very interesting point, chap. i started out writing a post that i thought it was a great idea, that you shouldn't know who is winning if its within the range of going either way. but, now that i think about it, if i'm up 90% to 10%, versus down 10% to 90%, i would like to have some indication. maybe something that says, the recruit is between schools X and Y, but a soft lean to X, or a strong lean to X, even something that basic. i use 10% as my example, because i think no matter where we wind up, 10% should be the minimum chance a school has of winning a 2 way battle, if its above 0%. winning a prized recruit has a major impact on the course of an entire program, we can't have 1% dice rolls going around having that kind of impact!

Posted by CoachSpud on 3/5/2016 12:38:00 AM (view original):
RE "If 80% of the testers hate a certain idea, then I am hoping he listens to the suggestions."

Shoot, 98% of the posters in the forums hate the whole thing and they haven't even sniffed it. I, too, hope that this guy Seble listens to reason about proposed tweaks suggested by the testers, but not liking something just because it's different seems to be the pattern so far.

coach - know that 98% of the posters do not hate the whole thing. i ran a poll a while back, with well over a hundred responses, and it was roughly spilt evenly. also, i hope you will keep an open mind yourself, on one issue. there are some people who are just so poisoned at this point, between their own nature and WIS's disastrous releases that hurt this game so badly, before your time. they do exist, but that is a fairly small % of the folks who are against the update, who are just blindly 100% against it, like you might think. frankly, i am not even fully anti-update. i think it would be far smarter to fix the primary pain points first, to stop the bleeding, before going off and doing a major functional update. this update is not really as much about fixing pain points, as it is about an enhancement. enhancements and new functionality are good, but they should come after stopping the bleeding.

anyway, where i'm asking you to be open minded, is, in assuming people are "not liking something just because it's different", just because they sharply disagree or criticize. i'm not sure if you feel that way about me or not, but i sort of figure you do, because most other people in this thread have been pretty reasonable, at least outside of a few 1 liner quips early on, gut reactions to the dev chat. i AM very vocal about these changes, but that's true about everything in HD :) i hope, in time, you'll come to recognize that when i am against something, it absolutely is not just because it is different! its because i love this game, because i reached a conclusion after putting a great deal of time into thinking about this - far more than i'd care to admit to people in real life! actually, i believe you said you re-read the entire initial posts about this update - in there, you might have seen how i explained why i didn't post for the first week (6 days?) - i put a moratorium on me posting, when it came out, to make sure i didn't have an over-sized impact on the initial conversations. it probably screwed me, because seble packed up after a week, so i ended up having too little impact, on the part where he was involved. but i wanted to sit out, to ensure i didn't dominate the early conversations. besides - i really didn't know what to say. there was SO MUCH to take in and process, i honestly wasn't even ready to comment, for days.

in closing, i won't say nobody is doing what you say - they certainly are and its certainly bad for the game. its more people than i would like to think. but, a lot of people, most of the folks in this thread at least, are against aspects of this update, because they have thought it through. i don't think there is much closed-mindedness in this thread, we aren't dismissing each other, which happens quite a bit on the pro-update side of things, too. especially the latter part of this thread, has been healthy, quality discussions, by people on both sides, who genuinely care about this game and the community. what im saying is, don't let the closed minded anti-update folks, poison you! don't let them cause you to be closed minded yourself. there are a lot of valid points on both side, we all owe it to the game we love, to be open minded to points from both sides! and, i just wanted you to know the community is really more like, 50/50 split on this - so rest easy - there will be PLENTY of pro-update folks doing the beta testing!

Thanks, gillispie1. No doubt you are right. The fact remains that none of us has experienced this update except in our imaginations, so to be pro-update or anti-update is all in our imaginations. It sounds intriguing to me, so the negativity catches my ear. I figure it will all come out in the wash (beta).

Posted by a_in_the_b on 3/4/2016 1:00:00 PM (view original):
I think the jumping of cliffs holding flaming pitchforks needs to slow its roll.

