I am glad they are trying something, because the attempted fix was a classic illustration of the "rule of unintended consequences." As they tried to bring more "realism" and importance to scouting and the draft, they actually did exactly the opposite. Sounds like the fixes will not really fix that situation either. I'm not calling it an issue, because it's clearly a design element. As I see it, and this is just one person's opinion, so take it for what it's worth.
Realism - why? We are already in a completely unrealistic simulated game to start with. The budget is a BIG deal. Every single owner has exactly the same amount of money with which to work, and it never changes one way or the other, and it doesn't matter at all how an owner's team performs - the budget stays the same. This simple fact of limited cash resources means the dollars must be allocated where you can get the best possible return.
So, let's just assume for a moment we allocate $10 million each to HS, college and INT scouting and another $20 million to the prospect budget. That's $50 million of $185 million - 27%. Let's also assume you want these prospects to develop so you spend another $12 million on coaches and $18 million on training and medical (this is all hypothetical - not recommended). That's another cool $50 million. Now we've allocated $100 million of our precious $185 on development items (now - the training, medical and coaching budgets - to an extent - will benefit the ML team, too. More on that in a moment.) With this approach, you really MUST have some degree of confidence in your draft and INT FA., because for the 30 players added to your Rookie roster, you are essentially investing $3.33 million per player. If you deduct out the coaching and medical - you are STILL paying - $2.27 million per Rookie roster spot.
Or - you can try a different approach . . . .
Spend $0 dollars on HS, COL and INT scouting. Drop coaching to only hire high end coaches at the ML level ($9 million). Spend $20 on training and medical. $20 on ADV scouting. Now what do you have? $116 in player payroll. Now you can own the FA market, fill your ML roster every season with the best available FA to plug open slots and let other teams develop your talent for you. It's a MUCH more predictable way to capture talent.
Bottom line for me anyway is that the draft is such a massive crap shoot, I simply am done wasting a limited resource even trying to find players there. I am steadily backing down my scouting budgets as fast as possible (within limitations of some private league rules).
One MASSIVE flaw in the entire scouting changes is the inability to see current rankings. If we could see current rankings, the whole HDB "realism" argument might be more logical. But - seriously - scouts in RL base 100% of their projections on CURRENT abilities. To not see the current rankings is really silly and runs entirely counter to the "realism" argument and actually shoots the whole thing down. At least that's my perspective.