Posted by llamanunts on 6/27/2012 1:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by usc4life on 6/27/2012 12:40:00 PM (view original):

Posted by milkamania on 6/27/2012 12:13:00 PM (view original):

Posted by llamanunts on 6/27/2012 11:42:00 AM (view original):
A note: any suggestion to increase the number of battles really should address what happens to the losers.  As it stands now, the loser is just plain BONED.  It's too large a price to pay.

I do not agree with this at all.  Yes the loser of the battle takes a hit, but how often does a school with 5 schollies go all in on 1 player and not get him??  If you only have 1-2 schollies and lose a battle, you get 1-2 walkons, hardly crippling to a program.  If you have 5-6 schollies and lose a battle, yeah it hurts, but you probably still got 2-3 other serviceable players.   Just make the recruit generation a little deeper, and there would be fall back players to go after.  Yes they are lesser quality, but that's life.  If you are afraid of a battle, get out of big time D1. 

I am about to start my 8th season at Iowa, my only big 6 team, and this is the first time I've had a roster that might be able to make a run.  The main reason for that was in my 2nd, 3rd and 4th seasons, I lost battles. It set me back, but I recovered.   Man up and get in some fights.  Watching Duke score 5-6 studs without a battle should NEVER happen under any recruiting system.  If duke aint fighting carolina, or syracuse aint fighting uconn, or indiana and kentucky, etc, something is wrong. 

+1000

More battles between top schools would be great for HD. The way it is now, top schools keep collecting more and more carryover because they don't have to battle anyone, then eventually mid-majors have no chance against top schools simply because of the massive amount of $$$ they have stockpiled.

Too much of a blanket statement on my part.  I should have realized that approximately 96% of any discussion focuses on D1.

In D2 or D3, which comprises only about 2/3 of, y'know, everything, you're BONED.

Please also note that I did not say anything about wanting fewer battles.  I suggested that people address the predicament of the loser... and should have specified D2/D3.

What if a percentage of the money that you spent on a recruit and lost were refunded? It could even be expanded to allow a coach to abandon a recruit and get some of the $$$ back if a higher prestige school jumps in and you know you are going to lose or if you need more for another recruiting battle you are involved in? This would at least give you a little extra cash to try and find a plan b.

I don't know what the solution is, but I think the recruiting would be best served when there are frequent battles for the same recruit, especially within the same conference. If the coaches are afraid of getting skunked if they don't have enough resources, they are usually going to pursue the slighlty worse player that is not going to require a battle to sign.

"What if a percentage of the money that you spent on a recruit and lost were refunded? It could even be expanded to allow a coach to abandon a recruit and get some of the $$$ back if a higher prestige school jumps in ..."


you have to be kidding

these were the recruiting regions I came up with a few years ago.
Possibly these were what zhawks was referring to when he mentioned Rails older thread.

overall the total number of teams is roughly the same amongst the regions, but several regions are top heavy in D3 teams (New England/region 1 below) while others (Southeast/region 4 below) have practically no D3 teams.

region 1:  CT, MA, ME, NH, NY, RI, VT
total teams in  D1= 42,  D2= 31,  D3= 120

region 2:  DE, DE, MD, NJ, PA, VA, WV
total teams in  D1= 51,  D2= 47,  D3= 89

region 3:  IA, IL, IN, KY, MI, MN, MO, OH, WI
total teams in  D1= 62,  D2= 46,  D3= 115

region 4:  AL, AR, FL, GA, LA, MS, NC, PR, SC, TN
total teams in  D1= 89,  D2= 80,  D3= 20

region 5:  AK, AZ, CA, CO, HI, ID, KS, MT, ND, NE, NM, NV, OK, OR, SD, TX, UT, WA, WY
total teams in  D1= 80,  D2= 72,  D3= 40
 

The important key to this was the disappearance of a recruits hometown & high school.
A recruit is just from a region, not a specific city.  Doesn't matter if he was from Hawaii or Arizona, as all teams within that geographical region recruit him with the same costs.

If there are 3000 overall recruits that would put about 600 in each region.

Scouting would give you the option of scouting the top third, the middle third, or the bottom third.  Or label them D1 level, D2 level and D3 level.
FSS costs could also vary by region and level.  The top group of all recruits from region 4 (Southeast which D1 heavy) may cost $5000 (or even make it $10000) but scouting the D1 guys from region 1, where there are fewer D1 teams, may only be $2500, or half of the costs of region 1.
The middle third might cost $2000 and the bottom third only $1000.
D3 teams could save money as they don't need to scout the top third, most likely D1 & D2 wouldn't scout the less expensive bottom third.
 

