Posted by shoe3 on 8/25/2021 2:48:00 PM (view original):

Posted by nc2457829305 on 8/25/2021 1:59:00 PM (view original):
I think what texashick is proposing is the opposite of chilling promises-- it's supercharging them for those who can afford to offer them by requiring them to last through a career and increasing the recruiting value. That makes a ton of sense to me.

If elite teams have 4 players returning who were promised starts once upon a time, they can now only offer a start to one player, and can't drop them from the lineup late in the season. Much more likely that a non-elite team can make that promise now than one trying to win a title this season.

It’s chilling them, in that promises will be far less common. They will have to be, because in effect, there are far fewer spots open. I get how, on the surface, it looks like you might be “supercharging” the effect of a promise, but good luck seeing that play out. With fewer starts and minutes being handed out, my A+ baseline teams have less to worry about from B+ and under schools. More recruits will go unchallenged.

Recruiting in this game is, for better or worse, an economic sim, and 4-year promises, besides being unrealistic, are bad economics. We achieve (what I think is) the desired result much better by simply re-instating the ability for non-freshmen to transfer when they’re upset over declining playing time, not tied to promises, but instead to the player’s playing time preference. That’s more realistic, leaves the recruiting economics alone so the prestige window doesn’t close on teams trying to challenge for good recruits, and it makes the game more fluid and intelligent.

I typically agree with you but I'm less certain about the outcome here as you are. That said, I do strongly agree with the 2nd half of your second paragraph which is ultimately what I am trying to get at with my suggestion. The game allows elite teams to hoard top-talent by giving them all of the minutes in their freshman year and then bury them on the bench in future seasons and in the NT. I do it, you do it, basically every A+ team you click on starts a couple freshman and decreases their minutes down the road. I think the game logic should be adjusted so these players consider transferring (whether based on previous promises or just unhappiness due to minutes). This balances the hoarding at the elite levels and increases RS2 for the people that think the EE system is broken.

I think 4-year promises are less of an issue at the non-elite teams. Typically players they are offering to promise (or in your proposal simply when they win an top quality prospect) are going to be the best players on their team so they are likely getting the minutes in the NT/future seasons anyway. The same argument applies on why I disagree with Billy regarding promises in the NT. IMO, the elite teams get a huge advantage by hiding their promised players in the NT. The less elite teams are probably playing those guys anyway. In the "choose-your-own-adventure" game, I think the elite teams should be stuck with their choices and not able to down-play them at the last moment.

Anyway, all of this is just my opinion. Certainly have a high level of respect for the people it this thread and everyone probably knows more than I do. I'm also a proponent of management opening a beta world and letting us try out a few of these things so we'd see how it would play out. That's probably a pipe dream because of lost rev, but hey I can ask.

Posted by texashick on 8/26/2021 11:10:00 AM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 8/25/2021 2:48:00 PM (view original):

Posted by nc2457829305 on 8/25/2021 1:59:00 PM (view original):
I think what texashick is proposing is the opposite of chilling promises-- it's supercharging them for those who can afford to offer them by requiring them to last through a career and increasing the recruiting value. That makes a ton of sense to me.

If elite teams have 4 players returning who were promised starts once upon a time, they can now only offer a start to one player, and can't drop them from the lineup late in the season. Much more likely that a non-elite team can make that promise now than one trying to win a title this season.

It’s chilling them, in that promises will be far less common. They will have to be, because in effect, there are far fewer spots open. I get how, on the surface, it looks like you might be “supercharging” the effect of a promise, but good luck seeing that play out. With fewer starts and minutes being handed out, my A+ baseline teams have less to worry about from B+ and under schools. More recruits will go unchallenged.

Recruiting in this game is, for better or worse, an economic sim, and 4-year promises, besides being unrealistic, are bad economics. We achieve (what I think is) the desired result much better by simply re-instating the ability for non-freshmen to transfer when they’re upset over declining playing time, not tied to promises, but instead to the player’s playing time preference. That’s more realistic, leaves the recruiting economics alone so the prestige window doesn’t close on teams trying to challenge for good recruits, and it makes the game more fluid and intelligent.

