Posted by johnsensing on 7/13/2017 2:14:00 PM (view original):
As for the rest of 3.0, there are several refinements needed at DI. Too bad seble's beta is apparently going to be all we get. Then again, I think I'm one of the few people who liked 2.0 better who's still around playing out the credit string.

It's certainly been tougher on those who used to dominate. I don't meant that in any sort of negative way. The advantages to those who had achieved tremendous success has certainly been mitigated.

Posted by Benis on 7/13/2017 3:46:00 PM (view original):
I only had to give them each 1 free season to say that. Worth every penny.

Benis is so good at this game he was overflowing with credits so it was a pretty nice move.

Posted by cubcub113 on 7/13/2017 3:43:00 PM (view original):
Benis' views are the best! I think that most users like recruiting DI more in 3.0 and DII and DIII less.

Honestly what is the point of having pools by divisions anymore? Majority of people recruit solely from DI..Might as well have ONE pool and as far as camps are concerned, use ratings caps instead of division to select the best talent.

Posted by Trentonjoe on 7/13/2017 3:46:00 PM (view original):

Posted by johnsensing on 7/13/2017 2:14:00 PM (view original):
As for the rest of 3.0, there are several refinements needed at DI. Too bad seble's beta is apparently going to be all we get. Then again, I think I'm one of the few people who liked 2.0 better who's still around playing out the credit string.

It's certainly been tougher on those who used to dominate. I don't meant that in any sort of negative way. The advantages to those who had achieved tremendous success has certainly been mitigated.

I agree completely with your first sentence (and some changes probably needed to be made), but I think the pendulum has swung too far the other way, and some of the ways in which seble "mitigated" the success of those who did well in 2.0 has been dumb.

The main problem in my view is that there's far too much luck/randomness involved in recruiting. I've had several teams (at LSU Knight and Texas Naismith, in particular) where I've either not been challenged in recruiting or where I've gotten a run of winning battles. At the start of the year, I've looked at team ratings, and there have been only 4 or 5 teams that I thought were legitimate NT threats to me (to that end, I've also had seasons where I've lost battles and I've run out 7 or 8, and I'm sure the elite teams with 10+ actual players thought I was no real threat -- and they were right). It seems to me in 3.0 that there may be more teams that have a chance to make the sweet 16 (and maybe get lucky and make a final 4 run) than in 2.0, but that there are fewer teams that have a realistic shot to actually win an NT. I find it's really easy to predict how my seasons are going to go in 3.0, and that's solely a function of whether the RNG let me win recruiting battles -- not a particularly fun way to play. The game incentivizes you to do that, though -- if you lose a bunch of battles, just come back the next year with a ton of APs and try to blow people away.

I would make the following changes:

1) Halve, or better yet, quarter, the value of APs compared to the value of HVs/CVs. As currently set up, teams with 1 or 2 open schollys are at a severe disadvantage to those with 4 or 5, especially if they think they may be getting an EE or two (keep the unlocking mechanism the same, though);
2) You can't win a two-man battle unless you're at 40%. I've lost several battles (and won 1 or 2) where the winning team was under 30% -- that is idiotic. Those are the battles people remember, and it really puts a bad taste in your mouth regarding the game -- especially when the recruit "wants success" but goes to a B- team.
3) Make certain preferences mean more. Ex: if you "want to play," if a team offers the player a start, it is nearly impossible to beat that team in a battle unless a competing team also offers a start. If someone "wants a rebuild" (and who knows what that even means), prestige should essentially be inverted (i.e., an A+ team's efforts should get D- credit, A to D, so on). Maybe even make the preference intensities random -- for one recruit, "man to man" may be a thumb on the scale, for another it's a deal-breaker -- although that may have the effect of increasing randomization, which would be problematic.
4) IMPROVE RECRUIT GENERATION. By far the most important one -- and what I really thought caused the 2.0 issues. Have there be 10/20% more blue-chippers -- create an extra 10/20 players a year that start at 500 overall, but are at all green and "want a rebuild" or "want to start," etc., etc. The artificial scarcity of players teams actually want creates screwy incentives.

I don't know -- there may be other improvements (or I may be off base), but the way 3.0 is currently set up is sub-optimal IMO. Disclaimer: I'm only playing DI, so your DII/DIII mileage may vary.

