The suggestions forum seems to have died a quiet death, so I'm putting these here in the hope they get seen.

This list of suggestions/improvements is intended to be one with which everyone can agree, so you won't see me mention the need to get rid of FCP as a base D or my desperate desire to be able to play a zone box-and-1 with a designated defender. I say that not to stifle discussion of the suggestions below, but instead to try and keep any discussion on these simple suggestions, in the hope seble can actually implement them in the near future. If you agree with one or all of them (or think they need tweaking), please comment (even if only to say "+1") so seble can get a sense of whether these suggestions would be widely welcomed.

1) Film Study. To my knowledge, the general idea of Film Study was introduced over two years ago by Rails in this thread. Essentially, Film Study would be an additional category in the individual improvement plans (like study hall or conditioning) but instead of helping a player's GPA or a particular rating, minutes allocated to Film Study would help develop a player's IQ. Ideally, there could be a FSO (for offense) and a FSD (for defense) category. While I do not do any programming, I believe this could be implemented without much trouble, given the currently variable rates at which players learn offensive and defensive sets.

The benefits are numerous: for transfers who played a different O/D at their prior school, coaches would have the opportunity to allocate minutes to Film Study (at the expense of something else) in order to get transfers up to speed more quickly. Similarly, if you have a freshman to whom you have promised minutes, the coach would have the opportunity to devote additional minutes early in the season to Film Study to get the freshman to a passable IQ more quickly. Very often, particularly with a RS season, players will hit their maxes in all of their cores (and sometimes all of their ratings), without reaching A+ in IQ. Currently, minutes are often dumped into Conditioning or Study Hall, so you end up with players who do nothing but run laps and study, neither of which (in some instances) helps them on the court. With Film Study, those players would still be doing something useful.

The drawbacks are limited: you would add a small additional amount of complexity to the game, but even brand new owners should be able to grasp the concept, particularly since it has a well-established real-world parallel.

2) Notes. Notes already exist in other WhatIfSports dynasty games. Essentially, there is a tab created on a player profile that allows you to type in your own notes on a player. This has been suggested many times over the years, and on at least one occasion - two years ago - seble has indicated that he would "put it on the list" of coming improvements. Unfortunately, it has yet to happen, and I fear the list has been lost.

3) When game is out of reach, give more time to underclassmen. Under the team game plan, we currently have the option to play backups when the game is out of reach. Unfortunately, the utility of this is limited for those of us who use promises or who would prefer to give younger players starts to help boost WE. A check box allowing more time to underclassmen in blowouts would allow coaches the opportunity to maximize player development of young scholarship players, regardless of whether they were starters or backups on the depth chart. If you didn't want the younger players playing more in blowouts, you could leave the box unchecked and/or (in the case of walk-ons) leave them off the depth chart entirely. You could also just have it apply to scholarship players, so if you had a walk-on on the depth chart for emergency purposes, he still wouldn't be impacted by this setting in blowouts.

Any Feedback?

1. I like film study, particularly if it means you can reduce the amount of time you put into team O/D practice, with the difference given to individual players.  Some need more, some need less.  My A+/A+ guy probably doesn't need the same amount of O/D as my freshman.

2. Seems easy and obvious.

3. Seems easy and forehead-slapping-obvious.  Excellent.

Sorry, I'd put these 3 ideas way down on the improvement list.

newer, so not sure how much weight my reply will have to devs, but:

1. +1, might be a lot of coding relating to the 130 total for all practice plan parts.  Is the total now 140, other spots in code affected, etc.  But I do like the idea

2.  +1, easy (well, easier, esp if already in other games)

3.  Maybe, it starts out as a nice idea, but then you add multiple complexities to it.  I'm willing to bet the backups option is just "anyone not listed #1" whereas filtering by underclassmen (What about RS), walk-on, transfer that's a Jr but doesn't know system, etc, would probably be much more complex.


I like the ideas, but 1 and 3 could have a lot of code involved (coming from a programmer).

allow us to enter recruiting actions prior to the first cycle of recruiting - nothing would happen until 6-8 ET, but let us enter them during say the prior 10 hours to reduce the crunch in that narrow window

Posted by fd343ny on 9/7/2012 4:04:00 PM (view original):
allow us to enter recruiting actions prior to the first cycle of recruiting - nothing would happen until 6-8 ET, but let us enter them during say the prior 10 hours to reduce the crunch in that narrow window

+1 million

i dont know how this has yet to be done... its insane, really.  not like it hasnt been brought up near a hundred times...

Posted by zbrent716 on 9/7/2012 4:17:00 PM (view original):
The suggestions forum seems to have died a quiet death, so I'm putting these here in the hope they get seen.

This list of suggestions/improvements is intended to be one with which everyone can agree, so you won't see me mention the need to get rid of FCP as a base D or my desperate desire to be able to play a zone box-and-1 with a designated defender. I say that not to stifle discussion of the suggestions below, but instead to try and keep any discussion on these simple suggestions, in the hope seble can actually implement them in the near future. If you agree with one or all of them (or think they need tweaking), please comment (even if only to say "+1") so seble can get a sense of whether these suggestions would be widely welcomed.

