i always figured if i made my own basketball sim id want to do recruiting cycles differently, but never settled on an idea i was fully satisfied with. i think it would take some getting used to, but one scheme i liked more than the others was to have recruiting run in 4 hour cycles, and to have players only update their considering lists every 24 hours. or maybe every 12 hours, not sure (either way, this would probably move out signings). i suppose a key piece of background information is, while i wouldn't try to totally deviate from an auction style system, i think it would make things richer if there was more variation in individual recruits, in terms of things like preferences of where they'd like to play (big school/small school, local or far away, etc), value placed on things like a school's prestige and minutes/starts, what kind of career path they envision... things that would reward coaches who do some investigation. it would have to be done carefully to not create a massive grind of individual attention to tons of players, maybe more along the lines of how today, in HD, its valuable to scout players for sub potential, but you only have to do evals on guys you target from searching with a much wider brush (and its not even required, although its clearly beneficial with many if not most recruiting strategies).

anyway, one of the downfalls to me with HD, even with the advent of FSS and potential, which create a tradeoff between considering effort and information gathering effort (a valuable tradeoff, in my opinion), is that in d1, for most schools, there is more or less no time to take advantage of what you learn, for all the sought after players. i would prefer to allow players a few cycles before initial considering lists ever came out. this would enhance the strategy of the first few cycles, in my opinion, in terms of who you go after, and how hard. i think some uncertainty about who is doing what would be good for the game, give lower schools some room to maneuver against bigger schools. combined with some reasonable minimum spending requirements (in terms of effort) to be considered by higher end players, i think this would go a long way to allow bigger schools to have advantages that were not so overwhelming to everybody else. to be clear, you wouldn't get scholarship type messages that indicated your situation relative to others every cycle, the only indications of where you stood relative to others would be on those 12 or 24 hour increments.

so, by creating a system where there were cycles for players to "research" in between considering list updates (which would contain good information, more like WOTS today than the old simple list), i think it would give people time to actually take information they gather into account in their decisions, rather than just having to go for the good players near you out of the gate, regardless. the competition in d1 recruiting is great and you don't really want to mess with that, but the simple auction style just doesnt seem to have enough variation in strategy, to me. you can go for recruits soft or hard, or go for 2 on 4 scholarships or 4, or that kind of stuff. but i think it would be more enjoyable to have some twists that require players to adapt over the course of recruiting. now it seems like you come up with a first cycle plan - if it works, you basically sit around until maybe poaching someone right at the end. if not, you scramble to find a guy or two and then hopefully sit around until you sign everyone. i think this could be better - what if you found out, for example, that one of your targets was one of the 15% (just throwing that out there) of recruits who prefer small schools - which would negate your prestige advantage - and that now the littler school could take you all the way on this one. this might require a change in strategy. the problem to me is that today, you almost learn nothing as recruiting goes on, except which schools are weak, giving you ideas for who to poach. i think information gleaned during recruiting should be much less centered around poaching (which i envision as possible, but more difficult and less appealing than it is in HD today), more around better understanding the availability and the qualities of players you might recruit in the regular recruiting period.

all that background aside, having updates only periodically would allow coaches who are busy or who cant make the first cycle or two to compensate for their other obligations with minimal damage. i think thats a good thing, while still allowing coaches who make every cycle an advantage - the ability to more slowly search for information, which is always more efficient (for an HD based example, instead of sending 5 evals, you could send 2 at a time until you have the info you need - often learning what you need to know in fewer evals, and thus, saving money).

Posted by gillispie1 on 11/1/2013 11:31:00 AM (view original):
i always figured if i made my own basketball sim id want to do recruiting cycles differently, but never settled on an idea i was fully satisfied with. i think it would take some getting used to, but one scheme i liked more than the others was to have recruiting run in 4 hour cycles, and to have players only update their considering lists every 24 hours. or maybe every 12 hours, not sure (either way, this would probably move out signings). i suppose a key piece of background information is, while i wouldn't try to totally deviate from an auction style system, i think it would make things richer if there was more variation in individual recruits, in terms of things like preferences of where they'd like to play (big school/small school, local or far away, etc), value placed on things like a school's prestige and minutes/starts, what kind of career path they envision... things that would reward coaches who do some investigation. it would have to be done carefully to not create a massive grind of individual attention to tons of players, maybe more along the lines of how today, in HD, its valuable to scout players for sub potential, but you only have to do evals on guys you target from searching with a much wider brush (and its not even required, although its clearly beneficial with many if not most recruiting strategies).

