Caveat: I have some mixed feelings about actually signing up again.  I've had some good seasons on 3 different servers over the years, playing with some really good HD coaches at all 3 levels, but eventually I grew bored.  So I quit all my coaching jobs and took some time off.

My problem now is that it's hard to watch college bball on TV and not think about coming back.  I get antsy and enthused and have to remind myself of why I quit in the first place.  I know this sounds like I'm down on HD, but I'm not.  I just think I needed to adjust my expectations. 

My last D1 job was BYU/Smith, but now the signup screen tells me that I'm not eligible for that job again (maybe I sucked that badly, who knows). The trick, IMO, is to find a SIM loser team in a decent conference that has a decent RPI and try to build there.  But when you don't have any active teams, you cannot view conference standings or conference RPI as a whole.  Even with some time-consuming research it's a crap shoot.  It appears that I only qualify for teams with D prestige or lower anyway, which is fine.  If I decide to return, I am willing to accept the challenge and work my way up to a better job if I can.  I'd consider a return to D2, where I won a NC, but the limited budget and dealing with pulldowns again doesn't excite me.

I don't want to violate any rules on collusion, so I'm not asking for someone to share secrets with me.  What I think I need is some general guidance as to conferences that may not be elite but could offer me an above average RPI from conference play.  I can try to schedule OOC games that are somewhat winnable as well as not harmful to RPI.  A "D" prestige is a challenge and an opportunity, not a curse :)

And finally, I would appreciate opinions on whether HD has improved or declined in the last several months.  It's been 5 game seasons since I quit, so not all that long.  But it troubles me to go through the jobs for which I'm qualified and find empty conferences, or conferences with 1 or 2 human coaches. That's D1, so maybe it's different in D2 and D3?  What's your feeling on the state of the game?

It hasn't changed at all in the last few months. 

Good luck with everything, I hope that you decide to sign up and try again!

If you missed 5 seasons at 1-a-day, then you might have missed a few, mainly cosmetic, updates earlier this year.   Who knows?  Maybe there'll be more programming time allocated to HD in early 2015.   Given the struggles with a new GD engine update, I wouldn't be surprised if WIS is leery of devoting a ton of time to updating the engine.  

Glad you decided to return.  Smith is the best 1-a-day world due to bullman17s thread in the Smith forum.  If you haven't already, check out the predictions and ratings here.   

In or out ethan66...in or out

Posted by colonels19 on 11/29/2014 10:35:00 AM (view original):
In or out ethan66...in or out

I'm in.  Somehow I was able to land BYU 10~ seasons ago, but this time it said I wasn't eligible (maybe my coaching cred took a hit with the mediocre job I did at Provo.  Or maybe the Mormons really hate me.).  So this time I took Tulsa.  C-USA has a C+ baseline prestige I believe, so it's not a horrible non-Big 6 conf,  but as of now its actual prestige is D+.   We're up to 6 human coaches so I expect that prestige to start moving upwards very soon.  (I also have a few personal ties to TU which have nothing to do with HD).

I've already noticed a couple of little cosmetic changes, like "Player Roles", which looks to me to be pretty useless.   They took out RPI history a few seasons ago and I submitted a ticket asking for it to be reinstated (it's a nice tool when you're trying to schedule against good RPI schools and haven't saved the prior seasons' listing), but instead we got Player Roles?  Does anyone use them and what for?

Welcome back, man!  I've never used Player Roles, they're pretty useless...it's basically like coach notes for yourself...someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Thanks Colonels.

I already have entire folders - FOLDERs I tell you! - for every team and for every season, with gameplay notes, RPI status, 6 or 8 or more spreadsheets for recruiting cycles, player improvement patterns.  I don need no more steenkin' notes :)

LOFL!  That's awesome...this is by far my favorite game on any platform right now...I've been at Mount Olive in Phelan since October 2010.

Posted by ethan66 on 11/29/2014 12:02:00 PM (view original):
Thanks Colonels.

