i obviously agree with baums away that at a minimum, there is a clearly undesirable element of coaches making their players worse to get ahead.

i tend to think 'massive advantage' is the right descriptor for the top crust of teams. most programs don't have multiple EEs per season, and you can stomach 1 here and there and even 1-2 per season, a heck of a lot better than 2-5. especially high end press teams, who are trying to compete every year, its a straight up requirement in my book. i still think its very important for great man/zone programs, but i definitely think there's a major drop off outside the top 10-15 programs in each d1 world, in importance (definitely not a 'requirement' for most programs). still, for those lower programs (but still good), an extra season on a guy who is, for that program, a rare stud and major difference maker - that can be pretty huge.

Posted by Baums_away on 9/27/2020 8:19:00 PM (view original):
It has no basis in real life basketball. Which isn’t necessarily a problem if it makes the game better but it’s gimmicky as hell.

I am all for more gameplay choices though, just don’t think this should be one of them.

I just had a junior guard, who's been climbing up the boards so far this season, get injured. My first thought wasn't "crap, what will I do this season?" but rather "I wonder if this'll dampen his big board projections".

He's dropped several spots and I'm actually excited. I feel like that's an issue.

Posted by gillispie1 on 9/28/2020 3:27:00 PM (view original):
i obviously agree with baums away that at a minimum, there is a clearly undesirable element of coaches making their players worse to get ahead.

i tend to think 'massive advantage' is the right descriptor for the top crust of teams. most programs don't have multiple EEs per season, and you can stomach 1 here and there and even 1-2 per season, a heck of a lot better than 2-5. especially high end press teams, who are trying to compete every year, its a straight up requirement in my book. i still think its very important for great man/zone programs, but i definitely think there's a major drop off outside the top 10-15 programs in each d1 world, in importance (definitely not a 'requirement' for most programs). still, for those lower programs (but still good), an extra season on a guy who is, for that program, a rare stud and major difference maker - that can be pretty huge.

If there was an “obvious” or “clear” problem, you should be able to point to a specific harm. Whose game experience is harmed by a user’s option to not rapidly optimize their player’s potential, and in what ways?

Maybe the funniest part of this conversation is that several months ago, on the same topic, cub asked me something along the lines of “how are you ever going to win a championship by holding your best players back?” But now it’s a “massive advantage” I guess? I don’t see it. You’re always giving something up.

Anecdotally, I “slowed” Randall Auger, beginning midway through his soph season, because it became clear he was going to end up projected in the first round by the end of his junior year if I didn’t. With his WE and PT, he would have fully maxed last season, mid-50s LP and high 90s to 100 Per, had I kept him optimized. Holding him back paid off, kind of; it kept him out of the projected first round as I hoped, and he stayed. But I paid for it. We didn’t have a premier scorer last year during the postseason, and we lost in the S16 to the team that went to the championship game, beaten on a missed dunk in the final seconds. An elite scoring guard would have been pretty useful. As it is, I won’t have one until the postseason this year, and he still won’t quite reach potential in perimeter, basically giving up a full season and a half of development. Getting another season from him is great. But it isn’t free, and it wasn’t without risk, because he could very well have left me completely empty handed after last season. That’s why I’m not really buying the “massive advantage” stuff.

i think absurdity is enough. i said there's a clearly undesirable element - and that IMO is the absurdity. i am not a huge proponent of the 'sim games much match real life' standard, i think fun should be the driver, but there's a long history of communal objection to the absurd, and i think for good reason. i'll hold this guy back so my team is better - its just too core of a thing to have such absurdity. i'm not saying i hate the status quo, but i think there is a clear negative to it, regardless of your take on the whole issue.

the competitive advantage stuff is a different issue, and i'm not too surprised we don't agree. i don't think its important at all, for example, in d2 :) i think if you want to build a top 10 all time d1 program, in this day and age, it is a requirement. even a 3peat, which i roughly feel i could get any time i wanted, i really struggle to see myself accomplishing that without strong EE planning. it feels impossible without just playing for it for really long and hoping to get lucky. you just can't be the best team in the country season in and season out without managing your EEs, unless you have insane EE luck i suppose? but we also have different perspectives and priorities. no issue agreeing to disagree on that one.

