Should FSS be made freely available to all teams? Topic

I am in the "less is more" camp. less information available right up front would increase the number of recruits that slip through the cracks.

crazy notion, but what about this: recruit ratings are completely invisible to start (rankings, eligibility, etc all still there). FSS gives you rating estimates. Scouting trips give you potential estimates (but not randomly; either all at once for a steeper price or each trip gets you one potential estimate). Then the player shows up and you find out what you got.
5/30/2013 3:40 PM
FSS and scouting potential are one of my favorite aspects of the game. Would hate to lose this. I'd rather see action taken that would limit the recruits that could be viewed through FSS by division. It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to initiate and would be a great first step in this on going war against cheating.
5/30/2013 4:29 PM
Posted by reddyred on 5/30/2013 4:29:00 PM (view original):
FSS and scouting potential are one of my favorite aspects of the game. Would hate to lose this. I'd rather see action taken that would limit the recruits that could be viewed through FSS by division. It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to initiate and would be a great first step in this on going war against cheating.
i agree with the hating to lose it part - IMO, not worth hurting the game to stop a couple idiots from cheating. they will find a way to cheat anyway, most likely.

however, the division thing, not sure theres much there. i can see not letting d1 see d2/d3, although some coaches still recruit down, especially for jucos (but i would have no objection to eliminating that). same with d2 for d3 recruits, and d3 for d1 recruits. top d3 schools can sometimes recruit d1 guys though, so theres even issues there. basically seems like it doesnt cut out much.
5/30/2013 4:52 PM
I'd like to see it cost less at the D3 level. Just provide D2-D3 recruits at D3 and reduce the cost to the amount provided per state.
5/30/2013 7:38 PM
Agreed on the lower cost at D3.
5/31/2013 10:22 AM
I'm basically a rookie when it comes to WIS, but have played a lot of text-based sports sims in the past...

To me, it seems like the infallibility of the FSS is a bit ridiculous. There are countless examples of players who were expected to be superstars that didn't pan out (remember Felipe Lopez?) and an equal number of guys who no one wanted that ended up superstars (Steph Curry, anyone?). The thought of one scouting service being able to accurately peg 100% of HS prospects from D1 to D3 is obviously absurd.

At the same time, scouting on WIS is useful only in finding High/High vs Low/High potentials (aside from this small difference, you get little to no useful info from your scout). With a D3 recruiting budget, you are limited to scouting local players, and can often only afford a handful of scouting trips. Once again, scouts are always correct, and you often get the same message even after repeated scoutings. Yes, thank you head scout, it is tremendously valuable for you to tell me about how this kid I am recruiting as a center has low potential as a passer on 5 consecutive scouting trips. If a real scout went and watched a center and repeatedly reported only about his passing skills he would be fired immediately.

At the very least, you should be able to tell your scout what areas you would like information on. But, ideally, there should be some sort of confidence interval when it comes to recruiting ratings. For high level D1 prospects, the confidence rating should be somewhat high, after all, these guys are scrutinized by countless blogs/recruiting services. For lower level players, the confidence ratings should be shakier since the information is more limited.

Ideally, it would be awesome to have various ratings services that you could access. Perhaps some or all of these could be free. In this scenario, D3 recruits would only be rated by local recruiting services, while D1 level recruits would be rated by local/regional/national services. You could have multiple scouting reports on each player, and also have a consensus report. This way you would still get info on recruits, but it would be open for more interpretation.

You should also have a greater base knowledge of local recruits, with less info as distance from recruits increases. Obviously, if I am a D3 coach in Ohio, I should have some advantage when it comes to my knowledge of a kid ten miles down the road, compared to a team in NJ. And, your assistant coach should have some type of rating to determine his actual scouting ability. Many sims use a fairly simple model of rating assistants based on recruiting/scouting/player development. You could even eliminate hiring of assistants by basing this on time spent performing these activities. Say, at D3 you get one assistant who has to spend 100 minutes between the 3 activities. At D2 you get 2 assistants. At D1 you get 3. Or something to that effect.

