I kind of like that idea...just gives it more of a realistic feel.

Like Team 1 might scout a dude at A but all other teams scout him at C-D...would take care of the ridiculousness of not seeing some guys that are seen by the general public as potential "superstars" but some teams have a better sense of if that person will really be a superstar or dud.

Posted by bpang1 on 6/6/2011 4:05:00 PM (view original):
Good thoughts all around...I really do think that WIS needs to let us all see at least the guys with 90+ OVR...there is no way you will miss someone like that in the real world even if you have no international scouts and just catch the guy on ESPN.

Like if I was a real life GM and I saw a guy on ESPN being touted as a rare talent...I would at least have his name in my head not to mention have called a few free agent scouts or have sent my guys down to take a look at him.  Its just unfathomable to believe that someone being talked about as "the next big thing" would be unknown to anyone running a team.

How many of these guys are there really, relative to the overall number of international stars in the game?  Lots of your international stars are guys who were signed in their home country as teenagers - by the time you hear anything about them they are already playing in someone's minor league system.  I think you're letting the handful of guys who were big names from the start cloud your perception a bit.

I think there are plenty of improvements to be made to the process, but this I don't see as one of them.

Posted by MikeT23 on 6/6/2011 4:11:00 PM (view original):
It would require a complete overhaul to the engine but, IMO, they should show all IFA to everyone.   All should start at 100k and the projections you see would be based on how much IFA scouting you had budgeted.  That way, you'd see the stud IFA but think he's a HiA replacement.

Of course, then you get into collusion but that solves your immediate problem.

This idea would be good until that geek World Chat's "holy crap did you guys see the 3B IFA? Stud!".  Course that could be said to cause someone to toss 20M at that HiA guy too.

Posted by dmurphy104 on 6/6/2011 3:24:00 PM (view original):

Posted by topoftheworl on 6/6/2011 3:18:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 6/6/2011 1:31:00 PM (view original):
If everyone can see the superstars, the smart owner would budget 1m in IFA and chase the superstars.  

Not sure what you are talking about.  I am not smart and I do this now.  If he has a 3.5 mil or more desired bonus and he isn't a SS I know he's good and go after him.  I may not know why he is good, but his talent isn't in question.

You arent doing it successfully. If you are budgetting $1m in international scouting, your odds are very slim that you will see more than 1 superstar, let alone all of them. You are mostly seeing the guys that no one goes after that do become available to everyone. If everyone sees all the superstars, there is no reason to budget anything in International scouting.

In truth both of the times I was refering to we mid-season replacement situations where they had put $4 mil as their IFA budget.  Still, I was happy with the results.  I am not sure I am wrong with my concept of using the asking price as a cheap way of evaluating IFA talent.  The RF with a 4.5 mil asking price is probably worth having even if my projections are inaccurate.

I've said all along that if the cry is for it to be "realistic", then they need to set a date for signing internationals just like they do in MLB.  Let everyone see all the IFA at once instead of rolling them out throughout the year, right after the draft you have the IFA signing period.  Even if they didn't do the overhaul (which they should do), it would naturally drive down the prices of IFA as those with budgets titled toward that would have to decide which one they wanted, or if they would try and go after more than one, etc.  Wouldn't change much to the process except the timing, but even if you did the overhaul and had everyone see everyone, set the same minimum bid for everyone, added fuzziness of some kind instead of the current state of predictability, and you would make this an extremely interesting part of the game.  But the priginal design was to set scouts in regions of the world and they nixed that because it was too complicated for the average Joe User, so I highly doubt they want to make anythign in the game more complex.

Posted by MikeT23 on 6/6/2011 4:34:00 PM (view original):
Not with my overhaul idea.  But it would require replacing numbers with letters.   A-F in each category.   A might equal 85-100, F might equal 0-20. 

What about question marks?  Say you see a player with projected fielding ratings of 71/?/?/88 .  The more you spend on scouting, the less ?s you'll see.  But going cheap on the scouting means a real roll of the dice. 

Posted by sweetsalve on 6/6/2011 7:53:00 PM (view original):
I've said all along that if the cry is for it to be "realistic", then they need to set a date for signing internationals just like they do in MLB.  Let everyone see all the IFA at once instead of rolling them out throughout the year, right after the draft you have the IFA signing period.  Even if they didn't do the overhaul (which they should do), it would naturally drive down the prices of IFA as those with budgets titled toward that would have to decide which one they wanted, or if they would try and go after more than one, etc.  Wouldn't change much to the process except the timing, but even if you did the overhaul and had everyone see everyone, set the same minimum bid for everyone, added fuzziness of some kind instead of the current state of predictability, and you would make this an extremely interesting part of the game.  But the priginal design was to set scouts in regions of the world and they nixed that because it was too complicated for the average Joe User, so I highly doubt they want to make anythign in the game more complex.

I haven't been around that long, but your comment about being to complicated for the average Joe User struck a bell.  This sim isn't really for the average Joe User, because they won't generally continue to spend money on something that is too complicated.

I have a suggestion post that detailed regional spending using the same budgets, its not complicated, its just choosing where you are going to spend your money.  If we say US / Canada by Time Zones (using only the main continenal 4 zones), Central America, South America, Asia, Rest of the World. Thats 8 zone choices for 2 seperate budgets (US / Canada is for the amature draft), IFA for the other 4 zones.  If you choose to ignore Asia but put the most money into Central America, then you would have the largest percentage chance of seeing the best and most IFA's in that region.  It doesn't guaranty that you will see the best overall IFA (He could be in South America), but you could strategize that much more.  Add MikeT's letter grading system based on budget and you could see a lot of interesting scounting strategies. 

In real life, the IFA hype machine is mostly driven by unscrupulous 'managers' and 'agents' in the poorer areas of the america's where birth records are altered, etc.  In the game world, with a system similiar to what I said above, well if you didn't spend the 2 million on the California Penal System, you missed out on Ricky Vaughn.

To anyone who pays attention to the forums, most "suggestions" are recommendations to dumb down the game(IMO).   Truthfully, every time the game gets more complicated, the market shrinks.  So while many suggestions may be good, they aren't good for WifS.   And, ultimately, they aren't good for the user because we need someone to play against. 

I'm guessing that California Penal System would be subjected to the domestic amateur draft, and not be a part of IFA.

True, they graduate from the school of hard knocks.