Love the idea of holding camps that reveal recruits that perhaps few other teams know about, and would give you more info on them than would for instance a scouting service.

But as a DIII coach I'd love to make sure things remain usable for us down in the lower levels. A couple things:
- Allow scouting service requests to focus on a recruit caliber (DI/II/III), with DI being the most expensive. If I have a good DIII program and I want to peruse DII recruits, I just need to pony up.
- Same idea with camps: holding a camp will cost different amounts based on the caliber of targeted recruits. Maybe $50 per recruit for DI, $35 for DII, $20 for DIII.
- Perhaps restrict scouting service results to only recruits who are in your school's prestige range. I'm a little afraid of DI coaches who also own DIII teams, doing scouting for DIII with their leftover DI cash. If you are Duke, your scouting service results wouldn't include DIII or low-DII players.

I'm hoping that the new fun stuff won't be prohibitively expensive for our meager DIII budgets. Maybe instead of a more-expensive camp, there is also an "open gym"-type option, which is dirt cheap and gives you slim data on a random set of players. Those definitely exist in real life because I attended a few back when I was an ATH=10 PE=80 coming out of HS.

Here's a realistic way to make the upper prestige levels more competitive against each other- in real college basketball, a+ prestige schools all compete nationally for recruits. Kentucky cheats, but they have a better chance at a Florida guy than Florida, even if Florida gies to 3 straight elite eights.
Proposal- have the costs for scouting trips/ campus visits, etc proportionate to your prestige... If you're super high a+, it's cheaper to go 1000 miles away than if you're lower a+ than if you're a-. Just do a sliding scale that no one knows.
How does this help even things out??? My a+ Georgia tech will actuslly have Texas A&M, kansas, Connecticut, etc. battle me for more players. I will take a chance and go against Syracuse on a recruit in Michigan , risking mich state jumping us both late. We would actually see battles for top recruits. This currently doesn't happen often because i don't wanna jump a conference mate for a stud recruit, and conference mates are the only ones I can afford to jump becuase they are within 360. Realistically, providence doesn't have a shot at a duke/ Kentucky battle. Good. They shouldn't. But if dukes battling UConn for a stud, prvidence should be able to jump a local guy late. Currently Duke and UConn don't battle. UNC, Kansas, and Duke dont battle. That's the problem at the top of d1. And the solution isn't socialism. The solution is- allow greed to actually cost someone something and let's have nation wide battles where the highest prestige school actually battles the 2nd highest even though they are 1000 miles apart. If cost is determined by a sliding scale of prestige and distance (distance doesn't cost as much for high prestige schools), Georgia will get some local recruits Georgia tech leaves behind, there will be a few more prospects at mid levels that can actually turn out to be studs, and Georgia actually had a chance to get better if tech gets people far away and battles ucla for recruits.

First off, excited about the update! I've been reading through this for a couple hours so hopefully I don't repeat a question or idea. I will focus on discovery for now;

If I attend a regional camp at a D3 school, am I seeing the same recruits as a D2 school that attended? Or is there going to be specific camps per level?

If I'm a D2 school should I attend a low end D1 camp to look for somebody I want to "pull down"? Or, are the guys I can pull down going to go to the D2 camp?

Once a recruit is discovered, let's say with a regional camp, and I hold my own camp, is it possible to only get 97 recruits discovered because 3 of them I saw at the regional camp? If so, does that mean that those 3 recruits are maybe more interested in my school? Also, do I go from level 1 to level 2 of those recruits? Or am I always going to discover a new 100 guys?

Something else, how many times have you heard a kid or a college coach say, "well we went to go watch recruit A's game but his teammate, recruit B, had a nice game so now he is on our radar." I think it would be a fun little addition to possibly discover a recruit that is a teammate or was an opponent to some game you went to bump a recruits level from 1 to 2.

Again, hopefully I didn't repeat. Thanks again for listening to the feedback seble!