Yup

I don't consider myself to be in this group, but maybe I am being looked at this way:

there are some people who are just so poisoned at this point, between their own nature and WIS's disastrous releases that hurt this game so badly, before your time. they do exist, but that is a fairly small % of the folks who are against the update, who are just blindly 100% against it, like you might think.

If so, I'd like to summarize my thoughts in one post. Why I am, overall (not blindly), not a fan of this update.

Not because I don't want change because it will threaten any supposed advantage, but because I don't see how it markedly improves the game. I admit that some of the features have the potential to improve some aspects of the game. Many of these also come with concerns regarding how they will impact other current aspects of the game.

I don't believe that this update will address any of the biggest issues plaguing the game currently. It also has the potential to create numerous others. When all this is added up, I come up with an update that might break other things, doesn't address the biggest needs, and which changes some things seemingly just for the sake of changing things.

Overall, recruiting will not fundamentally change now as I understand it.

Recruiting currently is a bidding war, where the highest cumulative score at the end wins and signs the player. To calculate this score the engine uses effort that the coaches select, modified by distance and prestige. Somehow considering credit is applied when applicable, along with preferences for close/far and/or favorite school, etc., and any other preferences that might exist (I am not sure if any others do anymore - I think they used to). Coaches have a budget based on number of open scholarships, carryover from last season, and post-season bonus cash earned by the conference.

In the update, recruiting (not scouting) will be a bidding war, where the highest scores will be more or less accurately displayed for all¹, and someone in the top three "points categories"² will get lucky and sign the player³. To calculate this score, the engine seems like it will use effort that the coaches select, modified by distance and prestige. No one asked about considering credit, so I don't know if that stayed or not. Player preferences are factored in, but now I think there will be more of them⁴.

Coaches will have two budgets, one for scouting efforts, which also reveal the existence of a player or number of players and makes them available for recruiting, another for the actual recruiting⁵. Only one Campus Visit will be allowed per recruit, but Home Visits will be limited only by available budget⁶. It was not asked, but presumably coaches with more open scholarships will still have proportionally higher budgets.

So what actually changes?

Not distance, or if there is a change it will only be the values involved, not the philosophy, which only serves to make everyone ferret out the new values for things⁷.

Prestige calculation⁸ I believe falls outside the scope of this update and won't be addressed until a later date (ie the update is being evaluated in how it incorporates current prestige if I read the footnoted response correctly).

So looking at the question of, "How do I sign a recruit," once you identify the player, by whatever means, signing and recruiting are about the same as before, except that where before the coach who could more accurately deduce/determine/divine (whatever) the variables (distance, budget available, prestige, preferences) would be rewarded by signing that player, now that coach has the chance to not sign the player, just because.

Yes, it happens in real life. In real life coaches also get a chance to actually exist. And talk to the player, and his folks, and Aunt Nancy, and pet the dog and see if he let's you rub his belly or not...the collected electrons here don't. So there will still be a threshold to meet, as before, and the process will be about the same, only spread out all season long instead of over 3 days. Oh and even when you win you might not win. But hey, at least if you lose you might not lose...

Scouting. WOTS is out, other changes.

Camps, Scouting Service, and Asst Coach Trips (evals?) replace previous scouting actions⁹.

Scouting service is just a different FSS. Asst coach trips finally get an overhaul and gain functionality into the new split budget thing by revealing/locating players and giving (probably the same 3 over and over) info on abilities, however:

Player information and potential that currently is revealed by number with color-coded potential will become more vague letter grades.¹⁰ This is a change to reveal less information than currently, and seems like change just for change's sake.

One issue with the scouting budget is regarding how players "appear" so a school can recruit them. This update sounds like it will allow the top programs an advantage in that the top ranked players are visible to (and recruitable by) everyone at the start¹¹. Some sort of scouting action will likely be necessary to get that letter-coded potential information, but this still might give an advantage to teams who know that their recruit pool is already visible, since it is very rare that top teams recruit outside the top 100 now. And since recruit generation isn't being touched, just the values obfuscated, even blindly recruiting the top players without any scouting info is no worse than recruiting top internationals now without evals if they have suitable cores...you'll get potential when they sign and show on the roster, right?