P.S. if you EE plan and team plan from the moment you seriously recruit a guy, it is really not impossible to do substantial EE management while giving up extremely little. its just a hard thing to really optimize. frankly, i was surprised how effective it was when i got into it big like 5-6 years ago. it definitely exceeded my expectations from the outset - but you also have to be team planning really early and really hard so you can with hold ratings surgically.

Did someone say something about how the EE system sucks?? :)

My favorite is when you try to hold back a players ratings but his WE is so high he grows anyway. Stupid jerks.

“i'll hold this guy back so my team is better - its just too core of a thing to have such absurdity. i'm not saying i hate the status quo, but i think there is a clear negative to it”

You keep using words like obvious and clear and absurd, but you’re using them like it’s self evident. It’s not. I suspect, as I’ve told you before, the folks - like you - who struggle to understand how this makes sense from a game theory perspective have been trained to think about optimization in very narrow terms. In reality, all forms of resource development have various parameters for evaluation based on long and short term goals. Driving toward complete and rapid potential optimization is not the only resource development model out there, even in college sports (again, see 80s-90s Duke). It’s kind of silly to paint this like coaches are all making their 5-stars worse. I didn’t make Randall Auger worse. He continued to get better. I just stopped developing his *scoring* at a certain point, because I decided I would try to win without it until his senior season. That’s a user choice, and frankly calling it absurd is kind of ridiculous. There was another recent thread where folks - some of the same folks on this thread, if I recall - went on about how team building and the choices that went into it was so fun. Well this is a pretty significant team building decision. Do you need your talented soph to carry your team offensively next year? If so, develop his scoring, and risk losing him to EE. Otherwise, try to get your scoring somewhere else, and see if you can keep him another year.

As with most of the things people complain about in the forums, the early entry issues are primarily driven by user choices. In general, I’m never going to be in favor of the game narrowing the range of user choices, unless we are shown A) significant imbalance, or B) harmed gameplay, unrelated to rational consequences of those choices. There are things about the EE process I would change, but none of them would result in less volatility (unless you include scoutable preference for pro ball, which I’ve always supported). I would actually like to see the Big Board eliminated entirely. I think it causes more confusion and frustration than it’s worth, when people seem to want to use it as a crutch instead of an evaluation tool. Maybe replace it with a much more ambiguous draft status area right under the IQs, where he’s not ranked, but simply “N/A,” “staying,” “likely staying,” etc

Posted by Benis on 9/28/2020 10:30:00 PM (view original):
Did someone say something about how the EE system sucks?? :)

My favorite is when you try to hold back a players ratings but his WE is so high he grows anyway. Stupid jerks.

Yeh, I've learned I need to plan ahead and starting nerfing them FR/SO year if they have 70+ we

Posted by cubcub113 on 9/28/2020 10:58:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 9/28/2020 10:30:00 PM (view original):
Did someone say something about how the EE system sucks?? :)

My favorite is when you try to hold back a players ratings but his WE is so high he grows anyway. Stupid jerks.

Yeh, I've learned I need to plan ahead and starting nerfing them FR/SO year if they have 70+ we

8.4.3

Yep I try that and it works for some guys but not for others depending on WE and PT.

I'd prefer a system where you could *slightly* influence whether a guy leaves via promises, PT, who you sign coming in, etc vs sabotaging ratings. It's not realistic, fun or strategic in the big picture. It's rather silly.

Here are some random ideas that I haven't thought through at all:

• EEs declare before the first recruiting session.
• The year a guy leaves is predetermined when the recruit is generated. This would still be unknown to coaches but better players would have a more likely chance of leaving early.
• Certain recruits could have a 1YR tag that indicates they are 100% one and done as many do in real life. Think this adds a ton of strategy.
• Promises should carry over into the postseason (we discussed this in another thread).
• Each team is alotted a certain amount of APs at the start of recruiting (ex. 400) and may use as many as they want on any one player in any one cycle. Right now it seems impossible to play catch up in the 2nd recruiting session. This might be irrelevant if EEs declare before the first recruiting session.