1) Film Study. To my knowledge, the general idea of Film Study was introduced over two years ago by Rails in this thread. Essentially, Film Study would be an additional category in the individual improvement plans (like study hall or conditioning) but instead of helping a player's GPA or a particular rating, minutes allocated to Film Study would help develop a player's IQ. Ideally, there could be a FSO (for offense) and a FSD (for defense) category. While I do not do any programming, I believe this could be implemented without much trouble, given the currently variable rates at which players learn offensive and defensive sets.

The benefits are numerous: for transfers who played a different O/D at their prior school, coaches would have the opportunity to allocate minutes to Film Study (at the expense of something else) in order to get transfers up to speed more quickly. Similarly, if you have a freshman to whom you have promised minutes, the coach would have the opportunity to devote additional minutes early in the season to Film Study to get the freshman to a passable IQ more quickly. Very often, particularly with a RS season, players will hit their maxes in all of their cores (and sometimes all of their ratings), without reaching A+ in IQ. Currently, minutes are often dumped into Conditioning or Study Hall, so you end up with players who do nothing but run laps and study, neither of which (in some instances) helps them on the court. With Film Study, those players would still be doing something useful.

The drawbacks are limited: you would add a small additional amount of complexity to the game, but even brand new owners should be able to grasp the concept, particularly since it has a well-established real-world parallel.

2) Notes. Notes already exist in other WhatIfSports dynasty games. Essentially, there is a tab created on a player profile that allows you to type in your own notes on a player. This has been suggested many times over the years, and on at least one occasion - two years ago - seble has indicated that he would "put it on the list" of coming improvements. Unfortunately, it has yet to happen, and I fear the list has been lost.

3) When game is out of reach, give more time to underclassmen. Under the team game plan, we currently have the option to play backups when the game is out of reach. Unfortunately, the utility of this is limited for those of us who use promises or who would prefer to give younger players starts to help boost WE. A check box allowing more time to underclassmen in blowouts would allow coaches the opportunity to maximize player development of young scholarship players, regardless of whether they were starters or backups on the depth chart. If you didn't want the younger players playing more in blowouts, you could leave the box unchecked and/or (in the case of walk-ons) leave them off the depth chart entirely. You could also just have it apply to scholarship players, so if you had a walk-on on the depth chart for emergency purposes, he still wouldn't be impacted by this setting in blowouts.

Any Feedback?

+1, I like them all.

Instead of only having career records for a team, I would like to see the single-season records for those same statistics

#2 is the only one that clearly fits the title of this thread.  I think there's a way to implement #3, but it's not something you could do in about 20 minutes, like #2.

Not necessarily opposed to the idea of film study, but just to play devil's advocate, I'll throw out one potential drawback that wasn't mentioned: At D1, IMO, this would make the elite schools even more dominant than they already are. Teams that are recruiting 700+ rated players really don't need to put many practice minutes in to begin with, as the players are already well-developed from a ratings perspective. Allowing them to speed up the IQ process will dramatically lessen the blow of losing players to EE, or taking on highly-rated JUCOS. They'll be able to completely re-load, without missing a beat, or really having any downside to losing players early.

#1:  I've always thought the game should tie SH and collegiate GPA into how quickly they improve their O/D IQs.  As it stands, SH is only used for eligibility, right?

Posted by darnoc29099 on 9/7/2012 10:14:00 PM (view original):
#1:  I've always thought the game should tie SH and collegiate GPA into how quickly they improve their O/D IQs.  As it stands, SH is only used for eligibility, right?

Not to be a smartass, but how does my freshman's grade in Psych 101 relate in any way to how fast he learns my team's offense?

1. Very good.
2. Good.
3. Excellent.
4. Addon to topic for recruiting input before 6PM cycle. Excellent.  Extremely popular. I have never seen anyone disagree with this. 

Posted by dcy0827 on 9/7/2012 10:18:00 PM (view original):

Posted by darnoc29099 on 9/7/2012 10:14:00 PM (view original):
#1:  I've always thought the game should tie SH and collegiate GPA into how quickly they improve their O/D IQs.  As it stands, SH is only used for eligibility, right?

Not to be a smartass, but how does my freshman's grade in Psych 101 relate in any way to how fast he learns my team's offense?

It doesn't...and I see what you're saying.  I just feel like the SH category, as it stands, is just something to throw 3 minutes of practice time towards and serves no other purpose.  You put minutes into the other categories to see gains.  You put minutes into SH to prevent a loss...just seems like the oddball out.

Posted by darnoc29099 on 9/7/2012 10:31:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dcy0827 on 9/7/2012 10:18:00 PM (view original):

Posted by darnoc29099 on 9/7/2012 10:14:00 PM (view original):
#1:  I've always thought the game should tie SH and collegiate GPA into how quickly they improve their O/D IQs.  As it stands, SH is only used for eligibility, right?

Not to be a smartass, but how does my freshman's grade in Psych 101 relate in any way to how fast he learns my team's offense?

It doesn't...and I see what you're saying.  I just feel like the SH category, as it stands, is just something to throw 3 minutes of practice time towards and serves no other purpose.  You put minutes into the other categories to see gains.  You put minutes into SH to prevent a loss...just seems like the oddball out.

To be perfectly honest, it wouldn't break my heart if they did away with grades altogether.