When I played Hoops Dynasty back when it was first created (so like 2005 I think?) I don't remember DEF and ATH being such a big factor. But I could be misremembering....or I got lucky to inherit teams that were strong there. I had good but not great success for about 20 seasons. So I've been frustrated early on here in my second go around. But I appreciate all of the input. Going to keep plugging away at recruiting better guys in these areas.

I want to add that since you are playing zone, defense is absolutely essential, but, since literally everyone is targeting those high D high Ath guys, you can get away with taking only decent Ath (above 45-50ish) in exchange for elite Speed for guards and elite Block for centers. This expands the range of recruitable players somewhat.

Posted by mjpolzin on 9/26/2021 8:48:00 PM (view original):
When I played Hoops Dynasty back when it was first created (so like 2005 I think?) I don't remember DEF and ATH being such a big factor. But I could be misremembering....or I got lucky to inherit teams that were strong there. I had good but not great success for about 20 seasons. So I've been frustrated early on here in my second go around. But I appreciate all of the input. Going to keep plugging away at recruiting better guys in these areas.

the current ath/def paradigm didn't govern until about 10 years ago, so that is probably why you don't remember it this way! but mostly it was press that changed. ath/def was always pretty darn essential in the other sets. still, that really enhanced competition for those attributes.

also when potential came out, the resulting player shapes and rate of growth favored ath/def... so that's a bit of it too. used to have less growth available to ath/def in the high growth players than today, and much more growth available than today's low growth ath/def guys, so it was much easier to focus on other things in recruiting and pick up solid ath/def growth in practice. now you are locked into the final player shape and that forces our collective hands on the issue in recruiting.

that's probably the #1 strategic change since you left, no longer can you decide what you want your player to look like along the way via practice planning. really have to have a clear picture going into recruiting and to project those recruits out fairly accurately so you can get what you need.

One other thing that's different from 1.0 is your recruiting pool. At D3 there's no reason you should be recruiting 100% in the other 2 pools. If you haven't seen the threads on it, I believe there is one pinned in this forum.