Posted by Baums_away on 9/29/2020 11:04:00 AM (view original):
Here are some random ideas that I haven't thought through at all:

• EEs declare before the first recruiting session.
• The year a guy leaves is predetermined when the recruit is generated. This would still be unknown to coaches but better players would have a more likely chance of leaving early.
• Certain recruits could have a 1YR tag that indicates they are 100% one and done as many do in real life. Think this adds a ton of strategy.
• Promises should carry over into the postseason (we discussed this in another thread).
• Each team is alotted a certain amount of APs at the start of recruiting (ex. 400) and may use as many as they want on any one player in any one cycle. Right now it seems impossible to play catch up in the 2nd recruiting session. This might be irrelevant if EEs declare before the first recruiting session.

I just think EEs should declare the 10pm before the 1st session.

I just want to point out here how the conversation shifts. This is what I was trying to get you all to admit the last couple days. The “problem” for you is not player development, because that’s an open ended gameplay choice *you are making*. The “problem” is that elite D1 talent is volatile, and difficult to replace - like real life D1 college basketball.

Posted by cubcub113 on 9/28/2020 10:58:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 9/28/2020 10:30:00 PM (view original):
Did someone say something about how the EE system sucks?? :)

My favorite is when you try to hold back a players ratings but his WE is so high he grows anyway. Stupid jerks.

Yeh, I've learned I need to plan ahead and starting nerfing them FR/SO year if they have 70+ we

8.4.3

i wanted to see if you could consistently hit a middle ground on promises violations, where a guy is ****** and loses half his WE but does not quit. that has happened to me before, but i don't know if you could harness it. if you could, you could knock those 70 WE guys down in their FR year, think of how great that would be?

i mean, im totally being serious BUT i also think its a sort of ridiculous sentiment on its face - compared to a real life standard. shoe i have no issue with the holding back, i think i've probably pushed the idea more than anyone as a way to succeed. it doesnt bother me and i don't particularly want to see it changed, in part because i have no idea what that would even look like. but i do think it is fair to say, compared to what a normal idea of coaching would be (based on real life or something), consistently sabotaging players seems a little ridiculous. not just counter intuitive, but backwards? i wouldn't call it a 'problem' though. it is what it is, these things tend to crop up in games like this.

Posted by gillispie1 on 9/29/2020 3:25:00 PM (view original):

Posted by cubcub113 on 9/28/2020 10:58:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 9/28/2020 10:30:00 PM (view original):
Did someone say something about how the EE system sucks?? :)

My favorite is when you try to hold back a players ratings but his WE is so high he grows anyway. Stupid jerks.

Yeh, I've learned I need to plan ahead and starting nerfing them FR/SO year if they have 70+ we

8.4.3

i wanted to see if you could consistently hit a middle ground on promises violations, where a guy is ****** and loses half his WE but does not quit. that has happened to me before, but i don't know if you could harness it. if you could, you could knock those 70 WE guys down in their FR year, think of how great that would be?

i mean, im totally being serious BUT i also think its a sort of ridiculous sentiment on its face - compared to a real life standard. shoe i have no issue with the holding back, i think i've probably pushed the idea more than anyone as a way to succeed. it doesnt bother me and i don't particularly want to see it changed, in part because i have no idea what that would even look like. but i do think it is fair to say, compared to what a normal idea of coaching would be (based on real life or something), consistently sabotaging players seems a little ridiculous. not just counter intuitive, but backwards? i wouldn't call it a 'problem' though. it is what it is, these things tend to crop up in games like this.

Haha yeah I've totally thought about this too. RS a guy who gets ****** and his WE drops way down. I've tried it a couple times and it's gone down to near 1 so that's a bit too far. If it went from like 70 to 30, that'd work.

Is it a 'problem'... eh. I think there are some worse things. Could it be improved? Absolutely. And we're all just talking here and always suggesting improvements so why not throw out some things we'd like to see changed to improve the game.