Make it 6 hour cycles (half as many cycles total) Topic

Posted by Trentonjoe on 10/31/2013 2:45:00 PM (view original):
This might be a dumb question but why are the first two or so periods so important?  ACN mentioned it and I have seen other people mention as well. 
One reason - because if you're the first school to get your name on a recruit, there's a chance nobody will challenge you for him. You could sign the top recruit in your area for relative peanuts.
10/31/2013 2:58 PM (edited)
Posted by mullycj on 10/31/2013 9:20:00 AM (view original):
The pussification of america now striking HD
This would be just as much weasel-stomping as pussification, IMHO
10/31/2013 2:53 PM
Posted by jetwildcat on 10/31/2013 2:51:00 PM (view original):
Posted by acn24 on 10/31/2013 9:23:00 AM (view original):
Posted by jetwildcat on 10/31/2013 8:36:00 AM (view original):
I'm similar to dacj in terms of checking as well, try to double-up the cycles to get the total checks down. but the very specific checking windows make for a good number of inconvenient times.

i'm not necessarily saying the current setup is terrible...besides the 2-hour first cycle. that is terrible.

are we so sure the game would be worse with half as many cycles? you can check 4 times per day more at your leisure or check twice a day strategically. twice as much is now happening each cycle (at least in theory, could end up being more or less than that).

also it would be nice to go to bed knowing that missing the 2am-5am EST cycle won't potentially hurt your team
I think reducing the number of cycles gives a bigger advantage to high prestige/big money schools, and those schools definitely don't need any more advantages.

Why are people so concerned about missing cycles, beyond the first couple? If you're in a battle and you miss the 2-5 EST cycle, just double up during the 5-8 cycle. Or add in extra effort in the 11-2 cycle before you go to sleep. Almost all battles are resolved at either 11 AM EST the day after signings or the 8 AM EST cycle the last day of signings, so you've got room to miss a cycle or two.
How fast someone wins a "battle" has a lot to do with how much someone is winning by. The typical decision times you're referring to probably apply for true 'battles' that are close.

This situation is 100% possible:
2:00pm - Bobby Brown only considering you
5:00pm - Bobby Brown only considering Syracuse (Cuse obviously dumped a ton of cash before 5:00pm)
8:00pm - Bobby Brown signs with Syracuse

If you miss the 5pm-8pm cycle, you can lose a recruit and never be the wiser. This applies most directly to when signings start, but it's also possible on Day 3 that Bobby Brown is your backup option to another player you're battling. It can happen.
That scenario you describe is extremely rare, and the only times I've seen it happen generally fall into some combination of these 3 categories: 1) you're trying to sign a guy too cheaply and leave yourself vulnerable or 2) you've targeted a recruit that is a bit above where you should and 3) you didn't check local schools to anticipate their moves (Hey Syracuse has 4 openings and only 1 guy considering them, maybe they'll move on a recruit on my list). All of those are coach errors, not flaws that need to be fixed.

You didn't address the extra advantage it gives to big prestige schools. Say you're an A- school and an A+ shows up on your recruit. With so many fewer cycles now you can't wait to see if the A+ picks another fight and makes themselves vulnerable. You have to decide immediately, do you fight and hope that the A+ gets another battle or do you go and throw big money into a B+'s target? I would guess the second instance happens a lot more often. I don't think that anything that makes it easier for elite schools to recruit is a positive change.
10/31/2013 3:21 PM
Posted by jetwildcat on 10/31/2013 8:36:00 AM (view original):
Posted by phillyboy107 on 10/31/2013 6:39:00 AM (view original):
If we change it I would consider leaving hd.
let's be real dude, you threaten to leave HD pretty frequently
......no
10/31/2013 3:39 PM
Posted by Trentonjoe on 10/31/2013 2:45:00 PM (view original):
This might be a dumb question but why are the first two or so periods so important?  ACN mentioned it and I have seen other people mention as well. 
thats really a d1 issue more than others (at least in this day and age, it used to be more important in lower divisions, too), as getting on a guy early makes roughly all the difference in the world. something like 90% of the guys worth anything have someone on them immediately, at least if you exclude the guys who have 6 high highs and terrible starting ratings that people haven't found yet. by the second cycle its like 98%. this means its going to be much more expensive to get guys to consider you alone later on. missing the first cycle in d1 for many coaches is basically a death sentence. it can be overcome but it is MUCH more difficult and usually you dont get what you could have gotten if you started on time. with all the recruits taken, if you try to take one away from someone, they have very few other options - so frequently they will fight you for them. and you can only fight so many battles...
10/31/2013 4:03 PM
Posted by acn24 on 10/31/2013 3:21:00 PM (view original):
Posted by jetwildcat on 10/31/2013 2:51:00 PM (view original):
Posted by acn24 on 10/31/2013 9:23:00 AM (view original):
Posted by jetwildcat on 10/31/2013 8:36:00 AM (view original):
I'm similar to dacj in terms of checking as well, try to double-up the cycles to get the total checks down. but the very specific checking windows make for a good number of inconvenient times.