Posted by Benis on 7/13/2017 3:33:00 PM (view original):
Yeah I know you think that would happen. I'm not as worried about it

D3 populations are around 60-80 teams right now (and decreasing every season). So

1) A year ago we had nearly double that number of teams and I don't remember people complaining that noobs were getting beat down in recruiting battles or that was deterring them from playing the game. The player pool size is plenty big enough.

2) What noobs? I'm looking at Iba D3 right now and there are currently TWO people on their first season and TWO more on their 2nd season. The noob is a dying breed.

In that case, why bother allowing n00bs to play? Close it down and let it play out til it's just me and you in D3.

Which, for the slow, is sarcasm. The game needs new players. Watching the vets in D3 snatch up all the top D3 players in a capped world makes the game a whole lot of fun for the guy who joins, gets a terrible team he didn't put together, finishes 7-20 and then gets destroyed in close quarter recruiting.

Except for the fact that in 3.0, it's not necessarily the vets that have the advantage. A new D3 user could easily take a recruit from a vet by paying attention to preferences and going all in. What would really make the game fun for new users would be recruiting a class of strong D3 guys and feeling great about it until you see the D1 talent that his competition is recruiting (also known as "the current setup"). That's definitely better than level-setting things, right?

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/13/2017 4:34:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 7/13/2017 3:33:00 PM (view original):
Yeah I know you think that would happen. I'm not as worried about it

D3 populations are around 60-80 teams right now (and decreasing every season). So

1) A year ago we had nearly double that number of teams and I don't remember people complaining that noobs were getting beat down in recruiting battles or that was deterring them from playing the game. The player pool size is plenty big enough.

2) What noobs? I'm looking at Iba D3 right now and there are currently TWO people on their first season and TWO more on their 2nd season. The noob is a dying breed.

In that case, why bother allowing n00bs to play? Close it down and let it play out til it's just me and you in D3.

Which, for the slow, is sarcasm. The game needs new players. Watching the vets in D3 snatch up all the top D3 players in a capped world makes the game a whole lot of fun for the guy who joins, gets a terrible team he didn't put together, finishes 7-20 and then gets destroyed in close quarter recruiting.

"The game needs new players."

Couldn't agree more. But clearly the new system is not doing a good job of retaining those new players. So your concern over noobs getting beat by vets in recruiting battles is moot.

Posted by johnsensing on 7/13/2017 4:30:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Trentonjoe on 7/13/2017 3:46:00 PM (view original):

Posted by johnsensing on 7/13/2017 2:14:00 PM (view original):
As for the rest of 3.0, there are several refinements needed at DI. Too bad seble's beta is apparently going to be all we get. Then again, I think I'm one of the few people who liked 2.0 better who's still around playing out the credit string.

It's certainly been tougher on those who used to dominate. I don't meant that in any sort of negative way. The advantages to those who had achieved tremendous success has certainly been mitigated.

I agree completely with your first sentence (and some changes probably needed to be made), but I think the pendulum has swung too far the other way, and some of the ways in which seble "mitigated" the success of those who did well in 2.0 has been dumb.

The main problem in my view is that there's far too much luck/randomness involved in recruiting. I've had several teams (at LSU Knight and Texas Naismith, in particular) where I've either not been challenged in recruiting or where I've gotten a run of winning battles. At the start of the year, I've looked at team ratings, and there have been only 4 or 5 teams that I thought were legitimate NT threats to me (to that end, I've also had seasons where I've lost battles and I've run out 7 or 8, and I'm sure the elite teams with 10+ actual players thought I was no real threat -- and they were right). It seems to me in 3.0 that there may be more teams that have a chance to make the sweet 16 (and maybe get lucky and make a final 4 run) than in 2.0, but that there are fewer teams that have a realistic shot to actually win an NT. I find it's really easy to predict how my seasons are going to go in 3.0, and that's solely a function of whether the RNG let me win recruiting battles -- not a particularly fun way to play. The game incentivizes you to do that, though -- if you lose a bunch of battles, just come back the next year with a ton of APs and try to blow people away.

