Too many D-1 coaches in comparison to the number of quality recruits. It's becoming more and more luck than strategy based. Try to keep the dice rolls to a minimum. No reason to have 5 teams battling it out. 2 is fine and maybe once in a while 3. Doesn't impact my recruiting either way, at least at the moment.

This is an economic distribution model, set against a college basketball backdrop. Supply and demand changes, and every choice coaches make in response is strategic, based on our evaluation of the available commodities, and tolerance for risk. There is always luck involved, when you have multiplayer games simulating decisions that aren't supposed to be up to us, but that's life, and it wouldn't be realistic (or fun) otherwise.

Imagine real life coaches complaining about elite recruits attracting more than 2 serious programs. Most of those kids have way more than 2 teams pursuing them at a high level, many attract more than a handful. It's not good for the game to suppress competition among coaches, to encourage coaches to back off or sit back when they see bigger fish, and to just try to slot in where they will fit with no friction. This is not supposed to be a draft.

All that said, 5 team battles are still pretty rare in this game, and usually only happen because of the nature of this cycled system, where we all make our decisions at about the same time. It ends up being a big game of chicken some times. I'm sure none of those 5 coaches loves being in a 5-team battle, if they've all invested resources already. But again, that's life sometimes, and it's also how our strategies play out when you end up there.

Posted by shoe3 on 6/29/2023 9:16:00 AM (view original):
This is an economic distribution model, set against a college basketball backdrop. Supply and demand changes, and every choice coaches make in response is strategic, based on our evaluation of the available commodities, and tolerance for risk. There is always luck involved, when you have multiplayer games simulating decisions that aren't supposed to be up to us, but that's life, and it wouldn't be realistic (or fun) otherwise.

Imagine real life coaches complaining about elite recruits attracting more than 2 serious programs. Most of those kids have way more than 2 teams pursuing them at a high level, many attract more than a handful. It's not good for the game to suppress competition among coaches, to encourage coaches to back off or sit back when they see bigger fish, and to just try to slot in where they will fit with no friction. This is not supposed to be a draft.

All that said, 5 team battles are still pretty rare in this game, and usually only happen because of the nature of this cycled system, where we all make our decisions at about the same time. It ends up being a big game of chicken some times. I'm sure none of those 5 coaches loves being in a 5-team battle, if they've all invested resources already. But again, that's life sometimes, and it's also how our strategies play out when you end up there.

That's a fair comparison in a vacuum, but if the Head Coach at Kentucky loses a battle for a 5 star recruit they aren't forced to settle for a 2 star or not fill the spot at all. I would think that most people playing this game are looking for the most realistic simulation of running a college basketball program possible, not a semi accurate economic supply and demand simulation. Recruiting is broken.

Posted by shane182436 on 6/29/2023 11:12:00 AM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 6/29/2023 9:16:00 AM (view original):
This is an economic distribution model, set against a college basketball backdrop. Supply and demand changes, and every choice coaches make in response is strategic, based on our evaluation of the available commodities, and tolerance for risk. There is always luck involved, when you have multiplayer games simulating decisions that aren't supposed to be up to us, but that's life, and it wouldn't be realistic (or fun) otherwise.

Imagine real life coaches complaining about elite recruits attracting more than 2 serious programs. Most of those kids have way more than 2 teams pursuing them at a high level, many attract more than a handful. It's not good for the game to suppress competition among coaches, to encourage coaches to back off or sit back when they see bigger fish, and to just try to slot in where they will fit with no friction. This is not supposed to be a draft.

All that said, 5 team battles are still pretty rare in this game, and usually only happen because of the nature of this cycled system, where we all make our decisions at about the same time. It ends up being a big game of chicken some times. I'm sure none of those 5 coaches loves being in a 5-team battle, if they've all invested resources already. But again, that's life sometimes, and it's also how our strategies play out when you end up there.