anyway, one of the downfalls to me with HD, even with the advent of FSS and potential, which create a tradeoff between considering effort and information gathering effort (a valuable tradeoff, in my opinion), is that in d1, for most schools, there is more or less no time to take advantage of what you learn, for all the sought after players. i would prefer to allow players a few cycles before initial considering lists ever came out. this would enhance the strategy of the first few cycles, in my opinion, in terms of who you go after, and how hard. i think some uncertainty about who is doing what would be good for the game, give lower schools some room to maneuver against bigger schools. combined with some reasonable minimum spending requirements (in terms of effort) to be considered by higher end players, i think this would go a long way to allow bigger schools to have advantages that were not so overwhelming to everybody else. to be clear, you wouldn't get scholarship type messages that indicated your situation relative to others every cycle, the only indications of where you stood relative to others would be on those 12 or 24 hour increments.

so, by creating a system where there were cycles for players to "research" in between considering list updates (which would contain good information, more like WOTS today than the old simple list), i think it would give people time to actually take information they gather into account in their decisions, rather than just having to go for the good players near you out of the gate, regardless. the competition in d1 recruiting is great and you don't really want to mess with that, but the simple auction style just doesnt seem to have enough variation in strategy, to me. you can go for recruits soft or hard, or go for 2 on 4 scholarships or 4, or that kind of stuff. but i think it would be more enjoyable to have some twists that require players to adapt over the course of recruiting. now it seems like you come up with a first cycle plan - if it works, you basically sit around until maybe poaching someone right at the end. if not, you scramble to find a guy or two and then hopefully sit around until you sign everyone. i think this could be better - what if you found out, for example, that one of your targets was one of the 15% (just throwing that out there) of recruits who prefer small schools - which would negate your prestige advantage - and that now the littler school could take you all the way on this one. this might require a change in strategy. the problem to me is that today, you almost learn nothing as recruiting goes on, except which schools are weak, giving you ideas for who to poach. i think information gleaned during recruiting should be much less centered around poaching (which i envision as possible, but more difficult and less appealing than it is in HD today), more around better understanding the availability and the qualities of players you might recruit in the regular recruiting period.

all that background aside, having updates only periodically would allow coaches who are busy or who cant make the first cycle or two to compensate for their other obligations with minimal damage. i think thats a good thing, while still allowing coaches who make every cycle an advantage - the ability to more slowly search for information, which is always more efficient (for an HD based example, instead of sending 5 evals, you could send 2 at a time until you have the info you need - often learning what you need to know in fewer evals, and thus, saving money).

You realize you never emailed me in response to my sitemail as few months ago, as you promised? 

If I made my own basketball sim, I don't think it would look very much like HD at all.

It's very hard to set a new baseline when you've played a game like this so much, especially when it's currently head and shoulders above any other sim game out there. However, is it possible for someone to design a sim game that is better than HD and terms like "recruiting cycle" aren't even part of the vernacular? I think that's a no-brainer "yes"

Posted by acn24 on 10/31/2013 4:55:00 AM (view original):
So you think checking 4 times a day is too many? I don't really see that. I also think that people grossly overestimate the value of every cycle. Miss some, it is fine. There are really only a few you need to be on for.

I'm a believer that effort every cycle, even if just a phone call, reaps rewards like recruits suddenly telling you everyone in their family went to your school and being ready to sign as soon as they can.

OK a different idea i'd like to squeeze in before this thread dies...obviously the implementation of this on current worlds would be impossible...but maybe the worlds should have been designed for different cycle lengths, kind of like how some are 2-games-a-day vs 1.

If anything needs to be altered, they need to eliminate the last day of recruiting all together!

Posted by dave64g on 11/1/2013 1:58:00 PM (view original):
If anything needs to be altered, they need to eliminate the last day of recruiting all together!

i could go for that, but i think the clear #1 need for altering is the first cycle. if people are afraid of sims and can recruit from 6-8, then they can wait. but no reason you cant at least let people put actions in a few hours earlier, and preferably, any time after the world rolls over and money is dished out. d1 cycle 1 is just too important to limit to 2 hours, its one of those things that is just so frustrating, because its so obviously huge in impact, has been for many years, and it cant be that hard to fix. wish seble would have done that instead of player roles, probably would have taken only 10% of the time, too.

whoops, sorry jet. if its any consolation, its not just you. its not even just HD. while ive forgotten to respond to several dozen coaches in the last year and a half, i've also forgotten about a million other things outside of HD. its like i have a second personality who gets high for about 10 hours a day, and im none the wiser. but seriously, two kids 10.5 months apart has been rough, i think its the lack of sleep... i always got a lot of sleep before my irish twins came along!