Let’s fix recruiting for D1

1. One session only, after early entrees leave and after new coaches are hired. New coaches get screwed so hard in current set-up.
2. No budgets, just limits on recruiting actions per player per avail scholly. Once a player signs, if it was with a different team you get your actions back for the next guy. Why should good teams take sub-D3 walk-ons after striking out? This would solve that horrible problem. It’s unrealistic for an ACC team to be stuck with 3 guys with 450 overall ratings just because they lost 3 coin flips that didn’t make much sense. Does anybody remember the time real life Kentucky missed out on three recruits and ended up with 3 drunk frat boys instead? If you want to spread your actions out amongst several players, so be it.
3. There can still be early/whenever/late, just during one session.
4. Make the elite in-coming freshmen better. And make more crap level guys available too (500-550 overall ratings). There just is not enough guys to go around, especially now that everyone and their brother can be in D1 after a season or two in the world at D3.
5. Keep the preferences. This is one of the few parts that works well and should stay. Some players want certain things, such as starting at a mid-major rather than mop up duty at an elite. Some want the mop-up duty. It’s all good.

Recruiting is a major part of the sim. Very important. And it’s been broken for far too long. We deserve better.

to further elaborate on #4 - ever since the one and done era started there have been several freshmen among the top overall players. But that isn't possible in this game. Here, Kevin Durant would be a 11ppg non-rebounding PF for a season. The top 10 incoming freshmen should be among the top 30 overall players in game. maybe top 25 overall.

I totally agree with Gigrant that recruiting at D1 needs to be expanded with more players and fixed. I really agree with number 5 and that doesn't seem like its in play right now with the A prestige teams just come in and swoop everything up. Now there are certain expectations with a coach to get to or they will be fired. I had my BC team trending in the right direction and now I cant even score a D3 walk-on. Seriously. If it continues I will just play my out of the park baseball and hockey manager more and not spend another dime on this site like other longtime coaches have done. I always thought this game was trending in the right direction but in all the years I have been playing this never seen it like this.

I think the recruiting hasn't been as good as it has been in the past. Don't know what happened but I have been scraping for a long time and thought it was just me. Please get a fix solution to the recruiting please.

Some have suggested making the promises be a commitment for the recruits entire career with that coach.
It's just too easy to promise a start and 20 minutes, then drop the guy down the depth chart to a backup seeing 10 minutes a game as a soph.

Or possibly increase players expectations of playing time. Juniors may want 20 minutes, even if there were no promises. Maybe sophs are 15+.
This could open up the world of transfers.

Or maybe player preferences could change over time. Although this could get messy. Perhaps the kid that originally wanted to play at a rebuild, gets tired of losing, even with 20 minutes a game and wants to finish at a big time program

I think your suggestions warrior would only increase user frustration of the game.

How about put more emphasis on the coach. Too many times coaches get into a power 5 conference, and reap the conference prestige benefit. While not getting passed the second round of the NT. Make things like CPOY, COY etc...help in recruiting also. The coach is generally the reason kids sign. Team success. Player success. Awards. All conference. Drafted players. Are all reasons kids signs. Very few sign with , say Oregon, cuz they're in the pac12.

Posted by cra666 on 7/7/2021 9:42:00 AM (view original):
How about put more emphasis on the coach. Too many times coaches get into a power 5 conference, and reap the conference prestige benefit. While not getting passed the second round of the NT. Make things like CPOY, COY etc...help in recruiting also. The coach is generally the reason kids sign. Team success. Player success. Awards. All conference. Drafted players. Are all reasons kids signs. Very few sign with , say Oregon, cuz they're in the pac12.

i can get behind that for sure.

as of right now, 259 people read this post but only a handful have commented. i'm taking that to mean i've hit the nail fairly close to the head. i'm all for improving this thing and taking a good sim to a greater level. i didn't comment on D2 or D3 as i don't see a need to adjust those. it's D1 that's a mess.

Posted by gigrant on 7/7/2021 5:29:00 PM (view original):
as of right now, 259 people read this post but only a handful have commented. i'm taking that to mean i've hit the nail fairly close to the head. i'm all for improving this thing and taking a good sim to a greater level. i didn't comment on D2 or D3 as i don't see a need to adjust those. it's D1 that's a mess.