I would make the following changes:

1) Halve, or better yet, quarter, the value of APs compared to the value of HVs/CVs. As currently set up, teams with 1 or 2 open schollys are at a severe disadvantage to those with 4 or 5, especially if they think they may be getting an EE or two (keep the unlocking mechanism the same, though);
2) You can't win a two-man battle unless you're at 40%. I've lost several battles (and won 1 or 2) where the winning team was under 30% -- that is idiotic. Those are the battles people remember, and it really puts a bad taste in your mouth regarding the game -- especially when the recruit "wants success" but goes to a B- team.
3) Make certain preferences mean more. Ex: if you "want to play," if a team offers the player a start, it is nearly impossible to beat that team in a battle unless a competing team also offers a start. If someone "wants a rebuild" (and who knows what that even means), prestige should essentially be inverted (i.e., an A+ team's efforts should get D- credit, A to D, so on). Maybe even make the preference intensities random -- for one recruit, "man to man" may be a thumb on the scale, for another it's a deal-breaker -- although that may have the effect of increasing randomization, which would be problematic.
4) IMPROVE RECRUIT GENERATION. By far the most important one -- and what I really thought caused the 2.0 issues. Have there be 10/20% more blue-chippers -- create an extra 10/20 players a year that start at 500 overall, but are at all green and "want a rebuild" or "want to start," etc., etc. The artificial scarcity of players teams actually want creates screwy incentives.

I don't know -- there may be other improvements (or I may be off base), but the way 3.0 is currently set up is sub-optimal IMO. Disclaimer: I'm only playing DI, so your DII/DIII mileage may vary.

DEAD. ON.

Posted by Trentonjoe on 7/13/2017 3:46:00 PM (view original):

Posted by johnsensing on 7/13/2017 2:14:00 PM (view original):
As for the rest of 3.0, there are several refinements needed at DI. Too bad seble's beta is apparently going to be all we get. Then again, I think I'm one of the few people who liked 2.0 better who's still around playing out the credit string.

It's certainly been tougher on those who used to dominate. I don't meant that in any sort of negative way. The advantages to those who had achieved tremendous success has certainly been mitigated.

Not true Only wins more easily now, so is ab90, people get a good d2, d3 location like florida and can't be stopped because of the way recruiting works. The less team around, the easier.

Posted by Benis on 7/13/2017 1:50:00 PM (view original):

Posted by DeBeque on 7/13/2017 1:08:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 7/13/2017 12:30:00 PM (view original):

Posted by zorzii on 7/13/2017 12:24:00 PM (view original):
Cap d2 and d3. Make recruiting possible first session. Joy is back

Recruiting is already possible in the first session. Do we really need to have this discussion again?

Of course not. But remember, some people would rather blame the game for their own shortcomings than make any genuine attempt to improve.

Ah yes. The old "you're not good that's why you don't like it" insult.

Was wrong the first time someone said it and its still wrong now.

No, you totally missed what i said, or perhaps chose to misrepresent it.

I genuinely apologize if I made it seem I was stepping on your toes. I don't know anyone by name in the forums, so I pay no attention to WHO is saying something, only to what is being said. I have no idea if you have a winning record or not, what you like or don't like about the game, what you would change or keep the same, I don't know you. But I certainly see plenty of posts where someone talks about their difficulty with various parts of the game and then concludes that therefore the game must be broken.

I am not good at the game but I like it so far, so I would not say what you said, "you're not good that's why you don't like it."

Posted by mbriese on 7/13/2017 4:48:00 PM (view original):
Except for the fact that in 3.0, it's not necessarily the vets that have the advantage. A new D3 user could easily take a recruit from a vet by paying attention to preferences and going all in. What would really make the game fun for new users would be recruiting a class of strong D3 guys and feeling great about it until you see the D1 talent that his competition is recruiting (also known as "the current setup"). That's definitely better than level-setting things, right?

Are you factoring in that n00bs really don't know what they're doing?

And, of course, if said n00b is knowledgeable to know to look at the good D3 rosters, he probably knows he's not recruiting the same quality of guys, no?

Posted by Benis on 7/13/2017 4:50:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/13/2017 4:34:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 7/13/2017 3:33:00 PM (view original):
Yeah I know you think that would happen. I'm not as worried about it

D3 populations are around 60-80 teams right now (and decreasing every season). So

1) A year ago we had nearly double that number of teams and I don't remember people complaining that noobs were getting beat down in recruiting battles or that was deterring them from playing the game. The player pool size is plenty big enough.

