First, it's great to see a reasonable and positive thread about a lot of facets of the game. I'm not sure what the developer's plan is and I doubt this thread directly will affect it, but still fun to spitball/dream. A few things from my perspective:

1. Top, I know you and I have a pretty good relationship and we agree to disagree on D2 which is fine, but the wait... and wait... and wait, in recruiting is what makes D3 superior to D2 since many fewer players slip through the cracks. And by the way, yes, I have exactly 1 D2 title. However, it's not like I stink there. 6 seasons in Rupp at Grand Canyon and my 4th season was a 1 point loss in the championship and my 6th season a 3 point loss in the final 4 to the eventual champ, so I feel like I'm progressing. Maybe one day I'll actually double my count and get to two.

2. I personally like the idea of promises, and yes they are a bit silly at the moment, but I still wouldn't change anything. I don't particularly like the 4 year promise idea (see below for my over the top proposal that I don't even really like) because the teams that have EEs would have those guys leave early and be able to offer starts and minutes more often, the opposite of what we are looking for. And be careful what you wish for with saying promises should carry through the postseason and that any missed start in the postseason (NT) would force the recruit to leave. Of course then if your stud freshman is promised 20 minutes and gets in foul trouble in round 1 and only plays 13 and you get beat, they would have to be something in the coding for that freshman to not leave, right?, which is really tricky. But just as importantly, it would have to be that you can't manipulate it where you start a freshman 29 games before the NT and then can sit him and have him stay because you met the threshold without the postseason. Ideal world, yes, promises would have to be met in the postseason, but I think that's a slippery slope.

3. I think the way to do it, but it would be a mess to keep track of as a coach and I'm not really advocating it, is to allow coaches to offer promises over multiple seasons. So if I want a recruit I could offer a start and minutes for any of his 4 seasons (maybe only 3 seasons since he can't leave and go elsewhere after his senior year unless we are truly penalizing coaches in some way, like making recruits less likely to sign with that coach, not that school if the coach leaves but the coach). So one team may offer 20 minutes and a start all 4 years. Another may offer 25 minutes and a start but only when he is a junior. No promises of anything as a freshman or sophomore. Another may offer 15 minutes as a freshman, a start and 15 as a sophomore, a start and 20 as a junior etc. I think that would be what gives us the compromise between what we have now and the 'make promises stick for 4 years argument' and it should create more transfers as coaches don't keep promises, which is what this thread was originally about, but at the risk of upsetting the coach who is losing the transfer. It also brings a whole new level to recruiting for those of you who want more layers. However, as I said above, this is a nightmare for coaches I think. I have about 6 teams too many and would end up petitioning the PAC 10 to play 7 v 7 with 35 minute halves just to make my promises attainable by year 3 :).

Anyway, great thread with great coaches. Well done everybody.

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.

how do you build the best team possible? that's the driving question behind this game, through the twists and turns and successes and failures along the way, its all in pursuit of a singular goal. it all comes to fruition in one seminal moment, the national tournament, where the only thing that matters is winning right now. everything else is murky, a balancing act between a dozen factors, comprises made in darkness. but the illuminating moment will soon be hand, the success or failure of your efforts will be laid bare as the time comes to lay down your cards and receive your judgement.

the post season isn't supposed to be about compromise. its the one pure expression of what makes teams and coaches great, the moment that guides everything else we do in this game. and it should not be despoiled.

Posted by gillispie on 8/28/2021 3:13:00 PM (view original):

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.

how do you build the best team possible? that's the driving question behind this game, through the twists and turns and successes and failures along the way, its all in pursuit of a singular goal. it all comes to fruition in one seminal moment, the national tournament, where the only thing that matters is winning right now. everything else is murky, a balancing act between a dozen factors, comprises made in darkness. but the illuminating moment will soon be hand, the success or failure of your efforts will be laid bare as the time comes to lay down your cards and receive your judgement.

the post season isn't supposed to be about compromise. its the one pure expression of what makes teams and coaches great, the moment that guides everything else we do in this game. and it should not be despoiled.

