Not to pick on my buddy Kuba - who mentioned that players leave early in real life that probably shouldn't and this justifies the random nature of early entries in HD - but I think we need to stop cherry picking 'realism' aspects of HD.

Here are the NBA draft results in real life from the 5 past years. Obviously it's heavily skewed towards Soph and Frosh players which we're all aware of. I've removed INTLs for simplicity.

	SR	JR	SOPH	FR
Top 3	0%	0%	6%	94%
Top 10	4%	8%	12%	76%
Lottery	7%	7%	17%	68%

I only have access to Phelan and Allen right now but here is the big board to compare against.

	SR	JR	SOPH	FR
Top 3	67%	17%	17%	0%
Top 10	30%	50%	20%	0%
Lottery	32%	50%	18%	0%

These could not be any more different- players don't stick around long enough to graduate if they're a top talent. HD does NOT replicate real life is so many aspects so let's stop using the "well this could happen in real life" excuse. This seems to happen all the time when someone (meaning Benis) brings up an issue with HD and people decide to cherry pick the realism excuse. I think we should focus the discussion around what makes good gameplay versus what is 'realistic'. My 2 cents. Have a good day y'all.

I agree with the overall sentiment but I think we're all guilty of this from time to time -- and I'm certain that it happens to other people not just you. This game will never be 100% realistic (no video game ever is) but the other side of the coin is a lot of us want it to be close.

That's inherently going to lead to some level of cherry-picking, and that's okay. I don't think there's any stopping it (or any real need to either, it's natural that people will want this game to resemble real life basketball).

In fairness, I really was arguing I don't have a problem with the randomness of early entries. I just lost one myself at Lamar of all places. Part of recruiting top talent is dealing with the EE and rebuilding a team. You can also choose to build on 4 year players to be competitive. Being mad because your great recruits don't stay 4 years in a game is pointless. I wouldn't even have an issue if we adjusted EE's to match the real statistics. We can even add in the return to college option and then coaches might have to hold on to a scholarship in hopes a guy comes back.

all good points... definitely there is a lot of realism cherry picking that goes on. its not really clear how to deal with it, but i like to think of it like this - the sim engine itself has to be pretty realistic for any of us to be interested in the first place. not all changes to make the sim engine more realistic fit in the current way the game works (at least not in a vacuum), but in general reality seems like the right starting point for the sim engine. i think there are some gray areas like player emotions (player loses a parent, then sucks for the next 10 games, or transfers back home) that get dicey, but overall making it realistic is an important goal.

the rest of the game around it is a lot more nebulous. some aspects seem extremely difficult to bring into HD, and in a lot of cases sound no fun at all - like dealing with your NCAA compliance office, getting players to class, winning over a recruit's parents, office politics, a recruit dying in a car crash, etc, etc... just goes on forever. but also, if the game doesn't remotely resemble running a basketball team, its problematic. in general, outside the sim engine, i think making an enjoyable game has to be the prime directive, with moderate effort to keep basketball flavor.

the one thing that annoys me is when folks point to reality as the only metric that matters. its almost always relevant, but its almost never the whole story. i agree with ABG that our value on realism is always biased by whether we like the idea in the first place or not, not sure there is anything to be done about that, except the generic making a good-faith effort to be open minded, i guess.

Posted by kubasnack on 7/20/2021 8:24:00 PM (view original):
In fairness, I really was arguing I don't have a problem with the randomness of early entries. I just lost one myself at Lamar of all places. Part of recruiting top talent is dealing with the EE and rebuilding a team. You can also choose to build on 4 year players to be competitive. Being mad because your great recruits don't stay 4 years in a game is pointless. I wouldn't even have an issue if we adjusted EE's to match the real statistics. We can even add in the return to college option and then coaches might have to hold on to a scholarship in hopes a guy comes back.

Yeah I hear ya. And I did notice you lost a guy at Lamar.

And that's a little of my point here. I was at MSU and had a ton of EEs but I could replace them pretty easily with my A+ prestige. But take a small school who makes some savvy moves and gets a little lucky and signs a 4 or 3 star that can be a difference maker for the program. But then he leaves early when he's 100 on big board. It sucks much more for that small school and I think makes the game overall less competitive.