No need to adjust D2 and D3 because they mostly just recruit D1 players.

I am not opposed to some small tweaks here and there but I do not believe that D1 recruiting is broken. I actually think D1 recruiting is one of the more enjoyable and exciting parts of HD.

Is D1 broken or is it a behavioral issue? It sounds like D1 people are ending up with crappy players (or walkons) because they are not spreading their efforts over several players (such that they have backup options available if a coin flip doesn't go their way). I agree that Kentucky wouldn't end up with 3 frat boys, but Kentucky also wouldn't be in a position where they have nobody else in line to take a schollie (if offered).

Posted by cra666 on 7/7/2021 9:42:00 AM (view original):
How about put more emphasis on the coach. Too many times coaches get into a power 5 conference, and reap the conference prestige benefit. While not getting passed the second round of the NT. Make things like CPOY, COY etc...help in recruiting also. The coach is generally the reason kids sign. Team success. Player success. Awards. All conference. Drafted players. Are all reasons kids signs. Very few sign with , say Oregon, cuz they're in the pac12.

I like the idea of a coach profile with your own prestige. Can counteract some of the advantage you get vs high baseline schools. Think Mark Few.

Since this game first started (and yes I have been around since this game started) that the biggest flaw in recruiting is it's all or nothing. The amount of money that you have to recruit pretty much means if you go all in on a couple targets, you have nothing left to get backup targets if you miss out on your primary guys. So you could be going after the #5 PG and if you miss out, you're stuck going after the #75 PG, so pretty much a dramatic and absurd difference.

I disagree with the statement that the power schools shouldn't be able to get just about anyone they want. But I do think there should be much more competition between the power schools. But the lack of being able to have backup options pretty much eliminates that. In real life, any time a recruit chooses a school there are a minimum of 7 or 8 scholarship offers out to him. But the small amount of funds prohibits the competitiveness in recruiting. Basically I'd like to see about 75% of signings involve a dice roll. But the schools that lose out on the dice rolls, they have the ability to go after other good players. Very few schools should have walk on players, much less multiple walk ons.

I think there should be a cap on the number of visits a team can make per cycle. No one should be able to do 20 HVs and a CV in one cycle. Prestige should have more of an impact with visits, so that if a school has to move in on a recruit later in the season, it's possible for an A+ prestige school who lost someone to an early entry to be able to come back and compete and target a replacement. There should also be 2 or 3 cycles of recruiting before players sign in RS2 so that power schools don't lose out to D2 schools who have offered D1 players and end up stuck with trying to beat out D3 schools for really weak players.

So really, I'd like to see:

1)a maximum of 3 visits per cycle (3 HVs or 2 HV and 1 CV).
2) significantly more money per scholarship so schools can recruit more players. (or remove the money factor for visits and just give a number of visits allotted per scholarship)
3) prestige play a bigger factor in player decisions.
4) preferences should be amped up to play a bigger part to also keep mid-majors in competition with the higher ranked recruits
5) D3 should get the same scouting budget as D2 schools because anyone who coaches D3 knows that you barely have funds to scout anyone to stay competitive.
6) a period during RS2 to allow recruiting without signings taking place so that new coaches and teams losing an EE can compete for players and not get screwed over.
7) player signing preferences should be changed to just 1st recruiting session and 2nd recruiting session with pretty much all of the top players wanting to sign during the 1st recruiting session.
8) I think ineligible players should not sign during RS1, unless they become eligible during the RS1
9) Coach accolades (COY, draft picks, win % etc) should play a factor in recruiting.
10) The ability to filter out offers so that if you offer 20 players you can say only put a cap on the number of players per position that you can sign in case multiple players sign in a single period. For instance you can say 1 PG, 1 C and 1 SG or you can say 1 PG, 1 PF/C, 1 Any. To make it more lifelike results you would also need to have ranked players selected based on the order of their overall ranking. Then the unranked players would sign in random order.

I'm sure I would have more things I'd like to see but it's getting late.