Seble has proposed a creative, major update of HD.  I am worried and others are worried about unforeseen effects of such a Mega Update.  Wont repeat that discussion here.

Goals - make the game more interesting/fun and enhance the ability of non elite DI teams to compete

I urge instead a gradual approach.  There are things that can be done with much less risk and burden - for the developers and the product.  I believe many of them would represent development of discrete portions of the ultimate grand scheme.  Some of the best things in HD were done in small steps.

My proposal is below.

And a request - please dont use this thread to gripe about the Mega Update proposals.  There are lots of threads to do that.  Please make suggestions - but please focus on suggestions that seem doable with reasonable effort on a discrete basis with limited ripple effects on the rest of the game.

Phase One - Recruit preferences

Develop, test and launch the enhanced preferences that have been described for the update.  Make the preferences count for more.  Starts, playing time, near, far.  I would add things like warm and cold climate, strong academics and others.  I would love it if you could build in a concept of pipelines - where one recruit from a high school or a town helps get kids the next season from that place.  Some ripple effects - like breaking promises needs an increased penalty if promises have more benefit.  BUT, rather few ripple effects.

Why?  You need to do this anyway for the Mega Update.  Seems rather standalone.  Make the preferences module work first.

It would be fun, new challenges and texture.  And it would help non-elites by creating recruits who would prefer them in one way or another.

Phase Two - Enhance national recruiting

For some category of elite recruits (top 100?  five star?) adjust the recruiting menu so long distance recruiting is cost effective.  Various ways to do this have been discussed.

This will create battles among elite schools for national elite recruits.  Fun!  And it will burn elite budgets - and let mid majors compete better for kids a level down from those elites.

Phase Three - Increase firings at DI Elites

One issue for folks who are at mid majors is that it is hard to get elite gigs because coaches can stay there almost forever even without much success.

I urge ramp up firings, but also adopt a policy of giving a fired coach a free season - usable ONLY in the world where he was fired.  Dont want folks to give up

Phase Four - Improve Jobs logic for hiring (if possible, do Three and Four together)

Its a pain that a good team often has to have a SIM coach for a few seasons of suckitude before a human can qualify.  Hurts competition.  Demoralizes customers.  Fix it .

Phase Five - Scouting

I have not figured out what would be the first discrete step toward the Mega Update of scouting.  Need to study more.   there must some sub-modules of what will be done that could be done first, in the existing scheme

More fun, less risk, we march toward the Mega Update one step at a time - improve the game along the way.

 

I like it. Actually, love it. Makes sense as well.

I like this proposal, but it seems that Seble is very fixated in changing scouting with this update, hopefully we can get him to reconsider. 

i disagree with the order, but the crux of everything im saying is in line with the crux of everything you are saying - slow it down. do it in pieces, so we can work out the bugs in small, manageable bites, not one massive chunk that will disenfranchise coaches. 

I think an issue we need to get a grip on is Seble has already spent a ton of time coding the new features. He's not going to move away from that code unless he hears and understands a major issue. I think we are stuck with whatever rolls out.

And as potential was Tarek's child, this will be Seble's.

For the old timers..I think you all remember how horrid the initial rollout of potential was ...even with testing ...when your players all capped out in the middle of their Soph years.

Mully I think you are right, I posted on another post that seble indicated that the recruiting is so out dated that even making minor changes would require a huge amount of work so they figured they would rebuild it from scratch. 

This is the response Seble provided me when I asked him why it couldn't be more piece meal and slow paced for changes: 

The current recruiting logic is very old and difficult to modify/maintain. To make any significant changes would require a lot of work and time. Given that, we decided to just rebuild it from scratch and make improvements to it at the same time. I know there is a lot of concern from the veteran coaches, but that's always the case when a major change is proposed. I just hope everyone will keep an open mind until they've tried it out at least.   

Agree with this... but you missed one major issue. 
Location at high prestige schools is the biggest advantage, and why BC and Georgia Tech often have better success than A+ Duke and UNC. Recruiting costs for distances to top 100 recruits is the number one fix. Agree there. 

But I think #2 fix is recruit generation. We need more late bloomers and hidden gems and hard to find recruits that turn out great. Scouting fixes a part of this, but recruit generation fixes the rest. 