The problem now, is that every single coach knows how good every single player is. Basically, the game can be fairly simply boiled down to a set of equations. Obviously, there is still some randomness at play, and a level of uncertainty as to how much each rating actually effects production....but, the ratings are infallible and you can fairly easily surmise which players will be better than other players at a glance. Reality is far messier.

There should be access to scouting reports. These should be somewhat accurate. But, there should be more room for error and interpretation. And, there should be situations where you can find diamonds in the rough that aren't obvious to everyone with FSS, and also chances to scout guys and realize that recruiting services probably have them overrated. It's just kind of amazing to me that Front Office Football: The College Years came out almost 10 years ago, and we still haven't had a game that improves upon it's recruiting/player development in the text-sim world.
5/31/2013 12:55 PM
Posted by gillispie1 on 5/30/2013 4:52:00 PM (view original):
Posted by reddyred on 5/30/2013 4:29:00 PM (view original):
FSS and scouting potential are one of my favorite aspects of the game. Would hate to lose this. I'd rather see action taken that would limit the recruits that could be viewed through FSS by division. It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to initiate and would be a great first step in this on going war against cheating.
i agree with the hating to lose it part - IMO, not worth hurting the game to stop a couple idiots from cheating. they will find a way to cheat anyway, most likely.

however, the division thing, not sure theres much there. i can see not letting d1 see d2/d3, although some coaches still recruit down, especially for jucos (but i would have no objection to eliminating that). same with d2 for d3 recruits, and d3 for d1 recruits. top d3 schools can sometimes recruit d1 guys though, so theres even issues there. basically seems like it doesnt cut out much.

I guess I really didn't define parameters much, but I know there are those players (drop downs, Jucos, transfers) who become recruitable across divisions. I would say these players could be viewed by all divisions that they'd be elligible to fall to or even limit the vision to the lower div-  schools who'd actually have the ability/prestige to recruit these players(probably too hard to accomplish but IDK). The bases for this solution really targets people with a D1 team and a D2 or D3 team in the same world. Seems the easiest way to cheat is to have a huge D1 budget which you'd use to FSS damn near every state if you're looking hard enough and then purchase nothing for your lower division teams. This solution would effectively stop this type of cheating which I think is probably what's really going on here and a huge reason why the 1000 mile limit rule is just useless. I could be wrong but it seems like this is what would be happening a majority of the time as far as cheating goes.  

5/31/2013 1:23 PM
The thought of one scouting service being able to accurately peg 100% of HS prospects from D1 to D3 is obviously absurd.

I agree with this statement, but I don't like its implications for HD.  I like knowing the ratings and potentials.

Put simply: While the " hidden gems" would be nice to discover,  I don't want to have all my work of scouting a player or looking for his potentials to be down the drain because he wasn't really as good as my "scouts" or "scouting service" thought he was, and then I'm stuck with a player I never would have recruited.
If a real scout went and watched a center and repeatedly reported only about his passing skills he would be fired immediately.

I agree this part of the game is annoying. I think they should re-do it so that with each scouting trip you get ONE attribute evaluated for the kids potential in that area, so in order to get the one you wanted, you'd need to send as many as 12-15 trips (if you include GPA and other info too). No repeating of information you already have, but there's still some spending needed to get the info you need.
5/31/2013 1:52 PM
Posted by bistiza on 5/31/2013 1:52:00 PM (view original):
The thought of one scouting service being able to accurately peg 100% of HS prospects from D1 to D3 is obviously absurd.

I agree with this statement, but I don't like its implications for HD.  I like knowing the ratings and potentials.

Put simply: While the " hidden gems" would be nice to discover,  I don't want to have all my work of scouting a player or looking for his potentials to be down the drain because he wasn't really as good as my "scouts" or "scouting service" thought he was, and then I'm stuck with a player I never would have recruited.
If a real scout went and watched a center and repeatedly reported only about his passing skills he would be fired immediately.

