Is Advanced Scouting now finally in play? - Page 2 - Hardball Dynasty

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I don't believe there will be any additional updates that will make ADV more valuable.

There were two "problems" in the past that made ADV irrelevant: (1) development patterns for young players were observable and therefore predictable/projectable; and (2) $20M in HS/COL was roughly equivalent to $20M in ADV.

They addressed (1) somewhat by removing the ability to look at season to season development for players not in your franchise. You can still see where they are now, but not how they got there by looking at ratings progression through previous seasons. When you were able to do that, you were able to project where a prospect was going to top out with far more accuracy than ADV (which was really a "best case scenario") would give you. Now, you don't have that any more. If you want to get a good picture of the ceiling for a player's development, ADV is now the only tool you have to do that.

As for (2), I would imagine that a number of folks realized that you could "snapshot" your yearly draftboard into an Excel spreadsheet to capture projected ratings for draftees, and as long as you were only interested in pursuing prospects who entered the world via the draft (as opposed to IFA), you could go back to those projections rather than invest in ADV. This made ADV completely redundant for those folks. Now, with less accurate HS/COL projections, ADV is no longer completely irrelevant. if you want/need more accurate projections, ADV is your best or only avenue.

With those two things in mind, they have closed, at least somewhat, the two loopholes that existed in the game that made ADV irrelevant for many owners. WIS may not have made ADV a "have to have" thing, but they at least shifted the needle more towards the center rather than buried at one end of the scale. Any really, right in the middle is where it should be, as that's where the strategy comes from.

8/4/2015 2:28 PM

MikeT23

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Sounds like WifS paid you to try to convince people ADV had more value. It really doesn't. As was noted earlier, trading FOR prospects is never a "win" in good worlds. Owners value them more than their first born. Perhaps rightly so as they are cheap labor and you can control them for 10-11 seasons at a minimum.

Until that changes, or players hold their value significantly longer, or some veterans become Barry Bonds and get better as they age, ADV just isn't going to be relevant. My guess is projections are still what a player will be at 27. Even if they changed development patterns and a 31 y/o can get better, you don't know that.

Truth is they could scrap ADV and it wouldn't be missed by the vast majority of HBD.

8/4/2015 2:38 PM

MikeT23

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Posted by jonas1102 on 8/4/2015 2:00:00 PM (view original):
I will not be leaving ADV at $0M. Because ADV is now more accurate than HS/COL/IFA, I am looking at this as an incremental change so that half the user base at $0M can choose to build (or not) $4M a season preparing for it to become more valuable. Needing $20M while sitting at $0M is gonna leave you in a year and a half hole if it becomes more valuable. I feel it will be more valuable. I'll probably sit a $12M (once I can get there) until the next update.

I hope that is beneficial for me if it happens, and they don't cave to the people who end up screaming they can only move $4M at a time.

If WifS were to do what I suggest, I'd simply move IFA/College/HS down to match what my ADV is(as it goes up). I'd use the extra money in payroll. So, if my college was at 12, next season it would be 8 and ADV would be 4. The season after that would be 8/8. And so on until it's where I'm comfortable. I wouldn't make any pre-emptive moves in hopes that future updates would benefit me if I had been moving it up all along.

8/4/2015 2:43 PM

tecwrg

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I'm not saying that ADV intrinsically now has more value, wasn't trying to imply that at all. I'm still at 0 ADV in all three of my worlds, which have all rolled since the May update. And I see no reason to change.

I was just pointing out that the May update attempted to close the loopholes that made ADV irrelevant for many owners, and they did a good job with that. Some people will feel compelled to move away from 0 ADV because of those moves, and the perception (addition by subtraction) that because the loopholes are closed, that ADV is now more important. Perception is not necessarily reality.

ADV probably is more valuable now for those people that feel that they have a NEED to see projections. But I think that over time, most people will realize that they really don't in order to play the game effectively.

8/4/2015 2:57 PM (edited)

MikeT23

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Since I know which worlds you're in, I can tell only 1 saw an increase in ADV average over the last three seasons. And I think that can be attributed to new owners. I don't think the owners in Coop, MG or Mantle feel ADV is more important.

8/4/2015 3:02 PM

damag

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The problem isn't whether ADV is effective or not, it's whether it has any useful function in the owner's playing style. Whether owners are capable or knowledgeable enough to make their own projections, or even not, it's just relatively easy to decide to play the game without insisting on having accurate projections.

As has often been said, everyone wants to figure out what parts of the budget they can zero out, so they can max something else that they want more. It's only logical that the first things to go would be the things with the least effect on whether you win or lose today.

8/4/2015 8:42 PM (edited)

MikeT23

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If that were the case, training/IFA/College/HS/ADV have little effect on winning in this specific season. In any given season of a good world with limited turnover, you'll find training to average over 16 and the three amateur scouting will be around 10(which is what all 0-20 categories should be if they had "equal" value). ADV will be 1 or damn close.

The reason is training is important and there isn't another comparable option, the AM scoutings are important but there are other comparable options and ADV isn't important regardless of other options.

It's just a fact.

There is one reason, and one reason only, to have ADV. If you are going to attempt to acquire prospects year in and year out. That is the only reason.

8/5/2015 10:37 AM

joshkvt

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Posted by damag on 8/4/2015 8:42:00 PM (view original):
The problem isn't whether ADV is effective or not, it's whether it has any useful function in the owner's playing style. Whether owners are capable or knowledgeable enough to make their own projections, or even not, it's just relatively easy to decide to play the game without insisting on having accurate projections.

As has often been said, everyone wants to figure out what parts of the budget they can zero out, so they can max something else that they want more. It's only logical that the first things to go would be the things with the least effect on whether you win or lose today.