This update does successfully fix recruiting at distance, does it not? I mean, there are other problems (recruit generation and hiring/firing), but that seems to be a positive change

The issue at D1 is this- in real life, mid majors actually have a chance. Here they do not. How do we give mid-level teams a chance to compete...
Seble's solution- fix recruiting by punishing good conferences and good coaches. 
*The flaw in the logic? In real life... Gonzaga, Butler, Wich State DO NOT RECRUIT WITH THE BIG BOYS BUT DO COMPETE!
* The flaw in the logic? Statistical analysis of WIS says mid majors can't compete with big 6 conferences because of money alone... but the truth is that there are too many sim's in mid majors... and we should NEVER expect sims to compete with humans! Just look at any world's big 6 conference and I will put money that a sim is at the bottom of the acc, Beast, b12, etc. 
We have sims, so the numbers will not match real life numbers. That should not shock us. But stat nerds who don't really analyze the pig picture behind the stats will never recognize this and come to poor conclusions. 


Real life- What made Gonazaga, Butler, San Diego St, Wichita State able to compete??? Or even this one: How did Florida become great at basketball? 
Was it recruiting one the same level as the big boys? (Florida eventually got this ability to a degree because of the conference exposure and money but it tool time and still wasn't equal with KY) Was it weakening the ACC? BEast? B12? PAC? Nope- it was this:

• Great coaches got do great things and make great programs. Billy Donovan is why Florida is great. Coaches make them great. 
• There's nothing inherently great about Butler, Zags, Wich State. And Indiana, UCLA, Duke, KY and UNC STILL get 99% of recruits against those guys though IN is currently BAD. 
• COACHING is issue #1- we need to make gameplay coaching more realistic. Oldresorter is one of the best at this. 
• Scouting & player development is issue 2: Those guys know how to develop players well and find hidden gems. Most of the guys aren't great as freshmen, but they keep their guys longer, get key transfers, and by the time they are older, they have a great TEAM! We need better mid level recruit generation/ see above. 
• Kansas, KY, and Duke always will have major advantages in real life and they should. But the fact they compete hard with each other for recruits mitigates some of these advantages so that Butler and Wich State can take advantage.
  • In WIS- if Kansas fights UCLA and UCONN for one recruit, while fighting KY and Duke for another, Wichita State will get some mid level gems if they can find them; just like in real life. We need to make that happen
  • In real life- Kansas would NEVER (1 in 20 years never) lose a priority recruit to Wichita State. Yet Wichita state has been as good/ better recently. Interesting. How did that happen?
    • Team chemistry (IQ).
    • Hidden gems (recruit generation).
    • Seniors (player development and chemistry combined)
    • Kansas left a local with good potential to chase a top 50 guy in Utah (encourage high prestige national battles)
    • The rest of the conference isn't AWFUL (no sim coaches in real life) so they don't hurt but they also don't help matters significantly like being a member of the B12 which brings exposure and money. (we can't fix that while still having great power conferences so we should expect inequity of mid major programs as long as there are sims. There are real good mid major conferences spread out throughout D1. The difference is ALWAYS the numbers of humans involved there which suggests sims are the major issue). 

I think one thing that isn't mentioned enough, and I know Seble said he wasn't planning to change with this update is prestige baseline. I'm truthfully fine with whatever happens, I like playing and will continue to play. But from someone who's spent a pretty lengthy time at the DI mid-major level, and had some decent success (in my opinion), I get tired of fighting the prestige battle. I've only got one team, so I don't know how the other worlds look at DI, but I think this applies to most/all worlds.

EMU (B prestige, C baseline) :
     4 seasons: 3 NT, 3 NT wins
     12 seasons: 9 NT, 3 Sweet 16, 1 Elite 8, 11 NT wins

Utah (A- prestige, B baseline) :
     4 seasons: 4 NT, 2 Sweet 16, 6 NT wins
     12 seasons: 12 NT, 5 Sweet 16, 15 NT wins

ACC Team (A prestige, A- baseline):
     4 seasons: 4 NT, 1 Sweet 16, 4 NT wins
     12 seasons: 9 NT, 2 Sweet 16, 9 NT wins

First, I'm not complaining. What I want to show, and I'm trying to do it with actual examples, so obviously there could be debate on the details, is that the last 4 years (what the prestige calculation uses) should not be the only determining factor in a program's prestige. If there were a floating baseline, say 12 years in this example, the ACC team would have lost it's baseline advantage on EMU and Utah. Utah probably actually would surpass the ACC team in current prestige, while EMU would be much closer. I think this mirrors real life. You can't tell me that the 'baseline' for Gonzaga is the same as it was 20 years ago; likewise with Indiana. Does a current 16 year old kid really think that much higher of Indiana than Gonzaga at this point? They weren't even alive when Indiana was consistently good. I'm not advocating to change prestige necessarily, but to make it so that historical success would allow a coach to build up a solid base over time.

We're all talking about money, SIMs, etc. and these are all valid points, but it sure seems like this would help a mid-major compete (assuming a coach stayed there long enough and with enough success) and to slowly reach the point of a low-level BCS team. Then the only real disadvantage is money, which clearly everyone already has their own opinions about based on these last few days, haha.