I've argued since the developer chats that I think it is odd to say that we are increasing strategy while separating scouting and recruiting budgets. I think this can be a good scouting system that adds much more depth and strategy but a big part to the strategy is deciding how much to scout. Well with an exact amount people will analyze and determine value of scouting actions. Also at least at d1 and d2 you won't have to choose between strategies based on openings because the starting scouting budget is not that very variable based on openings. This means that it is likely that people will start to determine a 'one best way' to scout with the only variable being location/competition. I know if it stays the way it is I will just scout the same way every time and use a formula to determine what the average expected rating a player will end at and then determine which of my top prospects best fits my needs. What does that add? To me, I get the same variables as I do from the current system. The only difference now is I have to run prospects through a different formula based on scouted level that would tell me whether to scout them to a higher level or not. I lose the ability to determine what percentage of my money to save for battles/establishing interest.
The argument I've heard against this when I've previously brought this up is that people would become disenfranchised if the budgets were seperated because they would be likely to spend all the money up front. To me this is a poor argument because there is an easy fix for that if that is needed. It may not be needed because of the addition of free scholarship offers and attention points. But they could also just change how the budget is dished out. Maybe you get 50% of your budget up front, 30% at the start of the first signing period, and 20% at the start of the second signing period.
By combining the budgets, there is an array of interesting decisions that users would have to make. Do I scout these guys to level 4 or do I put that towards winning a battle for another guy? With the absence of prestige meaning much maybe a developing program decides to just scout the top 100 guys within x number of miles to level 2 to find preferences. For the few guys close by that match preferences the user goes all in on those guys without knowing much potential wise and just hopes they can develop. Maybe someone does the opposite and goes scout heavy and tries to find undiscovered stars.