Things about recruiting most people define as problems this update seems to fix:
First cycle effort/time management for 3 hour cycles. Recruiting effort is processed in real time, and there is no periodic updates that require overnight attention.¹² This is fine, and could solve a number of time related recruiting issues.

What I am not certain I understand, however, is when recruits begin signing.

The first recruiting period runs from mid-season until the start of the postseason. There is a dead period then until the second period, which is after the job period. So coaches who change jobs may have an opportunity to do some recruiting for their new team. Also, coaches who lose players early to the draft will have a chance then to fill those openings.

Not all recruits will sign at the same time…In the new system, each recruit has a pre-determined signing tendency that will determine when he makes his decision. Some will sign right away, while others will wait.

Sign right away? After signing starts tough, right? There will still be a signing day/time for both periods that signing actually begins. So guys don't sign 1 hour after the period for scouting opens up. (hughesjr - Hall of Famer - 12:07 PM)

Sorry, yes. The signing period starts about 3 days after the first recruiting period. Signings can then take place until the end of the second recruiting period.

Do signings begin 3 days after the mid-season beginning of recruiting period one? 3 days after the post-season? I believe signings will begin happening 3 days after mid-season if I read this correctly. This means that players will begin to sign long before coaches know what impact Early Entries will have on their roster.

Since recruiting remains a bidding based system based upon a budget determined (presumably?) by open scholarships, not knowing what the final number of open ships will be (after EEs) while recruits are signing makes it impossible to know how aggressively to spend or save your budget during the early period, for those schools affected by EEs.

None of this removes any advantages currently afforded the high baseline programs, except perhaps the randomly assisted ability to sign a recruit despite not totaling as much cumulative effort as someone else. And I doubt that will be a recipe for long-term success if one focused on a consistent strategy of not being listed highest and rolling the dice.

The update is said to not necessarily be a fix to this though, and is meant to "improve gameplay."¹³

---

• CURRENTLY: Bidding style recruiting with budgets that allow coaches to buy "effort" that accumulates with a player until the highest total wins.
• UPDATE: Bidding style recruiting with budgets that allow coaches to buy "effort" that accumulates with a player until one of the highest total teams within the "signing range" wins, with the leader have the "best odds" but "some luck" is involved.

Verdict: Why? I've been asked, "Why not?" (As in, "Why is it inherently better for the highest total to win versus some bit of chance," - maybe it isn't - but my response is, "Why isn't it?") The current system rewards the coach that is best able to determine all the variables, and apply his budget most judiciously. The update will do the same, only sometimes not.

---

• CURRENTLY: Coaches buy FSS data for any number of states which reveals color-coded potentials for all player ratings. The funds are deducted from the overall recruiting account, meaning that a coach must decide how much money to spend on scouting and how much to reserve for recruiting actions. Some recruits can be "pulled down" to lower prestige programs by use of scouting trips.
• UPDATE: There are two separate budgets. Prior scouting actions all pretty much exist, but information is CAN BE more vague (CAN GET MORE DETAILS WITH MORE SCOUTING EFFORT) Pulling players down not required, but locating them via camps or scouting service is. Coaches still must budget scouting and recruiting effort, but now the decision on how to split that budget has been removed.

Verdict: Why? Yes, this sounds marginally different than the system we now have. Fundamentally nothing is any different. Change for the sake of change.

---

• CURRENTLY: When more than one school is shown on a recruit's considering list, coaches involved in the battle have a couple of mildly vague but generally reliable methods to determine their position in the battle, and the likelihood that the recruit will ultimately sign, these being WOTS order and scholarship messages.
• UPDATE: When multiple schools are involved in a close battle I do not believe you will know with any certainty your position in the battle relative to the other school, beyond what "category" you both are in.¹⁴ So if multiple schools are showing Very High in interest, the recruit will sign with one of those. The school with the highest accumulated effort will have better odds, but I do not believe we will know which school that is prior (or after I suppose...)

Verdict: It is going to be very difficult to plan and attempt to line-up backups, etc., when you aren't even certain of your position, let alone the chance you actually are on top but lose the dice roll. Makes the art of battling even more confusing and less logical, and I don't see the advantage over the current system.

