Fellas, hope everyone is doing well. Quick question - what are the factors that determine AP needed to unlock a given recruit? I have operated under the assumption that its a combination of Division, Ranking (if applicable - I'd think only D1 players have this factor if it exists), Preference Alignment (with certain preferences having a bigger impact), and then Juco/HS (Juco being easier to unlock). On top of that, wondering if there is some sort of random factor built-in to this calculation as well.

For context, I'm trying to increase my understanding of which preferences are most important and to what scale. I can tell (& have read) not all preferences were created equal, and if the experts can point to discrete factors that build into an AP -> Unlock calculation, I think that would help me think about this more critically. The greater the "randomness" factor, the more difficult this becomes of course, so I might be chasing my tail here. I also plan to look at data from recruiting battles to help myself understand it, that data just takes longer to collect!

Any thoughts or tangential advice is appreciated - I've had a few spells with HD 3.0 but feel miles behind everyone on mastering it and hope to continue to improve.

Hi RedsoxRooter, i think Prefeences is a huge factor in unlocking recruiting actions (with division and success being factors as well). For a D2 team, a D1 recruit with bad preferences becomes nearly impossible to really pursue-- sometimes 250-300+ APs are needed just to unlock a schollie.

Curious here, I’ve seen it mentioned by someone, I think it was cubcub, that Very Close to home is worth 5x the value as other preferences. If that's the case, do we know exactly what those multipliers are, or is it a guessing game?

And also, I read that the difference between 25 minutes promised and 20 is worth 3 HVs?? Is that right?

Other people can chime in on the "effort" calculation towards the signing of a recruit, but I can tell you more about the straight away AP to unlock scholarship offer piece. I've gotten comfortable that the tiers are somewhere along:

Tier one (sets the baseline): Distance, Recruit Total attributes, Recruit ranking, Recruit division, Off/Def sets (not style, provides small bonus)
Tier two (4-5x): Coach longevity
Tier three(1-2x): Offense, Defense, Strong Conference
Tier four(basically worthless): Wants success, Wants to play, Play style

This is for the initial AP to get to a scholarship offer. Once you do that, things can amplify and the unlocking other offers can come quicker. I haven't really studied that part, but it feels that's the case.

I'd be curious on the actual signing part weights.

I'm confused..... did the guy above mean that "wants success" preferences is useless???? I know that none of us can really know for certain. But if I had to tier the importance of preferences, I usually look at it like......

Tier 1 - success, distance, wants to play
tier 2 - long term coach (by itself)
tier 3 - play styles/tempos
Tier 4 - offense/defense sets

I'm curious as to what would lead us to believe that success preferences is useless? That's one perspective I haven't heard yet

Posted by tmacfan12 on 1/26/2022 5:04:00 PM (view original):
Curious here, I’ve seen it mentioned by someone, I think it was cubcub, that Very Close to home is worth 5x the value as other preferences. If that's the case, do we know exactly what those multipliers are, or is it a guessing game?

And also, I read that the difference between 25 minutes promised and 20 is worth 3 HVs?? Is that right?

Multipliers are a guessing game.

The "20 min promised compared to 25 minutes promised, equals about 3 HV difference" thing is way too high of an estimation tho. I mentioned here in the forums at some point, that for simplicity purposes only, I said I view promises as follows......
promised start = roughly 5 HV
25 min = roughly 4 HV
20 min = roughly 3 HV
15 min = roughly 2 HV

Of course it's a big difference if the player has the wants to play preference or not. But I used those just as a basic value. But others (including cubcub who you mentioned) felt that was way too heavy. And I'm sure they're correct. But none of us really KNOW

With a play preference, 25 minutes could have a large impact if offered early, right? I'm thinking personally for myself at D2 right now... If I have a main target and I put 80 AP into him for 10 plus recruiting cycles, that's an extra multiplier in my favor in what is a tier 1 preference, what kind of difference would that make long term?

