Maybe Seble will read this.  Never know.  I thought I would take dacj's suggestion and start a separate thread on this topic.  First to quote from the other:

Posted by zorzii on 7/29/2015 12:40:00 PM (view original):
Rogelio : what is the problem with D1 recruit generation? D1 job logic and the other change, I am all in favor.

If you look through the top D1 teams, you'll find that there are WAY too many elite post players generated in the game.  Think about IRL and how you would place players on a scale of 1-100 in each category.  How many 90+ across the board PFs & Cs would you figure?  There may be 3 on Kentucky each year (if they stuck around for a couple seasons to develop), but otherwise there might be 6 or 7 total.  

What would Jahlil Okafor be?  85 ATH, 80 REB, 75 DEF, 70 SB, 100 LP?   Each Big 6 conference has about 10 guys better than that.  How many M2M defensive teams have all players with 96+ DEF ratings and 96+ ATH IRL???  Any?  In HD there are like 5 or 6 in each world.  

Obviously the numbers don't mean much except in relation to each other, but too many recruits are elite.  If the game ratings were distributed properly, then, for instance, you might have good D3 players with overall core ratings (ATH, DEF) ~= 50; D2 ~= 65; D1 ~= 80, but there would be a few players that are separate.   There would never be whole teams in the 95+ range.  Further, remember that if the recruits start very high, then who cares about scouting!  FSS is plenty if the initial rating is over 73.  Scouting is irrelevant!  

So, that's just one take on it.  The engine wouldn't need to be fixed, but there needs to be a lot fewer elite level recruits.  The simulation would handle it and the recruiting budgets of top-tier schools would get blown fighting over that scarce resource.  If players looked relatively similar, then a few with dramatic potential could be hidden in among them as well.  Those might get overlooked (maybe) and go to mid-major schools.  You never know.  

i agree. we also need to see an uptick in work ethic among the lower crop of players - which mirrors real life if you ask me - to make the players with lower ratings and higher potential of more use in their soph/junior years, so they can be valuable members of low to mid bcs squads. the current ratings of the lower 3/4ths of d1 players are fine, but the potential and work ethic could both use a small uptick. it just goes a long way to increase the value of scouting and planning ahead - it should be the case that a very industrious team without elite prestige, can build a team that when experienced, can compete with the younger a+ recruited squads (assuming the pieces are arranged well). its fine they can't compete with the best team in the country, an experienced team that got some luck in EEs and has beast talent. fine. but a young a+ squad with 9 fr/sophs who are just really talented, you should be able to compete with that.

its very american to allow upward mobility. i think we just need to frame the current recruit gen as un-american and equate that with aiding and abetting terrorists, and THEN we will see action! this is fox we are talking about, after all :)

Here's the question to which I wanted to respond.  Well, I'll rephrase in the form of a question.  How would mid-major schools stand any chance without being able to get a post player that is comparable to the players on Big 6 schools?  Don't the Big 6 schools just get all of them during recruiting?

First, I think the answer, as things stand, is to target forwards with warts.  Low D1 teams can get those Cs that have very low passing and BH.  The Big 6 schools will take those project Cs, but they won't be willing to spend a ton on them.  You may be able to get guys with 90 ATH, but are terrible rebounders.  That won't help if you want to play zone, but it will work in some m2m or press systems.

My suggested change to the game is to tamp down on the generated curve of both initial and potential (cap) ratings, but only to create a full bell curve within each division.  Obviously, it doesn't really matter if D3 teams could only get post players with ATH in the 30s or 40s as long as all D3 teams faced the same problem.   The starting point has to be with D1.  

"Why don't you just make 10 a little louder?"  So, this is what needs to happen.  To make the 95 to 100 range really scarce, rather than having what seems like a clump of such players that are all very similar.  Ask, "what ratings would Shaquille O'Neal have had in this game?"  I swear the answers are greater than 100 in a few of those categories!