---

• CURRENTLY: Recruiting is condensed into a 4 day whirlwind with a narrow first cycle and it behooves most coaches in many situations to arrange their sleep schedules to be available overnight for possible game action. This is great for insomniacs and the unemployed. Probably sucks for most average people.
• UPDATE: Scouting will begin immediately or almost immediately. Sending effort will begin mid-season. Signings (I think) start shortly thereafter if a kid is genetically predisposed to early enunciation...Then there is a dead period so people can actually find out their total number of openings, then we start again with whatever is still available. "Poaching" will still exist, only now instead of praying no one shows up before 5 o'clock on signing day , some kids will make you wait until the last minute, probably increasing the chances someone comes along, while others might want to sign lickety-split.

Verdict: Eliminating the intense recruiting period and spreading things out is admirable. Making it so that Early Entries aren't known until after players start signing is disastrous to those coaches so affected. For everyone else, this is a net gain, probably. (reluctantly, since the EE thing is going to suck.)

---

Conclusion:

• I don't objectively see how most of this inherently improves the game. Even the one thing I find an improvement carries a heavy toll. Most of the other changes might or might not enhance anything, but they don't seem to fundamentally change how anything really works.
• Past history leads one to expect some degree of difficulty making the update integrate well with the engine.
• Most of the issues that most users feel are important to improving their gameplay experience remain unaddressed.
• Implementation of the update will require a complete stop then staggered restart of all 10 servers. This will take something like 2 months during which all users will need to find something else to waste time while at work or on the john. Some are certain to not return just from entropy.

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that seble's limited development time would be better utilized addressing the issues more pertinent to most users, many of which would conceivably also be less invasive updates. This has nothing to do with what teams I currently coach.

NOTES:

¹Right now the plan is to display a recruit's interest level in each school (well, up to 10 schools). That will show Very High, High, Moderate, Low, or Very Low. However, that won't tell you exactly who's in the lead. But a key change in the new system is that the leading team won't sign the player 100% of the time. The top teams on the considering list will all have a chance, based on the total points they've accumulated through recruiting actions. The leading team will still have the highest odds of signing the player.

²Only teams at Moderate or higher interest level can sign a player, so in your example, Team A would probably get him due to Team B being lower interest level.

³I didn't like how in the current system, if Team A had 1000 points and Team B had 999, Team A would sign that player every time. In the new system, Team B would have a decent shot of signing him.

⁴The only changes to recruit generation will be adding some deeper preferences that will come into play based on the school's pursuing him.

⁵I've gone away from having a set number of visits for each school and moved to a budget model. There was no other way to account for distance. So each team will have a separate scouting budget and recruiting budget.

⁶Campus visits will be limited to one per team/recruit. There is no strict limit on home visits for a team/recruit, but the budget will limit that.

⁷How much impact is distance going to have in this update, right now distance is 1a or 1b on the importance factor for recruiting. (the0nlyis - Hall of Famer - 11:51 AM)

I would say it'll be about the same or less important. Much of that depends on the cost of scouting/recruiting distance. Those numbers are still changing.

⁸I have the basic structure of the new recruiting system in place. I still need to add a few secondary pieces to it and do some testing. I'm also still tuning the budget amounts and value of certain recruiting actions relative to factors like prestige.

⁹The scouting options are: Public camps, Private camps, Scouting Service, and Assistant Coach Trip. The scouting service will work somewhat like the FSS system does now, where you purchase by state. The assistant trip will allow you to set some basic parameters and have your coach go find X number of recruits.

¹⁰With a camp, we are going to uncover letter grades for players instead of starting ratings. Certain categories can be linear between D1 and D3; an elite shooter is an elite shooter. But I consider a mediocre D1 athletic guard to have ATH/SP ratings of, say, 70-75, or a C letter grade. If a D3 guard gets a C letter grade in ATH/SP, are his starting ratings also 70-75 or are they scaled back for D3, so maybe 45-50? (darnoc29099 - Hall of Famer - 11:55 AM)

Letter grades are on the same scale for all divisions, so a C for a DIII player is the same as a C for a DI player.

