Doing some scouting for my D2 team and I'm finding a few more guys like this than I remember in past seasons.  I'm not ready to blame this on any sim changes, but frankly I'm not sure what good a mediocre player is when his WE is only 1.  

Why would the sim even bother to generate a player like this?  Shouldn't there be some kind of moderation range?  I don't know that I'd even recruit this guy for a D3 team unless I didn't need for him to ever improve at all.  Give him a WE over 15 or 20 and he'd be a pretty decent D3 pulldown:

whatifsports.com/hd/RecruitProfile/Ratings.aspx

there are recruits who are no good - whats wrong with having some of those?

and there are guys with WE=1 who are worth getting - if their existing ratings are useful to you - and especially if they already play your offense/defense, they can be nice cheap gets

I guess I'm looking at this from the standpoint of random generation parameters (because I'm ex-IT and a raging geek).   I'm a little surprised that there isn't some kind of moderation factored into ratings generation;  low WE is one thing, but WE = 1 makes a guy nearly useless when his cores are also crappy. 

I've taken guys with low WE before, but only if they have high cores already (like you said).  My starting PG had a WE of 18 when I signed him, but he also had high ATH, SPD, and DEF ratings - and he's still gone from a 502 total rating to 571 in 2 years.  I wouldn't have anywhere near the same expectations if his WE was 1.

Actually the stupid things about 1 WE are that starting and playing the guy 20 min does not raise his WE.  And if the guy has a 1 WE how did he get that good in the first place.  Improvement happened at some point.  But in college the guy decides to regress each year.  It doesn't make sense.

The 1 WE guy probably gets upset that he has to get off the bench.  You're lucky it doesn't drop to 0.  Or negative.

Posted by cal_bears on 4/29/2011 12:30:00 PM (view original):
Actually the stupid things about 1 WE are that starting and playing the guy 20 min does not raise his WE.  And if the guy has a 1 WE how did he get that good in the first place.  Improvement happened at some point.  But in college the guy decides to regress each year.  It doesn't make sense.

He was born with the ability to dunk? :)

That's the other scary thing - with a WE of 1, aren't his ratings likely to decline over a summer interval when you're not setting his practice minutes?  I haven't had this happen to me yet, but I've heard other coaches say that some guys will actually drop a bit over the summer.  Too many hot dogs, too much Xbox I guess.

Meanwhile, I've seen a number of walk-ons with WE of 99.  WTH.

Posted by ethan66 on 4/29/2011 2:20:00 PM (view original):

Posted by cal_bears on 4/29/2011 12:30:00 PM (view original):
Actually the stupid things about 1 WE are that starting and playing the guy 20 min does not raise his WE.  And if the guy has a 1 WE how did he get that good in the first place.  Improvement happened at some point.  But in college the guy decides to regress each year.  It doesn't make sense.

He was born with the ability to dunk? :)

That's the other scary thing - with a WE of 1, aren't his ratings likely to decline over a summer interval when you're not setting his practice minutes?  I haven't had this happen to me yet, but I've heard other coaches say that some guys will actually drop a bit over the summer.  Too many hot dogs, too much Xbox I guess.

Meanwhile, I've seen a number of walk-ons with WE of 99.  WTH.

A work ethic of 1 means the guy will be worse as a senior than he is as a freshman.  That's been the case with the handful of guys that I've recruited, anyway.

So ethan, your thought is that they shouldn't generate players with 1 WE?  Then why even have a spectrum from 1-100?  If anything you could redefine the growth rates at the low end of the work ethic spectrum, but I see no reason why 1 WE shouldn't exist.  Same thing as with any other rating - it's a spectrum of what that rating represents across the population of college basketball recruits/players.  If nobody's at the low end of it than the spectrum has been improperly defined.  Do you really think it isn't the case in real life that there are a number of players with huge natural talent but no drive to learn the game?  And other guys who could certainly be better basketball players than many of the D3 and D2 and even D1 players of the world but who never really cared for the game or worked on it and may or may not even have played in high school (of course, only the ones that did but didn't put much into it would show up in this game, but the point is valid, I think...)?

>>If anything you could redefine the growth rates at the low end of the work ethic spectrum, but I see no reason why 1 WE shouldn't exist.

Redefining the growth rates (or penalties) would be ok with me, but I think it would be better to redesign the bell curve on WEs.  

A 1 WE is much more serious and crippling  than a 1 BH or a 1 REB, which I see an awful lot of, but in those cases usually the 1 REB is a guard and the 1 BH is a center.  Those ratings don't hurt their real function in a game as much as a  1 WE would.  A 1 WE, on the other hand, severely cripples a player for his entire career who might otherwise actually be usable.  

A WE of 10 fits your example of a player who doesn't have a drive to learn the game.  Heck,  the PG I mentioned earlier has a crappy WE but I've been able to get him to improve a little in 2 years, despite his horrid work ethic.   A real kid with a work ethic of "1" probably wouldn't ever play a college sport.  They'd be more interested in moving into Mom's basement and playing Xbox.  

I wonder what the player in my link will end up with his senior year?  I should bookmark him and keep an eye out.  Odds are he'll be worse in 4 years than he is now.  So like I said: What's the point of even generating him?

my first year of HD, in which i had basically no clue what i was doing, i signed this guy with a 1 WE

whatifsports.com/hd/PlayerProfile/Stats.aspx

he was around a low 400, and is now, as you can see, a 389

funny thing is... he averaged 12+ PPG in two seasons and is putting up 8 PPG this year with unimpressive (to say the least) cores

Yes, you all have cited the stupidity and actually impossibility of the HD players with 1 WE.  How did the players get to the point they are at when recruited if they then decline over four years?  It is not possible.

A simple fix here is to stop all offseason regression.  No one wants it, and it doesn't add anything to the game.

The most noticeable offseason declines are in stamina.  You don't think players without exceptional work ethic lose some stamina in the offseason?  Conditioning definitely improves over the course of the year for a large proportion of players.  That's not how it should be, but it's how it is.  Particularly on the D2 and D3 levels where guys are typically actually trying to get an education and basketball isn't always the highest priority.

We are talking about the 1 WE players whose ratings tend to decline across the board, or at least in many categories.  Getting offseason regression as a whole I think would be welcomed.  And no one will miss the realism of losing a point or two in stamina.

Posted by cal_bears on 4/30/2011 1:00:00 AM (view original):
Yes, you all have cited the stupidity and actually impossibility of the HD players with 1 WE.  How did the players get to the point they are at when recruited if they then decline over four years?  It is not possible.

it is not possible to get worse as a player? I know lots of guys like that. Not that many famous DI players, because guys like this dont get famous, but lots of people get worse at what they do

and if you follow any DI program closely odds are you can think of some guys like that......classic maryland example? Xree Hipp......I dont follow marginal guys at other programs closely