I agree with most everything stated in this thread. I believe there should be fewer elite level players and that more players should have some defined weaknesses. I also would like to see more "project" type players but I'd also want to be careful with adjusting work ethic too much so that we don't have a game where every player becomes the same.
I also think that this comment - What would Jahlil Okafor be? 85 ATH, 80 REB, 75 DEF, 70 SB, 100 LP? - perfectly epitomizes my feeling on the rating system as it currently stands. While the numbers above might be a pretty decent representation of Okafor's ratings, unless we are privy to the ratings formulas used in this game, none of can really say with certainty what his ratings would be. I extend this thought forward by asking what would Shawn Hicks ratings be? Wait, that's rhetorical, I don't need to guess, I know what they are on any given night simply by clicking on his player profile:
http://www.whatifsports.com/hd/PlayerProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=0&pid=3056575
And the question is why? Why do we have such a precise measurement of ratings available to us? I'm not suggesting no correlation between a player's ratings as listed, but why not use an HBD type system where the numbers are fuzzier and one never really knows the precise numbers the game engine is utilizing for a given player? It has always struck me as silly that we are just given a player's attributes. Scouting is never perfectly precise in real life, so why is it in this game?
One last point that the issue of re-vamping recruit generation doesn't address, is that this does nothing to provide incentive for lower prestige schools to ever try to battle for higher tier recruits, nor does it do anything to eliminate the unwritten rule to not battle conference mates for recruits.
Higher prestige schools shouldn't be "entitled" to top tier recruits by the mere fact that they have made the NT twenty some seasons in a row and they have an A+ prestige - recruiting should be more than that. Lower prestige schools should be able to legitimately challenge (this doesn't mean they have to be successful) high prestige schools without fear that they will need to deplete their entire recruiting budget to do so. As it stands if a low prestige schools want to even TRY to compete with high prestige schools they usually can only do so by sacrificing all other recruiting efforts.
It's also silly that schools don't routinely challenge each other within conference for recruits. I understand strategically why it doesn't happen in this game - but take any RL conference rivalry - Michigan/Ohio St, UCLA/USC, Stanford/Cal, Missouri/Kansas, Harvard/Yale, Duke/UNC, Auburn/Alabama - these teams ALWAYS compete with one another for recruits and I think it would be nice if recruiting in this game encouraged it as well - again without the severe downside risk involved in the current auction style system.
That's my wish list: fix recruit generation; a rating system that isn't perfectly precise; and a recruiting system that encourages more battles without the unrealistic downside risk currently in place.