I hate the fact that everyone gets a flat amount of cash despite your postseason, conference, etc.    BUT- I will ONLY address my thoughts on scouting here:

1- I really like the proposed changes for scouting. I have always thought it would be beneficial for the game to scout for awhile before actually putting recruiting cash down on players. If I'm 50/50 btw two players, why should I have to wait until "recruiting" begins to find out one runs my o/d and the other doesn't?! 

2- I think its much more realistic to have "hidden gems" scattered throughout the landscape that are harder to find. Thanks for addressing this. IRL, kids who don' t have money can't afford to get noticed at all the camps. Other late bloomers don't look great until their senior season & flourish in college. To fully address this situation, add more high potential mid level recruits throughout the recruit generation. This will even out the game, allow scouting to be more meaningful and important, and allow a good B level coach to jump into the A+ prestige by season four of a few well scouted and developed players. 

3- Drop baseline prestige if you want better equity and opportunities for success from traditionally lower level programs. They still have to earn it... it just makes it doable. Sorry. This is about scouting. My bad. This is a fairer way to equalize the game that punishing mega conferences through socialistic everyone gets the same amount! Punish underperformers in mega conferences... share revenues more fairly (higher taxation to extend the socialism metaphor)... and allow Deleware state to earn and keep a higher prestige while killing 2-24 Virginia's prestige. 

4- Early Entries. This is a big deal. A VERY big deal to a small number of great coaches/ teams. But NOT necessarily in scouting. 
* My Georgia Tech team has won a lot of recent national championships. And every year I have had 3-4 early entries. And I rarely have a single senior. This year I have 1 SR and 1 JR. Same thing the last few seasons. I would have little scouting money but I know I will recruit 4-5. I do every year. From a SIGNING PLAYERS perspective, this is a HUGE issue and will absolutely kill successful teams unless we implement a system for over-signings and pushing out players listed high on the projection report. You almost need an allowance for "on the fence" or higher players (I currently have 8 players on the list, 6 underclassmen). From a SCOUTING perspective, though, it doesn't necessarily matter. Most teams that lose multiple EE's only recruit top 100 players... which everyone can see. So who cares. It won't effect my scouting much at all assuming I can see and do scouting on top 100 players. If I can't scout their potential at all- that will be a huge issue, especially since most of them will be highly sought after and signed early. This would be an over-correction and absolutely kill good teams/ coaches. Can you imagine if Coach Cal (without cheating) was not allowed to sign top players until after the season (when underclassmen declared)  when every good senior already committed somewhere? That would be ridiculous. The only solution I see is to "push out" a random number of projected NBA players.
Example: I have 6 "on the fence" or better underclassmen plus one senior.  I get senior scouting & recruiting money & I decide how much more I want. I decide to "push out" 2 so I get 2 more "recruiting & scouting slots/ money" during the season. If 3 or more declare, I get the extra money at that point. If only one naturally declares, the system automatically takes one more randomly from the projected report and makes them go NBA. That hurts me as I'd rather have the NBA ready player, but its a gamble I have to take similar to real life. This method would not kill great teams but serve as an equalizer, which it seems you are trying to achieve with this update. Most good coaches are OK with some equalizers, but once you start penalizing good coaches with socialism (everyone gets the same cash regardless of your conference, success, etc!), we will move on as that's ridiculous and not comparable to real life. 

5- 4 levels of scouting is too much in my opinion. 
Have multiple levels... I like that... but when we get to then end, can we have levels like: 
guard offensive skillz (speed, bh/ pass; per); guard defensive skillz (ath, def, ?) ; big guy offense (lp/ per/ ath); big guy defense (ath/ def/ rebounding/ block) ; physical skills (ath/ speed/ dur/ sta). I don't care if my pg prospect can't block shots or rebound necessarily. And my center doesn't need bh, or per necessarily. 

6- New players not getting a fair shake at recruits...
* You should be able to sign up for a SIM in a world at any time during the current season (you would not be able to game plan, etc) for scouting and recruiting purposes only. 
* If you plan on leaving your current situation, you should be able to make that known at any time during the current season as well. If you have seasons left, all programs scheduled to be abandoned by existing coaches OR all sim's should be available to sign up for... but again, you can only scout and recruit the new team. 