i'm not necessarily saying the current setup is terrible...besides the 2-hour first cycle. that is terrible.

are we so sure the game would be worse with half as many cycles? you can check 4 times per day more at your leisure or check twice a day strategically. twice as much is now happening each cycle (at least in theory, could end up being more or less than that).

also it would be nice to go to bed knowing that missing the 2am-5am EST cycle won't potentially hurt your team
I think reducing the number of cycles gives a bigger advantage to high prestige/big money schools, and those schools definitely don't need any more advantages.

Why are people so concerned about missing cycles, beyond the first couple? If you're in a battle and you miss the 2-5 EST cycle, just double up during the 5-8 cycle. Or add in extra effort in the 11-2 cycle before you go to sleep. Almost all battles are resolved at either 11 AM EST the day after signings or the 8 AM EST cycle the last day of signings, so you've got room to miss a cycle or two.
How fast someone wins a "battle" has a lot to do with how much someone is winning by. The typical decision times you're referring to probably apply for true 'battles' that are close.

This situation is 100% possible:
2:00pm - Bobby Brown only considering you
5:00pm - Bobby Brown only considering Syracuse (Cuse obviously dumped a ton of cash before 5:00pm)
8:00pm - Bobby Brown signs with Syracuse

If you miss the 5pm-8pm cycle, you can lose a recruit and never be the wiser. This applies most directly to when signings start, but it's also possible on Day 3 that Bobby Brown is your backup option to another player you're battling. It can happen.
That scenario you describe is extremely rare, and the only times I've seen it happen generally fall into some combination of these 3 categories: 1) you're trying to sign a guy too cheaply and leave yourself vulnerable or 2) you've targeted a recruit that is a bit above where you should and 3) you didn't check local schools to anticipate their moves (Hey Syracuse has 4 openings and only 1 guy considering them, maybe they'll move on a recruit on my list). All of those are coach errors, not flaws that need to be fixed.

You didn't address the extra advantage it gives to big prestige schools. Say you're an A- school and an A+ shows up on your recruit. With so many fewer cycles now you can't wait to see if the A+ picks another fight and makes themselves vulnerable. You have to decide immediately, do you fight and hope that the A+ gets another battle or do you go and throw big money into a B+'s target? I would guess the second instance happens a lot more often. I don't think that anything that makes it easier for elite schools to recruit is a positive change.
They're only coach errors because the coach also couldn't check the 5pm-8pm cycle. Hence those strategies are viable if you have a way of guaranteeing a check every cycle...but much less viable if you can't. I don't think that's much fun.

And as far as the second scenario is concerned, isn't the A+ also getting into other battles more quickly? The A+ is also more likely to make "wrong" decisions with less cycles and more action per cycle. I can see how less cycles makes it a little bit more likely that the reacting coach is screwed, but I don't believe it would happen every time.

Also this one is just a postulate, but might be true: less cycles could condenses recruiting, which helps newer players learn the ropes more quickly as they move up. a more educated body of below-A+ coaches would hopefully create A+ coach churn, which is basically non-existant right now.
10/31/2013 6:12 PM
Posted by jetwildcat on 10/31/2013 6:12:00 PM (view original):
Posted by acn24 on 10/31/2013 3:21:00 PM (view original):
Posted by jetwildcat on 10/31/2013 2:51:00 PM (view original):
Posted by acn24 on 10/31/2013 9:23:00 AM (view original):
Posted by jetwildcat on 10/31/2013 8:36:00 AM (view original):
I'm similar to dacj in terms of checking as well, try to double-up the cycles to get the total checks down. but the very specific checking windows make for a good number of inconvenient times.

i'm not necessarily saying the current setup is terrible...besides the 2-hour first cycle. that is terrible.

are we so sure the game would be worse with half as many cycles? you can check 4 times per day more at your leisure or check twice a day strategically. twice as much is now happening each cycle (at least in theory, could end up being more or less than that).

also it would be nice to go to bed knowing that missing the 2am-5am EST cycle won't potentially hurt your team
I think reducing the number of cycles gives a bigger advantage to high prestige/big money schools, and those schools definitely don't need any more advantages.

Why are people so concerned about missing cycles, beyond the first couple? If you're in a battle and you miss the 2-5 EST cycle, just double up during the 5-8 cycle. Or add in extra effort in the 11-2 cycle before you go to sleep. Almost all battles are resolved at either 11 AM EST the day after signings or the 8 AM EST cycle the last day of signings, so you've got room to miss a cycle or two.
How fast someone wins a "battle" has a lot to do with how much someone is winning by. The typical decision times you're referring to probably apply for true 'battles' that are close.