Sure. But if a player who was promised a starting gig and has started the entire season he should be PI$$ED if he rides the pine during the tourney and should take that as an indication of his future role on the team. He should at the very least, complain and lose WE and should potentially transfer. The way it works right now is silly.

I think the bottom line is that the desired result is a game less susceptible to manipulation and “gaming”. Promises and the playing time preference work as a proxy for a number of different concepts probably lumped together, so it’s not so over complicated on either the coding end or the gameplay end. It is manipulated to some extent, sure. But the gameplay effect is really negligible. Like there is really no competitive balance problem because of how promises work now, and that should be priority #1; it just looks kind of funny to see lots of teams start freshmen for 21-22 games, then sit them as sophomores kind of uniformly. So the problem is almost entirely aesthetic, since every team has the capacity to use promises in that way, and alternately teams also have viable paths to success that include not offering promised starts regularly, or doing so very judiciously.

I can get behind piman’s proposal, because as I’ve said before, I’m generally for things that make the game more intelligent (ie less susceptible to gaming) though I suspect it is far too complicated for the developers to really implement well, given how badly the tiered GD promises work. I think the holy grail is the ability to tell a kid yeah, I can guarantee you a starting spot by your sophomore season, or I can guarantee you 15 mpg by your jr season, or whatever. Of course that is all also complicated by job changes as well.

And if we increase transfers due to playing time issues (under any circumstances) I think it’s also important to balance the effect of those changes. I think the game already *desperately* needs recruits with a team player preference, the kid who threatens to, and sometimes follows through on a threat to transfer when a coach fails to fill scholarships. Not only does that player not care about your playing time promises, he looks at walkons taken in the past 4 seasons when determining preference. And he might bolt after his soph season if he doesn’t like how recruiting is shaping up. Like “hey coach, when you sold me on this program, you sold me on a commitment to win every year. But when you’re letting walk-ons take up roster spots, I have to wonder if we’ll have what it takes to make a deep run when I’m an upperclassman. I may have to reconsider my commitment if this continues.” This is the yin to the yang of the pretty OP short-roster/slowdown gimmick, so the game design isn’t steering the user choices.

Posted by Benis on 8/28/2021 6:50:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie on 8/28/2021 3:13:00 PM (view original):

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.

how do you build the best team possible? that's the driving question behind this game, through the twists and turns and successes and failures along the way, its all in pursuit of a singular goal. it all comes to fruition in one seminal moment, the national tournament, where the only thing that matters is winning right now. everything else is murky, a balancing act between a dozen factors, comprises made in darkness. but the illuminating moment will soon be hand, the success or failure of your efforts will be laid bare as the time comes to lay down your cards and receive your judgement.

the post season isn't supposed to be about compromise. its the one pure expression of what makes teams and coaches great, the moment that guides everything else we do in this game. and it should not be despoiled.

Sure. But if a player who was promised a starting gig and has started the entire season he should be PI$$ED if he rides the pine during the tourney and should take that as an indication of his future role on the team. He should at the very least, complain and lose WE and should potentially transfer. The way it works right now is silly.

i agree the way it works is silly, but this is a game based on 90's era basketball where seniors lead teams. it doesn't make sense to have promised starts for freshman in that context. promising 4 year starts makes perhaps even less sense. to your point (from a while ago), you can't just pick one little piece of the game in isolation, and call for reality.

I'm not even really talking about matching reality, I'm just talking about it being a logical result in the context of the game.

We have a system where you can make promises to a player and if you break those promises during the regular season, the player gets mad and will lose WE and/or transfer. However, for some reason, this does not apply to the postseason. Which, to me, is illogical and feels more like a loophole than proper game design.

Posted by Benis on 8/29/2021 9:00:00 AM (view original):
I'm not even really talking about matching reality, I'm just talking about it being a logical result in the context of the game.

We have a system where you can make promises to a player and if you break those promises during the regular season, the player gets mad and will lose WE and/or transfer. However, for some reason, this does not apply to the postseason. Which, to me, is illogical and feels more like a loophole than proper game design.