Posted by gillispie1 on 7/30/2015 2:25:00 PM (view original):
i agree. we also need to see an uptick in work ethic among the lower crop of players - which mirrors real life if you ask me - to make the players with lower ratings and higher potential of more use in their soph/junior years, so they can be valuable members of low to mid bcs squads. the current ratings of the lower 3/4ths of d1 players are fine, but the potential and work ethic could both use a small uptick. it just goes a long way to increase the value of scouting and planning ahead - it should be the case that a very industrious team without elite prestige, can build a team that when experienced, can compete with the younger a+ recruited squads (assuming the pieces are arranged well). its fine they can't compete with the best team in the country, an experienced team that got some luck in EEs and has beast talent. fine. but a young a+ squad with 9 fr/sophs who are just really talented, you should be able to compete with that.

its very american to allow upward mobility. i think we just need to frame the current recruit gen as un-american and equate that with aiding and abetting terrorists, and THEN we will see action! this is fox we are talking about, after all :)

100% spot on - there needs to be way more project type prospects at the D1 level with high WE.

This is probably the number one thing that can even the playing field between the midmajors and BCS schools with the A+'s cleaning up every recruiting cycle. 

It would also be nice if the starts/minutes promises had more weight for certain players which would make it a little easier to make up a $ difference. 

Posted by gillispie1 on 7/30/2015 2:25:00 PM (view original):
i agree. we also need to see an uptick in work ethic among the lower crop of players - which mirrors real life if you ask me - to make the players with lower ratings and higher potential of more use in their soph/junior years, so they can be valuable members of low to mid bcs squads. the current ratings of the lower 3/4ths of d1 players are fine, but the potential and work ethic could both use a small uptick. it just goes a long way to increase the value of scouting and planning ahead - it should be the case that a very industrious team without elite prestige, can build a team that when experienced, can compete with the younger a+ recruited squads (assuming the pieces are arranged well). its fine they can't compete with the best team in the country, an experienced team that got some luck in EEs and has beast talent. fine. but a young a+ squad with 9 fr/sophs who are just really talented, you should be able to compete with that.

its very american to allow upward mobility. i think we just need to frame the current recruit gen as un-american and equate that with aiding and abetting terrorists, and THEN we will see action! this is fox we are talking about, after all :)

Take the rhetoric to DEFCON 5...or is it 6!?  Anyhow, yes.

My thought has always been that recruits should not be generated with WE of less than 10, nor more than 90.  Simple.   There would still be some players with great potential and terrible WE, but few where you just could not move the needle at all.  Don't know what the distribution of WE generated currently is, but it could be bumped up slightly.  Maybe is should be a median of 55 and a range from 10 - 90 (assuming it's 1-100, with a median of 50 now).

With a slight bump down in initial ratings generated and a change in the distribution of maximum potential ratings generated, a lot of problems that currently exist just change.  Those very few generated with 90+ initial ratings would actually be fought over.  Just that money spent would make it possible for mid-majors to jump into the pool for players that are the next alternative for all the Big 6 schools. 

One thing to keep in mind is that the recruit generation was made when the worlds all had a significantly higher usage rate. As long as we stay where we are, these are good ideas. If the worlds ever started to fill up again, like they were in 2009-2011??? then everyone is going to have the exact opposite argument, if there are less elite players.

That said, I'm all for a change. Might reinvigorate some interest and might help out those if us at the mid-majors that refuse to leave.

Broadly, the best thing for recruit generation would be more texture

Create some tiny fraction of players with B or even A IQ as freshman

Create some kids with amazing potentials

Create a range of different preferences - warm or cold climate, good academics, party school.  Create pipelines - where recruiing a kid from a high school or a small geographic area makes it easier to recruit there the next season

Etc.  all of these would be fun and would help mid majors compete 

I agree with most everything stated in this thread. I believe there should be fewer elite level players and that more players should have some defined weaknesses. I also would like to see more "project" type players but I'd also want to be careful with adjusting work ethic too much so that we don't have a game where every player becomes the same.