This situation is 100% possible:
2:00pm - Bobby Brown only considering you
5:00pm - Bobby Brown only considering Syracuse (Cuse obviously dumped a ton of cash before 5:00pm)
8:00pm - Bobby Brown signs with Syracuse

If you miss the 5pm-8pm cycle, you can lose a recruit and never be the wiser. This applies most directly to when signings start, but it's also possible on Day 3 that Bobby Brown is your backup option to another player you're battling. It can happen.
That scenario you describe is extremely rare, and the only times I've seen it happen generally fall into some combination of these 3 categories: 1) you're trying to sign a guy too cheaply and leave yourself vulnerable or 2) you've targeted a recruit that is a bit above where you should and 3) you didn't check local schools to anticipate their moves (Hey Syracuse has 4 openings and only 1 guy considering them, maybe they'll move on a recruit on my list). All of those are coach errors, not flaws that need to be fixed.

You didn't address the extra advantage it gives to big prestige schools. Say you're an A- school and an A+ shows up on your recruit. With so many fewer cycles now you can't wait to see if the A+ picks another fight and makes themselves vulnerable. You have to decide immediately, do you fight and hope that the A+ gets another battle or do you go and throw big money into a B+'s target? I would guess the second instance happens a lot more often. I don't think that anything that makes it easier for elite schools to recruit is a positive change.
They're only coach errors because the coach also couldn't check the 5pm-8pm cycle. Hence those strategies are viable if you have a way of guaranteeing a check every cycle...but much less viable if you can't. I don't think that's much fun.

And as far as the second scenario is concerned, isn't the A+ also getting into other battles more quickly? The A+ is also more likely to make "wrong" decisions with less cycles and more action per cycle. I can see how less cycles makes it a little bit more likely that the reacting coach is screwed, but I don't believe it would happen every time.

Also this one is just a postulate, but might be true: less cycles could condenses recruiting, which helps newer players learn the ropes more quickly as they move up. a more educated body of below-A+ coaches would hopefully create A+ coach churn, which is basically non-existant right now.
No, they're coach errors because they're coach errors.  If you're going to try to sign somebody on the cheap you have to accept that somebody can blow you off easily, same way if you're reaching, you need to know that a bigger school can come calling.  If you're not scouting local teams at your level or above then you're just not trying to play the game as well as you can.  There is no reason not to know the number of openings, potential budgets, potential targets, players considering and any battles of the teams around you, other than not trying.

Perhaps the A+ is getting into their battles a little quicker; but given a prestige advantage and quite possibly a big money advantage they have significantly more room for error too.  Taking a walkon or two at an A+ is not a huge deal - I've done it the last few seasons at Duke.  Just take my openings to the next season and recruit more 4 and 5 stars.  At an elite school, in an elite conference, as long as I can get into the NT and win a game or two, that A+ isn't going anywhere, especially given how the top teams dominate the draft (Allen is in season 67, in the past 25 drafts, seasons 42-66, only season 43 has had a draft that didn't include a Blue Devil.  10 drafts have had 3 or more).  But lower prestige teams can't gamble like that.  Maybe it doesn't happen everytime, but I bet it happens at least as often as a coach loses a recruit because they miss one cycle.

I don't understand at all how reducing the number of cycles shortens the learning curve.  It seems the opposite is true, it makes it longer, or if they happen to get lucky once, they learn the wrong thing.

I find it interesting that in your concern about missing a cycle you are going to make it SIGNIFICANTLY more important that coaches hit each one.  Yeah, if they're 6 hours it will be easier, but there will still be coaches who aren't able to, and if you're only going to have signings on the 9th cycle then it is super important to hit them all.

Churn under the A+ schools is going to require adjustments to recruit generation to make the top recruits not quite so much better than other recruits (cue gillespie to show up and talk about my man Donald Pierce, 8 games into his FR season and he's already tied for 12th highest rated player in the Pac-10 and the 20th highest rated SF in Tark.  Still High in SPD, REB, and ST), to adjust the DI money situation (at least make DI scholarships and NT games played the same amount like it is in DII/DIII), or something even more radical.  Cutting the number of cycles won't touch it.

