One thing really strange is happening, I put 10 AP, then 1AP every other tick. Now, I am up at 76% to get the scholly open.

Others take forever… Explanation? He is up to 25 AP… only. Another example : 167 AP, up to 85%....
My team is D2 A+

Yeah I've seen this as well. Going to lose out on a guy to a D1 sim because he took 400 AP to unlock and I'm replacing rescinded players. Another guy only took 70 AP for me.

And it does not seem to be in relation to preferences. When you have negative pref, it can take a bit more time. I know it scales with the overall rating, the lower the faster, the higher the slower. Unlocking players takes too long.

ive kinda mentioned this in probably 3 other threads in the past 2 weeks, but the answer comes down to the players (hidden) personality trait, i call it their sense of self.

players have had a sense of self and have as long as i've played this game. you can have two recruits who look identical, and one will think you are an appropriate school for him while the other will think you are a backup plan. the first is likely to tolerate a redshirt, the latter is not. all kinds of stuff in the game is impacted by how a player sees themselves relative to your prestige.

here's some stuff the sense of self has factored into over the years, some of which no longer exists, but helps convey the idea:
1) whether a player will tolerate being informed of a redshirt or not
2) how much negative effort a redshirt inflicts
3) how much negative effort pulling a scholarship inflicts
4) how much effort it requires to unlock a player
5) old days - the thresholds at which you had to reach for a player to accept your promises
6) old days - whether a player was willing to 'drop down' to your school, would never consider you, or could be recruited right away (this has been totally eliminated, and was one of the bigger changes of 3.0)

possible stuff that may or may not be impacted by the sense of self:
1) the value of promises in recruiting
2) the value of scholarships in recruiting
3) the odds of a player going juco instead of coming to your school (unclear to me if this still works the same in 3.0)
4) the odds of a player taking a redshirt after being signed
5) the WE hit a player takes when taking a redshirt after being signed

i'm sure there's more, that's just what i can rattle off in 2 minutes...

its not abundantly clear to me that the sense of self *has* to be linked to a hidden personality trait - it could be like, not the personality traits as we know the term (personality traits are a specific thing that resulted from a release from hell and then was removed, all before my time). it could be like, some random value that isn't technically a personality trait but works the exact same way (its clearly something that is assigned to each recruit - its not randomly figured out for each situation - like if a player looks down on 1 school, hes going to look down on another school of equal prestige, perhaps unless its within 70 miles)

in the 'possible stuff' list, that stuff could be related to the personality trait or 'not personality trait technically but basically a personality trait nonetheless' , or it could be RNG, or it could be both. there's definitely some RNG in the mix in a lot of those - i think the personality trait does impact some of those, like the odds of taking a redshirt after being signed, is probably the one in that list i am most positive includes the personality trait as a factor (along with some RNG).

I always assumed preferences had something to do with it. For example, in DII Smith, I was going after a DI recruit and I had, like, four Very Bad preferences. The math worked out to about 400 AP just to unlock a scholarship. So I figured, okay, he really hates my school so he's making me really earn his attention.

Is it more complicated than this?

I think there is a sliding scale to preferences that we may not see. One player would kinda sorta prefer a Triangle team, because he's played it before and is familiar with it. Another may be adamant about it, telling his friends, "The only thing I care about is playing for a school that runs the Triangle." They both show a preference for Triangle, but we may not see how big that preference is.

Posted by cbriese on 5/10/2020 6:59:00 PM (view original):
I think there is a sliding scale to preferences that we may not see. One player would kinda sorta prefer a Triangle team, because he's played it before and is familiar with it. Another may be adamant about it, telling his friends, "The only thing I care about is playing for a school that runs the Triangle." They both show a preference for Triangle, but we may not see how big that preference is.

Your point would be some pref have different values depending on the player?

preferences seem to have a small effect on the effort require to unlock, but they are not the driving mechanism here. this mechanism vastly pre-dates 3.0 as i described above, and is based on 1) the recruits sense of self (hidden personality trait) and 2) the level (division + prestige) of the program. not stuff like triangle offense!

that said, i would not be surprised if seabreaze is right and the value of each pref varies by player - but i think those are two totally different things (preferences and the personality trait). i mean, i would guess this is not the case - that prefs are the same for all players - but i definitely do not know that or feel strongly enough either way to take a stand.

I feel preferences have a very large effect on how hard it is to unlock someone lol, I put the same amount of AP in many different players and the two correlations are overall ranking and preferences. I’m very confident those are the two leading factors. Team prestige as well obviously but we’re talking about different how long different players take with the same team so the prestige would be the same.

Posted by Sportsbulls on 5/10/2020 8:23:00 PM (view original):
I feel preferences have a very large effect on how hard it is to unlock someone lol, I put the same amount of AP in many different players and the two correlations are overall ranking and preferences. I’m very confident those are the two leading factors. Team prestige as well obviously but we’re talking about different how long different players take with the same team so the prestige would be the same.

There is totally a 3rd factor which is randomness. Some players are just easier to unlock, others harder.

at the D1 level I haven't noticed much besides Preferences and Prestige, and of course the recruit ranking.
I can usually look at the 10th rated recruit from year to year assuming a D1 A+ prestige, (and three Very good prefs), it'll probably take about 50 AP to unlock the scholarship. A little higher A+ may take fewer than 50.
Dropping the prefs to only one Very Good pref, it may take over 60 AP. I haven't noticed any random pattern that varies outside these ranges.

