Quick question on rankings:

Why not just make them cosmetic -- window dressing that doesn't have an effect on anything?

That's what they are in real life. The coaches polls are filled out by grad assistants and the like, and the rankings don't have any real bearing on anything. They're used primarily to hype college basketball, get TV ratings, etc. Fans talk about, "Hey, remember our Sweet 16 run?!", not "Hey, remember when we were ranked 14th?!"

And that way, you guys wouldn't have to devote time, energy and resources to trying to fix them (again) and could focus on stuff that would actually enhance HD.

Seble I understand that many people have a beef with the rankings, but as I am sure that daalt will agree, what is the rush to fix something that is window dressing when there are parts of the engine (ie EE's, Engine itself, among others) that aren't working 100%? The meat of the game needs to be working as best as possible before things like that need to be addressed. I think that is one of the biggest gripes from the past, that what needed to be looked at was never looked at.

Quote: Originally Posted By zhawks on 11/11/2009
Seble I understand that many people have a beef with the rankings, but as I am sure that daalt will agree, what is the rush to fix something that is window dressing when there are parts of the engine (ie EE's, Engine itself, among others) that aren't working 100%? The meat of the game needs to be working as best as possible before things like that need to be addressed. I think that is one of the biggest gripes from the past, that what needed to be looked at was never looked at.

90% of tickets (engine, rankings, tournament seedings, and recruit/player quality, does not = just rankings) is what is being addressed this go-around. thats fair. Let's give it a chance.

Moy I already stated I'll give it a chance. I am very happy that WIS is listening to its users and am very happy to see seble on the forums discussing this with us. It has been a very long time (if ever?!) that we have gotten the kind of contact from the devs that we are now. My point was mearly that at some point you need to realize that the ranking system will never be perfect and that so much man power has already been put into it that maybe its time to move on from solving that problem, I think daalt has it right, it is mainly window dressing to my knowledge, other then prestige possibly, but maybe that is all rankings need to be in HD.

I understand your feelings on the rankings, but to a lot of people they aren't just window dressing. It's an achievement to build a program to the point of being ranked and it's something meaningful in that way. This is also a simulation of real life (as much as possible), and rankings are a big part of real life college sports, however meaningful they might be.

seble --

1. You absolutely have to be able to make the distinction between "a big part" (a dubious assertion, imho) and "a meaningful part". That's the whole point here. If it's not a truly meaningful part, your resources are better spent elsewhere. And one of the major reasons that people care now is because rankings impact things.

2. The real life argument in general is very weak to fall back on. There are dozens of things in HD that don't resemble real life, and for good reason. HD was designed with that in mind -- that there are simply many aspects of real-life college hoops that don't translate well to HD.

"Because it's like that in real life" is a dangerous mantra. What's important is what is best for HD. If that can copy real life, then fantastic. If not, no big deal. Staying true to real life is only important in the context of making sure it's what's best for HD.

I would argue that having a reasonable ranking system is in the best interest of the game. Like I said, it's not fluff to most people.

I think that the reason that people seem to care about the ranking system is because it doesn't work well, not because they actually care about it.

Are boosters being addressed? I want boosters to be more available like real life

Quote: Originally Posted By brianp87 on 11/11/2009
Are boosters being addressed? I want boosters to be more available like real life

That should not be on the radar at all. Let's get the game working as intended before we worry about stuff like that.

rankings are not fluff to me.

But moy, you do agree that there are much more important things to work on then the rankings (which after numerous tries still hasn't been gotten right), correct? And the rankings really don't mean anything in HD except for a little bit of prestige.

Rank does impact tournament seedings.

10/14/2008 6:25 PM furry_nipps
Ok so does being ranked going into the NT help your seeding at all?

10/15/2008 1:28 PM Customer Support
Ranking in and of itself does not but when it comes to seeding we do look at some of the same criteria that go into rankings, the biggest of which is margin of victory which is completely ignored by RPI.

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So ranking does 100% matter in seeding seble? Or is it just indirectly related?

It does matter. It's not a dominant factor, but one of many. As for that message from CS, I think the tournament seeding process has changed quite a bit over time, so it was probably a lack of communication.