Let's kick off discussions with the topic of scouting.  Keep in mind that all the numbers involved here are preliminary and will very possibly be tweaked during testing.  This is a lot of information to absorb, so please read through it all and think it through before forming any opinions.  Thanks.

Resources

-          Each school is assigned a base amount for their division, plus a little extra for each opening. 

·         DI - $50,000 + $5000 more per opening

·         DII - $30,000 + $3000 more per opening

·         DIII - $10,000 + $1000 more per opening

Recruit Pool

-          Top 100 players in the country are visible to all.  Otherwise, recruits are invisible to a school until they’re exposed via player discovery, a camp, or scouting service.

-          May have some recruits contact a school on their own, which would make them visible.

-         Possibly a search page still, to show only visible recruits.

-         Various levels of information revealed to a team for each player based on scouting progress:

·        Level 1 –Three letter graded ratings (A to F)

  Offense – aggregate of Low Post, Perimeter, FT shooting, Ball Handling, and Passing.

  Defense – aggregate of Rebounding, Defense, and Shot Blocking.

  Physical – aggregate of Athleticism, Speed, Stamina, and Durability.

·        Level 2 – Basic letter grade for each current rating from A to F

·        Level 3 – More specific letter grade for current ratings (++, +, nothing, - , --) and low/medium/high for potential, indication of highest IQ for offense and defense (e.g. Motion/Press are his best systems)

·        Level 4 – Exact number for current ratings and very low/low/medium/high/very high for potential, letter grade for best offense/defense IQ

Player Discovery

-          Assistant Coach Player Discovery

·         Coach would specify some criteria

  Positions

  Max distance

  HS/JUCO/Transfer

  Area of focus – Offense, Defense, Physical, All-around

  Quantity (number of players to find) – chunks like 5, 10, 20, 50, 100

·         Cost based on player quantity.

  $50 per player

·         Once discovery is completed, all players included in search become visible with Level 1 information.

 

-          Camps

·         Only include HS players, no JUCOs or transfers.

·         Two types of camps:

  A handful of pre-set regional camps located around the country.

·         Around 100 players in each camp.

·         Subset of recruiting pool with random talent level, favoring players who are local to camp location.

·         Camp gets an overall grade based on average of players attending.

·         Cost is $30 per player, so about $3,000.

·         All players in camp become visible with Level 1 information.

  Hold camp at your school.

·         Can be scheduled at any time.

·         Set number of attendees from pre-set options (e.g. 50, 100, 150).

·         Subset of recruiting pool with random talent level, favoring players who are local to camp location.

·         All players attending would become visible.

·         Cost is $50 per player attending, so $5,000 for a 100-player camp.

·         Level 2 information revealed.

·         Could also count toward generating interest during recruiting period for all recruits to attend.

 

-          Scouting Service

·         Would include all recruits, not just HS.

·         Would always be filtered to division that your team is in.

·         Various options to purchase:

  International only

  JUCO only

  HS only

  All

  By state, region or national

  Level of evaluation

·         Level 1 or 2 info revealed depending on option selected

·         Cost varies based on selected options, number of players included, and level of evaluation.

  $25 per player for Level 1 info

  $50 per player for Level 2 info

Individual Scouting

-         Normal Scouting Trip

·        Recruit must be visible from assistant coach search, camp, or scouting service in order to do individual scouting trips.

·        Cost dependent on distance, similar to current formula.

·        Results of trip are available immediately?

Each trip reveals the next level of information for that player. So if a player has been scouted to Level 2 already, the next scouting trip would push them to Level 3.

SO EXCITED, probably going to go ahead and respond to as many as I can

Resources

• Love this idea, but does this mean there is no more post season recruiting cash bonuses?  At lower levels "super conferences" could be weakened severly since mainly there are clustered near each other and rely on the bonus cash to recruit well distance wise.

• I know the whole point is to lower the gap between Elite schools, but if there is no postseason cash, maybe consider having tiered starting bases based off current prestige such as A+ getting like 60,000 base and a D+ getting 40,000 this still keeps the elite gap high, but otherwise I could see lower end schools starting to become almost too strong, it should be easier and close the gap between the elite, but it shouldn't completely erase the gap, however without seeing this in action it is hard to tell how it would actually work.

Recruit Pool

• For the top 100 national recruits at what level are they going to be visible to all schools at(1,2,3,4)?
• Will there be correlating numbers to letter grades or at least ranges such as "A" correlates to 90-100
• Level 1 scouting seems it might be a bit "useless" in terms of finding offensive low post men since they're aggregate probably won't be well with the inclusion of perimeter/bh/pas I could see a lower overall as maybe a B aggregate is really good for a big man compared to a B isn't that great for a guard.
• Again will we be given specified ranges of very low, low, medium, high, very high
• Could you explain IQ a bit more, since IQ is based on which will be his best will be get "detailed" info such as what his caps are such as B+ for motion, B- for Flex, C- for FB, and C for triangle?
• Will there be correlation between say flex/motion?  What about defenses will a player be more likely to have higher caps for a press defense if he has the highest cap in the fastbreak offense?
• Will we see higher incoming IQ's making class structure "less" important at least at high divisions such as incoming recruits with a B or B+ in rare cases(mainly one and dones?)

