheBleedingRed21 complained of holding penalties being a bit too frequent when in-game compared to how often they’re usually called in real life. In Matt’s Heisman sliders, Holding is set to 85. So, if you’re experiencing a bit too many holding calls than you’d like, try bumping that setting down just a bit to around 65 and play with it from there.
- The CPU rushing game might be a bit weak: Also mentioned in BleedingRed’s post is that while the CPU passing game seems to be good, AI opponents do seem to struggle moving the ball on the ground. While a solution isn’t given, common sense would indicate that an adjustment to the CPU Skill when it comes to Run Blocking might be in order. My suggestion is to maybe bump that up to 65, then play with it until you feel the AI ground game is at least passable.
- Passing might be a bit too easy: OS veteran JWDixon120 echoed many of TBR’s sentiments, but also provided some other input related to the user-controlled passing game. According to Dixon, AI pass protection seems to be pretty lacking when it comes to quick, short passes, and he reported that even a lower-rated QB was able to exploit this. Therefore, adjustments to defensive pressure and QB accuracy were recommended. So, it’s possible you’ll need to increase Pass Coverage, decrease QB Accuracy, and maybe reduce a Pass Blocking just a smidge.
Matt10’s College Football 26 Heisman Sliders
According to Matt10, the All-American sliders are currently a work in progress and have not been properly fleshed out yet. We’ll be sure to update this article once the All-American sliders become available!