(I misinterpreted this reply in the dev chat I believe. The same info appears to be available if you scout hard enough.)

¹¹The top 100 ranked recruits will be visible and recruitable by all coaches. Beyond that, a coach will only be able to recruit the guys that have been scouted through the various scouting options. To unlock all recruits would defeat the purpose of the new scouting system.

¹²In the new system, the recruiting/scouting schedule is much different. You'll be able to start scouting pretty much from the start of the season. Then the first recruiting period will begin mid-way through the season. The second recruiting period will be after the job period. It's also important to note that many actions will now be immediate. The only recruiting action that is still tied to a cycle is attention points (which replaces letters/calls). Those will accumulate each cycle. But visits, promises, etc. will process immediately.

¹³The recruiting changes will affect all divisions. This update isn't just to fix issues, it's also meant to improve gameplay.

¹⁴If anything, I think this system is more straightforward in a lot of ways. The whole messaging aspect of the current system causes a lot of confusion. There was also some overly complex logic in place that sometimes caused weird things to happen. I'm focusing on making the new system user-friendly and hopefully fun.

Posted by gillispie1 on 3/5/2016 12:40:00 AM (view original):
very interesting point, chap. i started out writing a post that i thought it was a great idea, that you shouldn't know who is winning if its within the range of going either way. but, now that i think about it, if i'm up 90% to 10%, versus down 10% to 90%, i would like to have some indication. maybe something that says, the recruit is between schools X and Y, but a soft lean to X, or a strong lean to X, even something that basic. i use 10% as my example, because i think no matter where we wind up, 10% should be the minimum chance a school has of winning a 2 way battle, if its above 0%. winning a prized recruit has a major impact on the course of an entire program, we can't have 1% dice rolls going around having that kind of impact!

I thought Seble addressed that? There would be varying 'interest' levels. So if you're up 90 to 10, it'd show you as High Interest while the other guy is low interest. Not sure if they are 3 or 5 or 7 degrees of interest but this is my understanding. I think in the scenario people are talking about with the 5:1, the first time will be high or very high while the other guy is low. The guy with low interest may actually have ZERO % chance to win the battle because you need to have a certain threshold reached.

Posted by Benis on 3/5/2016 8:16:00 AM (view original):

Posted by gillispie1 on 3/5/2016 12:40:00 AM (view original):
very interesting point, chap. i started out writing a post that i thought it was a great idea, that you shouldn't know who is winning if its within the range of going either way. but, now that i think about it, if i'm up 90% to 10%, versus down 10% to 90%, i would like to have some indication. maybe something that says, the recruit is between schools X and Y, but a soft lean to X, or a strong lean to X, even something that basic. i use 10% as my example, because i think no matter where we wind up, 10% should be the minimum chance a school has of winning a 2 way battle, if its above 0%. winning a prized recruit has a major impact on the course of an entire program, we can't have 1% dice rolls going around having that kind of impact!

I thought Seble addressed that? There would be varying 'interest' levels. So if you're up 90 to 10, it'd show you as High Interest while the other guy is low interest. Not sure if they are 3 or 5 or 7 degrees of interest but this is my understanding. I think in the scenario people are talking about with the 5:1, the first time will be high or very high while the other guy is low. The guy with low interest may actually have ZERO % chance to win the battle because you need to have a certain threshold reached.

There will be 5 levels of interest, and the top 3 are where signings can happen. If more than one team is in the highest (or share the currently highest but still in signing range) level, I do not think you will know which is ahead and which is not until he signs. But if both schools put in enough effort to get to the highest interest level, one could still conceivably outspend the other 5:1, in which case the lower team would have a chance to sign the player, although i expect the odds are weighted by total investment, so a team that leads by a 5:1 ratio ought to be much more likely to land a kid than someone up 51% to 49%...

I think that developer chat and this whole situation can be summed up by the scene from Apollo 13 when Commander James Lovell says "there's a thousand things that have to happen in order - we're on number eight, and you're talking about number six hundred and ninety-two."

