How did 3.0 go from an attempt to rework scouting to this??

Posted by tmacfan12 on 4/28/2022 1:11:00 PM (view original):
Hmm.... you know, it would incredibly interesting to learn what happened From 2.0 to 3.0, I know there are many a returning coach over the years who missed out on huge HD events. If only someone with extensive game knowledge and a love for writing was around to help.... :)

I mean if we don't learn from the past, aren't we doomed to....

This is actually an interesting thought. You would need more than "extensive game knowledge and a love for writing" though. A skill at writing would be essential. The knowledge of the game would need to extend to some of the coding, too, or we would just get a conversation that becomes nothing more than a wish list, and unrealistic at that. We already have plenty of that. You would also need an unbiased point of view, or we would just get ... well, we would just get the current forums redux. So, extensive game knowledge, some knowledge of the coding, skill at writing, unbiased point of view ... nice, but sounds like a pipe dream.

Posted by gillispie on 4/28/2022 11:18:00 AM (view original):

Posted by johnroberts on 4/27/2022 6:45:00 PM (view original):
I don’t understand 1. If a D3 coach came in competing for D3 recruits against other D3 programs, how is that worse than a D3 coach coming in and competing for D1 recruits against possibly other D1, D2 or D3 programs?

I’m not saying I disagree. I just don’t see how if you capped divisions a new player wouldn’t be able to compete for the same players as an experienced coach in D3 would e competing for, which you say is only possible because of uncapped divisions if I’m understanding you correctly.

If last season when I started, I could only recruit D3, against other more experienced coaches who could only recruit D3, that’s easier than trying to figure out which D1 player I can recruit, that no other D1 or D2 is going to go after, and that I can still land while not waiting so long that I miss out on good fallback recruits.

Recruiting is hard everywhere in this game I gather. But D3 is hard. If you said they could only get D2 starting at the second period, that would make more sense. And make it easier to follow. I get moving up one division to recruit. I don’t get how most human schools at D3 can fill their rosters with D1 recruits. Maybe they don’t. But enough do.

paragraph 3 - exactly. i get shoe's point, but i disagree. for a new coach to come in, without massive mentoring, and to have a sense of which d1 players are attainable and which aren't, and to manage that whole situation throughout all of RS1 and RS2 - its borderline unthinkable. you should NOT have to have a mentor to have a chance. its not like experienced d3 coaches can swamp new ones in recruiting resources and stuff. i'm sure they'd push the newer guys around a bit, but with d3-only players, the biggest advantage of the experienced coaches is going to be in evaluating which players are better, not in their ability to obtain said players once identified.

there is a ton to learn in this game. its much more approachable to come in and recruit guys in the walled gardens of a d3-only pool, starting from cycle 1, and signing guys on the normal time periods like in d1, than it is to try to unlock d1 recruits for signing in the last 5 cycles when there's no time for quality replacements. of course, as shoe always points out, good coaches should think about backup options earlier. but IMO, new coaches should not.

besides, with a d3-only pool, they can just make it 2-3x bigger if we want to cut down on intra-d3 competition. it should be based on population, so that today's 30 man d3s have fewer recruits than if there's suddenly 200 coaches again. but my point is, you have a lot of options when d3 is isolated from the rest. things like ORs suggestion to give way more money to d3 for scouting, or whatever, to make it free... its much easier to tune d3 when d3 is 100% irrelevant to the competitive balance of other divisions, and vice-versa.

So this is the heart of it, I think. This argument has always ostensibly been about new player retention, but that really doesn’t fly. The game has always been dominated by vets at D3. The last version had pulldowns/drop downs, ironically not all that different from what we have now, functionally, the recruits are just labeled differently, and some hold out longer, while none really never consider you. Anyway, it’s always been extremely difficult for new players to rise - I think probably even more so before 3.0, if only because of so many superconferences at that level. I have 2 D3 championships, one prior to 3.0 and one after, and if you look at the players de-identified, I’d wager most would have difficulty telling who came on which team. This argument isn’t really about new players. I’m not saying you’re arguing in bad faith, gil. But if it was actually about new players, you’d be arguing for severing D3 off completely, and making it a completely different, dumbed down game. Gridiron Dynasty did that, and it was an unmitigated disaster, for what it’s worth. Be that as it may, crabman said the quiet part out loud. This issue has always been, at its heart, about coaches being irritated by not having cheap backups available to them because lower division schools snatch them up.

