Posted by jetwildcat on 8/14/2013 12:48:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dacj501 on 8/14/2013 6:17:00 AM (view original):

jet, I appreciate your argument and believe I understand how your proposal would work. Its not something I'm in favor of, mostly because I'm not worried about "poaching" (I've been on both sides frequently), and I don't really have a problem with a C- D1 not being able to really recruit against a A+ head up in most cases. Realism is irrelevant to me on this particular aspect, since anything that is done to handle recruiting will be unrealistic, unless WiS makes us start driving around the country IRL to log in from different locations to view scouting evals or something... 

While recruiting now is basically a math problem with 3 main variables, its also much more. There is a psychology to it, and a bit of an art form to get it right. I think I do a pretty decent job most seasons with that, and I'm just not a big fan of any changes that make it easier for those who I might be better than in this regard. I commend you though for your thought out explanation. 

Also, given past performance as a metric, I can see any changes like this making things much worse before they got better, and frankly, with the amount of time it takes for TPTB to make corrections and what not and the fact that by and large I am closer to disinterest and retirement than not if you were to graph my passion for HD right now, I'm mostly worried that I wouldn't stick around waiting for them to get it right, but that's more of a personal POV on it...

There are shades of gray to realism...I'm not sure I understand your argument against placing any value on realism here. Of course the game won't be a perfect simulation of recruiting...does that really mean that it's not an improvement to eliminate the 500 home visits at once situation? Right now the game is basically a bastardized auction with dynamic currencies veiled as real life recruiting elements.

I think that any system with the right level of complexity will facilitate an art form to exploiting it. That's what I was trying to demonstrate with my second example, how the art form could be even more diverse and complex without delving into utter chaos.

I think any change in the recruiting system will obviously hurt the experienced players vs. the general population, just to different degrees. I think it would be fun to bring things to a more level playing field as the system improves.

But you hit on an important point, which I'm in agreement with. I am very wary about the programmers-that-be and their ability to make swift, effective improvements. It's unfortunate, and kind of depressing. I don't think changes should be avoided because of this, but I do get it.

no, I guess I went a half step too far trying to be funny. Adding some realism may well be fine, I was just saying that of the 3 reasons you mentioned for looking at this kind of change (realism being #3) that none of them were really compelling for me as far as impetus for change. 

Until I actually get my first and only A+ baseline up to an A+ and try to see how that is for a while I don't really want too drastic a change. I've finally gotten close-ish at Mich st in Rupp and just as I approach the brass ring y'all want to take away brass rings 

My main sticking point is my last however, and on that one we seem to agree anyway... I'm not saying no changes should be attempted just because of it I suppose either, but changes that I am already wary about I'm not all that interested in beta testing for $12 a month...

Dude, I can guarantee you that the day I get a D1 school to A+ prestige the system will change. Guaranteed. lol

Posted by gillispie1 on 8/14/2013 1:35:00 PM (view original):

Posted by jetwildcat on 8/14/2013 12:33:00 PM (view original):

Posted by acn24 on 8/13/2013 5:46:00 PM (view original):
I feel like randomness is already too big an issue in recruiting (recruit generation) and significantly increasing the power of the utter randomness of the favorite school/distance preference is a recipe for disaster. I doubt too many people will be happy losing that stud from 10 miles away because their favorite school happened to be a different school, especially given the lack of any logic in the favorite school determinations.

I also think the max/cycle cap provides too big of an advantage to people who can be on every single cycle.

I think that promises do need to be much stronger than they currently are (and combined with that the penalty should be significantly harsher). This could tie in with a coach prestige; where broken promises cause huge prestige hits. To add some murkiness, maybe the coach prestige should only be visible to the specific coach; so I'd know mine and maybe I could ballpark yours, but it wouldn't be as exact a calculation as it can be now.

Is there a better alternative to "random" recruit generation? I could see a system where your team's success could "inspire" more theoretical 6 to 12-year-olds to pick up basketball and increase the number of recruits in your area down the line, and I think more recruits should come from populated areas...beyond something like that, how could recruit generation *not* be random? Not all HD jobs can be of equal difficulty.

I agree that adding some logic to players' favorite schools *could* be an improvement...but there are pitfalls there, too. Logically, more kids will favorite the good or local schools. Also, FWIW, I know people will be upset if they lose a recruit 10 miles away, but that's more of a trope of the current system than an inalienable right. Happy does not always equal Fun or Quality Game Design.

