ok, going to try this again (lost the entire post when i was almost done yesterday at lunch, lost over an hour, brutal!). at the time, i hadn't seen the recruiting post - which i haven't fully processed yet. so i am pretty much going to just respond to the scouting threads, and will pick up the recruiting one later, there was just too much already, to work that in.
i wanted to wait to reply to this all, because there is SO much to think about, i didn't want to rush to judgement. its been interesting reading all the comments, a lot of very key points have been raised already, glad to see so many folks engaged, instead of the conversation just being dominated by a few (another reason i waited to comment). anyway, have some new comments, and also, have to hit some of the old ones that haven't fully be resolved - just too fundamental and important not to!
- first off, i think the idea of enhancing scouting is an interesting one. generally, what seble has laid out could be fun. i know a lot of people are feeling fairly anti-change in general (at least for overhauls), and also, that people want other stuff at higher priority. but, i do think we have to keep an open mind, seble has done some good work on HD in the past, and this could potentially be fun. the implementation is going to make all the difference, as is usually the case. if done well, the scouting update has the potential to add another layer to recruiting, without significantly impacting the mechanics of actual recruiting (ignoring the new recruiting thread for now). i don't think its necessary for it to be a huge time sink - it just depends. we will see.
- second, at a theoretical level, i REALLY welcome scouting enhancement. before FSS/potential, all money was spent on actual recruiting. one of the greatest parts of that change, IMO, was to create an element of trade off in recruiting - you could spend money scouting, or for battles. a lot of coaches don't do much scouting, but a lot of us do. its not unusual for a low d1 or lower team of mine, to spend upwards of 1 scholarship on scouting (FSS + scouting visits). spending 20k in d1 on scouting instead of using it for battles, thats a major strategic tradeoff, and allows for variation in recruiting strategy along a new dimension. the fundamental trade off of spending money to find good players, versus recruit them, is very appealing to me, conceptually. however, as of right now, it seems the budgets are actually being totally separated. i think this is a really bad idea. it actually takes us a step back, before the potential era. the only thing that has happened in this game, to really take us away from a pure auction style, is the introduction of potential, and with it, FSS and using evals to find high/highs. seble, you seem to want to deviate from auction style - so deviate - the only other option talked about is to create a lot of random personalities, which can have their place, but you can only ride that horse so far. this update could really do a lot more for recruiting strategy, if the budgets were somehow related - it can still be 2 budgets if necessary - just allow coaches to "funnel" some of it into recruiting, converting at a reduced percentage. maybe you only get 20%, that would still be fine, the number is less important than the balance. today, its very possible for the deviation between a coach who is light on scouting, versus a coach who is heavy on scouting, to exceed the cost of one scholarship. that is a good rule of thumb, for what should be targeted in this scouting update.
- the biggest issue i see (reminder: this does not take into account recruiting thread), is the giant ripple effects being discussed here. in general, making a major functional update is one thing - having giant ripples that force major changes in huge areas of the game, as part of that - that is another thing altogether. its critical that the scope of this update stays in check. most particularly, what started as a scouting update, has trickled into the recruiting schedule, dropdown/pulldown reform, and d1 recruiting balance (through the post season money elimination). this is such a wide array of topics, its really too much to squeeze into one update. frankly, its too much to even discuss in a manageable way. there is SO MUCH to discuss on those topics, its really not feasible for us to constructively tackle them all in the same thread. as these other topics have been discussed, huge issues have arisen - and we haven't gotten very deep into it at all - virtually nothing has been said about the dropdown/pulldown reform. i want to tackle each of these topics individually - but my general comment is this - its just too much, its not too much to do ever, but its too much to try to rush into 1 update. theres a great deal of subtle balancing required in touching any of these - to do them all together simply takes on too much risk. during the new engine rewrite, i made a similar appeal, and seble, you rejected it - i thought it was too much to include a total engine rewrite, with substantial sim engine / game balancing, and a recruit generation overhaul. at the time, you did have a good reason for refusing me - there was a lot of clamor for change, and you said a simple rewrite, with no functional change, would not appease people. thats a fair point. this is a very different situation - its major functional change on top of major functional change. there is way more than is required to hit "major functional update" status.