We could go back and forth speculating on how far to dumb down a game at a D3 level to make it “easy” enough to keep more new players here, but then you have the issue of how different the game gets at higher levels anyway, so they’re still relearning. Unless we are willing to chase parked vets out of D3, and make it really a new-player only experience, I don’t see much point.

Posted by tmacfan12 on 4/28/2022 1:12:00 PM (view original):
How did 3.0 go from an attempt to rework scouting to this??

I don't think Gil is quite right on that. In fact, it's the opposite.

The main point of 3.0 was to fix recruiting issues that were d1 specific which was seen as the biggest problem with HD. Teams would rarely battle and it was too much of a pure auction style (no dice rolls back then). There are a couple other things but that was the main objective

I think you could have made MANY of these changes without even touching scouting such as 1) removing postseason/roll over cash and 2) add dice rolls. Maybe even preferences and prestige weight adjustment could also be added somewhat easily.

Instead we got a complete overhaul with many unintended consequences - such as allowing d3 to openly recruit any d1 projected player. That was never part of the proposal as there was no problem to fix. Whether you want to call it an oversight or just unintended consequence, it's up to you.

Fyi - one reason for a massive overhaul vs tweaks was due to the code being obsolete and written in a way that it made it difficult to make changes. I think that's a big reason why seble decided to overhaul and start fresh. He just didn't have the greatest grasp of many elements of the game and I think it was difficult for him to think through potential consequences of decisions he was making.

I still dont understand why it would be a bad idea to cap the recruits each division could go for? I mean, putting aside the new user argument at D3....most of the coaches are in D1, right, by a pretty decent margin? So why is it a bad thing to let them have viable backup D1 options that arent gobbled up by D2's if they lose their recruiting battles rather than what we have now? Again, you can lose battles for the next tier of recruits as well, its just not losing battles for studs that hurts you.

I mean, if you are a D or D+ rebuild its even difficult sometimes to fend off the D2s, not having to worry about them would actually help you correct?

Wouldnt that lend to more styles and strategies since you could actually land more high growth recruits that fit your game style?

Ill ask Seble tomorrow

Posted by crabman26 on 4/28/2022 4:38:00 PM (view original):
I still dont understand why it would be a bad idea to cap the recruits each division could go for? I mean, putting aside the new user argument at D3....most of the coaches are in D1, right, by a pretty decent margin? So why is it a bad thing to let them have viable backup D1 options that arent gobbled up by D2's if they lose their recruiting battles rather than what we have now? Again, you can lose battles for the next tier of recruits as well, its just not losing battles for studs that hurts you.

I mean, if you are a D or D+ rebuild its even difficult sometimes to fend off the D2s, not having to worry about them would actually help you correct?

Wouldnt that lend to more styles and strategies since you could actually land more high growth recruits that fit your game style?

Its part of the risk reward. and I think the real issue is not losing potential back ups to d3 but losing them to lower D1 schools they never had to contend with before. Thus people not liking more D1 coaches.

Posted by Fregoe on 4/28/2022 5:21:00 PM (view original):

Posted by crabman26 on 4/28/2022 4:38:00 PM (view original):
I still dont understand why it would be a bad idea to cap the recruits each division could go for? I mean, putting aside the new user argument at D3....most of the coaches are in D1, right, by a pretty decent margin? So why is it a bad thing to let them have viable backup D1 options that arent gobbled up by D2's if they lose their recruiting battles rather than what we have now? Again, you can lose battles for the next tier of recruits as well, its just not losing battles for studs that hurts you.

I mean, if you are a D or D+ rebuild its even difficult sometimes to fend off the D2s, not having to worry about them would actually help you correct?

Wouldnt that lend to more styles and strategies since you could actually land more high growth recruits that fit your game style?

Its part of the risk reward. and I think the real issue is not losing potential back ups to d3 but losing them to lower D1 schools they never had to contend with before. Thus people not liking more D1 coaches.

yeah, you may be right, although right now with as many D1 coaches as we have I still see what would be available decent D1 back up options that D2s end up signing. By not having the D2s able to sign those types we wouldnt see 8, 9, or 10 man rosters that we see now. Which again, I get it, risk/ reward. I just dont see the downside of limiting each division to recruiting from their pool.

Posted by crabman26 on 4/28/2022 5:35:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Fregoe on 4/28/2022 5:21:00 PM (view original):

Posted by crabman26 on 4/28/2022 4:38:00 PM (view original):
I still dont understand why it would be a bad idea to cap the recruits each division could go for? I mean, putting aside the new user argument at D3....most of the coaches are in D1, right, by a pretty decent margin? So why is it a bad thing to let them have viable backup D1 options that arent gobbled up by D2's if they lose their recruiting battles rather than what we have now? Again, you can lose battles for the next tier of recruits as well, its just not losing battles for studs that hurts you.