Sure, this change to recruiting could fix or alleviate some of the larger problems within the game, but it is the least pragmatic (not to mention more risky) way of going about it.

dac, very detailed write up.. thank you. I agree mostly with your analysis except for some conclusions.

With respect to the close battles. I think the issue with the team with the most overall effort winning every single time, is not realistic. For example, lets have a magical 'effort points' number. It is based on a calculation that includes all the things we want in it. (Prestige, cost weighted by distance, and so on). Let's assume max effort either team puts in is 1000 points. Then lets assume that the other team has put in 980 points. They both are in the Very high category. I can see some saying, well the 1000 point team should win every time. And I can agree with that position. I can also agree with the position that becasie of the effort, the 1000 point team has a 1000/(1000+980) = 50.5% chance of getting the guy and the 980 team has 980 / 1980 = 49.5% chance of getting the guy.

How do I think this could help. Well, first off I think it is fair because you should get credit (IMHO) for your effort as long as that effort is within a range of the max effort. But even if you argue that it is not really fair, here is the thing I think it adds to the game and why I think it will help out greatly. This will prevent guys getting really good players that should be heavily recruited from only being recruited by one player. And I think that is major biggest issue in division 1 recruiting.

For example, let's say #1 player in the country (really the best guy, not just ranked that way by the game) is from Knoxville TN. And lets say that in that world Kentucky is a viery good A+ team with lots of cash. That is within 180 miles. Players will say, I don't think I can go get that player because Kentucky can always out bid me, therefore I will not even make an effort. So, if Kentucky goes to about $10K and gets the very tight message, Kentucky has $180K to spend, and the #1 player only costs them 10K. This is a problem for 2 reasons. First .. that guy should cost more than 10K .. he should cost more than anyone else, he is the best guy out there and everyone knows it. He will not, because people don't think they can get him. This leads to the second problem, now Kentucky is flush with money to go after someone in Arkansas late in the game since no one challenged them for the best player.

How can this change help? Well, if I know that I get close to Kentucky's effort then I might get the guy .. that as long as I stay within the very high group I have a very decent shot at it even, then I am much more likely (at Tennessee) to battle for that recruit. This means that Kentucky HAS to spend a fair market value for the guy to get him. this means they can't afford to spend 100K on the guy in Arkansas late and the Arkansas coach get a better player.

You can also set it so that based on the perceived value of the player, one has to get to 'X' effort points to even get INTO the 'very high' category. That also means that people have expend a minimal amount of effort on a guy. You can make it a sliding scale for undecided guys after signing starts to it can drop later on, etc.

This would fix what I think really causes the Div-1 problem of the rich always getting richer .. they can still get the best players, but they can't get them for $10K because no one else challenges them.

If effort is divided "fairly" based on the current ideas of distance and prestige, as it is indicated it will be, then in your example UK would spend whatever the adjusted amount he needs to get to "very high" interest. Presumably that will be a much lower % of his overall budget than a team much father away with similar prestige, or a team with similar distance and much lower prestige.

Even if the effort isn't proportional (ie UK could have someone heavily outspent while both are in the very high category) and this encourages teams to jump in the pool hoping to win the lottery, that likely leaves UK with more budget than most and no player. Any of the "late-signers" that are still out there are now targets of UK, so Arkansas is probably more likely to get poached, if their target isn't an early signer.

If it truly isn't proportional, ie everyone in the very high category has more or less similar odds to sign, then yeah, why wouldn't 10 randos jump on every A+ recruit? The more in, the less chance the A+ has to win, right? How long are A+ coaches going to stick around if every one of their targets has 10 teams showing as possible and he loses most of them? And, conversely, does it really benefit the one school that wins the one player like this when a half a dozen don't?

If it is proportional (ie both teams are very high, but UK gets a much higher chance to win based on being up by maybe 3:1 or whatever, despite both being above the "very high threshold" then nothing changes, and going after a kid that shows an A+ very high is potentially suicide and waste of effort.

The top teams on the considering list will all have a chance, based on the total points they've accumulated through recruiting actions. The leading team will still have the highest odds of signing the player.

