posted a long time ago by coach billy g:
when you say average/high, i assume you read the dev chat where admin said they were adding 3 levels of detail per level of potential. the release notes just said this feature was added, but failed to give any details. in any case, its not true, no category has 3 levels.
also, on your original post, potential information you are given is never wrong (at least, i am pretty sure its not). sometimes, the practice before the assistant email will push border cases one way or another. however, this doesn't completely explain it - ive had a guy with medium potential get more than 8 minutes of practice for the first practice and show up high, and other coaches have reported this as well. i think the answer is that ratings are floating point values, not integers, i have long believed this and am almost positive it is true. CS has said the assistant emails figure potential the same way as the FSS data, so i am figuring they missed a rounding error - like, the FSS data truncates the difference between max potential and current rating, where as the assistant might round to the nearest integer. or maybe it was a bug they have since fixed. in any case, when the information doesn't line up for me, it has always been a guy right on the border. i've never heard of anybody who has experienced it differently.
i've long held off posting the following information, as it may cross the line of too much information, but a lot of time has passed since potential came out and much of it is common knowledge now. also, the system today sucks, i sent a ticket once i figured it out and seble (i think) agreed the current system was stupid. he said the problem in fixing it was that the wordiness involved in describe potential with a sentence made it difficult to do better. but, he said he was open to the possibility of improving it, possibly by eliminating the wordiness (i assume by just giving the answer). so i think there is a good chance they will change it in the next patch. also, i hope a couple readers will agree and send in a ticket asking for it to be changed, let them know deciphering cryptic messages that are actually unambiguous is really not fun, and taking it away would only make the game better. as a programmer it seems to be a very simple change, especially compared to some of the other stuff they are doing, so it probably only would take a couple tickets to get it in if its not already.
low potential: 0 - 6
medium potential: 6 - 20
high potential: 20 +
note this is measured from the time a player is recruited to the time you get the maxed out email, and there is often a point, maybe even two, left to be gained. i think there might be a little wiggle room about when you get the potential email too.
there are 5 subcategories, low low (0-3 i believe), high low (3-6), med (6-20), low high (0-30ish), high high (30ish +). this is why the system is stupid - the evals are supposed to give you more info, but the 14 point range of medium is undivided, which is potentially huge in a core. but how often will you turn a guy down bc he had 3-6 pts to go instead of 0-3? note on high/high, i once had a guy gain 28 - but that was 72 to 100. i suspect maximums may be allowed to go over 100, to allow more rapid improvement to 100, but current ratings are not allowed to improve past 100. that may not be true though, making high/high 28+, but everybody else ive tracked has been at least 31.
deciphering the messages:
i once was building a complete list of messages, but stopped because the rest i didn't have didn't gain me anything else. low/low, high/low, and medium are all pretty obvious, so ill just give a couple examples, along with the high messages for everything. there is exactly one message per sub category per rating, although a couple months into potential, some of them changed, which is why somebody above mentioned having 2 replies for medium. it threw me off for a while, but seble confirmed there was now just 1 message per category for the 5 categories when i sent my ticket.
low/low:
I don't see how we're going to get any improvement
realistically I think he's tapped out
high/low:
very little room for growth
probably not going to see much improvement
med:
we should be able to improve his endurance with our training program
I think he does have some upside if I fine-tune a couple of things on his release
I definitely think we can correct some fundamental issues to help him improve (this is probably the trickiest medium, its ft%)
here are the high and high/high messages. they aren't always in order but i think its clear which is which when you see both. if anybody is unsure feel free to ask for clarification
ath:
Good athleticism - I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he could improve substantially if he really works at it.
Definitely wasn't the best athlete on the floor - unless I'm an idiot and/or this is the laziest kid ever, we can *dramatically* improve his athleticism.
spd:
with the right diet and conditioning he could be MUCH quicker than he is today
if he works hard at it, we could see *massive* improvement here
reb:
Fantastic rebounding instincts - there's no reason to NOT expect HUGE improvement here.
based on my experience, he can still improve substantially if we work with him and he's willing.
def:
if he's willing to listen, we could really see some major improvement
I really think we could see massive improvement by his Senior year
sb: (i am guessing the first one here no longer exists)
definitely has above average room for growth with the right drills and coaching.
he's shown glimpses of raw ability which make me think he just has *tremendous* room for improvement.
has a LOT of room for growth with the right drills and coaching.
lp:
has a LOT of room for growth with the right drills and coaching
skys the limit
per: (2nd is high/high)
I know this may sound crazy, but I think he has the potential to really improve his shot.
I see such solid fundamentals that with enough practice I don't see why he can't be a *significantly* better shooter than he is today.
bh:
with the right drills and assuming he's willing to put in the time, I see big upside.
he has the raw skills to make me think he has *tremendous* upside.
pass:
I'd like to see him play more, but still, I really think we could see fairly significant improvement.
with more experience I expect to see TREMENDOUS improvement.
sta:
even with that, I think we can really improve upon his conditioning.
with the right diet and drills, I think we can see a *dramatic* change in his conditioning.
ft: (only have the 1, assuming its low/high)
the fundamentals look solid, with time and coaching, he could really show some improvement.
Anyway, I think using evals to get more potential info is a very interesting part of recruiting, its a good trade off. The question of spending money for credit vs information makes recruiting a much more interesting problem, and I think the eval refinement of FSS data is a critical part of that. So I think it really blows that medium potential is not subdivided. And I would love to see 3 sub divisions, so there was more reward for using evals - now, unless the guy has a bunch of high cores, its really only worth it if you have money to blow. If you agree, please take a minute to send a ticket in! If you think about it, it should be really easy to change, so I wouldn't be concerned about it possibly delaying the release.