From an earlier thread I posted in:


I believe HD stands to gain a significant benefit from running recruiting ALONGSIDE the regular season. The current system is quaint, fairly straightforward and easy to understand, but has glaring flaws (that we all know about) and gives large benefits to people whom can dedicate themselves to checking every 3-6 hours for a four-day period.

Looking at the current season setup we have roughly:
4 days of job changes (offseason 1)
4/5 days of recruiting (offseason 2, i say 5 since you get your cash a day early) including 34 recruiting cycles
2 days/cycles of exhibition games (really 1.5 but i digress)
29 days/cycles of regular season play
10 days/cycles of postseason play
1 reflection day (as i like to call it)

that's 41 game cycles and 34 recruiting cycles, which could actually line up pretty nicely.

Before I elaborate, i'd like to mention that i do understand server loads and that running recruiting cycles at 11pm takes a load off the servers at 2am; i am keeping that in mind but nobody besides seble has the data required to confirm or dispute the notion that a setup like mine can be executed.

Imagine a season where:
-After the 4 days of job changes, you have one day where nothing happens that you can set your exhibition lineup and do recruiting research. Perhaps CollegiateInsider posts draft results and maybe an extra fun-to-read publication on that day.
-Exhibition games run as planned while you still have two days of recruiting prep.
-Once the season starts, you also have your first recruiting cycle. Recruiting cycles technically occur at the same time as the games (i'll explain why in a second) but for server reasons you might not see the results until 8am (or 8am/8pm for two-a-day worlds)
-This continues throughout the season. Signings start at the mid-point of conference play (so 20 cycles in), recruiting ends the day after the NC (on Reflection Day).
-The extra 4-5 days gained from the recruiting period can be spread throughout the season for extra days off if the recruiting+gameplanning every day workload is perceived to be larger (which I wouldn't expect, as one cycle in and of itself doesn't take too long to manage).

This setup would give numerous benefits, I can think of a few:
-No 2am recruiting wake-up calls. i feed the cat at 330 am just so i can check whatif naturally during the 2am-5am cycle.
-More to do during the season. i know a lot of top coaches take gameplanning pretty lightly during the regular season, and simultaneous recruiting would give more to look at.
-You HAVE to buy a new season to see your recruits. new coach retention, anyone?

This system is also especially conducive to cycle recruiting limits, as you can:
-Coordinate campus visits so that recruits see your team play the big dogs or just see you win a game. maybe even bring multiple players in at the same time and create some synergy (where Chris Webber can say if Juwan Howard signs, I want to sign).
-Have head-coach home visits only available on your team's off days, whereas an assistant coach has to visit in your stead on gamedays
-Same deal with scouting trips; only one scouting trip per player per cycle, however if it's a head coach scouting visit, you get to see ALL the player's potentials
-The limiting of moves makes it much more difficult for big schools to poach recruits
-The "shotgun" strategy becomes a viable recruiting strategy, since you can't just throw all your eggs into the backup-option basket the day after signings. it promotes battling while slightly lowering the stakes, and increases the chances of landing UConn's backup option if they land all their top recruits.
-You can take "can't be in two places at once" factor into account with assistant coaches and recruits if you'd like to, but even without that, you already now have a system that is not only more 'realistic' but could be more fun as well.

Any thoughts? I think this is one of my better ideas, alongside my "run a 5v5 scrimmage with practice lineups of your choice every day at 5am" idea.

jet- my response was this:

One thing jumped out immediately: Buying a new season to recruit. Problems:

1) personally, unless I want to redshirt someone, I wait to re-up until the playoffs. So I'd miss most of recruiting or have to buy sooner.

2) The main problem is when people want to cut back or stop playing all together. They don't re-up, and therefore don't recruit, and it screws the team up. 

3) The first season you come in you have absolutely none of your own recruits. No one wants that. You might have a different philosophy compared to the guy before you, or the guy before you was just downright bad at recruiting. So you have to wait till your second season to begin the fix.


----
You agreed with this sentiment (here is the link). Those are the main factors that you'd need to hurdle.

Posted by gillispie1 on 6/27/2012 3:52:00 PM (view original):

Posted by johnner26 on 6/27/2012 3:31:00 PM (view original):

Posted by jsajsa on 6/27/2012 9:30:00 AM (view original):
allow us to post first cycle moves prior to 6 ET

not that the cycle would run earlier or change anything of substance - just allow entry of planned recruiting moves during say the 12 hours prior to the first cycle - which is now the shortest and often the most important

Pre load the 6PM cycle

+1



I see no need for a complete overhaul, just a few upgrades here and there.