I typically agree with you but I'm less certain about the outcome here as you are. That said, I do strongly agree with the 2nd half of your second paragraph which is ultimately what I am trying to get at with my suggestion. The game allows elite teams to hoard top-talent by giving them all of the minutes in their freshman year and then bury them on the bench in future seasons and in the NT. I do it, you do it, basically every A+ team you click on starts a couple freshman and decreases their minutes down the road. I think the game logic should be adjusted so these players consider transferring (whether based on previous promises or just unhappiness due to minutes). This balances the hoarding at the elite levels and increases RS2 for the people that think the EE system is broken.

I think 4-year promises are less of an issue at the non-elite teams. Typically players they are offering to promise (or in your proposal simply when they win an top quality prospect) are going to be the best players on their team so they are likely getting the minutes in the NT/future seasons anyway. The same argument applies on why I disagree with Billy regarding promises in the NT. IMO, the elite teams get a huge advantage by hiding their promised players in the NT. The less elite teams are probably playing those guys anyway. In the "choose-your-own-adventure" game, I think the elite teams should be stuck with their choices and not able to down-play them at the last moment.

Anyway, all of this is just my opinion. Certainly have a high level of respect for the people it this thread and everyone probably knows more than I do. I'm also a proponent of management opening a beta world and letting us try out a few of these things so we'd see how it would play out. That's probably a pipe dream because of lost rev, but hey I can ask.

i 100% agree with the top part, but that is why i would just axe promises completely. i know promise users would lose something, but right now the promise scheme favors the big teams like you said. its the elite teams who can afford to start 2-3 freshman, who can still pull a quality seed in spite of that, and who have the prestige already built where they don't care too much about the regular season. all those little teams need to win games, try to make the post season... they just can't afford to completely sell out the regular season for growth.

so i guess i just don't see the point in having them at all. they hurt little programs and bastardize the regular season - sure, the top 5-10 programs might be starting those freshman anyway - but the general quality of regular season teams has definitely taken a hit from 3.0 style promises, and its a shame. plus it gives coaches less time to refine their strategy, and basically none of us are good enough to set up a team perfectly on the first shot. i'm definitely not. i feel like the main impact of 3.0 promises is having poorly constructed regular and post season teams, and i think that stinks, basically.

on the 4 year promises specifically -

i do agree that extending promises into the post season would probably hurt the big teams more than the little ones. i do question that some, because of how crazy competitive it is right now with d1 pop, for decent to good recruits, and how many of those i'm assuming are getting promises as a result. its a lot easier to tolerate starting a 5* than it is the project players being recruited by lower schools. but of course they could choose to stop doing promises on them...

my main objection is moving away from playing your best team in the NT. i think team planning is the best part of the game and frankly its something a lot of coaches need a lot of work on. i would personally hate not playing my best team in the NT, but i sort of shudder to imagine what the fallout will be for the average coach. i plan ahead - when i'm recruiting a player today, i have a fairly clear picture of what i expect them to do each year until they graduate. as such, i could deal with the planning required to avoid totally reaming yourself from promises. most coaches don't or can't project things out like that, i think it would lead to quite a bit of disaster out there, and with disaster comes angst and frustration. plus with the dice roll nature, where you have to target 2 guys for 1 spot so often, it really is not very straight forward for anyone to deal with, 4 year promises.

you could say, just don't use promises if you don't like it - and i think some folks would do that. but always, the competitive balance is going to push people to use roughly as many promises as they can without totally F'ing themselves, and so i think its hard to avoid the chaos that would almost surely ensue.

one of the major wrinkles would be with new coaches. right now, promises get cleared for new coaches. with 4 year promises, wouldn't clearing those promises be an unacceptable advantage? and if you don't clear them, there are going to be a lot of poisoned programs out there from the misdeeds of the prior coach. seems like a pretty big problem IMO.

last point - in real life, freshman come in who are as good as anyone in the league. that is not the case in HD. there are almost 0 starter-quality freshman, a handful of bigs are borderline, and that's about it. its easier for me to swallow the idea of NT-promises on a worthy freshman. but there really aren't any, seems like a problem to me

" its easier for me to swallow the idea of NT-promises on a worthy freshman. but there really aren't any, seems like a problem to me"

...but that's just it. You, as an elite team, would have to decide whether or not you could make that promise, and the guy at B- who isn't sitting on 4 other 5* recruits has NO issue making and keeping that promise.

tiny advantage, little guy.

that's totally fair, and i pretty much agree with all of it. promises as they exist today favor the big schools, and i could see 4 year promises evening that back out - maybe even edge for small schools. but i feel like you could accomplish the same thing, wiping out that big school advantage, by eliminating promises.

so i basically concede the 4 year promises would help balance the promises issue as a whole, i just think the net result is worse than not having promises at all.