Agreed on the need for promises to be increased in value.

to me the randomness in recruit gen is one of the biggest problems in d1 today. of course the lack of "decent" recruits, or whatever you want to call it, resulting from seble's recruit generation change, would be #1 in my book. but before that, the randomness in geographic recruit generation and the pseudo-randomness of what good coaches/programs happen to be nearby, resulting in a very different difficulty level for various programs, was the #1 issue in my book. more accurately, i think its the variance in recruiting situations, more than the randomness in recruit generation - although that plays a part. some areas just naturally have more recruits and less high end schools than others, and thats probably a bigger issue. also who happens to coach nearby ends up playing a huge part in how hard your situation is, and im not sure thats a good thing. ultimately these all combine together to make some situations much easier than others, and i think the range there is simply too large.

to me the biggest single change that can reduce the issue is to decouple distance and cost. the problem is, you dont want to go too far, bringing back national recruiting of d2/d3 from the old days, which was incredibly tedious and boring. another mechanism to limit the pool of recruits you are looking at is needed - but it can't be distance, if you dont want it to be 3x easier to win a title at one high end BCS school than another (which is the case today, IMO).

a simple example of a potential limiter would be, how much does the recruit like your school, a psuedo random attribute that would be forced to conform to expectation with a small variation (so maybe always 25-35% of 4-5 star bigs would think highly of your school, something like that). this would need to be obvious to the school recruiting and would need to be searchable. im not sure im a fan of this particular limiter, but its just a simple example of something OTHER than distance that could be used to limit the pool people are closely looking at, which distance does a great job of accomplishing today. 

however, the advantage it provides, and im sure there is a better solution out there, but still - the advantage is recruit generation "luck" plays a much smaller factor, and more importantly, so does who happens to be near by. today if you happen to have a bunch of sims near you, they don't even recruit locally, which is retarded - competition in your area is now much lower than other areas, if you are a mid major. for higher end schools, the luck of how many high level programs and top coaches are nearby is huge. i dont have as much of a problem with one season you get a good mix of recruit and the next, a sparse one - it changes things up which is important to keep things fresh, and it rewards those who can adapt well to the situation at hand. but that is dwarfed by some regions just not having as many local recruits relative to the level of competition as other regions, and also, by who else happens to be coaching near by. i believe if distance was removed as a substantial driver of cost, at least for high end recruits, this would greatly level the playing field among top schools - and hopefully, would increase competition for schools who happen to be in areas with low competition, which really makes things crappy for everyone else, who has to watch the dominant school effortlessly sign four 5 star players every season.

I have an alternate idea...how about you can "bundle" actions together? Say if you did a home visit and a scouting trip, you only pay to 'travel' to the recruit once. Say you host a campus visit, but you save money by having multiple recruits come in at once. Etc.

SIDE NOTE: Another potential benefit of the cycle limits idea is the concept of "time" can mean something, say hosting only one campus visit per cycle. Hosting multiple recruits might devalue the visit per recruit, but if a 1-star sees a bunch of 5-stars on campus at the same time it might increase his opinion of the school. If a recruit says no to a campus visit, word gets around to the ones that did show up, etc. Blah blah blah, moral of the story is THERE IS A MORE FUN WAY TO DO THIS! Yes planning cycles in advance is necessary.

Anyway, to digress back to the original matter at hand, the distance cost does exaggerate the ebbs and flows of random recruit generation; I agree that is something that could be improved. The only thing I'd be worried about would be fixing it with a band-aid to appease the masses without any long-term visions in mind.

Posted by dacj501 on 8/14/2013 10:02:00 AM (view original):

Posted by noleaniml on 8/14/2013 6:36:00 AM (view original):

Posted by jcfreder on 6/5/2012 10:13:00 AM (view original):
The problem is that losing a battle is super punitive right now.  Nobody wants to lose a battle where they've sunk so much money in.  In real life, nobody puts in 90% of their recruiting budget into 1 or 2 guys.  Nor is it really an auction - kids decide where to go based largely on preferences.   A better way to do it might be to have a cap on how much effort "matters" to a recruit, and then the final decision rests with their internal attributes. 

I think jcfreder hit on a problem that is much more key than most people are giving it credit for. If you miss on a key recruit, especially if you are trying to build a program, you have really damaged your chances for a few years. I think the key motivation that discourages battles are the penalties if you lose. With the money system- if you miss on a recruit and you spend all your money- you are taking a walk-on. There needs to be some sort of system that allows coaches to still get left over scholarship players on the roster without having to take multiple walk-ons. I think the solutions lies in a fundamental "re-thinking" of the money system in general and it needs to be an effort based system. Very similar to the EA Sports NCAA Football Series of games. You get a certain amount of effort each cycle (with each cycle being a longer period so that you don't have to be at your computer every few hours or miss out on your allotment for that cycle) and the multipliers could be calculated after the effort has been allotted. Success on the court is already reflected in prestige- it should not also be reflected in the amount of recruiting effort you have available.

I disagree about needing a system to still award non walkons.. This is similar to the NBA (or any pro sports league I guess) needing to be protected from itself so they don't keep doing things like Allen Houston's 70 gajillion contract. And how does it mess things up for years? You get to do it all again the next season. It may mean a bunch of walkons and a bad year, but the next season you load up and try again, hopefully a little wiser about how to (and not to) win a battle (or choose a winable battle in the first place, which really is the most important part of a battle...)

dacj, I think we disagree on the penalty for taking a large amount of walkons due somewhat to a difference in perspectives. When you are building a program, if you miss on a key recruit that was part of the plan and end up taking a walkon, you miss a window of opportunity to have the key recruit with other pieces in place. For instance, if you have 4 decent starters as JRs but you still need a SG. You go out and try to get a really solid SG that will be an impact player as a SO and all the others will be SRs. If you miss on that dude at a school that is building- you missed a real window of opportunity and then its back to the drawing board for a few years. If your plan was to take 2 walkons already to try and have more money for that guy and you miss and then you end up taking 3 walkons... sure you will have more money for the next year, but it's not like you are at an established school and you are going out to recruit a bunch of studs that could come in and contribute right away. You will have a really young team that next year and it will take some time to get them competitive again. My second argument against taking random walkons is the randomness. If you could still extended scholarships to back up plan guys- you would still be exercising SOME control over who you got- not some randomly generated piece of crap. And I think any time you can give coaches more options, it adds to the intrigue and strategy of the game.