+1

+1

seble, i admire the extent you seem willing to go to change things to make the game better. however, the bigger and more fundamental the changes, the more important beta testing and all that is. also, i think you should have some higher end teams, some teams who threaten to win championships. this game is a lot different when you compete for (and win) championships, and when you don't. i think you would benefit from having a high end bcs team, a low end one, a mid major, a d2 team, and a d3 team, before you make SUCH drastic changes. otherwise, its impossible to personally weigh the potential impacts of a change on all levels of the game, which i personally feel like has been one of your weaker suits in your time as HD admin, because you were still getting to know the game (obviously, its to be expected).

i think you know i have REALLY been behind many of your changes, especially in theory. but a lot of times, they just don't come out exactly right, and need some tweaking (again, i am in software development, and that is the natural order of things). a lot of it sounds simply fantastic in theory but context is everything, it might be great in one way, but always have that pesky law of unintended consequences to deal with. you can get that critical context 2 ways. 1) have more teams that are more competitive, and 2) in depth exchanges with beta testers. preferably both. i would strongly recommend getting through a good beta round, getting that process all down, and having a highly successful release that is a major change, before you do something INCREDIBLY HUGE like write recruiting from scratch.

im not saying you haven't had highly successful releases. your fix to potential arguably saved this game, it may be the only significant release that didnt change something i didn't like (it didnt fix everything, but what it touched, came out really nicely). and many of your updates since have had a lot of positive. but some of them have needed some context, and you've never had a successful beta round here in HD. i think until that process has been vetted, a from-scratch recruiting system is just too big and dangerous. please don't take that the wrong way, i am honestly one of your biggest supporters and fans (not to say i haven't been critical, i have on a number of occasions, but still). and I in no way mean to belittle the great work you've done on HD, or demean the effort you've put in. however, we've never had the beta testing required for these kinds of game-shaping, life-altering changes, and i don't think its possible for *anyone*, you, me, or programmers better than both of us put together - to pull off something as big and complex as doing recruiting from scratch - without that all-important beta cycle.

i disagree with you here. i would actually think Seble's current activity is on-target. if he were to play the game at more in-depth levels, it would give him a certain level of the tunnel vision that 95% of players get (i cannot believe that some people think the recruiting system is OK the way it is).

if you asked someone who never played the game how he would do recruiting, there's a much better chance you'll get the "most fun" way out of him, rather than an HD player still stuck in the current HD recruiting paradigm

Posted by caesari on 6/27/2012 9:56:00 PM (view original):
jet- my response was this:

One thing jumped out immediately: Buying a new season to recruit. Problems:

1) personally, unless I want to redshirt someone, I wait to re-up until the playoffs. So I'd miss most of recruiting or have to buy sooner.

2) The main problem is when people want to cut back or stop playing all together. They don't re-up, and therefore don't recruit, and it screws the team up. 

3) The first season you come in you have absolutely none of your own recruits. No one wants that. You might have a different philosophy compared to the guy before you, or the guy before you was just downright bad at recruiting. So you have to wait till your second season to begin the fix.


----
You agreed with this sentiment (here is the link). Those are the main factors that you'd need to hurdle.

to save a click:

That's precisely the main problem I envisioned with this idea. I think you'd need to allow for recruiting regardless of your impending season purchase, where empty classes are filled by the assistant coach like they are now. 

If the delay to playing with your own recruits is really an issue, I'm sure there are other ways to keep people interested enough during season one (maybe walk-on practice squad tryouts, assistant coach interviews, planning recruiting cycles in advance, a big coaches' conference chatroom run by whatifsports after the 5th game, team picture coordination, current player "interviews" where you get their personality test and team expectations, etc etc etc)

I havent had a chance to go thru and read everyones suggestions but plan on doing that here shortly..

im new to HD but I figured i'd throw out a few ideas

1.) You get your home state free for FSS
2.) You get to choose 1 additional state thats in your region (say within 300 miles) that you'd deem as your pipeline state and have it free or at least 50% off.  For example, if you're coaching UNC, you get NC free and then your choice of like GA, SC, VA, TN, KY..
3.) If you send out a bunch of scouting trips, lets say 10, you should know everything about this recruit.  You should know his highs, lows, ft%, IQ, etc.  I mean, if you watch a kid 10 times, you should get a good idea of what you're getting.  I dont know what the answer is to this one.  Can you make visit #1 show xxx, visit #2 show yyy, visit #3 show zzz and so on.. rather than it being random and repetive. 

Here are a few ideas that I think would help improve recruiting and allow for it to become more national. 
 