Player Discovery

• The addition of being able to exclude top ranked recruits for when coaching a low end school or a D2 school would be nice.
• Will there be the ability to scout via regions instead of chunks such as scout the NE region or the West Coast.
• Will cost be varied based on division as scouting 100 prospects at D3 is already 5,000 dollars half the base.

Scouting

• So no there will be no ability to choose what traits to go or is it by off,def,phy and each one you go up a level of scouting?
• I do like the idea of scouting trip results being available immediately, and I assume the "value" of the scouting trips won't be added till the next cycle?

Another thing is that I am against season long recruiting, I could see having budgets given during conference tournaments and then add the per scholly and bonus cash at the cycle of seasons.  I think this also makes it much more miserable to rebuild a program since you have to go a whole season without any of your players, basically adding another season to get to a complete rebuild(now 5 compared to the normal of 4).  It also makes it a bit harder to plan around I like knowing when I need to devote "extra" attention such as the current 5 day block, I think making it season long might give advantages to people who are able to spend more time on the game than those who just set a quick gameplan during the season.

I think a good way to get coaches "acclimated" quicker is by forcing a walkthrough of the game, I've mentioned this before a while ago, but give a detailed walk through of the game and lock the ability to gameplan, edit depth charts, and recruit, until the walkthrough is completed which would include things like how to do each things, what types of recruits are "better" so that they at least have a brief idea of what is good, changing when they recruit isn't going to help them unless they find out how to, bring them to the aejones guide and my FAQ guide(and soon an updated one on recruiting) so they have some knowledge or at least were forced to see there is guides out there.

Also any timeline for when a beta world would be started to test ideas out.

first off, i think we all appreciate the upcoming tweaks in regard to recruiting...so, thanks Seble.

to be honest, i haven't thought all of these proposed changes out...and i think this may be too many tweaks to the game at once. can we change a little each recruiting season - rather than all at once?
i think the money per recruit is already set properly. maybe tweak the way the tourney bonus money is handed out. instead of dividing the tourney money by 12...why not reward the teams that actually earned it by dividing the bonus money by 13 (with the team earning the cash getting two shares and the rest of the conference with one share) - for all 12 teams tourney money?
and for each type of player - guards or low post - have scouting trips that target their base talents first. i mean, i am so tired of hearing that a point guard has no shot blocking skills - in almost every scouting trip.

i like to think i peruse the forums as much as the next coach, but i don't see where most of these suggestions are coming from. i think these changes will make the game more complicated than it already is.

just my 2 cents worth.

Posted by crazyivan on 9/10/2015 1:53:00 PM (view original):
first off, i think we all appreciate the upcoming tweaks in regard to recruiting...so, thanks Seble.

to be honest, i haven't thought all of these proposed changes out...and i think this may be too many tweaks to the game at once. can we change a little each recruiting season - rather than all at once?
i think the money per recruit is already set properly. maybe tweak the way the tourney bonus money is handed out. instead of dividing the tourney money by 12...why not reward the teams that actually earned it by dividing the bonus money by 13 (with the team earning the cash getting two shares and the rest of the conference with one share) - for all 12 teams tourney money?
and for each type of player - guards or low post - have scouting trips that target their base talents first. i mean, i am so tired of hearing that a point guard has no shot blocking skills - in almost every scouting trip.

i like to think i peruse the forums as much as the next coach, but i don't see where most of these suggestions are coming from. i think these changes will make the game more complicated than it already is.

just my 2 cents worth.

Updating how much cash each school/division gets seems like a must with the multitude of new ways recruiting must incorporate scouting as if you have only 1/2 scholarships you can barely scout anyone under this new update.

The beta world would help with the change as well as it doesn't seem like they're very many ideas that could be implemented one by one, since they all seem to affect each change in a way such as budgets and scouting.  You cant get new budgets and keep scouting the same, and you can't implement new scouting without the new budgets.

(In D2) 30k + 3k for one scholarship opening is overkill - if all they are going to do is give you more ways of spending your recruiting budget. 

I realize you probably can't provide any definitive time frames for these changes because there are probably a great many unknowns that might arise along the way, but is there any tentative plan (best case scenario/worst case scenario) as to how long you think it will take to implement this?

