Just looking at all release notes.  Some interesting things timeline wise(still amazed people have been playing this game since i was 9)

Were there any other major changes, or discoveries such as finding out about dropdowns, which I remember learning about from Rails dominating stretch at West Chester.

Sort of another random thing, but old coaches when would you say was the golden time of Hd, based on gameplay, coach talent, number of coaches, and forum activity, or any other reason.

it caused a bunch of people to leave and made the game better

Posted by Trentonjoe on 6/25/2015 7:59:00 AM (view original):
it caused a bunch of people to leave and made the game better

i understand not liking how thiings are, but i couldnt imagine no potential in hd, when i did GD no potential was a big turnoff.

How did it affect recruiting and gameplay?

were their coaches who didnt leavebut were not abble to adapt,,,, and viceversa were their coaches who were playing but were not great or just couldnt get over the hump and diid with potential?

Before potential was introduced, player's ratings continued to increase. It wasn't unusual to have teams hitting over 80% of their FTs.    So, it was very important to have good starting numbers when recruiting because a recruit with a DEF rating of 40 would never overtake one with a 50. 

FSS, which went hand-in-hand with potential, was a major change as well.  Prior, there was no little need to scout because every player had the same potential. 

I was 100% against potential before it was introduced.  I had to admit, however, that it was a good addition to the game. 

It's been a long time, but I think all of your recruiting money carried over at the end of the season, not just 25%.  

Another major change was the limit of 6 players/class.  We used to see teams with 12 seniors dominate the game. 

In the early years, our schedules were randomly generated.  With RPI being the most important aspect of tournament selection, you could be in trouble if you were handed a very weak non-conf schedule.

Posted by alblack56 on 6/25/2015 8:22:00 AM (view original):
Before potential was introduced, player's ratings continued to increase. It wasn't unusual to have teams hitting over 80% of their FTs.    So, it was very important to have good starting numbers when recruiting because a recruit with a DEF rating of 40 would never overtake one with a 50. 

FSS, which went hand-in-hand with potential, was a major change as well.  Prior, there was no little need to scout because every player had the same potential. 

I was 100% against potential before it was introduced.  I had to admit, however, that it was a good addition to the game. 

It's been a long time, but I think all of your recruiting money carried over at the end of the season, not just 25%.  

Another major change was the limit of 6 players/class.  We used to see teams with 12 seniors dominate the game. 

In the early years, our schedules were randomly generated.  With RPI being the most important aspect of tournament selection, you could be in trouble if you were handed a very weak non-conf schedule.

How much would players grow based on their WE?  did you still see insane growth in LP/PER or were starting numbers generally already high.  Were recruits better looking in base ratings then compared to now?

Wow I couldnt imagine the frustration I wouldve had from a loss to a 12 team super class.

Same with the scheduling.

Back then did people know HD was going to become something like it is now, compared to games you know are nothing more than some minor thing and the guy running it isn't good enough to evolve it?

The founder of the game was very involved. He wanted our stats to mimic real-life stats and would tweak the game frequently.  On the negative side, he had so much time/energy invested in the game that he couldn't admit there were any faults with it.  It would take weeks, and hounding from numerous coaches, before he would admit to a glitch in the program.  Even then, he never , EVER, apologize or accept fault. 

EXAMPLE: My team was listed as a 'lock' for the NT but, when the bids came out, I was in the PIT. There was an error on the 'lock' page so that it included teams with losing records. My team was 13-14.  Noone knew that only .500 teams could play in the NT and that aspect had been omitted from the 'Lock/Bubble' list formula. Rather than admit fault, the founder told me that the 'lock' list was independent of the game and he had no control over it. 

The game was very popular. When they added Iba World, all the D3 teams were taken within an hour or so. 

The forums were very popular, as well. There were easily a hundred new posts/day.  This was prior to Facebook and I think, for many coaches, this forum was a social network as well as a game. 

Posted by alblack56 on 6/25/2015 8:31:00 AM (view original):
The founder of the game was very involved. He wanted our stats to mimic real-life stats and would tweak the game frequently.  On the negative side, he had so much time/energy invested in the game that he couldn't admit there were any faults with it.  It would take weeks, and hounding from numerous coaches, before he would admit to a glitch in the program.  Even then, he never , EVER, apologize or accept fault. 

The game was very popular. When they added Iba World, all the D3 teams were taken within an hour or so. 

The forums were very popular, as well. There were easily a hundred new posts/day.  This was prior to Facebook and I think, for many coaches, this forum was a social network as well as a game. 

Wow, do we know if the founder still plays?  I know WIS was sold to fox sometime ago?  Is the founder of wis the same guy or did wis also buy the game from him?