1. Increase the amount of money per open scholarship and decrease the amount given for post season tournament games. For example something like bumping the per scholarship $$ in DI to $25k but decreasing the per NT game to $10k. This would in theory pump a little more money overall into recruiting for all teams and take away the huge advantage full conferences have when it comes to putting a bunch of teams in the NT compared to conferences that aren't as full.
2. Make trips (campus & coach) across the board cheaper so that it doesn't cost ~$2k to send a campus visit to a kid on the West Coast from an East Coast team. At the same time make it cheaper to recruit locally (inside 150 miles) so that teams do have an advantage in their "area"
3. Have a WIS Showcase each season where coaches can buy in (by a deadline) for a reasonably low cost and they will get potentials for a certain amount of randomly selected players across the country and all coaches will get the same players as each other (prevent multiple accounts from having an advantage). This could be used at all levels where once you buy in you get for example 40 potentials for players at the level (ie. DII) of your school. 
4. Make the prestige advantage be not as large inside each letter bracket (A vs. A-) but larger outside the brackets (A vs. B). So for example a team that has an A prestige and is going against a team with an A- would only have a 10% advantage but if it was an A prestige vs. a B+ prestige it would be something along the lines of a 40% advantage.  The multipliers for each letter could look something along the lines of:

• A+ (x2.8)
• A (x2.7)
• A- (x2.6)
• B+ (x2.3)
• B (x2.2)
• B- (x2.1)
• C+ (x1.8)
• C (x1.7)
• C- (x1.6)
• D+ (x1.3)
• D (x1.2)
• D- (x1.1)
• F (x1)

What I invision here is in real life, a school like Duke (A+) doesn't have that big of an advantage over a school like UConn (A) but they both have a much larger advantage over a school like Texas A&M (B+).

The main problem with the idea of in season recruiting and signings that no one has answered yet is what to do about job changes.  How can we realistically expect something like this   "This continues throughout the season. Signings start at the mid-point of conference play (so 20 cycles in), recruiting ends the day after the NC (on Reflection Day).""  when the coach can just leave for a different school in the offseason.  I don't want anyone else choosing my players for me (although in all fairness I'd probably do better) if I took that open job later. 

Posted by milkamania on 6/28/2012 8:26:00 AM (view original):
The main problem with the idea of in season recruiting and signings that no one has answered yet is what to do about job changes.  How can we realistically expect something like this   "This continues throughout the season. Signings start at the mid-point of conference play (so 20 cycles in), recruiting ends the day after the NC (on Reflection Day).""  when the coach can just leave for a different school in the offseason.  I don't want anyone else choosing my players for me (although in all fairness I'd probably do better) if I took that open job later. 

Not sure if this makes sense (correct me if I am delusional), couldn't you have in season recuiting as an option to use or not. If used it "could" give a slight advantage to you, but make it so that you will NOT be able to switch to another job the following season. No move up/down or lateral job changes. If not used a new coach still has the present system of recruiting to recruit players from (sure "maybe" at a disadvantage, but one year price to pay).

I have seen a few people post that they only buy one season at a time and this would hamper them. Well any coach in real life that signs perennial one year contracts would have a harder time recruiting as well.

I strongly dislike the idea of inseason recruiting.  Too hard to deal with new coaches....the best part of the game is recruiting and the first year taking over a sim you get to recruit some of your own guys, which is excellent fun.

Some of the nationalization ideas are interesting, but would need MAJOR testing before I'd support them.  National recruiting could easily just help the top teams even more. 

Changes to the amount of effort allowed per cycle would be good.  10-20 home visits or something like that would totally change recruiting at D1, and I think in a good way, creating that requirement you need to touch a guy 5 or 6 cycles to put $30,000 into him.

I do not want to see in-season recruiting since EE's could affect what position(s) you need to fill.  I've always envisioned a Letter of Intent period during the recruiting process prior to signings.  This would let the coach know he has the player locked up and avoid dumping unnecessary $$$ into him as well as let other coaches know so that they can start looking elsewhere without wasting money.  This would also eliminate the 'poaching' during the later cycles as it would make it nearly impossible to get a player to sign with another school.

Not a fan of in-season recruiting. Having recruiting get its own slot makes it more fun, rather than having it in the middle of everything else going on as well as being slower and more drawn out. Aside from the other problems that come along with it that others have already pointed out.

whatever one does, one has to be careful not to make it a big competitive disadvantage to be unable to pay attention to the game constantly during a season

if the only way to recruit effectively becomes to take action every cycle, we will close off some participants

likewise, if the only way to recruit effectively becomes to consistently devote major attention to recruiting - and not just during a narrow period - we will lose participants

of course we also should consider my long sought "super turbo world" in which a season is handled in four days - recruiting cycles every hour, then games every hour.........with a bit more time in postseason........