This sounds like a completely different game.  I would advise MAJOR beta-testing--way way way more than last time and conducted in a much more straightforward way.  Perhaps two beta worlds?  Perhaps place certain people at different levels in the different beta worlds?  A major overhaul like this is going to be strange to the vast majority of the community who are all VERY happy with the current game (obviously there's a small minority in the forums being loud voices for change) and a good way to make them all leave is to implement a large overhaul.  We saw what happened with GD.  Please don't let that happen.  Take your time.  Don't get over excited.  HD is fantastic and a major overhaul has the potential to kill the game.  Please don't do that.  

The large issue I would like to see changed is Big 6 programs recruiting on an national level. Maybe each school has a certain set of "official visits' instead of sending 40-50 visits like we do now? I think many of the proposed changes would make this a very different game, I am not saying that is a bad thing, but I don't know that it needs that large of an overhaul to fix some its minor issues. 

Posted by crazyivan on 9/10/2015 2:05:00 PM (view original):
(In D2) 30k + 3k for one scholarship opening is overkill - if all they are going to do is give you more ways of spending your recruiting budget. 

but the cost to "scout" has been greatly increased, you don't get the same info as cheap as you currently do through fss in this update meaning to have the same knowledge you will be spending more money hence the increased overall budgets.

Posted by gvsujulius on 9/10/2015 2:46:00 PM (view original):
The large issue I would like to see changed is Big 6 programs recruiting on an national level. Maybe each school has a certain set of "official visits' instead of sending 40-50 visits like we do now? I think many of the proposed changes would make this a very different game, I am not saying that is a bad thing, but I don't know that it needs that large of an overhaul to fix some its minor issues. 

here's an idea i just thought of.

With the 100 national recruits available to everyone, why not give a option for "official visits" like you mentioned.  these are a flat cost to all programs, such as 3k or 5k per each and they are the most "influential" thing you can do compared to like start/hv/cv so while it may be cheaper for a closer school to send a bunch of hv, the distance school can still be in contention with like a couple of official visits, this means closer schools can still sign these guys on hv which are cheaper but it opens up competition by having these official visits as the closer school would probably have to offer a official visit or two to remain ahead.  This makes it slightly more national recruiting while still leaving a slight adv for schools in a closer proximity

Try to keep the discussion in this thread focused on the scouting process as outlined above.  I'll start a different discussion for the actual recruiting process.

To answer some questions:

- The plan is to eliminate postseason cash.  It creates too much imbalance in resources in my mind.

- Prestige will still be very significant in recruiting, so just because we're eliminating some advantages of the elite schools, that doesn't mean every school will be on equal ground.

- Recruits will have the same number ratings that they do now.  The different scouting levels will just obscure those values to varying degrees based on the level that you've scouted a player.

- A major change here is that you can't just go to a list and see all the recruits.  You now have to "discover" them through the various scouting techniques. 

- There is no plan to change recruit generation with this update.  If we need to do that at some point, it would be a separate release.

- Scouting actions won't count at all toward recruiting a player like they do now.  It's purely to gather information and determine your player targets.

- The budget listed is just for scouting.  Recruiting resources will be handled separately. 

- We'll be designing the new recruiting pages to be as user-friendly as possible to make the new system easy to pick up.

- We will be having extensive beta testing for this update, with as many of you as we can.  I'm not going to release this change until everyone is happy with it (or as much as possible with a large group of people) .

-         Possibly a search page still, to show only visible recruits.

Thanks for responding.

This is a bit looking ahead but I'm a bit worried that the abolishment of post season cash will hurt super conferences at D2/D3 which rely on that extra cash to be able to recruit nationally a bit better than most other schools in the same divisions.  I don't know what you have planned for recruiting options, but I'll not dwell to far into that since this is about scouting only for now.

How come there is no plan to change recruit generation there seems to be some support for that or at least fixing ratings to be a bit more realistic like getting rid of players with sub 20 ath/def and still be a ranked D1 prospect.  I don't exactly know how these changes would go into effect, but I would expect to still see the big 6 teams that are nc contenders being full of 90+ ath/def guys which personally I do not want to see since thats not how it is in real life.

Can you explain the budget a bit better it seemed like it was going to be the base+ scholly opening but now it seems like it will be 2 seperate budgets?  1 which can only be used for scouting options and 1 only to be used to actually recruit players?

What about job changes? If a coach changes jobs at season end does scouting effort carry over to the new team? Or would one need to start over at the new school? Also, if one changed jobs and filled a spot previously occupied by another coach would they be left to the mercy/benefit of how the prior coach spent the scouting budget? Or would it refresh to allow a coach to start anew?

1.  must test extensively
2.  consider the time commitment for a participant - to some degree, more to do is better - but at some level it makes the game too much - there is risk here that folks will cut back on teams
3.  question - for the various functions that involve 100 or other number of players - I understand that there will be a geographic element to it - beyond that, how will the 100 players be selected?  if I hold a camp at my school and randomly sucky players attend am I out of luck?
4. gotta have a search page that searches whatever I can see - a home place during recruiting so I dont need to keep notes outside the game - on XLS or paper