I already have entire folders - FOLDERs I tell you! - for every team and for every season, with gameplay notes, RPI status, 6 or 8 or more spreadsheets for recruiting cycles, player improvement patterns.  I don need no more steenkin' notes :)

This makes me wonder if I put enough work into HD lol

Posted by kevodaphenom on 11/29/2014 12:08:00 PM (view original):

Posted by ethan66 on 11/29/2014 12:02:00 PM (view original):
Thanks Colonels.

I already have entire folders - FOLDERs I tell you! - for every team and for every season, with gameplay notes, RPI status, 6 or 8 or more spreadsheets for recruiting cycles, player improvement patterns.  I don need no more steenkin' notes :)

This makes me wonder if I put enough work into HD lol

If you're winning, don't worry about it.  If you're losing (like I generally do), you can always do more :)

One of HD's sage wizards (not sure, it might have been aejones) once said that he put hours of effort into every recruit decision and every gameplan.  I tried that, but my ADHD keeps kicking in and ... OH LOOK, A SHINY!

Posted by ethan66 on 11/29/2014 11:51:00 AM (view original):

Posted by colonels19 on 11/29/2014 10:35:00 AM (view original):
In or out ethan66...in or out

I'm in.  Somehow I was able to land BYU 10~ seasons ago, but this time it said I wasn't eligible (maybe my coaching cred took a hit with the mediocre job I did at Provo.  Or maybe the Mormons really hate me.).  So this time I took Tulsa.  C-USA has a C+ baseline prestige I believe, so it's not a horrible non-Big 6 conf,  but as of now its actual prestige is D+.   We're up to 6 human coaches so I expect that prestige to start moving upwards very soon.  (I also have a few personal ties to TU which have nothing to do with HD).

I've already noticed a couple of little cosmetic changes, like "Player Roles", which looks to me to be pretty useless.   They took out RPI history a few seasons ago and I submitted a ticket asking for it to be reinstated (it's a nice tool when you're trying to schedule against good RPI schools and haven't saved the prior seasons' listing), but instead we got Player Roles?  Does anyone use them and what for?

RPI history is still available on the team cards under the "history" tab -- it shows the RPI and SOS for every season. 

Posted by rednu on 11/29/2014 1:01:00 PM (view original):

Posted by ethan66 on 11/29/2014 11:51:00 AM (view original):

Posted by colonels19 on 11/29/2014 10:35:00 AM (view original):
In or out ethan66...in or out

I'm in.  Somehow I was able to land BYU 10~ seasons ago, but this time it said I wasn't eligible (maybe my coaching cred took a hit with the mediocre job I did at Provo.  Or maybe the Mormons really hate me.).  So this time I took Tulsa.  C-USA has a C+ baseline prestige I believe, so it's not a horrible non-Big 6 conf,  but as of now its actual prestige is D+.   We're up to 6 human coaches so I expect that prestige to start moving upwards very soon.  (I also have a few personal ties to TU which have nothing to do with HD).

I've already noticed a couple of little cosmetic changes, like "Player Roles", which looks to me to be pretty useless.   They took out RPI history a few seasons ago and I submitted a ticket asking for it to be reinstated (it's a nice tool when you're trying to schedule against good RPI schools and haven't saved the prior seasons' listing), but instead we got Player Roles?  Does anyone use them and what for?

RPI history is still available on the team cards under the "history" tab -- it shows the RPI and SOS for every season. 

Yes, for individual teams.  Of course.  But if you're trying to schedule, say top 50 or top 100 RPI teams, do you really want to go through team-by-team and look at each one? 

I save an Excel spreadsheet at the end of each season that lists all RPI/SOS for both teams and conferences on a table sorted in descending order.  When a world rolls over, that aggregate history disappears on the server.  I use my saved spreadsheet to pick my prospective opponents for the next season's schedule.

I just have to know what LOFL stands for, colonels.

Languishing on floor level?
Lording over foolish Loons?