That's a fair comparison in a vacuum, but if the Head Coach at Kentucky loses a battle for a 5 star recruit they aren't forced to settle for a 2 star or not fill the spot at all. I would think that most people playing this game are looking for the most realistic simulation of running a college basketball program possible, not a semi accurate economic supply and demand simulation. Recruiting is broken.

Even Coach Cal doesn't have more than a few future NBA players on his roster at a time - because his top recruits always declare after a year or two. Is that what we want? Beyond that, there is one Kentucky in real life. Everyone in HD seems to think they should be able to recruit like that though.

I tend to agree the game should not have been set up as an economic simulation. But it was, and no one seems interested in changing the model. I'd much prefer to play a more realistic college basketball recruiting game, where it's mostly about prestige and finding good preference fits, and the real limiting factor is prioritizing time (attention) and promises and offensive focus/distribution, rather than saving money for dozens of home visit "love bombs" which I've always found just stupid. Scouting could use an overhaul too, as far as that goes, but then you're changing the whole model, and the game will look a *lot* different. I doubt the developers have a real appetite for that at this point.

What we have is fine for what it is, but you need to accept that the system just wants you to make economic choices. That's the game. The "brokenness" of the system in that context is generally just the way a whole lot of users want to play. Coaches get stuck in this mindset of "meta" where they feel like they have to do certain things because everyone else is doing it, and so it has to be the most effective, so I have to do it. There really are a lot of options though.

hi thewizard17

Posted by Napoli on 6/29/2023 10:54:00 PM (view original):
hi thewizard17

Great memories. Thanks for sharing. By chance did you have something to add to the thread? lmao

Shoe the difference is if Kentucky tries to recruit the #110 ranked guy in the country they will certainly get him IRL, while in HD you have to blow half your recruiting budget to hold B- Arkansas Little Rock to moderate if you're lucky...

If you want to go for realism you have to make prestige more important as well then.

I couldn't agree more. I still find this game very fun, but it was significantly more fun before the job change system overwhelmed D1 with coaches.

The devs need to create a new world to address this need.

Posted by shoe3 on 6/29/2023 9:16:00 AM (view original):
This is an economic distribution model, set against a college basketball backdrop. Supply and demand changes, and every choice coaches make in response is strategic, based on our evaluation of the available commodities, and tolerance for risk. There is always luck involved, when you have multiplayer games simulating decisions that aren't supposed to be up to us, but that's life, and it wouldn't be realistic (or fun) otherwise.

Imagine real life coaches complaining about elite recruits attracting more than 2 serious programs. Most of those kids have way more than 2 teams pursuing them at a high level, many attract more than a handful. It's not good for the game to suppress competition among coaches, to encourage coaches to back off or sit back when they see bigger fish, and to just try to slot in where they will fit with no friction. This is not supposed to be a draft.

All that said, 5 team battles are still pretty rare in this game, and usually only happen because of the nature of this cycled system, where we all make our decisions at about the same time. It ends up being a big game of chicken some times. I'm sure none of those 5 coaches loves being in a 5-team battle, if they've all invested resources already. But again, that's life sometimes, and it's also how our strategies play out when you end up there.

The first part of your statement seems somewhat self contradictory. You mention there is always luck involved when you have multiplayer games simulating decisions that aren't supposed to be up to us, but then you go on to say that it wouldn't be realistic, unless I'm taking your words out of context?

I completely understand you can't mirror a real life situation with a simulation game. But what part of deciding where a recruit lands is decided by a dice roll in real life? My argument is recruiting should be a lot more strategy based, especially now you have easily from anywhere between 3-5 teams on a top recruit. It's gotten much more crowded as the D-1 human population has increased, which is why there should be a need to increase the recruit population.

Maybe there aren't 5 teams at VH and H at the end with a particular recruit decides to sign, but I guarantee you there are lot more teams now than ever before that are targeting the top players. It's gotten so bad, it's at the point where high top tier D-1 teams(A and B prestige) are targeting D-2 JUCOs.