in gaming in general, its important to keep the scope of releases in check - existing users tend to gauge a release not by the ratio of good to bad, but rather by the total quantity of bad. the reason is that the pain is realized immediately, in most cases - where as the good generally requires adaptation, people need to adjust their strategy and approach, to learn the new elements and start to reap their benefits. for this reason, its critical to limit the amount of "bad" in a release - and touching 5 major areas of the game is just way too risky, from that standpoint. consider the new engine release - objectively, trying to remove my own bias - the engine rewrite itself was generally a success - there were some bugs (especially in recruiting), but it wasnt that bad. the game balancing issues generally went well - lp players were made more viable, addressing a specific pain point, and the ratings and fatigue changes brought press back into balance with man defense. granted - the lp change, and the fatigue change, both required tweaks - the original release over compensated, and less the game balance in poor shape. but upon correction, those are generally great changes, some of your finest work. but do people talk about how successful you were, in that release, for the reasons I just described? no, they don't - because it was bundled with recruiting generation overhaul, which was a big problem, and caused roughly 1 in 3 d1 teams to be dropped. the changes overshot the mark, as is so often the case - and a rebalance was needed. because you took on so much, you only could rebalance some of the issues you had in the release. the ones you rebalanced ended up being great changes - the one you didn't, remains arguably the most catastrophic change in HD history.
this update is going to be huge, even if you adjust it for the sake of all those looking for a downsize. there is going to be good in the update, and there is going to be bad. and the bad parts are going to require rebalancing afterwards, to maintain sanity and all that good stuff - its just a fact. i strongly recommend trying to find ways to limit the ripple effects of this scouting change, or at least, trying to break it down into multiple releases. ok, enough of that - now into specifics.
- the dropdown/pulldown rework is probably the most potentially alarming item of everything i've heard. dropdowns/pulldowns are a much loved part of the game, in the olden days, there was near consensus, that dropdowns/pulldowns had saved d2/d3 recruiting. to this day, its the best part, to many folks. a major rework is not required, what specific pain point are you even trying to address? i believe, the answer is none - that its just a ripple effect, from trying to limit scouting to same-division players. it seems to me there are 2 options here. the first, just allow teams to scout multiple divisions, and pay multiple times, or something along those lines. its not ideal, but that pain is not worth redoing a massively important part of the game. alternatively, if you are going to touch dd/pds, here is my recommendation: this basically requires displaying all the players recruitable to (using d2 as an example) a d2 school, in the d2 search. so, what you should do is, for every d2 school, show all the players they could possibly talk to, in the d2 search. do not let them recruit, call, anything, players in the d1 and d3 pools. what you have to add is a clear indicator - who is willing to talk to you immediately, and who is a potential dropdown? that is clear today, and it needs to be going forward. then, basically, keep everything else the same. let a school call those players to find out what the situation is - that set doesn't even have to be a strictly, dropdown set - it could including some immediately recruitable players (say, under 70 miles, if you keep that), and could even include some that you have no chance at, if that helps you. but the requirement is the set of players who show as immediately recruitable, are. then you can call the other players, get the responses like you do today (make those clearer if you like, no objection there). over time, as players drop, send the school a message, and have them show in the immediately recruitable pool, or with the immediately recruitable flag, or whatever. this way, you can get what you want in scouting, without overhauling one of the best parts of the game, a part that people will get really ****** off, if it gets screwed up, in their eyes.
- on the recruiting balance, through post season cash issue - i really feel like we shouldn't even be talking about this, there's just too much. but you are proposing it, so i dont feel right neglecting it. this is a very complex issue. d2 and d3 really benefit, IMO, from post season cash. the negative of being in a power conference in d2/d3 - of having other well coached a+ schools in your area competing with you - clearly outweighs the benefit of having awesome post season cash, compared to just having good post season cash. theres no doubt it makes things harder, being in a star-studded conference like that. i would definitely not look at the post season cash issue as one issue facing all of HD. i see the pain point you are trying to address in d1, but even there, keep in mind the game is fairly balanced today. recruiting is one of the best parts of the game - and d1 recruiting is what makes d1 lovers love d1 more than the rest. its the reason so many folks predominantly or exclusively play d1. there are problems, and pain points, but a careful touch is required. completely removing post season cash is like taking an ax to d1 balance. i would recommend at most halving it, and seeing how that went - meaning, cut it in half in d1, 10k instead of 20k per win - but leave d2/d3 alone, unless you have a case you want to make there about what serious imbalance you are trying to remedy. additionally - about the worst thing that could be done for this game, is to incentivise coaches to be in emptier, not fuller, conferences. frankly, with worlds being so empty, having coaches concentrate in a handful of conference, is what keeps this game alive. super over powered conferences... ok, if you can affect them, without jeopardizing full conferences, thats one thing. but tread with care, its a fine line, and if coaches feel they have a disadvantage, being in a strong conference with nothing to offset the increase in local competition - and they feel they should sacrifice the social benefits and more enjoyable regularly season, for an empty conference and better post season chances - it could have tragic consequences, over the long term. P.S - tweaking the post season cash, thats a small and isolated change, from a development standpoint. if you want to do that, why don't you do it now, or a few months after the scouting - its a REALLY easy one to decouple. may as well take the low hanging fruit - because a lot of the rest of this is really intertwined!