 

I also think that this comment - What would Jahlil Okafor be?  85 ATH, 80 REB, 75 DEF, 70 SB, 100 LP? - perfectly epitomizes my feeling on the rating system as it currently stands. While the numbers above might be a pretty decent representation of Okafor's ratings, unless we are privy to the ratings formulas used in this game, none of can really say with certainty what his ratings would be. I extend this thought forward by asking what would Shawn Hicks ratings be? Wait, that's rhetorical, I don't need to guess, I know what they are on any given night simply by clicking on his player profile:

 

http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/PlayerProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=0&pid=3056575

 

And the question is why? Why do we have such a precise measurement of ratings available to us? I'm not suggesting no correlation between a player's ratings as listed, but why not use an HBD type system where the numbers are fuzzier and one never really knows the precise numbers the game engine is utilizing for a given player? It has always struck me as silly that we are just given a player's attributes. Scouting is never perfectly precise in real life, so why is it in this game?

 

One last point that the issue of re-vamping recruit generation doesn't address, is that this does nothing to provide incentive for lower prestige schools to ever try to battle for higher tier recruits, nor does it do anything to eliminate the unwritten rule to not battle conference mates for recruits.

 

Higher prestige schools shouldn't be "entitled" to top tier recruits by the mere fact that they have made the NT twenty some seasons in a row and they have an A+ prestige - recruiting should be more than that.  Lower prestige schools should be able to legitimately challenge (this doesn't mean they have to be successful) high prestige schools without fear that they will need to deplete their entire recruiting budget to do so. As it stands if a low prestige schools want to even TRY to compete with high prestige schools they usually can only do so by sacrificing all other recruiting efforts.

 

It's also silly that schools don't routinely challenge each other within conference for recruits. I understand strategically why it doesn't happen in this game - but take any RL conference rivalry - Michigan/Ohio St, UCLA/USC, Stanford/Cal, Missouri/Kansas, Harvard/Yale, Duke/UNC, Auburn/Alabama - these teams ALWAYS compete with one another for recruits and I think it would be nice if recruiting in this game encouraged it as well - again without the severe downside risk involved in the current auction style system.

 

That's my wish list: fix recruit generation; a rating system that isn't perfectly precise; and a recruiting system that encourages more battles without the unrealistic downside risk currently in place. 

Posted by ekswimmer on 7/30/2015 5:21:00 PM (view original):
One thing to keep in mind is that the recruit generation was made when the worlds all had a significantly higher usage rate. As long as we stay where we are, these are good ideas. If the worlds ever started to fill up again, like they were in 2009-2011??? then everyone is going to have the exact opposite argument, if there are less elite players.

That said, I'm all for a change. Might reinvigorate some interest and might help out those if us at the mid-majors that refuse to leave.

i disagree with this - people would actually complain even more loudly! when the recruit gen first came out, the d1 world were significantly fuller, and basically the top 20 programs were getting all the top players just like today - they weren't affected. but the other 150 schools then split the recruits now shared by 100 schools, so they were even further behind the top teams!

The other thing I need to throw out here is we are talking about an engine and numbers, Finite details, and core values that a simulator pushes out an outcome. The problem with nit picking and changing things is it will never mimic real life so we cannot compare real players to this game. Now I will say of course that I agree fewer Elites need to happen and more potential pumped out would not do this game harm but by no means can we inject the human factor.

The human factor is what some seek in this engine, in this game, and it will never be. A cinderella story is so rare and hard to come by because the human factor is not in tact. Play devils advocate for a minute. If we lower the elites on the other end if one team happens to sweep up 3-4 maybe 5 of them in a recruiting span do they then dominate the next 2-3 NT's? If we are to influence seble into lowering the elite player amount we have to ask the question by how much? Do we completely nerf it to make only 1-6 instant NBA locks or do we balance it down slowly? What about potentials? Do we ramp that to where there is too many or just a slight uptick? I honestly like how its at right now, its hard to find that gem but when you do it can change the course of your program if you pluck it out of the nose of a big 6 or in my case a mid major. 
 
We can certaintly ask these questions but until we have anwsers all we will have is just questions. I like a lot of these ideas but in the end I've seen enough of these threads where we will just have to wait and see. Remember this is an engine and will never have the capability of the human factor. 