I mean, if you are a D or D+ rebuild its even difficult sometimes to fend off the D2s, not having to worry about them would actually help you correct?

Wouldnt that lend to more styles and strategies since you could actually land more high growth recruits that fit your game style?

Its part of the risk reward. and I think the real issue is not losing potential back ups to d3 but losing them to lower D1 schools they never had to contend with before. Thus people not liking more D1 coaches.

yeah, you may be right, although right now with as many D1 coaches as we have I still see what would be available decent D1 back up options that D2s end up signing. By not having the D2s able to sign those types we wouldnt see 8, 9, or 10 man rosters that we see now. Which again, I get it, risk/ reward. I just dont see the downside of limiting each division to recruiting from their pool.

To add a little to Fregoe’s risk/reward talk, it’s specifically the concept of prioritization - needing to actively recruit all levels of recruits in order to have a decent shot to land them - that many struggle with. If you’re trying to spend all your resources on top targets, then move down the ladder when you lose, you can’t expect those guys to be waiting for you. The current model is both realistic, and important for an economic-based simulation. I recall these forum discussions during the beta era, in fact. And of course there were folks predicting that lots of coaches would continue to try to recruit this way and getting frustrated about it, and I didn’t doubt it. That’s life. It doesn’t mean the game should change. It shouldn’t. If you don’t like the results you get - and frankly, at the risk of restarting the supercharged slowdown option fight, the game does bail short rosters out, so it’s not like you can’t have a viable team and take a couple walkons every season, lots of coaches do - it’s up to you to adapt your gameplay.

The downside is that it will end up limiting upward mobility. High level teams want to go all in on elites AND have backups in their back pocket too. Right now, everyone has to worry about recruits getting picked off,because there’s economic pressure from every level. When that’s no longer true, the prestige window through which teams can reasonably challenge for recruits closes, and upward mobility is limited.

Posted by shoe3 on 4/28/2022 7:37:00 PM (view original):

Posted by crabman26 on 4/28/2022 5:35:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Fregoe on 4/28/2022 5:21:00 PM (view original):

Posted by crabman26 on 4/28/2022 4:38:00 PM (view original):
I still dont understand why it would be a bad idea to cap the recruits each division could go for? I mean, putting aside the new user argument at D3....most of the coaches are in D1, right, by a pretty decent margin? So why is it a bad thing to let them have viable backup D1 options that arent gobbled up by D2's if they lose their recruiting battles rather than what we have now? Again, you can lose battles for the next tier of recruits as well, its just not losing battles for studs that hurts you.

I mean, if you are a D or D+ rebuild its even difficult sometimes to fend off the D2s, not having to worry about them would actually help you correct?

Wouldnt that lend to more styles and strategies since you could actually land more high growth recruits that fit your game style?

Its part of the risk reward. and I think the real issue is not losing potential back ups to d3 but losing them to lower D1 schools they never had to contend with before. Thus people not liking more D1 coaches.

yeah, you may be right, although right now with as many D1 coaches as we have I still see what would be available decent D1 back up options that D2s end up signing. By not having the D2s able to sign those types we wouldnt see 8, 9, or 10 man rosters that we see now. Which again, I get it, risk/ reward. I just dont see the downside of limiting each division to recruiting from their pool.

To add a little to Fregoe’s risk/reward talk, it’s specifically the concept of prioritization - needing to actively recruit all levels of recruits in order to have a decent shot to land them - that many struggle with. If you’re trying to spend all your resources on top targets, then move down the ladder when you lose, you can’t expect those guys to be waiting for you. The current model is both realistic, and important for an economic-based simulation. I recall these forum discussions during the beta era, in fact. And of course there were folks predicting that lots of coaches would continue to try to recruit this way and getting frustrated about it, and I didn’t doubt it. That’s life. It doesn’t mean the game should change. It shouldn’t. If you don’t like the results you get - and frankly, at the risk of restarting the supercharged slowdown option fight, the game does bail short rosters out, so it’s not like you can’t have a viable team and take a couple walkons every season, lots of coaches do - it’s up to you to adapt your gameplay.