I agree this part of the game is annoying. I think they should re-do it so that with each scouting trip you get ONE attribute evaluated for the kids potential in that area, so in order to get the one you wanted, you'd need to send as many as 12-15 trips (if you include GPA and other info too). No repeating of information you already have, but there's still some spending needed to get the info you need.
Problem I see here is having your cake and wanting to eat it too.  You like the fact that you may discover that diamond in the rough and get a better player than you initially thought.  But.....don't want it to work in reverse and find out your guy is a bust.  My personal opinion is that if there are going to be those "diamond in the rough" players who improve much more dramatically than a coach expected, then you have to counter that with the "busts".  We always argue realism, right?  Well, that's reality, it happens.  Really, what you're asking for is a game with no risk and only reward.  Not fair, shouldn't happen.  Has to be balanced out to be right.  Just my opinion.
6/1/2013 1:50 AM
Posted by bistiza on 5/31/2013 1:52:00 PM (view original):
The thought of one scouting service being able to accurately peg 100% of HS prospects from D1 to D3 is obviously absurd.

I agree with this statement, but I don't like its implications for HD.  I like knowing the ratings and potentials.

Put simply: While the " hidden gems" would be nice to discover,  I don't want to have all my work of scouting a player or looking for his potentials to be down the drain because he wasn't really as good as my "scouts" or "scouting service" thought he was, and then I'm stuck with a player I never would have recruited.
If a real scout went and watched a center and repeatedly reported only about his passing skills he would be fired immediately.

I agree this part of the game is annoying. I think they should re-do it so that with each scouting trip you get ONE attribute evaluated for the kids potential in that area, so in order to get the one you wanted, you'd need to send as many as 12-15 trips (if you include GPA and other info too). No repeating of information you already have, but there's still some spending needed to get the info you need.
In Draft Day College B-Ball, the accuracy of the scout reports depended on the scout rating of your assistant.  But that was a (mostly) single player game.

In a multiplayer setting, it's important for everyone to have the same information so the playing field is level.


6/1/2013 3:53 PM
Posted by ethan66 on 6/1/2013 3:53:00 PM (view original):
Posted by bistiza on 5/31/2013 1:52:00 PM (view original):
The thought of one scouting service being able to accurately peg 100% of HS prospects from D1 to D3 is obviously absurd.

I agree with this statement, but I don't like its implications for HD.  I like knowing the ratings and potentials.

Put simply: While the " hidden gems" would be nice to discover,  I don't want to have all my work of scouting a player or looking for his potentials to be down the drain because he wasn't really as good as my "scouts" or "scouting service" thought he was, and then I'm stuck with a player I never would have recruited.
If a real scout went and watched a center and repeatedly reported only about his passing skills he would be fired immediately.

I agree this part of the game is annoying. I think they should re-do it so that with each scouting trip you get ONE attribute evaluated for the kids potential in that area, so in order to get the one you wanted, you'd need to send as many as 12-15 trips (if you include GPA and other info too). No repeating of information you already have, but there's still some spending needed to get the info you need.
In Draft Day College B-Ball, the accuracy of the scout reports depended on the scout rating of your assistant.  But that was a (mostly) single player game.

In a multiplayer setting, it's important for everyone to have the same information so the playing field is level.


You could have one assistant coach who might have 100 points at D3, 250 at D2, and 500 at D1. These points could be divided up amongst Recruit Scouting, Player Development, and Opponent Scouting. A coach with more Recruit Scouting points will be able to more effectively scout recruits, a coach with a higher development rating would work with players more in practice allowing them to progress faster, and a coach with a higher Opponent scouting rating would be able to provide more info on your upcoming opponent (I would hide your opponents offensive %). Also these would be things you had to set at the start at the season and then be locked so you couldn't start with 100-0-0 and then after recruiting switch to 0-50-50.
6/1/2013 5:57 PM
Also as an added note I really liked most of davidcrones proposal
6/1/2013 5:58 PM
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Should FSS be made freely available to all teams? Topic

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