2) What noobs? I'm looking at Iba D3 right now and there are currently TWO people on their first season and TWO more on their 2nd season. The noob is a dying breed.

In that case, why bother allowing n00bs to play? Close it down and let it play out til it's just me and you in D3.

Which, for the slow, is sarcasm. The game needs new players. Watching the vets in D3 snatch up all the top D3 players in a capped world makes the game a whole lot of fun for the guy who joins, gets a terrible team he didn't put together, finishes 7-20 and then gets destroyed in close quarter recruiting.

"The game needs new players."

Couldn't agree more. But clearly the new system is not doing a good job of retaining those new players. So your concern over noobs getting beat by vets in recruiting battles is moot.

My concern is if they actually start getting new players. Don't stack the deck before they join. Well, any more than it's already stacked.

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/13/2017 5:18:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 7/13/2017 4:50:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/13/2017 4:34:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 7/13/2017 3:33:00 PM (view original):
Yeah I know you think that would happen. I'm not as worried about it

D3 populations are around 60-80 teams right now (and decreasing every season). So

1) A year ago we had nearly double that number of teams and I don't remember people complaining that noobs were getting beat down in recruiting battles or that was deterring them from playing the game. The player pool size is plenty big enough.

2) What noobs? I'm looking at Iba D3 right now and there are currently TWO people on their first season and TWO more on their 2nd season. The noob is a dying breed.

In that case, why bother allowing n00bs to play? Close it down and let it play out til it's just me and you in D3.

Which, for the slow, is sarcasm. The game needs new players. Watching the vets in D3 snatch up all the top D3 players in a capped world makes the game a whole lot of fun for the guy who joins, gets a terrible team he didn't put together, finishes 7-20 and then gets destroyed in close quarter recruiting.

"The game needs new players."

Couldn't agree more. But clearly the new system is not doing a good job of retaining those new players. So your concern over noobs getting beat by vets in recruiting battles is moot.

My concern is if they actually start getting new players. Don't stack the deck before they join. Well, any more than it's already stacked.

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts then we'd all have a merry christmas

Regarding johnsensing's proposals:

1) It's much easier to compete with teams that have more scholarships in 3.0, no doubt. I've seen no evidence that APs are overpowered. I would support a diminishing (or negative, on bad preference matches) returns after actions unlock, for the sake of realism. But as it generally plays out, I think the value related to visits and promises all feel about right.
2) They should probably stop showing the odds. I know some people wanted to see them to help pin down the relative value of actions, but I suspect it's a net negative on gameplay. It's enough to understand that you were roughly in the same ballpark, or if it was considered a surprise, when a recruit makes a choice in a battle. The general range extends about 2 full grads of prestige, and that fits well. I wouldn't support it getting any more narrow.
3) Some of the preferences could be more intelligent, but wants to play and success are already the strongest (along with distance). Wants rebuild is just a prestige mitigating, for the players with that preference, and that feels about right. I don't like how the style preferences are calculated, generally, too easy to game. I'd add academic preference balanced against a recruits desire to play professionally (NBA, or elsewhere) and make the style preferences less game-y, and that's probably all.
4) Is there a scarcity of players that teams want, or is the problem that the range of players that coaches have been conditioned to accept is too narrow? In real life, most D1 schools, even Big 6 programs, have an ability to be competitive without going 8 deep with future NBA players. When this game is fully functioning, a coach should be able to put together a championship caliber team with no obvious lottery picks. I think we're starting to see that in 3.0. I don't think a lack of "good enough" players is a problem, as long as the great ones are distributed in fully competitive way.

Posted by zorzii on 7/13/2017 4:58:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Trentonjoe on 7/13/2017 3:46:00 PM (view original):

Posted by johnsensing on 7/13/2017 2:14:00 PM (view original):
As for the rest of 3.0, there are several refinements needed at DI. Too bad seble's beta is apparently going to be all we get. Then again, I think I'm one of the few people who liked 2.0 better who's still around playing out the credit string.

It's certainly been tougher on those who used to dominate. I don't meant that in any sort of negative way. The advantages to those who had achieved tremendous success has certainly been mitigated.

Not true Only wins more easily now, so is ab90, people get a good d2, d3 location like florida and can't be stopped because of the way recruiting works. The less team around, the easier.

I was referring to d1