It's more logical to prioritize long-term competitiveness over the current season. I'd take a 10% hit to this season's chances for a 5% bump in each of the next four. If I have a crop of good 18-19-yo prospects, Training/Medical/Coaching are going to be the first places my money goes. In that scenario a $4M LR might be helpful to my ML team, but I'm not going to sign him if it means skimping on MiL coaches or knocking Training down by $2-3M. If my minors are depleted with most of my best prospects in the majors my priority is to maximize at least one of the Scouting depts, since I'll probably be picking in the second half of the draft and need to replenish the farm. If I have to trim ML Coaching to do that, so be it.

The logical first things to go would be the things with the least effect on my franchise's long-term health.

8/5/2015 11:50 AM

tufft

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tecwrg & Mike seem to be doing a nice job of bickering their way to explaining both ends of how the latest changes impact the different strategies. Thanks.

What I think they missed is WIS has created a MASSIVE advantage for people with basic coding skills who have been in a world for 3+ seasons.

I think WIS did a good job of explaining how ADV, COL, HS, and INT work now and how that's different than before.

Since they didn't say anything about it, I'm assuming how players actually develop has not been changed at all.

If we'll still see in season development for all players (ours and other teams) -

That means anyone with basic programming skills (or a few bucks to hire an off-shore programmer) will be able screen scrape every player's progression at end of the season.

2-3 seasons of that for a player (season drafted, plus 1-2 more) tells you pretty much where a player will end up. As it always did. Which IMO is the main reason so many people went with ADV 0. If you kept scouting projections and notes on the best of the IFAs, ADV did almost no extra good.

We all had easy access to that data before the latest updates. Now only a small handful will.

Seems a good opportunity for a someone looking to keep themselves beer & gaming money to spend a night writing a program and selling it for a few bucks on this forum. Or keep it to themselves and have a pretty big advantage.

Of course, most people won't do this. At first.

Experience tells me many people who'll pay $24 to play a game will pay $25 to have an advantage.

Guess we'll see.

8/5/2015 11:18 PM

joshkvt

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What is the MASSIVE benefit in that? For players with 2-3 seasons, stats and a little other research will tell me roughly how good those players are. By 40 games in, the in-season development will provide more clarity. If you offer a trade to me, we'll both see my players' histories and I won't see your players' histories. Theoretically that's an advantage, but in reality if there's not enough for me to make an informed judgment on your players I simply say no thanks, or counter with an offer in which I get back players who have finished developing. Having all that info is one thing. Being able to use it is another.

Before the update, anyone with 0 ADV shouldn't be trading first-year players. After the update, maybe that becomes second-year players before there have been a few current-season updates (I can compare the in-season improvement to other players at the same level, and see how good the coaching is; if a 19-yo has gone up 1 point at the break and you have decent coaches, he's no gem). Before, if you offered me a prospects-for-prospects deal, I could check and see whether you had high ADV and had better data than I did. Now, if you offer me a prospects-for-prospects deal, I'll just assume you have better data than I do. Whether that's 20 ADV or a data base is irrelevant to me.

Outside of tankers trying to shed salary and wins by overpaying, trades for top prospects are rare. The change likely made them more rare. If it becomes clear that a few owners in a world have that data, vetoes will flow and whatever advantage there might have been is lost.

Digging through reams of data — 98% of which will be useless — to find a bargain to target, hoping that the target's owner is a moron, and further hoping that owners don't just start vetoing any prospect trades, hardly seems like a MASSIVE advantage. It might actually be a disasdvantage, in that the research is time that can't be spent on something more productive.

8/6/2015 1:22 AM

MikeT23

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LOL at tuft. Yes, people will save every player's developement at season's end for the rare opportunity to trade for one of them.

Jesus.

8/6/2015 7:07 AM

plague

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I rarely make trades, so the benefit of me increasing ADV above 0 is negaitve. The way the game is setup now, and because I am at zero ADV I will assume that everyone has more accurate projections than I. So that means at best I am at even when it comes to the trade game, I don't like those odds.The end result is I will go from rarely making trades involving players with projections, to not making trades with owners involving projections. That doesn't bother me 1 bit, but that is the my outcome in the current system.

Overall I like the recent changes, I think its improved the game a lot. I had a 10 in both college and HS scouting and I had 1 first round pick and 1 supplemental 1st round pick, and I would bet that neither player has a prayer of making the ML. I think my 2nd round pick has a better chance of making the majors. I actually signed a few draft picks that I normally would not of signed hoping they will be DITR.

Tankers will have to adjust to the new system. In order to tank effectively they will have to devote more resources to INTL/COLL/HS scouting and less resources that can be transferred over to prospect bonus decreasing their chances of competing financially..

My next favorite change would be too not allow transfers to prospect bonus.

8/9/2015 11:32 PM

Stewart_UK

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So Plague that you think 10 College and HS is not enough for drafting after the update? And where do people sit in INT Prospect numbers now? Thanks in advance.

8/10/2015 8:17 AM

MikeT23

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No one knows for sure this early in the process. I've gotten better players than I expected late in the first round. But, until they develop, we don't really know how much is enough. Purely anecdotal but 6-10 doesn't seem to give very good projections.

8/10/2015 10:10 AM

tecwrg2

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Posted by MikeT23 on 8/10/2015 10:10:00 AM (view original):
No one knows for sure this early in the process. I've gotten better players than I expected late in the first round. But, until they develop, we don't really know how much is enough. Purely anecdotal but 6-10 doesn't seem to give very good projections.

Purely anecdotal but 6-10 doesn't seem to give very good projections.

Now exaggerated by the fact that the "new" draft and IFA scouting projections are fuzzier than their old counterparts. So 6-10 would be even less accurate now than they were before.

8/10/2015 10:28 AM

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