Posted by Benis on 12/11/2020 9:14:00 PM (view original):
And why would WIS want to cut their revenue by 1/3?

I have said this long ago. WIS gets the same revenue from a SIM team as they do from a non paying customer. The question becomes how much much future money do you get by allowing D3 to be free?

Just go directly to the off-season after the first round of the D3 NT. People can then learn the game but are incentivized to move up so that they can actually finish the season. If someone is so content to just play regular season after regular season for free then let them.

Make D2 $5 dollars a season and D1 $10 but don’t give anything out for D2 success.

Posted by plague on 12/12/2020 4:08:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 12/11/2020 9:14:00 PM (view original):
And why would WIS want to cut their revenue by 1/3?

I have said this long ago. WIS gets the same revenue from a SIM team as they do from a non paying customer. The question becomes how much much future money do you get by allowing D3 to be free?

Before the world populations went to complete ****, we had 80-100 teams in D3. Why would WIS want to now make the game free for those players?

I dunno guys. I just don't see the logic here, I really don't. I think anything beyond free seasons or BOGO stuff is just a terrible business idea. There are better ways to make the game more accessible for new users and we've talked about many of them over the years.

Some people actually really like D3. I know I did in 2.0 and if the new recruiting didn't completely ruin it for me, I'd probably still have a d3 team. Now you want to completely ruin D3 for the paying users who actually like that division by removing the postseason? I can't see them being too happy about that.

So .. I would say the very first change is to make people recruit in their own division .. no pull downs (old system), no 2nd session (recruit one level up) only or last session for D3 on D1.

Either that or fix the 2nd session to be longer .. OR .. open up recruits to new coaches faster.

When you switch teams or come into the 2nd session with a new team (previous experience) .. you can not open up recruiting options in the very limited time.

I think the game benefits greatly giving people a bit more time in session 2 (or open up options faster). I know this hinders people recruiting above their level .. but that is not really required. For the first 4 years, existing lower level teams who did recruit above level will be much better than the rest, but after that 4 season period, all teams are again on equal talent footing. And you can then better equalize the 2nd recruiting session.

So my proposal .. no recruiting above your division and a bit faster opening up of recruiting options in the 2nd session.

I agree that RS2 needs to be longer because, as you point out, you're screwed in RS2 when switching teams because of the time constraint. But you don't want to make that dead time at the end of the season longer than it already is for everybody else.

Let's say you're a one and done in the PI or NT. And you're not looking to change teams. You're literally sitting there with nothing to do for eight full days between your final game and RS2 opening up.

I'd like to see something fill that time to keep coaches who either don't make the post season, or are early exits, engaged.

Because teams have such limited time in RS2 I think D3 players should all be scouted to level 3, D1 and D2 players should all be scouted to level 2. This way teams who get late start can at least scout a few more players, and teams that lose out on their targets can also afford to scout a few more players so they don't have to take walk-ons. It helps see players better, however you do still have to do some scouting to see potential.

A couple much better and simpler solutions (IMO) to new coach recruiting include creating new recruits for the second session, or withholding some current late signing recruits to be newly discovered in the second session, where everyone starts fresh; and giving coaches the option of bringing previously signed 1st session recruits with them (provided they’re moving at least laterally in prestige and not down in division) when they change jobs.

I don’t think there’s any reason or appetite to make a big structural change to the model.

Posted by shoe3 on 12/19/2020 9:49:00 AM (view original):
A couple much better and simpler solutions (IMO) to new coach recruiting include creating new recruits for the second session, or withholding some current late signing recruits to be newly discovered in the second session, where everyone starts fresh; and giving coaches the option of bringing previously signed 1st session recruits with them (provided they’re moving at least laterally in prestige and not down in division) when they change jobs.

I don’t think there’s any reason or appetite to make a big structural change to the model.

I could live with new recruits .. but that kind of breaks with realty and it would require people who might lose players to EE to keep back scouting points until the second half.

The biggest issue (IMHO) is not there are no decent recruits (except for the most elite teams) .. the biggest problem is there is not enough time to open the recruiting options. I mean all the top tier recruits are already highly recruited, and new ones might be ok for that. But that is pretty unfair for people who are battling for a top 10 recruit if better players magically appear mid-stream.

I think there shouldn't be arbitrary lines (like the pulldowns in days of old or the randomly selected times when higher division players can sign with lower teams. Make three pools for scouting purposes, but not these arbitrary signing times. It should just be never or any time.

What I mean by that is, say players ranked top 50 at their position never sign below D1. Players ranked at their position never sign d3. Otherwise a player rated as a D1 prospect, but not ranked at his position, and has early signing preference could sign with a d3 the first session of signings. The whole D1 rated prospects only have 24 hours to sign d3 is crazy. That means the teams who need to have back-up options the most (or at least for the longest amount of time) are the teams who have the least resources to do so. The lines I've picked were examples and could easily be different, but having some hard line has always made more sense to me, even back in the old 1.0 days.

