Just sent a ticket to CS... see how that goes... Went like this.


"It seems in Smith (about to start its season) far more sim teams than normal have 6 or more walk-ons. Actually, it seems like just about every sim that had a LOT of open scholarships now has at least half their team occupied by walk-ons. This is something that happened to 2 sims in my conference (which stinks obviously because I have to play these RPI/Projection Report killers), so I looked around a little and it appears this is a common problem. It's absurd how many teams have total overall ratings of under 400 now. Has something changed in the sim recruiting logic lately that makes them take all these walk-ons? It's clearly not good for the game if this continues."


I looked through about half the DIII conferences in that world and this was clearly a rampant problem. Sim after Sim after Sim with 5,6,7,8... walk-ons. Question is, anyone else who just finished recruiting see a similar problem. If this continues, the problems are obvious. And if this is the current Sim logic to recruiting, all these walk-ons would just be replaced by more walk-ons. It would become devastating to play in a conference not majority human run. Anyone else notice the same problem in other worlds that recently recruited?

Wow, that's very bizarre.

Shortly after the engine change this happened in Naismith...roughly 1/3 of the Sim teams at D3 carried 4+ walkons for a season and then the trend gradually faded and 2 seasons later the problem had solved itself for the most part.  I was told nothing appeared out of the ordinary to be causing it...I'm still not sure I buy that. 

I'll keep an eye on Iba, which is just going into signing phase, and see how things look. Totally agree that it is not good for the game.

I've always wondered why, at the end of signings, the Sim teams don't scoop up most of the players left who didn't get signed.  Granted, they aren't very good (obviously, or they would have been signed), but they've GOT to be better than the walk-ons the Sims get stuck with.

The ONLY positive I can see with Simmy taking on all the walk-ons is if a human coach decides to try a rebuild, they'll have plenty of open schollies right off the bat instead of all those leftover players who couldn't find a home.  I'm sure most coaches would rather have the open spots than a roster full of garbage.  Of course, since most of the worlds have a lack of human coaches, I don't think you'd run into that problem too often.  And even if a coach did pick up a team full of leftovers, he could always cut a couple for a season or two to get them off the roster anyway.  Seems like an easy fix with not much of a downside, if at all.

Just make the walkons be the players that nobody scoops up and that aren't going to go JUCO.  On all teams, human or otherwise.  There are going to be very few totally awesome gems in the rough that are going to be left after all the recruiting is done and the guys have gone juco ...

Just looked at sim teams in D3 tark in my conference and some had 2 walkons, a few had 4 and one had 6... I didn't realize that until now, definitely needs to be changed

Posted by arssanguinus on 6/19/2012 10:31:00 PM (view original):
Just make the walkons be the players that nobody scoops up and that aren't going to go JUCO.  On all teams, human or otherwise.  There are going to be very few totally awesome gems in the rough that are going to be left after all the recruiting is done and the guys have gone juco ...

Umm, that's pretty much what I said minus the human team part.  I don't think those teams (the human coached ones) should get the extra slots filled.  If they can't recruit properly, that's their fault.  And what about teams that intentionally want to leave spots open for walk-ons to get the extra money for the following season?  Kinda throws a small monkey wrench into those plans, no?  Just the Sim teams would be sufficient, I think.

Posted by emy1013 on 6/19/2012 11:07:00 PM (view original):

Posted by arssanguinus on 6/19/2012 10:31:00 PM (view original):
Just make the walkons be the players that nobody scoops up and that aren't going to go JUCO.  On all teams, human or otherwise.  There are going to be very few totally awesome gems in the rough that are going to be left after all the recruiting is done and the guys have gone juco ...

Umm, that's pretty much what I said minus the human team part.  I don't think those teams (the human coached ones) should get the extra slots filled.  If they can't recruit properly, that's their fault.  And what about teams that intentionally want to leave spots open for walk-ons to get the extra money for the following season?  Kinda throws a small monkey wrench into those plans, no?  Just the Sim teams would be sufficient, I think.

I think he meant take the remaining players and put them on the SIM teams as the walk-ons rather than randomly generating some 325 rated player as the walk-on

Posted by ryrun on 6/19/2012 11:53:00 PM (view original):

Posted by emy1013 on 6/19/2012 11:07:00 PM (view original):

Posted by arssanguinus on 6/19/2012 10:31:00 PM (view original):
Just make the walkons be the players that nobody scoops up and that aren't going to go JUCO.  On all teams, human or otherwise.  There are going to be very few totally awesome gems in the rough that are going to be left after all the recruiting is done and the guys have gone juco ...

Umm, that's pretty much what I said minus the human team part.  I don't think those teams (the human coached ones) should get the extra slots filled.  If they can't recruit properly, that's their fault.  And what about teams that intentionally want to leave spots open for walk-ons to get the extra money for the following season?  Kinda throws a small monkey wrench into those plans, no?  Just the Sim teams would be sufficient, I think.

I think he meant take the remaining players and put them on the SIM teams as the walk-ons rather than randomly generating some 325 rated player as the walk-on

Umm, yes, again that's pretty much what I said in my original post.  I'm agreeing here, just saying that the idea had already been proposed earlier in the thread. 

Only difference is, he's including human teams as well as Sim teams, which I don't believe to be a good idea.  We're all pretty much on the same sheet of music here, just the slight difference about what to do with human coached teams with walk-ons.