I get your point to a degree, it is what it is and adjust your strategy. For instance, don't be an idiot and target a top recruit if you're a B prestige team going up against 3 or 4 other coaches that have a higher prestige. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying the game is failing to adjust and most likely will need to if they want to keep their customers.

If success to a team is 75-80% recruiting and every top recruit is decided on a dice roll now, how can one call this a game of strategy?

Are you suggesting with the current model, assuming all 324 teams were filled by human coaches that keeping the game the way it is would work?

Second part. Exactly! there are way more than 2 teams pursuing the top recruits, maybe as many as 10.Now imagine what a disaster this game would be if 10 teams were chasing a recruit and it was ultimately decided by a roll of the dice?

Posted by cubcub113 on 6/30/2023 10:27:00 AM (view original):
Shoe the difference is if Kentucky tries to recruit the #110 ranked guy in the country they will certainly get him IRL, while in HD you have to blow half your recruiting budget to hold B- Arkansas Little Rock to moderate if you're lucky...

If you want to go for realism you have to make prestige more important as well then.

Well again, even if that was true - and I'm not sure it is, exactly - there is one Kentucky in real life (and it's not like they're getting to the Final Four every year either, right?). There are over a dozen A+ baseline teams in every world, and a dozen more at A+ prestige in each HD world, and all of them plus another couple dozen in each world that WANT to recruit like Kentucky. That's the issue. That's why the system, which is fine for what it is, doesn't work for people. They're all trying to use lemons to make pinot grigio. Just make lemonade, that's what the system is designed for. Real life teams don't get classes filled with 3+-star players, why are we all expecting that?

Posted by thewizard19x on 6/30/2023 11:39:00 AM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 6/29/2023 9:16:00 AM (view original):
This is an economic distribution model, set against a college basketball backdrop. Supply and demand changes, and every choice coaches make in response is strategic, based on our evaluation of the available commodities, and tolerance for risk. There is always luck involved, when you have multiplayer games simulating decisions that aren't supposed to be up to us, but that's life, and it wouldn't be realistic (or fun) otherwise.

Imagine real life coaches complaining about elite recruits attracting more than 2 serious programs. Most of those kids have way more than 2 teams pursuing them at a high level, many attract more than a handful. It's not good for the game to suppress competition among coaches, to encourage coaches to back off or sit back when they see bigger fish, and to just try to slot in where they will fit with no friction. This is not supposed to be a draft.

All that said, 5 team battles are still pretty rare in this game, and usually only happen because of the nature of this cycled system, where we all make our decisions at about the same time. It ends up being a big game of chicken some times. I'm sure none of those 5 coaches loves being in a 5-team battle, if they've all invested resources already. But again, that's life sometimes, and it's also how our strategies play out when you end up there.

The first part of your statement seems somewhat self contradictory. You mention there is always luck involved when you have multiplayer games simulating decisions that aren't supposed to be up to us, but then you go on to say that it wouldn't be realistic, unless I'm taking your words out of context?

I completely understand you can't mirror a real life situation with a simulation game. But what part of deciding where a recruit lands is decided by a dice roll in real life? My argument is recruiting should be a lot more strategy based, especially now you have easily from anywhere between 3-5 teams on a top recruit. It's gotten much more crowded as the D-1 human population has increased, which is why there should be a need to increase the recruit population.

Maybe there aren't 5 teams at VH and H at the end with a particular recruit decides to sign, but I guarantee you there are lot more teams now than ever before that are targeting the top players. It's gotten so bad, it's at the point where high top tier D-1 teams(A and B prestige) are targeting D-2 JUCOs.

I get your point to a degree, it is what it is and adjust your strategy. For instance, don't be an idiot and target a top recruit if you're a B prestige team going up against 3 or 4 other coaches that have a higher prestige. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying the game is failing to adjust and most likely will need to if they want to keep their customers.

If success to a team is 75-80% recruiting and every top recruit is decided on a dice roll now, how can one call this a game of strategy?

Are you suggesting with the current model, assuming all 324 teams were filled by human coaches that keeping the game the way it is would work?