That doesn't say if the odds for the leading team will be better in direct relationship to the ratio of accumulated points, or if it is merely some pre-determined function, like the team with the most effort is x% likely to sign the player, the next team on the list is x-5%, etc., If the odds are representative of the effort lead, its the same as now. If it's not, it is possible to grossly overspend to take the #1 spot and still only be marginally more likely to win the battle.

Posted by dacj501 on 3/5/2016 8:30:00 AM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 3/5/2016 8:16:00 AM (view original):

Posted by gillispie1 on 3/5/2016 12:40:00 AM (view original):
very interesting point, chap. i started out writing a post that i thought it was a great idea, that you shouldn't know who is winning if its within the range of going either way. but, now that i think about it, if i'm up 90% to 10%, versus down 10% to 90%, i would like to have some indication. maybe something that says, the recruit is between schools X and Y, but a soft lean to X, or a strong lean to X, even something that basic. i use 10% as my example, because i think no matter where we wind up, 10% should be the minimum chance a school has of winning a 2 way battle, if its above 0%. winning a prized recruit has a major impact on the course of an entire program, we can't have 1% dice rolls going around having that kind of impact!

I thought Seble addressed that? There would be varying 'interest' levels. So if you're up 90 to 10, it'd show you as High Interest while the other guy is low interest. Not sure if they are 3 or 5 or 7 degrees of interest but this is my understanding. I think in the scenario people are talking about with the 5:1, the first time will be high or very high while the other guy is low. The guy with low interest may actually have ZERO % chance to win the battle because you need to have a certain threshold reached.

There will be 5 levels of interest, and the top 3 are where signings can happen. If more than one team is in the highest (or share the currently highest but still in signing range) level, I do not think you will know which is ahead and which is not until he signs. But if both schools put in enough effort to get to the highest interest level, one could still conceivably outspend the other 5:1, in which case the lower team would have a chance to sign the player, although i expect the odds are weighted by total investment, so a team that leads by a 5:1 ratio ought to be much more likely to land a kid than someone up 51% to 49%...

The effort should have a sliding scale. And there should be a threshold. There should be a Minimal effort required to get to very high .. BUT .. if someone goes significantly about that minimum, then it should shift all scales up.

Let's say the minimum effort to get into Very High is 1000 points. Lets say 1/2 of that effort gets you into medium category.

If someone puts in 2000 effort, then the Very high category minimum should shift up .. and also medium should shift up as well and then require 1000 effort .. so the guy that was at 500 points and medium initially is now at low (or maybe dropped off) .. and the initial guy who was at high at 1000 effort is now at medium, and the guy who put in the 2000 effort is now the only guy in very high.

This seems fair to me and it means you have to spend fairly to get a recruit.

So, the only thing that needs to be discussed is, what are the initial minimums for each category .. that should be based on the ranking calculation for the recruits and how the system sees their worth. Once the minimal is met, the thresholds for each need to be defined. So, maybe to be in very high, you have to have put in at least 90% of the leader's effort .. 75% for high, 50% for Medium. (just suggestions, can be tweaked).

So, one guy puts in 5000 effort, the lowest to get into Very High is 4500 and Medium is 2500.

so, if 3 guys are in , all at the minimums, then it would be:

5000+4500+2500= 12000 ... so:

5 / 12 = 41.7%
4.5 / 12 = 37.5%
2.5 / 12 = 20.8%

You can play with the amounts for each category .. a factor to multiply by. Maybe, it takes 2500 effort to be in medium, but in medium your effort only counts 1/4 in the process (high guys get half) .. then you can adjust the medium guy to 625.

So in a 2 Very high (5000, 4500), one high (3750 effort) and one medium (2500 effort) .. it would be:

5000+4500+(3750/2)+(2500/4)

5000+4500+1875+625 = 12000

5 / 12 = 41.7%
4.5 / 12 = 37.5%
1.875 / 12 = 15.6%
0.625 / 12 = 5.2%

You can adjust the math until you are happy with the categories .. it is just the concept that needs to be considered.

