It obviously is cheating.  Stop it or be punished.

Mike it is being done. mulshutt just explained how he is doing it and said it only takes him 2-3 minutes.

So if a Owner is able to indentify development paterns, would he be cheating by using the patern in player acquisition?  After all, since WIS has a Adv Scouting catagory they must have intended for us to stop thinking and blindly follow the "projected" line on a player's card- right? 

Yeah, what's the difference between the brain and excel? Both are external to the game.

Posted by timf on 12/15/2010 10:47:00 AM (view original):
Mike it is being done. mulshutt just explained how he is doing it and said it only takes him 2-3 minutes.

Can you do it  too?   Is there a specific area in the TOS that identifies this as a problem?   Have you contacted WifS for their official stance?

And regardless, it's not a perfect substitute anyhow - you can spend 20 million in all the draft/international scouting areas and you're still going to miss players - the only way to get reasonably accurate projections for every player out there is to spend on advance scouting.

Posted by sermonauthor on 12/15/2010 9:59:00 AM (view original):

Posted by dwoolery on 12/15/2010 8:24:00 AM (view original):
Probably goes without saying - but for now you won't be able to make trades involving players with less than 2-3 yrs of development. Going forward, you might copy to a spreadsheet those prospects your higher paid scouts see so you can consider deals later.

Yes, this will make me sound like Old Father Time--if making obscure references to Old Father Time doesn't beat me to it--but even though I own Excel through the MS Office suite I've never used a spreadsheet. Never had a need or at least never knew I had a need. What will it do? Generally, how does that work to help track the mysteries of player value? Or is that even the right question?

Also, this team is supposedly loaded with top prospects at many levels. How will I track those I've never seen through the eyes of those high paid HS/Col. scouts. Is there another way than guessing by their draft position/bonuses?

Thanks gents. This a huge help. Keep 'em coming please. I'm appreciating and sifting all opinions.

You can check draft position and IFA signing bonii on the player card.

I save my draft scouting, like mulsh said, I put my draft board on an excel sheet to get my draft picks in order, so I just save it. I only do the top 100 prospects, and mostly do it to see how my guys actual ratings end up compared to what they were projected at time of draft.

Posted by MikeT23 on 12/15/2010 10:41:00 AM (view original):
The only way ADV scouting can be circumvented with Excel is to save draft scouting ratings.   It seems insane to me to spend that much time/effort in the off chance that you can make a deal for one player in his 1st/2nd full season.   If you have the desire to do that, seek counseling for your OC behavior.   

You had me laughing hard, MikeT. The world I'm joining is called OCD. 

I'm very high on morality timf. Integrity too. Yet I find nothing wrong with using a tool readily available to 95% of players on their home computers to analyze data. Where I would draw my line in the sand is to sitemail or TC one of the current world owners with high advanced scouting investment and slip him an inducement to feed me youthful player projections. That's a line I wouldn't cross in terms of valuing integrity. Anyone disagree with that?

Sharing projected ratings is cheating. 

Agreed...aka collusion

Agreed. I wouldn't go there.

You'll get no disagreement on that.

Agreed - don't cross that line.

I use 0 advanced and don't think I would ever change unless Advanced somehow impacted the actual gameplay or player development was less predictable. I trade for and trade away 1st/2nd-year prospects too. Some prospects have higher growth curves, but most develop at similar rates. I also just tend to look at how much they fetched in the IFA market or when they were drafted, and check to see how much money the drafting/signing owner had in the relevant scouting category.

Even if I am losing out a little bit in those trades, I will gladly take that extra 20M plus, put a top tier free-agent on my team and come out ahead. I don't see why anybody would put any money into advanced, to be honest with you.