Posted by oldwarrior on 5/10/2020 8:45:00 PM (view original):
at the D1 level I haven't noticed much besides Preferences and Prestige, and of course the recruit ranking.
I can usually look at the 10th rated recruit from year to year assuming a D1 A+ prestige, (and three Very good prefs), it'll probably take about 50 AP to unlock the scholarship. A little higher A+ may take fewer than 50.
Dropping the prefs to only one Very Good pref, it may take over 60 AP. I haven't noticed any random pattern that varies outside these ranges.

this post reminds me that ranking was all that drove the pulldown/dropdown limits in the old days. not all players have a rank listed but for the guys who did, it was consistent, based on position rankings.

kinda makes me wonder, is position ranking all that drives all of those things listed in my previous posts (how many AP to unlock, whether a player will accept a redshirt button, get kinda ****** or super ******, etc?). i more of less totally forgot about that, it really was most important in d2 and i haven't touched that in so long. so - is really their 'sense of self' i refer to just their position, so basically their ranking is compared to your prestige to determine all those things above, like if a player will totally blacklist you for redshirting etc? and are there clear cutoffs, so if the #150 pf blackballs you and the #151 doesnt, then 1-149 all blackball you too, while 152-200 and unranked don't - like it was for pulldowns? would probably not be that hard to experiment and find out. i do recall that this changed season over season - one year perhaps you could talk to the #140 sf but the next it would be #155, and this was consistent across all programs, it wasn't like, variations in the A+. an A+ might get the #140 sf to talk to them, the A maybe 146, B might have been able to talk to 172 and so on?

this wouldn't really change my take that preferences have only slight impact on AP, like instead of 50 its 44 type of thing - but the part where one guy is 30 and another is 200, that is definitely about the sense of self, which may be the same as position ranking? i wonder if a guy is 154 PF and the next year the same guy with the same ratings is 140 PF, if he'd behave the same way - like if ratings are REALLY what drives the sense of self, and the position rankings just reflect the order?

i think a lot of us look at players and some vastly better guy is cheap to unlock than some other really ****** one - and we think - it cant just be based on ratings. but the sim engine may use an irrational value system for ratings, like where passing for a big is half as important as rebounding - things that make no sense to us, but nonetheless, a consistent system is being used to map a player (with their ratings) to a score, and then that score is directly compared to our prestige to figure things out?

if this is true, we could take the ranked PFs (or any position) and probably find a set of values on ratings, a linear equation (ath = 1 pt, reb = 1 pt, bh = .4, etc), that achieves that rankings - and if so - the 'mystery' of how many AP you need and who will get super ****** about a redshirt - all of that - could evaporate instantly.

Posted by Sportsbulls on 5/10/2020 8:23:00 PM (view original):
I feel preferences have a very large effect on how hard it is to unlock someone lol, I put the same amount of AP in many different players and the two correlations are overall ranking and preferences. I’m very confident those are the two leading factors. Team prestige as well obviously but we’re talking about different how long different players take with the same team so the prestige would be the same.

in the olden days (i forgot this having not been in d2 for like 7 years) it was position rank not overall rank - which is why it was so confusing to us all, i mean that and many of our targets being unranked...

Posted by cubcub113 on 5/10/2020 8:28:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Sportsbulls on 5/10/2020 8:23:00 PM (view original):
I feel preferences have a very large effect on how hard it is to unlock someone lol, I put the same amount of AP in many different players and the two correlations are overall ranking and preferences. I’m very confident those are the two leading factors. Team prestige as well obviously but we’re talking about different how long different players take with the same team so the prestige would be the same.

There is totally a 3rd factor which is randomness. Some players are just easier to unlock, others harder.

im starting to think there's no 3rd factor. or 2nd. that its only whatever builds position rating... which is, who knows what, it could include a random factor.

now that i think about it, i noticed when i started a year ago, a low a+ d1 school had some guys who were more that ~50 ap. for a higher a+, every single player is 50 ap ballpark max (and all like, 5* types, are in that range). but for the lower a+ it wasn't guaranteed - but outside the top 10, at each position, it seemed guaranteed. and it sort of seemed 'random' in there but i also wasn't trying to unlock the mystery or anything. it probably would have been position rank...

so let me try to state the hypothesis succinctly - each player is turned into a score in some mostly deterministic manner, and those scores are used to rank players for their position ranking, which is exposed to us. this position ranking isn't directly what is compared to the team's prestige, but rather, the score behind it. we may not know what causes the score (1 linear equation per position possibly plus a random factor??), but its possible that the behaviors are consistent relative to the score, for each position - at least for a whole season. the hypothesis is that there is a good chance that if the #150 PF requires ~100AP for some d2 school and the #151PF requires ~50, then every PF above 150 is at least 100 (modified by whatever, 5%, 12%, 18%, by preferences) to unlock while every PF under 152 is at most 50 AP to unlock (again, modified by preferences).

note - it is trivial for someone to try like 10 PFs with their d2 school and see if this hypothesis can be immediately disproven. its harder to prove, but if its false, it should be REALLY easy to demonstrate it. i don't have a d2 team, may need a volunteer...

hypothesis #2 - its possible the ranking scheme is a simple linear formula by position and if we had that information, we could generate the scores for players as needed, and through experimentation we could find the cutoffs on a score basis (which isn't impacted by seasonal recruit generation, like the position rankings are) for various levels of school (a+ d1, b+ d1, c+ d1.... a+ d2, a+ d3, etc) - and people could use those documented cutoffs to know, even for players who are unranked, a variety of things - the number of AP before small preference modifier - whether the player is likely to accept an inform of redshirt - and possibly, even stuff like whether the player will accept a redshirt once the season starts (or at least, what the probability is)?