That also helps D1 and D2 coaches IMO who lose recruits late due to losing battles for late signers, potential transfers, EE (maybe not EE since they are typically at top schools), etc. because seeing a D2 or D3 at moderate before their signing window gives no information on what interest level is actually there. It also protects the top level talent for the top level schools

To help with new user retention. Every pack bought with a new credit card AND new ID gets one season free. They must have both. This allows new users to experience two seasons instead of one. One at D3 and the other at D3 or D2.

Posted by mlitney on 12/9/2020 1:30:00 PM (view original):
I guess I like baseline prestige because it keeps the game more in line with real world NCAA basketball. I don't want to see mostly low to mid-major schools in the top-25 and NT. A school like Hartford could almost never sustain a real life dynasty because its a small school and they simply don't have the funding and recognition to do so. Baseline prestige replicates that.

I wouldn't mind seeing prestige updated every 5 years or so, but its realistic and that's why I'd want to keep it. But that's just my opinion. Its a preference. HD is obviously not real life, but there's also no way a school like chapel's Delaware State has that type of multi-year success in real life. So I feel like this sim is already slanted towards smaller schools having a better chance than they should.

Now if you wanted to get rid of baseline prestige and create some type of revenue/budget, then I'd be down for that. The better your team is playing, the more revenue you make (limited by the size of your stadium). The revenue would be your recruiting/scouting budget for the next season. The caveat being that you can also use that money to upgrade your stadium every few seasons (in lieu of some recruiting/scouting $$). That would give smaller schools a chance to compete with long-term sustainability, although it would take a long time to build that program into an elite. It also wouldn't keep the already elite schools at the top since they'd already have the large stadiums. The flip side is that the smaller schools would start at a huge deficit, which would make it much harder for coaches that aren't staying long-term. To adjust for that, they'd have to make it easier to get hired at a higher prestige school. This would work similar to how the soccer dynasty system is set up. Just a thought.

I agree in general, but I remember when John Calipari was at UMass and they were an extremely good team. I feel like perhaps the baseline for a team should be able to be improved over a period of time. Like our Delaware State team. In 11 years, three National Championships, two other final 4 appearances and two elite 8. Over a period that long, it seems to me like the baseline should adjust at least somewhat. Right now if I left that team, which I am definitely not planning on doing, if no one picked it up, within a few seasons it would be back to C to D prestige despite it's recent history of at least Elite 8 in 7 of the last 11 seasons. I'd also like to see some kind of adjustment to team prestige based on coach history. For example, if a really good coach goes to a crappy D- program, maybe it becomes at least a C-. Just a thought. But in general I really like the game in its current format

But then again look at Butler.

I’d love to see (and voted for) conference realignment. I’d also like to see teams moved up divisions too like in real life (aka Bellarmine and USC Upstate to DI)

But I do know that some of these teams may be in Division II to help fill out that division.

i missed the discussion on the d3 stuff, or else maybe i just don't remember. but anyway my take is - leave d2 as is, treat d2/d1 as two different games. right now d3 is prep for d2 but poor prep for d1 as the recruiting is extremely different. lower division recruiting skills do not translate to d1 and this creates a 2nd major hurdle for users to climb, which often functions as a cliff.

IMO d3 needs to be prep for d1. open up d1 jobs a bit more so d2 can be skipped, buff the d3 and d2 pools a little bit but no longer allow anyone to recruit down a division, and do not allow d3 schools to recruit up (creating a d3-only pool people can hit the ground running on like d1 folks do). this idea of waiting till the last 24 hours for the best recruits is complete nonsense from a 'introduce the coach to the game and get them ready for the big leagues' standpoint. IMO d2 and d1 are in ok shape, but i cannot wrap my head around why seble thought it was appropriate to make d3 so incredibly complex. he agreed with the overall line of thinking about pulldowns being too complex to the point where he removed them - but is what he replaced them with any simpler? does it translate any better to d1? i'm not seeing it.

Posted by anchordown on 12/26/2020 5:58:00 AM (view original):
I’d love to see (and voted for) conference realignment. I’d also like to see teams moved up divisions too like in real life (aka Bellarmine and USC Upstate to DI)

But I do know that some of these teams may be in Division II to help fill out that division.

User-instituted realignment and relegation would be radical and incredible. It would also be pretty complicated, and would make each world look pretty different, which might make things a little confusing for some. But that’s the only way to do realignment, IMO. The game is over 100 seasons in every world. I don’t think you can legitimately just tell paying customers they have to change conferences or divisions now, because something has changed in real life, after a dozen RL years of none of that mattering in a fantasy game. But if it’s available in some limited cases as an option, like for a user to move South Dakota State from D2 to the Summit League in a single world, and relegate some bottom feeding team in that conference that’s been sim controlled for 20 seasons to take their place in the D2 North Central, that would be wonderful.

Many schools in D1 would need to be “anchored” to their conferences, maybe the current B+ or higher “baseline” prestige teams in the power conferences. I think everyone else could potentially be mobile. Would be fun to try in a beta world, anyway.