So player roles are basically a way to rate your team in comparison to a few chosen ratings, or with custom weight to ratings instead of the usual equalized weight for each rating...am I understanding correct? Does anybody use player roles? If anyone does use them how important/useful are they? It seems like it would be more useful during recruiting but you can't apply it to recruiting correct? Any info would beinfo would be appreciated.

I do use them
Mainly to help me sort my roster.  I have masks for various sorts of players and sets of skills I like to use and I can, as things grow, periodically sort the whole roster by various roles and see if anything new pops up.  It can be of use in setting up your depth charts.  And yes, I have used it in recruiting before to a degree.

Is is critical?  Not really.  Can it be useful?  Definitely.  Nothing you CAN'T do with an excel spreadsheet, but its more convenient.

Could you set them as a 1.2.3.4.5. a subsitute for point gaurd, shooting gaurd, small foward, power foward., & center?

You can name them sleepy sneezy grumpy dopey and bashful if you like.

I also use player roles ... if you set them and then go to the menu and use Office => User Settings, there you can pick 'Use Player Roles' to see team and player info in your player role definitions.

This really only works if other teams also put their players in the same positions .. but I find it more helpful than Total score even for teams that don't update player positions.

Player Roles would be awesome if they also took into account potential.

I never really understood the point of player roles. If you don't know what makes a good player then it won't help you and if you do then you don't need it. If you can figure out a way to make it useful, and I'm sure some people have, then that's great, but I wouldn't consider it an important thing to try and learn how to use.

I agree with jsajsa but figured my opinion was simply my ignorance on how to use it (heck even set it up)

Posted by jsajsa on 1/7/2016 7:48:00 PM (view original):
I never really understood the point of player roles. If you don't know what makes a good player then it won't help you and if you do then you don't need it. If you can figure out a way to make it useful, and I'm sure some people have, then that's great, but I wouldn't consider it an important thing to try and learn how to use.

actually, the process of trying to formalize (through formula-izing) your thoughts on what makes a player great, can be quite valuable. i really got into it in my younger days as a coach, when i was basically as addicted as a crackhead is to crack. definitely found it helpful. i did find, however, despite a knack for that sort of thing, i could never make a formula that truly captured it all. i thought i could, going in, but it helped open my eyes to how important the interactions between ratings were, how the game was really about abilities, not ratings. i started playing with formulas with products of ratings, like spd*per and per*bh, but it got too complex too fast, although i did finally start to get really close to a perfect rating system (in my eyes) for a SG. 

but anyway, to me personally the tangible value was being able to quickly sort the top 10% of the players into the top 20% of the results, so you don't have to sift through so much. back then, i didn't know you could view by ratings on the recruit search, and recruiting was so time consuming, so time saving was my aim.

now, i think it is valuable for people to play with player roles for the experience, for the thought it induces. but potential is a massive part of ranking a recruit, and you can't incorporate potential into the ranking system, so its about useless for recruiting, IMO.

I play with the roles less usually for positions and more for rating the presence of certain skill clusters or literal roles.  A bit different than "Point guard"  "Shooting guard' etcetera.

Posted by gillispie1 on 1/7/2016 8:36:00 PM (view original):

Posted by jsajsa on 1/7/2016 7:48:00 PM (view original):
I never really understood the point of player roles. If you don't know what makes a good player then it won't help you and if you do then you don't need it. If you can figure out a way to make it useful, and I'm sure some people have, then that's great, but I wouldn't consider it an important thing to try and learn how to use.

actually, the process of trying to formalize (through formula-izing) your thoughts on what makes a player great, can be quite valuable. i really got into it in my younger days as a coach, when i was basically as addicted as a crackhead is to crack. definitely found it helpful. i did find, however, despite a knack for that sort of thing, i could never make a formula that truly captured it all. i thought i could, going in, but it helped open my eyes to how important the interactions between ratings were, how the game was really about abilities, not ratings. i started playing with formulas with products of ratings, like spd*per and per*bh, but it got too complex too fast, although i did finally start to get really close to a perfect rating system (in my eyes) for a SG. 

but anyway, to me personally the tangible value was being able to quickly sort the top 10% of the players into the top 20% of the results, so you don't have to sift through so much. back then, i didn't know you could view by ratings on the recruit search, and recruiting was so time consuming, so time saving was my aim.

now, i think it is valuable for people to play with player roles for the experience, for the thought it induces. but potential is a massive part of ranking a recruit, and you can't incorporate potential into the ranking system, so its about useless for recruiting, IMO.

All of that is true .. which is why yatzr's recruiting tool, which is basically player roles WITH potential included, is outstanding for recruiting :)

And to decide who are the best players for today's game, you don't really need potential (unless you want to play someone for growth and not the best player at a position) .. so Player Roles are good for that.

I use my own spreadsheets, which take into account what is in player roles AND FT Shooting, OFF and DEF IQ.

So, player roles can be improved upon as currently implemented, but they are valuable to quickly compare teams, etc.

Hmm ... "yatzr's recruiting tool ..."  Can anyone direct me to that tool?  Thanks.

Thanks for all the info

Posted by CoachSpud on 1/8/2016 12:57:00 PM (view original):
Hmm ... "yatzr's recruiting tool ..."  Can anyone direct me to that tool?  Thanks.

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=455328&Page=1

Thank you, hughesjr.

Posted by jsajsa on 1/7/2016 7:48:00 PM (view original):
I never really understood the point of player roles. If you don't know what makes a good player then it won't help you and if you do then you don't need it. If you can figure out a way to make it useful, and I'm sure some people have, then that's great, but I wouldn't consider it an important thing to try and learn how to use.

Exactly the way I view it