Topdogg, I think *your tiers are probably fairly accurate for the impact of our AP towards signing a guy. My point was in determining how many AP it will take to unlock the scholarship offer, I haven't found much correlation with the wants to play preference. You also have to remember, you can't unlock promise minutes before unlocking scholarship offer. I'm sure if you could, it would change how quickly you could offer the scholarship. The wants to play preference starts as either neutral or N/A. I think it's more of a multiplier as opposed to a set baseline (like distance and total attributes) that comes into play for the signing. Here's an example of my last run chasing DI recruits from a DII team. I have a formula that I use to produce my expected AP to get to a scholarship offer and tend to get close directionally:

OVR	Rank	Miles	Wants to Play	Distance	Wants Success	Play Style	Off	Def	Strong Conference	Coach Long	xAP	Actual AP
544	159	107	Neutral	Very Good	Good	-	-	Very Good	-	Good	37.2	40.0
566	51	248	Neutral	-	-	Good	Neutral	-	-	-	112.2	115.0
556	119	67	-	Very Good	Good	-	Very Good	Neutral	Neutral	Good	46.9	50.0
598	41	290	Neutral	Good	Good	-	Neutral	Neutral	-	-	188.1	200.0

Posted by tmacfan12 on 1/27/2022 9:48:00 AM (view original):
With a play preference, 25 minutes could have a large impact if offered early, right? I'm thinking personally for myself at D2 right now... If I have a main target and I put 80 AP into him for 10 plus recruiting cycles, that's an extra multiplier in my favor in what is a tier 1 preference, what kind of difference would that make long term?

So, to answer your first question - yes. The earlier you offer those minutes to a play preference, the earlier the multiplier is applied to your investing efforts (AP, HVs, CVs). As for the difference, it's not going to make or break a recruiting battle normally but with the percentage system of rolls, every point counts for sure and I'd speculate it could help a few percentage points in a big battle.

Just to clarify one quick thing about your initial question. From what I've learned about the play preference, 'very good' = 'very good' and there are no varying levels of 'very good'. If you offer 10 minutes, you get good. If you offer 15 minutes, you get very good. If you offer 20 or 25 minutes, you still only get very good. Now that's not to say 15 minutes = 25 minutes in terms of recruiting efforts but, from what I've gathered, you aren't getting any more benefit from a multiplier on your efforts. Just the standard boost from offering 25 minutes vs. 15 minutes. Additionally, offering a start to those types of players have no impact on their playing time preference multiplier.

Anyone could feel free to correct me since I'm less familiar than most on the board.

Posted by upsetcity on 1/28/2022 10:18:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tmacfan12 on 1/27/2022 9:48:00 AM (view original):
With a play preference, 25 minutes could have a large impact if offered early, right? I'm thinking personally for myself at D2 right now... If I have a main target and I put 80 AP into him for 10 plus recruiting cycles, that's an extra multiplier in my favor in what is a tier 1 preference, what kind of difference would that make long term?

So, to answer your first question - yes. The earlier you offer those minutes to a play preference, the earlier the multiplier is applied to your investing efforts (AP, HVs, CVs). As for the difference, it's not going to make or break a recruiting battle normally but with the percentage system of rolls, every point counts for sure and I'd speculate it could help a few percentage points in a big battle.

Just to clarify one quick thing about your initial question. From what I've learned about the play preference, 'very good' = 'very good' and there are no varying levels of 'very good'. If you offer 10 minutes, you get good. If you offer 15 minutes, you get very good. If you offer 20 or 25 minutes, you still only get very good. Now that's not to say 15 minutes = 25 minutes in terms of recruiting efforts but, from what I've gathered, you aren't getting any more benefit from a multiplier on your efforts. Just the standard boost from offering 25 minutes vs. 15 minutes. Additionally, offering a start to those types of players have no impact on their playing time preference multiplier.

Anyone could feel free to correct me since I'm less familiar than most on the board.

