Posted by zhawks on 1/3/2017 12:36:00 PM (view original):
That's why I really didn't want to open up the rabbit hole, we all come down on slightly differing ideas on it but I think it really needs to be looked at from multiple angles and clearly needs involvement from not only WIS but also coaches. The structure is here to stay and I'm fine with that, but there can be tweaks to it for sure.
One easy tweak is making the baseline AP each school gets higher, there are other consequences that has though as well. I think an increase in baseline AP is probably needed across the board to increase battles a bit but I'm not really sure what the right direction is it's just a gut feeling. I think making the min AP each school gets equal to the max you can put on one target makes sense but until I saw it in practice (i.e. in a Beta) it would be difficult to know if that really was the right direction.
I don't think more APs is the answer. Then everyone gets more, and it's just the same arms race with more arms. This isn't related to the OP, because tarvolon is in a different situation, but much of the frustration over not being able to quickly recruit guys in RS2 stems from people being resistant to the idea that their gameplay can actually change. You don't need to absolutely maximize your chances with your primary targets. But that's what people want to do. So increasing baseline AP just means bigger arms races for the primaries, and the same problem (actually worse, because those second tier guys will be even more locked up by teams who have them as their primaries, because they get more APs as well) for backups.
I go go back to 3 small tweaks that I think would ultimately find that balance between fun, competitiveness, and realism.
1. Diminishing returns on APs after unlocking recruiting actions; negative credit after unlocking actions with a poor prestige/preference match.
2. Make players with the late preference start signing 2 cycles later, giving coaches changing jobs and dealing with unexpected EEs a chance to get their intended effort considered.
3. Increase the instance of late and whenever preference among starred players to 40% each, such that for starred players, 10% will sign early, 10% will sign BEOP1, 40% whenever, and 40% late.
Then you have a rational number of elite recruits who are open to receive effort from elite teams, who haven't been locked up by lower level teams reaching up.