The real problem is that we aren’t given an option to grade out the starts like we do minutes - like start half your games, or 3/4 of the games, etc. or start as a soph or an upperclassman. Promises in this game are shorthand covering a lot of ground, recruiting conversations that have a lot of nuance in real life.That’s why these binary all-or-nothing kind of suggestions are nonsense. They would hurt gameplay, and make it less realistic. Make it more intelligent, in line with what piman suggests, or leave it alone.

Posted by Benis on 8/29/2021 9:00:00 AM (view original):
I'm not even really talking about matching reality, I'm just talking about it being a logical result in the context of the game.

We have a system where you can make promises to a player and if you break those promises during the regular season, the player gets mad and will lose WE and/or transfer. However, for some reason, this does not apply to the postseason. Which, to me, is illogical and feels more like a loophole than proper game design.

ok thats fair enough. i think its because promises are kinda dumb to start with, but they wanted to add something to give recruiting some color / variety without tainting the post season, and there just weren't many options. d1 used to be more like d2, where there really are basically no acceptable freshman starters... and before that, freshman were even worse with steady iq growth. so i think having to honor promises in the NT would be viscerally more offensive for much of HD.

but also they used to do promises more mellow... if you got 1 complaint and then met them, you were golden. took 2 promises to fail - and even then you might survive like with a WE hit, it wasn't all or nothing. that logic saved my rear end a ton of times when i forgot to set my team up until a half dozen or dozen games into the season. so it only made sense that if you met promises the whole way till the end, there wasn't time to screw them up and get 2 complaints...

IMO if they are going to enhance things in this expectations, promises, transfers arena... they should actually go back in a way, to where consequences were more varied. where there wasn't just a line in the sand between 100% a-ok and transferring. but overall managing the feelings of the fake players, its just dubious territory, its just not generally very easy to make that a lot of fun, and it seems quite easy to make it a giant pain. WIS tried something similar with personalities at one point, before my time, but it went over really poorly and they mostly took it out shortly after, and seble took out the remainder at some point a few years before 3.0.

Posted by gillispie on 8/28/2021 3:13:00 PM (view original):

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.

how do you build the best team possible? that's the driving question behind this game, through the twists and turns and successes and failures along the way, its all in pursuit of a singular goal. it all comes to fruition in one seminal moment, the national tournament, where the only thing that matters is winning right now. everything else is murky, a balancing act between a dozen factors, comprises made in darkness. but the illuminating moment will soon be hand, the success or failure of your efforts will be laid bare as the time comes to lay down your cards and receive your judgement.

the post season isn't supposed to be about compromise. its the one pure expression of what makes teams and coaches great, the moment that guides everything else we do in this game. and it should not be despoiled.

Again, this is kinda the whole point-- if promises mattered in the postseason, you, team planner of all team planners, would have to decide if your plan could accommodate that freshman in the postseason... so you either have to compromise in recruiting and not offer everything needed to land the kid, or you have to accommodate him in your plans.

I'm not sure where your beautiful dream of pure expression in the postseason came from, but isn't the goal to build the best team you can within whatever parameters are out there? As Benis said later, why should a player transfer for not starting in the regular season, but then not care if you bench him in the tourney?

Because MY players care whats best for the team when it comes to the post season!!!

Coach, I'm cool not playing in the Final Four but I HAVE to start against Grambling State or else I'm outta here.

Coach, I know I started all of our regular season games as a freshman last season, but I'm completely okay with you signing my replacement in the starting lineup and relegating me to the bench for the rest of my career. I have no aspirations of personal accolades or a professional career.

Posted by mlitney on 8/30/2021 4:46:00 PM (view original):
Coach, I know I started all of our regular season games as a freshman last season, but I'm completely okay with you signing my replacement in the starting lineup and relegating me to the bench for the rest of my career. I have no aspirations of personal accolades or a professional career.