Example: I am at d1 Yale & want to move up to an empty Penn State team I qualify for (based on current prestige/ reputation points). I click a button on my home page telling Yale I am leaving at the end of the year. It doesn't affect game play at all this year & I still run the team. I qualify for Penn State and "sign up" for them because I've paid for next season already. That year, I RUN the Yale team, SCOUT AND RECRUIT the Penn State team while not doing any game play. A D2 team sees my Yale teams as empty for next season, and they can abandon their team for my YALE and start scouting and recruiting there while game-playing the d2 school. New coaches and "warm up" to the game by signing up for an empty d3 team watching gameplay from a distance and scouting/ recruiting. 

Like most people, I am split on this plan, but generally open to it. A few points:

1. One of my biggest concerns is that this update would cause HD to lose too many experienced coaches and not bring in sufficient new coaches to offset the loss. We are talking about a major revamping of how this game is played. It's a game that I love and I don't want to see a mass exodus, especially if there is an outside chance that the exodus could cause the game to become financially impossible for WIS to sustain.

2. Many people keep saying that new coaches aren't going to like the game because they aren't able to add their own recruits right away. Two points in response: a brand new coach isn't going to know what the previous version of the game was like -- if the first Madden game you ever picked up was Madden 08, you started the game with no idea how it differed from Madden 03. And secondly, if SIM recruiting becomes stronger and SIM teams have better players who are better fits for their offense/defense, not recruiting your own players right away won't become such an issue. One of HD's biggest problems is that SIM teams suck at recruiting, target subpar players who are not good fits for their style and are generally a wasteland. If a SIM team was designed to be generally competitive, I think new coaches are not going to care too much about not recruiting their own players right away (and will throw themselves into scouting anyways).

And Stewdog's idea of allowing a new coach to sign up for a SIM in a world at anytime (maybe at a reduced price) for purposes of scouting/recruiting would cure many of the newbie objections.

3. I love the fact that in the new recruiting model, you have to find the players rather than just analyzing data. In real life, the coach at a D2 school in Minnesota doesn't get a list of nationwide D2 recruits with a breakdown of their skills. For a D2/D3 coach, life is about beating the bushes to find the player with a high capacity for improvement that other schools have overlooked. Or its about finding the guy who lacks athleticism/speed, but is very skilled and has run your offense/defense since middle school.  The current system rewards the ability to spend time searching for data; the new system rewards the ability to smartly beat the bushes.

4. One tweak for the proposed scouting. All players within a close radius (say 50 or 75 miles) should be visible to the coach. If you talk to real life D2/D3 coaches, they know about the good players in their backyard. It takes virtually no money to scout them and if a guy is good, they are going to have friends/neighbors/whoever mentioning them (whether the RL coach can accurately assess that player's ability is a whole nother question). 

+1 to the post above. Good points.

Posted by grimacedance on 9/15/2015 7:17:00 PM (view original):
Like most people, I am split on this plan, but generally open to it. A few points:

1. One of my biggest concerns is that this update would cause HD to lose too many experienced coaches and not bring in sufficient new coaches to offset the loss. We are talking about a major revamping of how this game is played. It's a game that I love and I don't want to see a mass exodus, especially if there is an outside chance that the exodus could cause the game to become financially impossible for WIS to sustain.

2. Many people keep saying that new coaches aren't going to like the game because they aren't able to add their own recruits right away. Two points in response: a brand new coach isn't going to know what the previous version of the game was like -- if the first Madden game you ever picked up was Madden 08, you started the game with no idea how it differed from Madden 03. And secondly, if SIM recruiting becomes stronger and SIM teams have better players who are better fits for their offense/defense, not recruiting your own players right away won't become such an issue. One of HD's biggest problems is that SIM teams suck at recruiting, target subpar players who are not good fits for their style and are generally a wasteland. If a SIM team was designed to be generally competitive, I think new coaches are not going to care too much about not recruiting their own players right away (and will throw themselves into scouting anyways).

And Stewdog's idea of allowing a new coach to sign up for a SIM in a world at anytime (maybe at a reduced price) for purposes of scouting/recruiting would cure many of the newbie objections.