"That's my wish list: fix recruit generation; a rating system that isn't perfectly precise; and a recruiting system that encourages more battles without the unrealistic downside risk currently in place"

I find this quote quite amusing...
I don't know what you mean by "perfectly precise". Does this mean you can predict for me what my 76 PER guard will be shootng this season? Or can you predict how many rebounds by 80 REB center will average per game?

Of course you can't. Ratings don't; always 100% correlate to in game performance. Not only is there a random factor built into every possession/game, but teams perform according to how the entire team's ratings mesh together.

IMO the rating system is ALREADY far from precise.

Posted by mullycj on 7/30/2015 10:11:00 PM (view original):
"That's my wish list: fix recruit generation; a rating system that isn't perfectly precise; and a recruiting system that encourages more battles without the unrealistic downside risk currently in place"

I find this quote quite amusing...
I don't know what you mean by "perfectly precise". Does this mean you can predict for me what my 76 PER guard will be shootng this season? Or can you predict how many rebounds by 80 REB center will average per game?

Of course you can't. Ratings don't; always 100% correlate to in game performance. Not only is there a random factor built into every possession/game, but teams perform according to how the entire team's ratings mesh together.

IMO the rating system is ALREADY far from precise.

And I find it amusing that you think the rating system is ALREADY far from precise.  You do understand the definition of precise don't you? 

Precise (adj) - marked by exactness and accuracy.

This means I can look at any team on any given night and see EXACTLY how each player rates in each respective category, nothing more nothing less, and my belief is that there is no way we should know that. It simply makes it easier for the high prestige teams to find the top tier talent season in and season out and perpetuate their monopolies. A fuzzier rating system would serve to reduce that somewhat and I think that would be a good thing.

The randomness of outcomes you site as an example is a separate issue entirely.  So no, I don't know what your 76 PER guard will shoot this season but I do know that your Wisconsin team doesn't have a single guard with a PER rating under 84 so you obviously aim higher, but why? Do you think your 84, 89, 95, 99 and 99 PER rated guards are better shooters than the 76 PER guys? I might suggest that if you're so confident in ratings not correlating to in game performance that you start recruiting guys with weaker ratings and let randomness work its magic. I'm guessing the reason you don't is because you know as well as I do that over time performance will revert to the mean and that your 95 PER guy WILL shoot better than the 76 PER guy you didn't recruit.

Look, I don't care if you don't agree with me. You're entitled to your opinion. Maybe I'm misreading the intent, but your "I find this quote quite amusing..." remark comes across as smug, condescending and implies that you think your opinion is more important and quite frankly, it's not.

ratings are precise
potential is fuzzy
results are results of complex interactions

Posted by metsmax on 7/30/2015 5:43:00 PM (view original):
Broadly, the best thing for recruit generation would be more texture

Create some tiny fraction of players with B or even A IQ as freshman

Create some kids with amazing potentials

Create a range of different preferences - warm or cold climate, good academics, party school.  Create pipelines - where recruiing a kid from a high school or a small geographic area makes it easier to recruit there the next season

Etc.  all of these would be fun and would help mid majors compete 

+1

Also Hometown kids who want to stay home, and recruits who will follow players from their HS or hometown to a college.

I agree that we should lower the number of elite recruits, but I would take it one step further and make those recruits national recruits.  National recruits would basically be an international in terms of distance being the same for everyone no matter where they are from.  IRL an elite recruit out of Texas would be recruited by UNC, Duke, Kentucky, Michigan State, etc.  It is silly that they are left to whatever Texas team has the A+ currently.  I would also make a minimum spend to get the elite recruit.  If it cost a minimum of $30k (those elite recruits need to feel that love) that elite A+ school would have to put a lot more thought into the way they use their budget.  One of the biggest problems with recruiting, in my opinion, is when a team dominates a region so fully that no one ever challenges them and they pick whatever recruits they want in the region, sign them for cheap and then have huge carryover making them even more dominant the next season.