Second part. Exactly! there are way more than 2 teams pursuing the top recruits, maybe as many as 10.Now imagine what a disaster this game would be if 10 teams were chasing a recruit and it was ultimately decided by a roll of the dice?

The "dice roll" simulates a decision that's not up to the coach. There is no other way to realistically effect that outcome in a simulation, other than RNG. If it's just a known-formula puzzle, and coaches can just blunt-force their way to 50.1 to get the win (as in the previous version) that is no longer a college basketball recruiting simulation, because now the decision is not the players. The decision has been forced by the coach, who has manipulated the system to get the outcome they wanted. That's neither realistic, nor fun. That's what I'm saying up top.

Higher populations means that coaches need to be spreading their resources out more *if they are concerned about filling their scholarships*. If they want to only pursue very high quality recruits, they will constantly be walking a high wire, and probably be taking a lot of walk-ons. That should be expected, that's been the game for 6 years now, it's just pronounced now with higher D1 populations.

I think you and I have always had different definitions of the term "strategy", wiz. To me, there is a ton more strategy in recruiting now, and it only increases as populations increase. I think for you, strategy is pretty narrow, and is about finding the one best way, and doing it. To me, that's not strategy at all, but just a puzzle game. A strategy game is much more open - like Crusader Kings, just for example. Lots of viable, competitive strategies to choose from. The more viable strategies to choose from, the better the strategy game. What I hear in these complaints about population though is that the preferred strategy that some folks (perhaps most folks) have liked to use just doesn't work the way it used to, so they want the system to change. To that, my response is always that the user needs to adapt. This is an open world, where we just make choices, and they all have reverberating consequences. That's the strategy.

If worlds filled (they won't, but if they did) all the way to 324 in D1, users would need to adapt, for sure. They would have to scout and recruit a lot differently. That would actually be very good for the game - we are where we are because users are accustomed to very low populations, frankly. And that's really not very healthy. Step one is probably getting used to the idea that no-star players can actually be pretty useful components of championship caliber D1 teams.

In fairness and to correct myself, yes, there is more strategy and competitiveness that is involved with more coaches. However, the process to get there once you're in a battle and the end result/final outcome is less about strategy.

You seem like an extremely intelligent person. I'm just having a hard time why you don't see the connection. But would you agree that:

*A 75-80% or a very high percentage of the game in terms of trying to win a national championship or even just to get to the Sweet 16 is based on recruiting.

*You can't get to that level if you don't have quality/good recruits and at some point you have to battle other teams?

*Due to the fact that there are more coaches, it's much much more harder to find those "diamonds in the rough" so even if you did try to avoid battles against the top recruits, with more coaches, the mid majors are eating up the secondary options.

If say B prestige Kent St is on the #50 player and Kentucky A+ prestige loses out on a couple of battles, the power of APs are way too much that if Kent St. dropped 80 points per cycle, there is no way Kentucky could catch up. However, in real life, if I have a chance to go to Kentucky, I'm holding out on Kent State's offer and waiting.

*There are 78 teams that range from A+ to B-, in Tark, where any of these B range teams with the right preferences can battle an A+ school for a recruit. Way too crowded if you ask me.

I will say I do like the fact that a coach at a low prestige school, a coach that has been there for several years, has the opportunity to move his school up in prestige and makes the game more competitive, instead of having the same schools Duke, Kansas, North Carolina and UCLA win all the time. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to like about 3.0, but I'm not sure when they rolled it out they checked each situation to make sure it would still work i.e more human coaches etc.

If generating more recruits isn't an option, I would suggest eliminate the "high" vs "very high", but that would create another set of circumstances, where it might be too hard for a B or C prestige school to move up.

Let's say hypothetically, I'm on 3 recruits in the Top 100. All 3 recruits 2 teams are battling and effort is 50/50. Why should the luck of the draw decide whether I have a 1/8 chance of either getting all 3 recruits or losing out on all 3 recruits? That could easily be the difference between being a Final 4 team and not making the tournament. (I'm just calling it a dice roll for arguments sake), but it's giving the random generator way too much power in deciding the final outcome, which again, is 75-80% of the game.