3. I love the fact that in the new recruiting model, you have to find the players rather than just analyzing data. In real life, the coach at a D2 school in Minnesota doesn't get a list of nationwide D2 recruits with a breakdown of their skills. For a D2/D3 coach, life is about beating the bushes to find the player with a high capacity for improvement that other schools have overlooked. Or its about finding the guy who lacks athleticism/speed, but is very skilled and has run your offense/defense since middle school.  The current system rewards the ability to spend time searching for data; the new system rewards the ability to smartly beat the bushes.

4. One tweak for the proposed scouting. All players within a close radius (say 50 or 75 miles) should be visible to the coach. If you talk to real life D2/D3 coaches, they know about the good players in their backyard. It takes virtually no money to scout them and if a guy is good, they are going to have friends/neighbors/whoever mentioning them (whether the RL coach can accurately assess that player's ability is a whole nother question). 

I'm honestly not concerned about #1. Experienced long time coaches leave the game almost every season. Attrition is not gooe right now. I think the game can survive but not thrive if we are relying on a core of elites playing it while very few new coaches stick around. It might cause some friction to start but if I had to take a wild guess, I would say more than half of new coaches are gone within two seasons. Turnover like that has to be fixed. The status quo will not grow the game. And in the long run most of us will quit anyway due to empty conference, apathy, or boredom. All of which can be greatly alleviated with some basic changes to the game. Very very few have coached for multiple years. So few that most of us can name the list.

I just really hope seble looks at ways to improve usage. Recognize high achieving coaches more in season through the engine. Figure out ways to increase and have reason for more conversation amongst coaches. So many leagues are dead quiet. The game is really only active in a few leagues in each world and level. With the vast majority empty or with coaches who never talk to each other. You will lose some coaches but the potential for gains is so much more if this is done right.

If part of the goal of this change is get and retain new coaches, I'll throw out one quick thought about it based upon a very recent experience.

I got my buddy to join my conference last season and after the season during the renewal period I asked him if he was going to play again. I'm paraphrasing but he basically said "I don't know. Recruiting was fun but during the season was boring". 

My thinking is that if you do have some in season scouting/recruiting, you will accomplish two things-

1. Keep those new players involved in the game more during the season as they're learning the game. Give them something to do basically so they don't get bored.
2. They're going to more invested in their team and therefore more inclined to renew. They're going to say "ooh I got this really good recruit coming in, I want to see what he can do. Might as well do another season and see how it goes".

Thanks for your work here Seble.

On a non-recruiting side note, please keep the graphics, fonts, layout and navigation the same.   HD is really easy to use, really across the board.   In my opinion, it's sensible, clean, simple and really outstanding.   

I suck at Hardball Dynasty, and I'm going to blame it partly on the game's layout and navigation, with some real difficult pages to read from a graphics standpoint (I don't like Hardball's categories labeled with a picture icon, as opposed to Hoops Dynasty's straightforward "REB" for rebounding, "LP" for low post, etc) .   Gridrion Dynasty to me had a problem with too much micromanaging and just setting up your team's preferences was a pain.   Soccer Dynasty to me is also difficult graphically and navigation-wise.

Anyway, just hoping Hoops Dynasty's graphics and layout can stay the same.

Thanks.

Sorry if these issues have been addresses already, but I don't have time to read through all of these posts. Is there anything being done with this update in regards to being able to see in recruiting whether the designated Average rating is Low/Ave (7-14 pts) or High/Ave (14-21 pts)? The difference between a player potentially improving only 8 points as opposed to 20 points in certain categories can make a significant difference in his eventual value.

I would also like to see an additional designation for something like an Extremely/High rating for players who's potential is over 40 points in a category. The difference between the career talent level of similar recruits is often determined by one of them having High/Highs where they gain 50-80 points in one or more categories, whereas the other recruit's High/Highs end up being closer to the 28-40 point range. That variable can make such a significant impact and very well end up being the difference between someone having just a good team or having a great team that can compete for a NT Title - and it's just a matter of random luck at this point.    