Aren't preferences like prestige though? I might be completely wrong but I thought I read they were the same in that there is a grade (A+, A, etc.) for prestige and a preference (very good, good, etc.) for preferences shown to us, but that is just a range of numbers and there is an actual hard number/multiplier behind it.

i dont absolutely know the answer here but i can't imagine that all very goods are equal. i believe i have been told by someone trustworthy that seble said there are ranges for preferences just like anything else. not positive though.

just to add two cents, i never looked closely at the preference impact on unlocking. but i did look at the effort for unlocking for all the different stuff (except cv, because you can't). its not that hard to get more or less exact values for all that stuff, so i did, basically right when i got to 3.0. and i determined that almost certainly, the unlocking effort from actions and the recruiting effort from actions was made different by seble perhaps to add flavor or perhaps to stop someone like me from doing what i was doing.

i also got the impression at the time, that recruiting preferences for unlocking probably also did not match actual effort. it seemed like the preferences for unlocking were more important overall but i did not actually study that, i just sort of, had one eye in that direction on occasion.

what is said here i think is interesting, if wants success has no or almost no bearing on unlocking, that would be cool in my book, because that would more or less 'prove' that unlocking value from preferences and recruiting value from preferences had no bearing on each other. folks have said to me, 'preferences make a big impact on unlocking ships, so they must be valuable in recruiting, too'. i'm not passing judgement on the second half of that statement, but i think the causality is wrong.

Posted by gillispie on 1/29/2022 2:52:00 PM (view original):
i dont absolutely know the answer here but i can't imagine that all very goods are equal. i believe i have been told by someone trustworthy that seble said there are ranges for preferences just like anything else. not positive though.

Weird you’re saying this since I was almost sure it was you who had suggested the opposite. I suppose there goes my source lol.

Posted by upsetcity on 1/29/2022 6:21:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie on 1/29/2022 2:52:00 PM (view original):
i dont absolutely know the answer here but i can't imagine that all very goods are equal. i believe i have been told by someone trustworthy that seble said there are ranges for preferences just like anything else. not positive though.

Weird you’re saying this since I was almost sure it was you who had suggested the opposite. I suppose there goes my source lol.

I've been searching past forum discussions for answers to different questions I have and I swear I thought it was you who said that the difference between 25-20 minutes promised was significant so there went my source with that as well lol

Posted by gillispie on 1/29/2022 2:52:00 PM (view original):
i dont absolutely know the answer here but i can't imagine that all very goods are equal. i believe i have been told by someone trustworthy that seble said there are ranges for preferences just like anything else. not positive though.

It might have been me, and this is definitely true. All the preferences have ranges within each category, even sets I think (though this is tricky, and CS - I think it was adlorenz when I asked - has been evasive on this point. Not all games during the season move the meter, they stop at some point kind of early on, and *probably* pick up again later, though I can’t say for sure because I haven’t set up a control for it or anything). 15 promised minutes is not the same as 25 minutes, and 5 miles from home is not the same as 195 miles, though they both show up as “very good” for players with those respective preferences. Likewise, 83 pp100 possessions is a bit different than 92.

No one can say for sure to what extent certain preferences matter more than others, though many of us have developed hunches. This information was always kept very tightly guarded, to my knowledge. What we can say for certain though is that some of the preferences lend themselves to larger discrepancies, and therefore you can find bigger advantages. With sets, for example, you can only ever be as bad as neutral, so the advantage is really never that large. Distance, by comparison, can be as wide as the continent. Play styles can be too, though they tend not to be, because human controlled teams tend to end up not so far apart from one another there to make enormous differences (some extreme perimeter, paint, and fast tempo teams excepted). Coach longevity is capped at 20 seasons (I think) which limits its impact ceiling. And since few human coaches linger in sim dominated conferences, the strong conference preference mostly impacts battles with sims.

That leaves distance and success as the highest impact preferences (apart from minutes, which is a different kind of animal altogether), which is exactly what many of us have experienced. Now whether and to what extent that is boosted by coding, I don’t know.