Posted by noleaniml on 8/16/2013 10:53:00 AM (view original):

Posted by dacj501 on 8/14/2013 10:02:00 AM (view original):

Posted by noleaniml on 8/14/2013 6:36:00 AM (view original):

Posted by jcfreder on 6/5/2012 10:13:00 AM (view original):
The problem is that losing a battle is super punitive right now.  Nobody wants to lose a battle where they've sunk so much money in.  In real life, nobody puts in 90% of their recruiting budget into 1 or 2 guys.  Nor is it really an auction - kids decide where to go based largely on preferences.   A better way to do it might be to have a cap on how much effort "matters" to a recruit, and then the final decision rests with their internal attributes. 

I think jcfreder hit on a problem that is much more key than most people are giving it credit for. If you miss on a key recruit, especially if you are trying to build a program, you have really damaged your chances for a few years. I think the key motivation that discourages battles are the penalties if you lose. With the money system- if you miss on a recruit and you spend all your money- you are taking a walk-on. There needs to be some sort of system that allows coaches to still get left over scholarship players on the roster without having to take multiple walk-ons. I think the solutions lies in a fundamental "re-thinking" of the money system in general and it needs to be an effort based system. Very similar to the EA Sports NCAA Football Series of games. You get a certain amount of effort each cycle (with each cycle being a longer period so that you don't have to be at your computer every few hours or miss out on your allotment for that cycle) and the multipliers could be calculated after the effort has been allotted. Success on the court is already reflected in prestige- it should not also be reflected in the amount of recruiting effort you have available.

I disagree about needing a system to still award non walkons.. This is similar to the NBA (or any pro sports league I guess) needing to be protected from itself so they don't keep doing things like Allen Houston's 70 gajillion contract. And how does it mess things up for years? You get to do it all again the next season. It may mean a bunch of walkons and a bad year, but the next season you load up and try again, hopefully a little wiser about how to (and not to) win a battle (or choose a winable battle in the first place, which really is the most important part of a battle...)

dacj, I think we disagree on the penalty for taking a large amount of walkons due somewhat to a difference in perspectives. When you are building a program, if you miss on a key recruit that was part of the plan and end up taking a walkon, you miss a window of opportunity to have the key recruit with other pieces in place. For instance, if you have 4 decent starters as JRs but you still need a SG. You go out and try to get a really solid SG that will be an impact player as a SO and all the others will be SRs. If you miss on that dude at a school that is building- you missed a real window of opportunity and then its back to the drawing board for a few years. If your plan was to take 2 walkons already to try and have more money for that guy and you miss and then you end up taking 3 walkons... sure you will have more money for the next year, but it's not like you are at an established school and you are going out to recruit a bunch of studs that could come in and contribute right away. You will have a really young team that next year and it will take some time to get them competitive again. My second argument against taking random walkons is the randomness. If you could still extended scholarships to back up plan guys- you would still be exercising SOME control over who you got- not some randomly generated piece of crap. And I think any time you can give coaches more options, it adds to the intrigue and strategy of the game.

I can see that point, but for me that is part of the risk assessment for recruiting strategy. If I'm depending on a player, I need to do everything possible to protect him. If I'm thinking of stealing one, I need to protect everything else. I guess I'm not in favor of making it easier just for the sake of making it easier. If changes somehow improve or enhance the whole system that's ok I suppose too, but I guess I'm not seeing that something like what is proposed here would do that, in my opinion...


ETA: I can see doing something about the quality of walkons or even using the unrecruited pool of players to generate walkons or something, if that would improve the quality of them a bit and make them at least usable on the deep bench in some way, and if that would also help alleviate some of the factors you are mentioning for some folks, that's cool too...


Edited Again - Also, what division/level are we talking about? At most rebuilding levels, in my experience, any player that is within your reach is probably replaceable with some looking - either still unclaimed, or, if some bigger fish comes along and swipes your guy, find a smaller fish and swipe his...

Yes, there is a risk assessment present when making recruiting decisions...but reducing the risk isn't necessarily a bad thing. The risk will be effectively reduced for everyone, especially in D1 for the non-A+ prestiges.

If the stakes of recruiting in HD were along the lines of "if you don't sign four good players, the game will come out of the computer and chop a finger off" then there would also be a risk assessment. It would just be a tad more extreme of a risk than it is now.

It would be more fun if the risk were along the lines of "should I promise him more playing time and upset my other players?" rather than "if i try to go after him i might not sign anybody and doom my program for a few seasons"