It would also be nice to have some additional visual designations for the player's remaining category points available in the team player ratings view. Something like Maxed Out, 0 pts left = purple;  Very Low, 0-3 pts left = dark red; Low, 3-7 pts left = red; Medium, 7-14 pts left = grey; Medium Plus, 14-21 pts left = black; High, 21-28 pts left = dark blue; Very High, 28-40 pts left =blue; Extremely High, 40+ pts left = green. As it is, I'm constantly having to reference each players individual ratings history in order to set efficient practice plans and such which is an unnecessary pain.  

Posted by affvid on 9/16/2015 2:47:00 PM (view original):
Sorry if these issues have been addresses already, but I don't have time to read through all of these posts. Is there anything being done with this update in regards to being able to see in recruiting whether the designated Average rating is Low/Ave (7-14 pts) or High/Ave (14-21 pts)? The difference between a player potentially improving only 8 points as opposed to 20 points in certain categories can make a significant difference in his eventual value.

I would also like to see an additional designation for something like an Extremely/High rating for players who's potential is over 40 points in a category. The difference between the career talent level of similar recruits is often determined by one of them having High/Highs where they gain 50-80 points in one or more categories, whereas the other recruit's High/Highs end up being closer to the 28-40 point range. That variable can make such a significant impact and very well end up being the difference between someone having just a good team or having a great team that can compete for a NT Title - and it's just a matter of random luck at this point.    

It would also be nice to have some additional visual designations for the player's remaining category points available in the team player ratings view. Something like Maxed Out, 0 pts left = purple;  Very Low, 0-3 pts left = dark red; Low, 3-7 pts left = red; Medium, 7-14 pts left = grey; Medium Plus, 14-21 pts left = black; High, 21-28 pts left = dark blue; Very High, 28-40 pts left =blue; Extremely High, 40+ pts left = green. As it is, I'm constantly having to reference each players individual ratings history in order to set efficient practice plans and such which is an unnecessary pain.  

For that last paragraph something like this?

I like th idea of adding in a high++ since there is a huge difference between high 28+ which never really goes above 40 and then those per/lp growths that get 80 some growth.  Would make recruiting offense a lot easier.

Thanks the0nlyis. Yes, anything along those lines that would give an easier and faster visual reference for accurately evaluating my team's potential would be very beneficial. From a realistic point of view, it doesn't make sense that an assistant coach can go out on a scouting trip and identify a player as being low/low or high/high in certain categories, but, for a recruit who wasn't scouted, even after getting that player in and practicing with the team, we as coaches still don't have access to that info. Yes, you can get an idea of whether a player is a high/high and, to a certain extent, if he is an extremely high/high based on how much improvement he is making, but that involves continually deciphering a combination of work ethic + practice minutes + game minutes to come up with a reasonable guesstamite of that players potential. Wouldn't a real life coaching staff have a much better handle on their players potentials once they had them in practice for a week or two? Why can't HD reflect that?    

kill the 5 day of recruiting!

Two suggestions to ponder, one relatively simple, one that I don't know how easy it would be to do, but would a nice twist.

1 (Simple). Don't give out the scouting money all at once at the beginning of the season. Give like 5K at first, but then something like $500/day after that. Give players a reason to come back and login each day rather than rushing to spend all of the scouting money at once.

2 (Complex) Have scouting players be cheaper if you are already in their locale for a game. Lets say you have a D3 school in Wisconsin and go play a road game at a D3 school in Ohio in the NC sked. For that day, you are already in Ohio, so scouting a kid in Cleveland is just as cheap as if you were the Ohio school. But only for that day -- the next day, when you play a home game, the normal price applies.

This will add another layer of complexity to NC scheduling (already factor in SOS, W/Ls, RPI, etc.) and make recruiting somewhat more nationwide. Schools that are not located in recruiting hotbeds can use scheduling to make it cheaper to find good players in those hotbeds.  It will also add some complexity to scheduling exhibition games, because coaches will have to balance getting a good challenge vs. figuring out optimal starting lineups vs. chance to cheaply scout players.