Frankly, that’s a whole lot more likely than a kid going to Coach K or Roy Williams or Cal or whoever and saying “hey I know we’re in the conference tournament now, playing for seeding with a shot at a Final 4 this season, and we have a senior who is a lot better and smarter than I am who has been patiently waiting for me to develop all year, but do you remember that time at my grandmas house when you said I was going to be a starter this year? Promises, promises, coach. You better start me and my B- IQ and 10% lower attributes, or I’m going to take my incredible talents somewhere else next year.”

I suspect very, very few recruits IRL ever hear anything like a hard promise to start every game in a season through the postseason, much less all 4 years. I mean to be honest just the thought of it is pretty absurd. Like I said these promises are proxies for much more complex real life conversations on the recruiting trail that actually have a lot more nuance. The way it’s set up now actually allows for that nuance; truly special recruits on the right teams actually do start all the games sometimes. It’s happened on some of my teams, even some of the good ones. And sometimes a guy starts the first 21 games of his career and never gets another start, because he loses his job. It happens, here and in real life. Should that guy *sometimes* transfer? Probably. I think so. I’ve been saying that for a long time. More players, and not just guys who got promises, should get unhappy with PT and leave.

But should he *always* transfer because the promise, as it exists right now, was made prior to the start of his freshman season? Absolutely not.

Posted by shoe3 on 8/30/2021 7:34:00 PM (view original):

Posted by mlitney on 8/30/2021 4:46:00 PM (view original):
Coach, I know I started all of our regular season games as a freshman last season, but I'm completely okay with you signing my replacement in the starting lineup and relegating me to the bench for the rest of my career. I have no aspirations of personal accolades or a professional career.

Frankly, that’s a whole lot more likely than a kid going to Coach K or Roy Williams or Cal or whoever and saying “hey I know we’re in the conference tournament now, playing for seeding with a shot at a Final 4 this season, and we have a senior who is a lot better and smarter than I am who has been patiently waiting for me to develop all year, but do you remember that time at my grandmas house when you said I was going to be a starter this year? Promises, promises, coach. You better start me and my B- IQ and 10% lower attributes, or I’m going to take my incredible talents somewhere else next year.”

I suspect very, very few recruits IRL ever hear anything like a hard promise to start every game in a season through the postseason, much less all 4 years. I mean to be honest just the thought of it is pretty absurd. Like I said these promises are proxies for much more complex real life conversations on the recruiting trail that actually have a lot more nuance. The way it’s set up now actually allows for that nuance; truly special recruits on the right teams actually do start all the games sometimes. It’s happened on some of my teams, even some of the good ones. And sometimes a guy starts the first 21 games of his career and never gets another start, because he loses his job. It happens, here and in real life. Should that guy *sometimes* transfer? Probably. I think so. I’ve been saying that for a long time. More players, and not just guys who got promises, should get unhappy with PT and leave.

But should he *always* transfer because the promise, as it exists right now, was made prior to the start of his freshman season? Absolutely not.

What? Good players go to Duke, UNC, and UK because it's the best place to showcase their talents in an attempt to make millions playing in the NBA. Let's not pretend like these players aren't going to protect their own self-interests. I doubt the vast majority of them care if a senior has been "patiently waiting".

Although I do agree that those types of promises don't occur in real life. If a coach wants to keep his job, he'll start his best 5. I was strictly speaking as a hypothetical HD player, where those promises do indeed exist.

How many UNC, Duke, Kansas players over the past dozen seasons do you suppose transferred because the coach recruited excellent players at their positions? And how many college basketball players do you suppose go on to play professionally, out of all the players who are recruited and offered scholarships?

So in a nutshell, you acknowledge that the current form of promises is already beyond what we see in real life - once again, a proxy for conversations that contain a lot more nuance on the actual recruiting trail. And your suggestion is to make the system further removed from reality, make it more absurd by turning those promises into mandatory 4-year starts? Like I said, if we’re talking about a *more intelligent* system, like what piman is talking about, or simply just allowing older players to transfer when they complain about pt sometimes, like they used to, regardless of promises (the best and simplest approach), totally different conversation. But straight 4 year promises? No. The correct answer is no.