- on the recruiting schedule... its hard to even start, its so huge. its way bigger, in terms of ramifications, than the actual scouting changes suggested themselves. there are major ripple effects - its not just new coaches, but any coach who is new to a school, who now has to wait until season 2 to get their own players! its said that new coaches generally suck anyway - yeah, ok. but they learn by using the sucky players they recruited :) more importantly, many coaches who switch schools do not suck. being able to quickly make a mark on a program is hugely important (really, its almost unfair to even charge people for that first season, if they don't get any of their own players!). additionally, like it or not, EEs are a huge part of this game for a large part of the customer base. anyone who competes in high d1 anywhere views EEs as very significant. having ANY recruiting, before EEs are known, is almost unthinkable. something has to give. the first day i read all the scouting stuff, i was really excited - but i didn't even realize any scheduling meddling was happening with recruiting - i thought scouting was being moved to the regular season, and recruiting was in the post season. i think that would be a fine model, and it would avoid all these pitfalls. at the least, consider making this a 2 phase approach - in phase 1, enhancing scouting, and moving it into the regular season (while allowing coaches to do 100% of scouting during recruiting, if they so choose), and in phase 2, move recruiting into the season, and deal with your mass of issues surrounding jobs, new coaches, and EEs. this allows people to play with the large amount of new functionality, the scouting overhaul, without poisoning that experience with all the unpleasantness surrounding the recruiting schedule change. i don't see why recruiting is being moved, honestly - putting it before jobs or EEs simply cannot be reconciled - you can try to mitigate the negatives - but thats really what you are hoping for. the pain is boring regular seasons, right? with all this work to do scouting, isn't that enough? besides, you hear a lot of coaches here, not wanting to spend all this time. they think the game will become too much effort and that they will have to leave. if you enhance scouting, and make it optional if you do all of recruiting (including scouting) during the old window, in one big push - or to drag scouting out over the whole year - you really cater to both sides. why not let people have their preference on how they want to handle it?
- i had more points about the scouting change itself, but having lost that message i don't recall them all, and this is already long enough. and the problem is - i haven't even really got to talking about the scouting change yet - what this whole thing is supposed to be about! the reason is simple, not to beat a dead horse, but its because WAY too much is getting dragged into an already very substantial update, in a scouting overhaul. i will make this one point, though. i have no problem with the off, def, physical categories. however, an A through F grade... that is so generic. is that going to be the same, across position, and division? or tailored to positions and divisions? the latter would make development much more complex, while the former makes the grades so broad as to be meaningless. what, are all d3 players going to be Fs, maybe Ds if they are lucky? and BCS schools will recruit players who are an A in everything? an A in offense on a scale where an F is a guy in d3 with 40 per and 50 spd, really doesn't mean jack - from a high d1 perspective, it means you aren't ungodly awful at offense - and that's about it! are all guards an F in rebounding, which would hurt their defense? anyway, i think the best answer is to do + and - grades from the get-go. this lets you have enough range to use a constant scale, across divisions and positions, for simplicity - but then not to have the ridiculousness of all d3 players being Fs, etc :) this still allows for enough unknown for the purpose, I think, but you'd have to look at it.
- one more. team planning is a massively important part of this game. if you consider recruiting mechanics and team building/planning to be individual aspects of the game, as i do, then team planning is actually the most important part of the entire game. its very fun and needs to be kept in tact. the level 1 and 2 information are so vague as to be useless from a team planning standpoint. its important that coaches can get a substantial number of players to level 3 and 4, so they can plan their teams with some intention. or hey - link the budgets - so some guys can scout less, battle more, while others do the reverse! also, with respect to the EE issue, EEs possibly declaring after recruiting starts - this is a team planning nightmare. really, its unthinkable. its not uncommon for a high d1 team to expect anywhere from 1 to 3 EEs, which could be 1 guard, 1 big, or heck, 3 guards. how you react to that varies wildly. those are mild cases, the guys who have 7 guys on the board, they are basically shooting blind. its not reasonable and it won't be fun, to recruit in the dark like that. all this scouting stuff could be great, it really could be a fun update, but its critical that team composition planning remains in tact as a major part of this game.
9/16/2015 8:54 PM (edited)