I feel like in my experience, promises seem to mean more when offered early on in recruiting.  When offered late during recruiting in a battle (when most promises are offered), it doesn't seem like they mean squat.  Anyone else have some thoughts on this?

I feel like there is something broken with the promise system.  On the first recruiting cycle with my D3 team, I recently offered a player a scholarship, promised start, 15 promised minutes, and a couple home visits.  This guy was considering a SIM already, and since I was in total rebuild mode I wasn't worried about having to start him.The player rejected both promises, but after that cycle was considering only me (knocked the SIM off).  It worked out pretty well for me so I'm not complaining, but I think we all can agree that this shouldn't happen.  The player rejected a start and guaranteed minutes from a school they are considering.

I chalk this up to the order that recruiting actions are performed.  In this situation, the promises must have been the very first recruiting action performed by the engine.  Since I had no previous contact with the recruit, the promises didn't mean anything and got rejected.  Next came the home visits (or maybe scholarship, I don't know), and this got the recruit to consider me.  If the promises came after the home visit action, like I feel they should, both would have been accepted by the recruit.  I've noticed something similar with calling the recruits coach.  The feedback given by the coach reflects the recruits opinion before any other recruiting actions are performed, so the response isn't as up to date as it could be.

In my opinion, promises should be worth more.  I think when offered, they should work as a multiplier on every recruiting action performed (like prestige).  Say, for example, a promised start and 15 minutes would be worth as much as a letter grade of prestige.  So a B prestige team and a C prestige team would be on equal ground if the C prestige team promised a start and 15 minutes.  Is that fair?

Promises work just fine in terms of value, imo.The way it works is minutes will always be rejected until the player is already a fan of yours. Starts are not as strict, but if you promise someone a start who is only considering someone else he will reject it. The point is that you can't always get the cheap way in. Sometimes you have to earn it. Practically speaking that's not so different than what you are saying about the order of recruiting actions, but it's meant to be that way. Obviously the sim had put in minimal effort and the HVs were enough to knock him off. 

a couple things
- jsa is right, about when minutes/promises get rejected. your promises are based on the situation at the start of the cycle, not the end, so from the perspective of the promises, the sim was considered alone - in which case the promises should be rejected. so that worked as intended. i think this makes sense - if you aren't even considering a school, is it appropriate for that coach to start making promises? 

- i agree it should be a multiplier, but its not. its a fixed value. what you are observing in terms of the value going down, i believe, is just about context. a start is worth more than a HV and less than a CV. early in recruiting, when you don't have much into a guy, that is pretty significant. but late in a battle situation, you have a lot into recruits, so the relative value of promises is pretty small - even though, i believe, its still the same as in the beginning. or maybe its not, its possible the value changes, i wouldn't be too surprised if that was true but as of now, have no reason to think it works that way. 

Promises don't usually work for me, but there is a bias at work because I generally only offer them when I feel like I am losing a battle and MUST offer them... and of course if I only offer them in cases where the battle is going against me, it is going to appear that they fail to have much of an impact.

That said, I do think that a promised starting job late in a battle has swayed a couple of 50/50 battles in my direction.  I'm not sure the system is a failure, it depends on how much we think promises should be worth.

To me, the big problems with recruiting are that the number of open slots (and thus cash) and the proximity to the recruit overwhelm almost every other consideration.  I'd like to see the impact of those two things be dampened a little bit relative to every other factor.

I'm honestly quite surprised that there are people who think promises "work just fine in terms of value." Maybe people just have a very different idea of how much a promise is valued by recruits. To me, it makes far sense to have it act as a multiplier than a set value.

As a set value, it almost has to be worth way too much (basically making it required if you are facing someone else willing to offer it) or worth way too little (as it is now). Acting as a multiplier adds a dimension to recruiting, where you can try to combat promises either way, but where they do give a significant advantage (which, I think, they should). 

EDIT - And the trade off for making promises worth substantially more (as a multiplier) is penalties with actual teeth for breaking such promises.