However, I do believe increasing the recruiting the population is necessary, because if you are in favor of having 324 D-1 human coaches, there is too big of a gap between the best players and the crap at the bottom of the D-1 barrel.

I think at the very least you have to make the worst D-1 recruits better, a lot better. I don't think it's much to ask to for the worst D-1 guys to get to a 65 rating on average. There are D-3 projected players better than some D-1 players.

Also, due to the number of human coaches at D-1, it would also make it much more harder to recruit for a fastbreak/ and/or fullcourt press team, but in one sense a smart coach would know to eliminate that strategy, but in another, it would near possibly eliminate using that o/d, giving you two less options. The unintended consequences of having a 324 human coaches at D-1 could be disastrous.

When they created 3.0, I'm guessing they didn't take into consideration that this could happen(having this many coaches), but I also really wasn't on as a beta tester before it rolled out, so can't be certain.

I don't really have a horse in this race, just got to Drexel last season and hasn't really impacted my team, at least not yet. Just giving my unbiased opinion.

Wiz:
1. Recruiting is significant; I don't know how you'd quantify it, or why you'd even want to in terms of what part of a national title is due to recruiting, but team building is obviously a big part of success. I will say, getting the right parts together is as important as getting "the best players" you can land. But I won't argue with the fact that recruiting is indeed significant. That's why we're here.

2. Granted. If you lack quality, *relative to the rest of the division* (that is very important, per below), you will have trouble breaking into the top levels, no matter how good your coaching skills are.

3. Here we part ways. There are plenty of recruits. Lots of players who don't even get approached by human coaches can absolutely play on competitive D1 teams, assuming D1 isn't dominated by teams that are loaded with 5 star players. It's all relative, and we're all playing under the same competitive conditions.

If you used to consider 90 the baseline for D1 cores, maybe with all the extra coaches, it has dropped. That doesn't mean the game is broken. Quite the opposite. It's starting to be more functional; because it *shouldn't* be dominated by a handful of teams loaded with only 90-core players. When those teams exist at a program for more than a one-off run, it indicates one of two things, or possibly both. Either the teams around that super-squad are too timid, and are failing to challenge it for recruits, likely because they don't understand the system well, and what is possible; or there is some collusion going on. Either way, it's user gameplay choices driving the dysfunction.

As I've said a lot, this isn't the system I would have designed. I wouldn't use money at all in recruiting (scouting is separate). Everything we use money for should be covered in the recruiting game by the concept of prestige. Recruits should allow you to do single home visits, one at a time, when you've met attention/promises markers, and then do a campus visit when they have an overall considering credit marker reached. Again, no money - the limiting factor is how much attention you want to devote to them and all schools have the same amount, regardless of prestige or scholarships. The attention credit is modified by prestige, promises, and the preference match. Teams with lots of scholarships will lose the $ advantage, but will gain the advantage of having big PT preferences with lots of recruits.

I pitched this a lot even while seble was developing 3.0. But folks are really tied to their scholarship resources. They like their resource management game; they just don't like when other folks use resources in disruptive ways. But that's what competitive economics is all about - disruption.

It is kind of a catch 22 if you ask me. I hated for years how if you had the top prestige schools going for a recruit, still valid somewhat today, the recruit was pretty much theirs and no one else had a chance. The schools with the A prestige almost felt entitled and now it's like hey, why the competition? While I like the fact that a slightly lower prestige school has a chance now, there are simply too many coaches in that prestige range with not enough players to go around. I completely agree it's impossible to field a competitive roster and compete, especially in the power conferences, if you are constantly losing rolls and all of the backup players have multiple user coaches on them also. I enjoy the fact that the top prestige schools do not totally dominate recruiting like in years past, but at the same time there should not be 3, 4, maybe sometimes 5 coaches battling it out for guys all the time.