I remember when HD started, all the teams in the first world, Naismith, were taken before I could get one, so the first world I was in was the second one created, Wooden (it's still the world I've got the most experience in). Even when I went to get a team in Wooden, it was one of the last taken, because you could see the ratings and all the good teams were taken, so I started out with a relatively bad team.

Recruiting was one battle after another, as someone else said. Players no one would touch if the world were more SimAI teams were battles back then.

Recruiting was also boring, as someone else said. You only wanted the highest rated players you could get, with possible exceptions for high ratings in certain categories over others. So regardless of "coaching style" or whatever, everyone pretty much wanted the exact same players.

Practice was annoying early on, especially when it came to improving a players LP or PER - because there was only ONE category, called "shooting" which affected both, seemingly at random. This was problematic when you really wanted to improve one or the other.

At one point WIS added player issues to the game, where players could get into trouble and the coach had to deal with it, and you could learn of their potential for it in recruiting with all kinds of tools like psychological evaluations and what not. It was incredibly annoying and made the game less fun and recruiting incredibly frustrating. You find a great player you like close to home, but he's no good because of his bad behavior issues. I'm absolutely thrilled they did away with that.

Ratings were MUCH higher early on. It wasn't unusual in the early days to have DI teams AVERAGE 900+ (the elite teams, anyway). There were many top notch DI players who were rated over 1,000 back then. They've scaled back and "normalized" the ratings since then, and it's made the game better. Who wants to play a team with literally no weaknesses? That's no fun.

Those are just things off the top of my head from the early days pre-potential.

Good points, bistiza. I had forgotten that LP and PER were combined.  I'd also forgotten those dreadful player issues. Yikes!

In the early days, players stayed in the game longer and amassed more minutes.  i think we only had target minutes, not fatigue.  That's why, when you look at your school records, the top scorers are usually from the earlier seasons. 

Posted by alblack56 on 6/25/2015 8:39:00 AM (view original):
The founder of WIS was treble. When he sold the game to FOX, he continued to run the game.  A short time later, he was replaced by seble. I don't know the circumstances of treble's departure

Recruiting was nothing but battles...almost for every recruit

Tarek Kamil was the creator of WhatIfSports.com...after he sold out to FOX, they kept him on as a "consultant", but he was canned a short time later...couldn't have been with them more than a year or year and a half.  How he conned FOX into thinking that this website had 500,000 active online members is beyond me.

There is no username from back in the day of treble (maybe just a wonky auto correct? lol), so I think AlBlack is a touch mistaken on this...Tarek was always under the guise of Admin or tkamil I believe.  Treble shows as being created in 2014.

Posted by colonels19 on 6/27/2015 10:37:00 AM (view original):

Posted by alblack56 on 6/25/2015 8:39:00 AM (view original):
The founder of WIS was treble. When he sold the game to FOX, he continued to run the game.  A short time later, he was replaced by seble. I don't know the circumstances of treble's departure

Recruiting was nothing but battles...almost for every recruit

Tarek Kamil was the creator of WhatIfSports.com...after he sold out to FOX, they kept him on as a "consultant", but he was canned a short time later...couldn't have been with them more than a year or year and a half.  How he conned FOX into thinking that this website had 500,000 active online members is beyond me.

There is no username from back in the day of treble (maybe just a wonky auto correct? lol), so I think AlBlack is a touch mistaken on this...Tarek was always under the guise of Admin or tkamil I believe.  Treble shows as being created in 2014.

You're correct....tarek was the name

I remember when potential first came out, freshman would improve at a ridiculous rate, but they've scaled that way down since.

Biggest exploitation of a glitch? A D-3 team called Dominican got just about every single player they wanted(or at least 3 and 4 star recruits) by bombarding the players with (illegal)booster gifts, another option at that time. I'm sure a whole bunch of coaches complained, Admin stepped in and took away all of their recruits, in addition to having to forfeit all their games. Think they started 13-0. Anyone remember that fiasco?

Posted by the0nlyis on 6/25/2015 7:59:00 AM (view original):
Just looking at all release notes.  Some interesting things timeline wise(still amazed people have been playing this game since i was 9)

Were there any other major changes, or discoveries such as finding out about dropdowns, which I remember learning about from Rails dominating stretch at West Chester.

Sort of another random thing, but old coaches when would you say was the golden time of Hd, based on gameplay, coach talent, number of coaches, and forum activity, or any other reason.

Has it really been 7 years since potential? Geez, I've been playing too long.

Posted by thewizard17 on 6/27/2015 3:35:00 PM (view original):
I remember when potential first came out, freshman would improve at a ridiculous rate, but they've scaled that way down since.

Biggest exploitation of a glitch? A D-3 team called Dominican got just about every single player they wanted(or at least 3 and 4 star recruits) by bombarding the players with (illegal)booster gifts, another option at that time. I'm sure a whole bunch of coaches complained, Admin stepped in and took away all of their recruits, in addition to having to forfeit all their games. Think they started 13-0. Anyone remember that fiasco?

I don't remember that one.  But another glitch allowed D3 schools to sign low D1 players. Only a few coaches knew about it and those teams dominated D3 for 3-4 seasons.   After those players FINALLY graduated, the same schools did the same thing!  This time, WIS made their players transfer after one season and closed the glitch

Oh I was trying to recruit D1 guys out the gate as well...I didn't land any but dammit I wanted to.  I only played the first season of HD then took a little hiatus and only played sporadically.

Another glitch was the slow down offense and -5 defense.

honestly, it took me a while to get used to it. I lost interest for a while and finally decided to come back and try and learn again. I must say, the game is a little better with potential/FSS than it was before.

Posted by garmansouth on 6/27/2015 9:06:00 PM (view original):
Another glitch was the slow down offense and -5 defense.

It was questionable whether that was a glitch or not. However, it's possible the stamina settings weren't working as intended, so as a result, the slow down may have worked for that reason. I guess if you have a poor outside shooting team, where they pack it in,  then a -5 would work really well, considering it would stop the drive, inside scoring and that team would be getting more rebounds. It's possible it may have needed some adjustment, but I would've countered that with better perimeter recruits.

Posted by thewizard17 on 6/27/2015 3:35:00 PM (view original):
I remember when potential first came out, freshman would improve at a ridiculous rate, but they've scaled that way down since.

Biggest exploitation of a glitch? A D-3 team called Dominican got just about every single player they wanted(or at least 3 and 4 star recruits) by bombarding the players with (illegal)booster gifts, another option at that time. I'm sure a whole bunch of coaches complained, Admin stepped in and took away all of their recruits, in addition to having to forfeit all their games. Think they started 13-0. Anyone remember that fiasco?

I remember this. The whole team was stacked due to booster gifts - their ratings for freshmen were higher than D3 seniors.