In my scenario, remember, that the scale slides .. so if max guy goes to 7500 .. people drop down into lower categories unless they also pay. And if you adjust the factors a bit more (1/4 for high, 1/8 for medium) , then you have to position yourself into the very high category to have a decent chance of winning.

First of all, dac you have footnotes on posts? Look at you

It's slipping through the cracks some, or maybe you guys are taking it into account already in the points, but I think seble has said several times that there will be other factors other than strictly "most cash, period" that can influence players to sign. Right now we have favorite school (useless in D2 and D3, and useless for low D1, so why is it there?), near/far (again, mostly useless with the exception of slight advantage for far). But now, the way I read it, other things will come in to affect signing. Starts and minutes may hold more sway. If UAB can promise a start and 15 mins a game to a 4 star, vs Alabama or Georgia Tech offering .... more prestige? Maybe that can sway enough to make an influence. IF UAB actually follows through.

Simple example, but it sounds like there's going to be more variables that I see as multipliers to cash. I think we all understand cash, WOTS, and what multipliers are in effect today, but it sounds to me like those are changing in this, and changing in a way that spending 1000 vs 980 (strictly budget) isn't as clear as leading

That is very interesting in many ways. I have doubts that is what the system is currently designed like, but I suppose it's possible.

I like just about all of the aspects of that as regards most of my concerns - the one new concern it raises is that in this case recruiting becomes even more of a "math-game" since once we determine the built-in ratios as long as we can see all of the schools interested (we can see up to 10) and we know what level each is, math geeks ought to be able to determine a table like yours and see how to manipulate the categories.

Also, since prestige and distance are the same, more or less, the A+ team at close range will still need to spend a lot less of his overall budget to get to the VH category, and can probably relatively easily price everyone else out of VH with this method - I don't know if that's a net gain or loss, and I still don't know if any of these changes ultimately really change anything, other than the volatility of where they might sign.

Good discussion though, and the game designer in me digs the logic of it...I still don't know if I prefer it over most effort wins, in a vaccuum...

What is the math like with 1 elite VH and 9 also-rans at Moderate?

Simple example, but it sounds like there's going to be more variables that I see as multipliers to cash. I think we all understand cash, WOTS, and what multipliers are in effect today, but it sounds to me like those are changing in this, and changing in a way that spending 1000 vs 980 (strictly budget) isn't as clear as leading

But why is that better? Especially since these other preferences things will be hidden? If we don't know that a kid really wants to start vs wanting high prestige, then who benefits from the random event is random and unknown. If we do know, then the higher prestige team offers the start if need be, but probably they can just spend a tiny bit more budget instead and overcome that minor advantage, and if its a known desire, they will know to spend more to compensate...and since prestige and distance are the same, it won't cost very much to gain the equivalent of one of these preferences, I wouldn't think...

Posted by dacj501 on 3/5/2016 9:46:00 AM (view original):

Simple example, but it sounds like there's going to be more variables that I see as multipliers to cash. I think we all understand cash, WOTS, and what multipliers are in effect today, but it sounds to me like those are changing in this, and changing in a way that spending 1000 vs 980 (strictly budget) isn't as clear as leading

But why is that better? Especially since these other preferences things will be hidden? If we don't know that a kid really wants to start vs wanting high prestige, then who benefits from the random event is random and unknown. If we do know, then the higher prestige team offers the start if need be, but probably they can just spend a tiny bit more budget instead and overcome that minor advantage, and if its a known desire, they will know to spend more to compensate...and since prestige and distance are the same, it won't cost very much to gain the equivalent of one of these preferences, I wouldn't think...

That's the thing, and I could be totally wrong here, what's important and what really shifts signing chances is changing I think. Clearly prestige, and possibly distance (although he seems wishy washy in some ways about distance) still are at play, but I think other things are as well, and they might be as important/more important.

I could be reading way too much into it, but that's how I see it in my head. Of course it all still comes down to math (stupid math), but I think we're all going to have to learn a whole new set of formulas and metrics and such.

You know how there's the stuff in the help about ... what was it ... psychological traits? I see it as things like that being added (back) in