The downside is that it will end up limiting upward mobility. High level teams want to go all in on elites AND have backups in their back pocket too. Right now, everyone has to worry about recruits getting picked off,because there’s economic pressure from every level. When that’s no longer true, the prestige window through which teams can reasonably challenge for recruits closes, and upward mobility is limited.

And this is really how I think and feel when I read coaches complaining in their CC or on the forums about recruiting. You can argue the fundamentals of HD all day - rolls are annoying, not enough mid-tier D1 recruits, too many inexperienced coaches making strange pushes, etc. - but the game has been created in a certain way (yes, updates happen but I'm talking more generally) and we can either whine until it's different or we can play around it's design. I'm super excited for the new team working on all of WIS but I don't expect any serious updates in the upcoming months so I'd say it's more enjoyable to choose the latter of those two options. Especially since, after all, it's a game!

Something I've been picking up from top coaches, maybe not explicitly stated by any but something I notice they do, is they seem to always be considering how to maximize their successes AND minimize their risk for failure. That goes for recruiting, gameplanning, EEs, scheduling, everything. I've seen too many posts about "I lost 3 battles for my only 3 scholarships so I guess I'm leaving for a new job" and it's like... you can avoid battles? Everyone can avoid battles - we just decide to play the game of chance and it backfires sometimes. It's how the game is designed. Now, I'm not trying to be obtuse, I know it significantly limits your ceiling if you avoided battles all the time but that's one of the potential strategies in the game to me.

I think my perspective largely comes from playing a video game fairly competitively over the past few years, I wasn't the best by any means but I was okay? The one thing that killed me every time was when an update would come and the community would all say "wait, that's not fair!" and it's like, if it's not fair for everyone, maybe in a weird way, it's fair for everyone? And instead of complaining, we can adapt and try to maximize our successes while minimizing the risk of failure.

Posted by crabman26 on 4/28/2022 5:35:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Fregoe on 4/28/2022 5:21:00 PM (view original):

Posted by crabman26 on 4/28/2022 4:38:00 PM (view original):
I still dont understand why it would be a bad idea to cap the recruits each division could go for? I mean, putting aside the new user argument at D3....most of the coaches are in D1, right, by a pretty decent margin? So why is it a bad thing to let them have viable backup D1 options that arent gobbled up by D2's if they lose their recruiting battles rather than what we have now? Again, you can lose battles for the next tier of recruits as well, its just not losing battles for studs that hurts you.

I mean, if you are a D or D+ rebuild its even difficult sometimes to fend off the D2s, not having to worry about them would actually help you correct?

Wouldnt that lend to more styles and strategies since you could actually land more high growth recruits that fit your game style?

Its part of the risk reward. and I think the real issue is not losing potential back ups to d3 but losing them to lower D1 schools they never had to contend with before. Thus people not liking more D1 coaches.

yeah, you may be right, although right now with as many D1 coaches as we have I still see what would be available decent D1 back up options that D2s end up signing. By not having the D2s able to sign those types we wouldnt see 8, 9, or 10 man rosters that we see now. Which again, I get it, risk/ reward. I just dont see the downside of limiting each division to recruiting from their pool.

From a gameplay standpoint, there really isn't any downside. We had a "soft cap" kinda thing for d2 and d3 previously and most would agree that it worked well and there wasn't any reason to change.

pulldowns and dropdowns were too complicated for d3 teams, for new coaches. at least before 3.0, admins were clear about what was supposed to be possible, instead of the 'strategic ambiguity with buggy code at best and intentional deception at worst' strategy that was in place when i first started. so that was better, but making that less confusing for d3 coaches was a goal of seble's, as i understand it. i thought that was a good goal, but i was blown away by the way he went about achieving it.

maybe i am wrong about the scouting thing being the impetus. it sure looks that way from that thread, but like i said, i didn't remember that was the start of it all. that was the kick off thread i think... but perhaps that was just 1/2 and that was intentional from the beginning. absolutely though, there was enormous scope creep and major side effects from what seble had told us he was cooking up, casually, from before that thread. i don't remember what all he was going for anymore, from the beginning, its all kinda hazy.

but regardless - IMO d3 recruiting got more complicated, not less. i don't think you need to neuter d3 in the way is shoe is talking about, to get to where i'm trying to go. not a dumbed down version of the game for noobs. but, it shouldn't have major additional complexity on top of d1, and it does. i am just advocating for d1-style recruiting, in a less competitive format. a d3 only pool for d3 only teams is pretty darn similar to the experience in high d1, where most folks ignore d2/d3 teams and where d2/d3 teams have pretty minimal impact on their lives, at least directly. i agree with shoe there is some indirect impact, especially about d2 schools signing so many d1 pool recruits at the start of RS2. but i wouldn't agree that d3 schools have a major impact on d1, indirectly or otherwise. and i don't agree with shoe that this is really about d1 schools, for all the coaches having this conversation. maybe for some, i doubt its the majority, but perhaps. at least for me, i don't give a damn about d3 schools recruiting from the d1 pool, from my own d1 team's perspective.

