Posted by mbriese on 12/20/2016 12:32:00 PM (view original):
Shoe - can you put more context around what happened in beta? In my opinion removing the caps would have the biggest effect on lower tier schools, since they could put more resources into either A. poaching players from bigger schools that aren't as high priority for them or B. going after one big fish with their resources while trying to fill other scholarships with role players using AP only.
Just to be clear, I do operate 2 IDs. This is my original, shoe3 started as my son, who stopped playing (before beta) because he didn't enjoy 2.0 much, but asked me to keep up his team in Smith and update him. For what it's worth, he and I have very similar thoughts on how the game should feel.
The first season of beta was a mess. We were told that they wanted more competition for top recruits, and they wanted it to feel more like real life recruiting, and less like bidding. Specifically that they didn't want number of scholarships and distance to be primary factors in the elite recruit's decision. Before HVs were capped, there was very widespread "sniping" - poaching isn't the right term, because poaching means coming in to someone else's territory and doing something illegal, which doesn't apply to recruiting, but anyway... Lots of people lost recruits at signing cycle to snipers who just "lovebombed" them at the last minute. It was clear that this was going to be a dominant strategy, and it needed a fix. Gaming your class structure to ensure that you have maximum resources to spend when you bid... I mean recruit... isn't a good way to run a competitive simulation of real life college basketball coaching.
My preference would be to eliminate cash "resources" altogether. Recruit's decisions should be made based on his preferences, promises the coach is willing to make, and prestige of the program. This doesn't get any traction, because players want to bid, I suspect people like that feeling of control, despite the obvious (to me) absurdity of the notion of an elite recruit making a decision based on how many time a coach is willing to eat mom's pie. I accept that my vision for the game will likely never be implemented. I can live with caps, as they currently exist, both with APs and home visits.