 
10/31/2013 8:13 PM
i have to agree with acn here, all reducing cycles does is create less time for a+ schools to get pressed. time is on their side even more with fewer cycles. conceptually jet, i see where you are coming from, but i just dont think thats how it would work out in practice.

acn is DEFINITELY right about the main issue, same thing everyone has been saying, OR/girt/myself/every other great coach in the game. its the ridiculous talent at the top that a/a+ schools monopolize that gives them a bigger advantage in this day and age than they have ever had, at least in the last 6 years. that guy pierce is so damn good, hes literally good enough to be the best-in-world pg, sg, sf, pf, or c. its absolutely ridiculous players like him exist! the top players in todays game are better than they were anytime in my career. we used to talk about how, in the coin flip days, all the top teams had 90s in everything. but that was just 90s in the cores. now there are all these supermen with 90s in their cores and like 50 60 in all these other off ratings. its just crazy, and creates such a gap between the haves and the have nots. especially with the reality that there are only so many high potential low ratings guys. smart coaches can find them, sure, but they also have to wait 3 seasons for those guys to be able to compete with the studs top schools are signing out of the gate. and even then, they can't get to the level of the super elite players you see way too often even on 10th and 15th best in the country type teams. 

largely, there is nothing else that matters in terms of leveling the field until the recruit generation curve is fixed. i liked the idea of elite players but this implementation sucks, it would be different if there were enough elite players for 10 teams to have 1 or 2, but there are way more than that, and then there is a huge dropoff. i am totally fine with good teams having guys with 80s and 85s in their cores, but you cant have that when the great teams have guys with 90s in everything plus all these off core 40s 50s and 60s. its just too big a gap. sure, a guy like girt in CUSA with an elite BCS quality coaching lineup (who shortly after became the #1 conference in their world) can win with a mid major, but if thats the only guy who has won with a "mid major" in the whole history of the new engine, there really is no longer a defensible position about today's recruit generation. its just so skewed to benefit the top teams its ridiculous. 
 
10/31/2013 11:44 PM
You're missing my point on the coach errors thing. You have to approach the game differently if you can't guarantee you'll hit every cycle. You can't risk having players taken if you can't react within a cycle. Is it a coach error to play as if you could hit every cycle, when you know you can't? Sure, that's a coach error. My point though is that your ability to recruit to your best ability is dependent on your ability to react at a moment's notice, that it already is a big deal to miss cycles. Even if something bad doesn't happen every cycle, you have to hedge your bets if you can't always check.

Also as far as learning curve, being able to track, map out and strategize recruiting over 16 cycles vs 32 cycles i feel is akin to mastering single variable calculus vs multivariable calculus. there's greater depth of understanding with multivariable, but less 'students' would voluntarily see the class all the way through. wholly separate postulate tho, i digress...

With 6 hour cycles yes, each cycle is more important to hit. It's still much easier. if you kept the number of cycles the same but doubled the length, suddenly now recruiting is boring. there's gotta be a better way to do this. (i hate to throw a bunch of caveats into a proposed game improvement so i'm not going to go into that.)

if you're right that the negatives of sub-A+ school gambling would cancel out with the positives of sub-A+ schools not missing cycles, this improvement could technically be a wash. I'd be curious to hear the mindset behind the 3-hour design to start with.
11/1/2013 12:00 AM
for what its worth i think 3 hour cycles are too short... i just dont think making them longer balances the field in any way, between high end schools and other schools. it does balance things to some degree between the folks who can dedicate as much time as needed, versus the more casual folks - which i view as a good thing - as long as the richness of strategy is not compromised. i personally see no strategy in being able to rearrange your life around a specific 2 hour window (the start of recruiting) every month, or N times per month if you have N teams. i think it is far better to remove those sort of aspects of the game, to allow the addressable market for HD to increase. its just important to guard the strategy side, so you don't fall into the trap of many other games, like MMORPGs, where things are dumbed down so much for the casual audience, that the more serious users feel a serious deficiency in the depth of strategy.
11/1/2013 4:17 AM (edited)
I sometimes miss days of recruiting, not just cycles so although I agree with bith sides of the argument, I do think that a good coach in hd really means they are more committed to the game. So I would say the pussification is requiring people to be able to put their life on hold for mutiple days at random points throughout the year. Lengthening recruiting periods may anger people whose top priority is hd, but why?
11/1/2013 8:05 AM
here's another conundrum this presents: if there are now only half as many cycles, doesn' t that make missing one an even more costly proposal? Suppose I'd like to sleep for more than 6 hours in a row? or work? 
11/1/2013 8:30 AM
The only reason I even suggested half as many total cycles along with doubling cycle length is because of HOW BORING it would be to recruit under the current setup for twice as long. Again that's a side issue but potentially a bigger one.
11/1/2013 8:33 AM
I agree that pushing out recruiting to over a week is an absolute non-starter, I just think halving the number of cycles is too severe a correction for not a giant problem. If they wanted to shift to 4hour cycles like HBD, I wouldn't really mind, although that might annoy some people, if the first cycle still runs at 8 and then the second doesn't run until midnight.

On the whole though, I think expanding that first cycle is the only part of the mechanics of recruiting that needs serious improvement.
11/1/2013 8:58 AM
Just knock a day off of recruiting...I usually have all my guys signed by day 3 at the latest
11/1/2013 10:33 AM
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Make it 6 hour cycles (half as many cycles total) Topic

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