Great point Gil, the previous pull down system was confusing for new folks. Totally agree there.

As you and a couple others have brought up, d3 scouting in particular is tough. D3 has by far the biggest pool of players but by far the smallest budget. If you just restricted d3 teams to their own pool then you could significantly increase scouting budget and really help new folks.

Posted by gillispie on 4/29/2022 2:56:00 PM (view original):
pulldowns and dropdowns were too complicated for d3 teams, for new coaches. at least before 3.0, admins were clear about what was supposed to be possible, instead of the 'strategic ambiguity with buggy code at best and intentional deception at worst' strategy that was in place when i first started. so that was better, but making that less confusing for d3 coaches was a goal of seble's, as i understand it. i thought that was a good goal, but i was blown away by the way he went about achieving it.

maybe i am wrong about the scouting thing being the impetus. it sure looks that way from that thread, but like i said, i didn't remember that was the start of it all. that was the kick off thread i think... but perhaps that was just 1/2 and that was intentional from the beginning. absolutely though, there was enormous scope creep and major side effects from what seble had told us he was cooking up, casually, from before that thread. i don't remember what all he was going for anymore, from the beginning, its all kinda hazy.

but regardless - IMO d3 recruiting got more complicated, not less. i don't think you need to neuter d3 in the way is shoe is talking about, to get to where i'm trying to go. not a dumbed down version of the game for noobs. but, it shouldn't have major additional complexity on top of d1, and it does. i am just advocating for d1-style recruiting, in a less competitive format. a d3 only pool for d3 only teams is pretty darn similar to the experience in high d1, where most folks ignore d2/d3 teams and where d2/d3 teams have pretty minimal impact on their lives, at least directly. i agree with shoe there is some indirect impact, especially about d2 schools signing so many d1 pool recruits at the start of RS2. but i wouldn't agree that d3 schools have a major impact on d1, indirectly or otherwise. and i don't agree with shoe that this is really about d1 schools, for all the coaches having this conversation. maybe for some, i doubt its the majority, but perhaps. at least for me, i don't give a damn about d3 schools recruiting from the d1 pool, from my own d1 team's perspective.

Yeah pulldowns/dropdowns still exist, in function, and what seble did was basically remove the vision concept, where high prestige teams can reach higher. Now there’s essentially no limit to anyone. That’s really not any more or less confusing than the old version. What’s confusing about this system is confusing for everyone. It took most of us all the beta seasons to start to figure out a decent process for doing it.

We’re not going to agree on the negative effects of making new players go head-to-head against vets in D3 for top of division recruits, and that’s fine, it’s all speculative until a change is made and tested. The idea that there would be no downside, or no effect felt to just putting up a wall… I just don’t think some folks are thinking it through very well. It will have a major effect on late session recruiting at both D2 and D1. Anyway, I will say, short of a total overhaul of the entire scouting system (a budget-less system is what I wanted) probably the best thing they could do for everyone, not just new players, is construct a scouting wizard. The whole idea behind having all the choices and divisions was that seble wanted to maintain options and choices, different viable paths to success, to suit coaching preferences. As you say, it just gets really bulky and consuming fast in practice. If there was a wizard option - say, answer a series of questions or check a series of boxes indicating how much of your budget to spend, what states to FSS at what levels, whether to include a camp and what levels, and then forego so some of the minutiae like detailing miles and positions, etc. Then at the end just indicate *as many as possible to level 4* or *as many as possible to level 3*. For example:

1. Welcome to the Scouting Wizard! Which states would you like to select for FSS? (none or select)
2. Would you like to attend regional camps? (no or select)
3. Would you like to host a private camp? (no or choose details)
4. It looks like you’ll have ($x) remaining. How much would you like to invest in the assistant scout? (Here it can give hints like, you can scout 260 of your 350 identified targets to level 4. Would you like to do this now?)

At any point you can end the wizard and go back to manual.

If they wanted to simplify within the framework of the current system, without messing with the economic balance of the game, this kind of thing is the way to go.