Posted by MikeT23 on 7/14/2015 6:23:00 PM (view original):
The ONLY way to make ADV relevant is to determine the projections of all prospects. No one liked that idea but that will be the simplest way to make it useful. I expect most owners would bump ADV up and drop the draft or IFA instead of trying to do both.
Not the ONLY way. If you radically vary the development patterns of prospects it would make ADV relevant for most owners. You would need to make huge changes, including all of:
1) some players making large improvements at all ages up until 27 or even 28;
2) some players making large improvements in their 7th or 8th year in the pros;
3) some players declining and then improving, or at least stagnating and improving;
4) some players plateauing and improving, and others plateauing permanently very young;
5) some players declining from age 23 or so
etc. The point is to make it so that when you look at the current ratings of a 19-23 year old player, regardless of pro experience, you have a greatly decreased clue what the hell he's going to become if you don't have money in ADV, and a somewhat decreased clue for 24-26 year olds.
That's not perfect; some owners will still run zero ADV and not trade for anyone under the age of 26 or so, because most players would still have to have fairly stable ratings at age 26. But it would make ADV do what it was originally supposed to do.
I'm not saying this is any better than Mike's proposal, and I'll concede that Mike's is easier to program. But it is in my opinion a viable alternative, and one I would enjoy more. Furthermore, it blows up the incentive to copy, paste, and store ratings periodically, which is a thing I think should be blown up; in Mike's system you would still be able to trade for young players confidently if you knew their historical ratings because you had them in an excel spreadsheet. (Mike, I know you think that's crazy to do-- but there are plenty of crazy people who play this game... is it any crazier than going 49-113 for four consecutive seasons to get good draft picks?)