Wow thats insane to hear about iba and the forums, i mean now its amazing to see a division in a world above 40%

How was recruiting with some many teams around, obviously many other things have changed since then too, but with little to no sims, I assume it was very competitive and there were more good recruits to good around or were stud players able to have more of an impact.

The founder of WIS was treble. When he sold the game to FOX, he continued to run the game.  A short time later, he was replaced by seble. I don't know the circumstances of treble's departure

Recruiting was nothing but battles...almost for every recruit

Improvement for a stat was a bell curve. You could improve anything fairly quickly from 20 - 80. Durability used to be more important as a single digit guy would almost always get injured.

I remember the Iba world opening, it was my first team. Recruiting was crazy. But fun.

Posted by jaxorbetter on 6/25/2015 11:06:00 AM (view original):
Improvement for a stat was a bell curve. You could improve anything fairly quickly from 20 - 80. Durability used to be more important as a single digit guy would almost always get injured.

I remember the Iba world opening, it was my first team. Recruiting was crazy. But fun.

how did player ratings differ, would a D3 title team look similar to what a title team look like today ratings wise?

potential was a big change.  Some folks left.  The game became much better as a matter of game play - more interesting.

I hoped, many hoped, that the game would march forward from there to improve in other ways - like more texture to the recruiting process - preferences, pipelines, all kinds of stuff that get mentioned every time someone starts a thread on improvements.  game has not advanced much since then.

And yes new worlds got big signups.  Folks wanted to see if they could get a team and race to the top or to their favorite schools.  Lack of marketing effort has wasted that asset

Back in the day before the change, FT shooting would improve like everything else.

Posted by the0nlyis on 6/25/2015 11:20:00 AM (view original):

Posted by jaxorbetter on 6/25/2015 11:06:00 AM (view original):
Improvement for a stat was a bell curve. You could improve anything fairly quickly from 20 - 80. Durability used to be more important as a single digit guy would almost always get injured.

I remember the Iba world opening, it was my first team. Recruiting was crazy. But fun.

how did player ratings differ, would a D3 title team look similar to what a title team look like today ratings wise?

I don't remember exactly. My guess is they were higher. If you could get a guy with 30s in nearly everything and a great WE, that guy would be awesome as an upperclassman.  It was like how WE works now--< 10 forget it, 10-20 goes up slowly, 20-30 sort of slowly, 30+ reasonably quickly, etc...

I remember when Allen was created.  I think coaches could sign up starting at 2:00am.  I logged in at 5:30 and there were only 6 teams left in D3.

One thing I liked about the pre-potential days was you could mold a player into what you wanted.    WE was huge as it was the only limit on growth.    If you dumped 20+ minutes of practice a guy may improve 6-8 points a season in REB-LP-PER-BH-PAS (a few less in the other categories).  Then depending on WE might drop a point back or gain another 3-4 in the offseason.  So we didn't see the single season gains of 15-20 points in a category.  

In essence a high WE guy had high/high potential in all categories.  But since it wasn't possible to max out all categories within 4-5 seasons, the coach had to decide what to leave on the table.

Back in the first few seasons, rather than having separate LP and PER practice, there was a single Shooting category.  Player position mattered.  Bigs improved in LP.  Guards improved in PER.  SF improved a lesser amount in both.

Posted by jaxorbetter on 6/25/2015 1:24:00 PM (view original):

Posted by the0nlyis on 6/25/2015 11:20:00 AM (view original):

Posted by jaxorbetter on 6/25/2015 11:06:00 AM (view original):
Improvement for a stat was a bell curve. You could improve anything fairly quickly from 20 - 80. Durability used to be more important as a single digit guy would almost always get injured.

I remember the Iba world opening, it was my first team. Recruiting was crazy. But fun.

how did player ratings differ, would a D3 title team look similar to what a title team look like today ratings wise?

I don't remember exactly. My guess is they were higher. If you could get a guy with 30s in nearly everything and a great WE, that guy would be awesome as an upperclassman.  It was like how WE works now--< 10 forget it, 10-20 goes up slowly, 20-30 sort of slowly, 30+ reasonably quickly, etc...

Ratings were lower there actually. If your team had an overall rating of 500 to start the season you were likely in the top 25. A guy with good/not elite work ethic, would only gain 4 points during the season in ATH/SP even with 20 minutes in conditioning as I recall. Defense being mostly irrelevant was an interesting aspect. I did enjoy recruiting those SFs that were awesome at everything but had a 5 defense rating, and they would still be good defenders just based on athleticism, speed, stamina, and IQ.

The problem with the old system and why it got boring was it was extremely formulaic. Just do a nationwide search with the same minimums every season on the higher level list depending on your position of need and then sign whoever drops first. The names would change but the teams stayed the same, so to speak.