I dislike the idea of taking away another recruiting tool (promises).

But once again you all are focused on the effects on elite DI (understandable since most of the posters are elite DI coaches)

But promises also are a tool used at Mid DI Low DI, DII, and DIII, Coaches DO have to pick and choose where they can hand out promises at these levels.
I also think you are over valuing the impact. I've been told its between 2-2.5 HVs which is not a ton.

wrong - let me spin this for you another way :
"...but that's just it. You, as a B- prestige team, would have to decide whether or not you could make that promise, and the guy at D who isn't sitting on 4 other 2* recruits has NO issue making and keeping that promise.

tiny advantage, little guy (D)".

So you have now hurt the B- coach trying to build HIS program.

Yeah I agree with mully on this one.

I’m going to use an example from the last recruiting cycle in Tark, where I have a very non-A+ Fresno St in the vicinity of piman’s A++++ UCLA. I had 2 open scholarships, he had I don’t know, 3 or 4, with a couple expected EEs as usual. There was a Southern California 4 or 5 star guy that we were the only two on after one cycle (I have lots to say about this, but I’ll leave it alone for now). I had only spent a single AP, knowing UCLA was probably going to also be on him, but the kid wanted to play, and wanted at least one of my sets, and I think I had another possible advantage, so I tried to pull the stow AP and promises on a wants to play kid before I offered a scholarship. The idea being that of course UCLA is going to likely think this guy is locked in, and move on to other targets; perhaps I can sneak in and make some noise.

As it turns out it worked too well, when I unlocked the promises, even before the scholarship, I jumped all the way to very high. Now at that point I knew I had no shot at the kid if UCLA wanted him, but I did want UCLA to spend on him (and I also want UCLA to know I’m around, and all that) so while I had my own real targets locked in, I also threw in some visits and hung around for a while. Not all the way in, only about half way, but enough to make sure UCLA either offered promises themselves, or invested some visits to lock the kid in. It’s in no one’s interest if A++++ teams get 4-5 star recruits unchallenged. The reason I could challenge for this kid was because he had a preference for playing time, and I could offer him promises that did not hurt me at all. It probably doesn’t end up hurting UCLA either (much, this time around) but in these *types* of cases, forcing the A+ teams to give starts to freshmen does hurt them, it does cost them something. You take that recruiting tool away, and you’re closing the window on the range of teams that can challenge for these types of players.

Posted by mullycj on 8/26/2021 4:46:00 PM (view original):
I dislike the idea of taking away another recruiting tool (promises).

But once again you all are focused on the effects on elite DI (understandable since most of the posters are elite DI coaches)

But promises also are a tool used at Mid DI Low DI, DII, and DIII, Coaches DO have to pick and choose where they can hand out promises at these levels.
I also think you are over valuing the impact. I've been told its between 2-2.5 HVs which is not a ton.

wrong - let me spin this for you another way :
"...but that's just it. You, as a B- prestige team, would have to decide whether or not you could make that promise, and the guy at D who isn't sitting on 4 other 2* recruits has NO issue making and keeping that promise.

tiny advantage, little guy (D)".

So you have now hurt the B- coach trying to build HIS program.

I agree that I dislike the idea of getting rid of another recruiting tool. Promises can be super helpful when you're out of funds but need to knock off a sim. Your example doesn't really make any sense though. How have you hurt the B- when the B- can now better compete for 5-star recruits? Sure, the D-prestige can now contest those mid-tier recruits, but that's a result of a rising tide raising all boats.

The only teams that are truly hurt would be at the very top where there's no more upward movement. The elite teams aren't able to reach higher because they're already there, and there would be more competition for the recruits they sometimes get for free.

See the moral of the story above was that if Fresno St, which already had promises out to 5-6 players in previous classes as it tries to dig its way out of D+ mid major status in the pac-10, can’t offer 5* Shane Adams a promised start/minutes, A++++ UCLA gets him for 35 AP and a scholarship. In case that wasn’t clear.

Chilling promises is not going to play out with more competition for elite recruits, not the way most folks play this game. I wish I believed that could be true, but it’s just not. Coaches are just too risk averse.

maybe a compromise would be to enable 4 year promises, but only for wants to play players? having the entire pool get 4 year promises, it just feels too disruptive to having functional teams, i guess. or maybe the difference between a 1 yr and 4 yr promise (assuming both options are offered) is only small for normal players and is big for wants to play, something along those lines?

i think its just too severe to extend promises to 4 years, and to extend to include the NT... i think taking today's promised start functionality, and extending it to all seasons in the player's career, is more palatable?

Posted by gillispie on 8/27/2021 12:29:00 PM (view original):
maybe a compromise would be to enable 4 year promises, but only for wants to play players? having the entire pool get 4 year promises, it just feels too disruptive to having functional teams, i guess. or maybe the difference between a 1 yr and 4 yr promise (assuming both options are offered) is only small for normal players and is big for wants to play, something along those lines?

i think its just too severe to extend promises to 4 years, and to extend to include the NT... i think taking today's promised start functionality, and extending it to all seasons in the player's career, is more palatable?

I feel like there are several compromises including:
1) Only enable 4-year promises for the "Wants to Play" preferences
2) Only require 50% (or whatever %) of original promise after freshman regular season.
3) Create promises for 2, 3, and 4 years. So you could offer 3 seasons of starts and 4 seasons of 15 mpg, which could help with planning for a deep NT run.

Edit: Actually I was just thinking that it would be really interesting if we could offer multiple year promises and then specify which year the promises would be fulfilled. For example, you could promise starts in their junior and senior season, but they wouldn't be as valuable as a freshman start promise. Something like the time value of money.

I am, generally speaking, all for things that make the game more intelligent. So *smart* varied tool promises, I could be open to, if that was a road the developers wanted to go down. Just be careful what we wish for there. The way the tiers work in GD doesn’t result in a more intelligent system at all, just a different kind of manipulation. (Hilariously, it’s quite common to see, for example, championship teams starting elite recruits their sophomore season and then mostly ride the bench while other players are developed until the playoffs of their senior season.)

Still sounds mostly like a solution in search of a problem. Whatever problem actually exists is much better addressed by just letting *some* older players transfer sometimes when they complain about declining playing time, rather than messing with the recruiting economics.

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but...enforce promises for 4 years. I hate losing a recruit to a team, seeing them start as a FR then ride the bench or, even worse, redshirt as a SO/JR/SR, and not transfer out. Having teams have to hold promises or close to it for 4 seasons, resulting in additional transfers would help.

Posted by gillispie on 8/27/2021 12:29:00 PM (view original):
maybe a compromise would be to enable 4 year promises, but only for wants to play players? having the entire pool get 4 year promises, it just feels too disruptive to having functional teams, i guess. or maybe the difference between a 1 yr and 4 yr promise (assuming both options are offered) is only small for normal players and is big for wants to play, something along those lines?

i think its just too severe to extend promises to 4 years, and to extend to include the NT... i think taking today's promised start functionality, and extending it to all seasons in the player's career, is more palatable?

Why do you think that's too extreme? I think it's perfectly reasonable. And makes those promises much more valuable and strategic. Right now I throw promises around left and right. But if I had to keep them through the NT and for their entire career, I'd have to really think about who I would offer them to.

Posted by Benis on 8/27/2021 3:46:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie on 8/27/2021 12:29:00 PM (view original):
maybe a compromise would be to enable 4 year promises, but only for wants to play players? having the entire pool get 4 year promises, it just feels too disruptive to having functional teams, i guess. or maybe the difference between a 1 yr and 4 yr promise (assuming both options are offered) is only small for normal players and is big for wants to play, something along those lines?

i think its just too severe to extend promises to 4 years, and to extend to include the NT... i think taking today's promised start functionality, and extending it to all seasons in the player's career, is more palatable?

Why do you think that's too extreme? I think it's perfectly reasonable. And makes those promises much more valuable and strategic. Right now I throw promises around left and right. But if I had to keep them through the NT and for their entire career, I'd have to really think about who I would offer them to.

If you really want extreme, extend the promises to 4 years and then ding a coach's reputation whenever they lose a transfer (making it harder to land future recruits). That would really enforce the promises rule and make people think about when/how they use them.