are there really folks at power five jobs who have not had a winning season in 20 years? really?

I totally agree that firings should be increased - with warnings along the way (better than the "expectations" messages - and better criteria.

@gillispie1
I disagree respectfully. I think a hard start of new worlds is just not feasible. You cant have a worlds that are obliterated. It takes away the pride of the accomplishments when you know it'll be time limited. I think there are much better ways to accomplish excitement in the game.
1. More realistic firings. If you miss the tournament in 4 straight seasons at an A+ prestige school, you should be fired. Simple as that. Nobody serious would dispute that and it makes those at the highest levels stay high level.
2. Non conference tournaments (hard to code Im sure) but would add another element of intrigue to the season
3. Conference challenges and/or more interaction in the game. What keeps interest strong is engagement. The game is not designed for it and I still think it's the largest problem of all. Find ways to produce more engagement across conferences so we aren't all in our individual bubbles so easily.
4. Greater recognition of success. If you make the Final 4 every season, it should be celebrated more in game. It's basically titles or bust. There's not a lot of apparatus to recognize success. And people want their props. It's the only thing you get in the game, really.

"Coach K is in his 41st season at Duke, but no one coaches at a top tier school that long any more."

Coach K?!! Gimme Jimmy B and his 45 seasons are Cuse.

Posted by deemo15 on 2/18/2021 1:26:00 PM (view original):
Now that the game has been getting the attention it needed for so long, a new world would be a great opportunity for coaches new and old. I have been here for 13 years and nothing can replicate when Phelan was added and everyone was on even ground. That D3 would be packed for a season and all the great coaches of this game could compete on even ground before moving to wherever they wanted.

And for the junkies of us here I wish it would be a 2X day world.

Just nice after all this time, with great thanks to those involved, that the game is still trying to be improved.

Note: Limits would be nice. The stranglehold some have on the A/A+ D1 teams makes it very hard to ever crack.

+1

I'm really pro new world.

Posted by sol_phenom3 on 2/18/2021 5:23:00 PM (view original):
What about a new D1 only world?

This would be a lot of fun

There's no question it is easier to build an Elite program at a power 5 conference school, but one of the great things about HD is you can, over time, build your own Elite program and overcome bad baseline prestige/poor conference prestige. For example, in Tark, 5 of the last 12 NT champions are not from a power 5 conference (as well as 2 runner-ups). My experience is limited to 3 worlds, but in general, brokenee is right; the vast majority of NT winners come from a power 5 conference (& yes, get free seasons). But, it is possible at a low or mid-major school IF the conference is about 75%+ full.

Hopefully with these and upcoming changes, more conferences will be full, which I believe, would make it easier to be successful in a non-power 5 conference and make the game better. I do like gil's idea of phasing out some worlds to begin new ones because every coach should be able to experience the excitement/competition/rush of the dawn of a new world. There is nothing like it. But, contraction of any existing world is probably unrealistic.

When I originally threw out the idea of a resetting world, it was more as an idea for another game mode in a sense, not to anger people who built careers to get to their alma mater. You would sign up for this new world fully knowing what it is, a race up the ladder. Sure, it would get stale toward the end, but that doesn't ruin the fun, it just means people get excited for the big reset and to start the race all over again. This happens all the time with other games like Rust, Path of Exile, etc. Of course, the challenge is how long is enough without being too long? As Gil pointed out last time I mentioned this, it would also be easier to implement patches and fixes easier.

You'd lose that anticipation of a hard reset if instead it was coaches contracts who expire as they would be expiring in no coordinated way. So the world would just go on as all the other worlds we already have. You'd run into the same problems we face now - not being able to fix conference realignments, etc. The one thing it does fix is coaches camping someone else's alma mater indefinitely, so I do like it, just not as much as having a world hard reset.

I like the concept of a having a different game mode for that purpose. I was also thinking in those terms, but couldn't articulate it as succinctly as basketts just did..

Before the aforementioned changes, I think I'd like to first see promises made permanent. Meaning they still need to be fulfilled in the freshman postseason and in soph-senior seasons. That's a somewhat simple fix which most coaches would agree with, right?

Just to follow-up on my previous post, permanent promises would make recruiting and roster management much more dynamic. No longer could coaches just throw a start and 20-25 minutes at each recruit. We would really need to consider and manage our rosters. I think it would be a fairly balanced change for most teams with the exception being coaches at a new school who can throw out a bunch of promises in their first few seasons.

It's also more realistic. In real life, a player isn't going to accept a promise for starts/minutes and then be okay with zero starts and 10 mpg in their sophomore season. It feels like common sense.

I'm no programmer, but it seems like it wouldn't be the most difficult change in the world. Especially compared to some of the other big changes that will require a ton of work while upsetting many users. Let's get the easy, common sense changes knocked out.

Posted by hughesjr on 2/18/2021 2:08:00 PM (view original):

Posted by georgerollin on 2/18/2021 10:55:00 AM (view original):
so basically this patch does nothing

The fact that there are patches at all is the whole point.

New employees are looking at the code .. interacting with users and trying to make things better.

They have to try simple things and see how the code reacts to figure out how this stuff works. These guys were not here in the code for years and years. They have to figure out how the game works first and how the code changes they are introducing impact the overall game.

I am a software engineer (operating systems .. not games).. inheriting code, some of which is undocumented (or lightly documented), means you have to FIGURE OUT what algorithms actually do BEFORE you change them. For people who don't understand coding .. think how a mechanic has to figure out undocumented additions to a car to fix things, etc.

So .. be happy there is someone who gives a crap about fixing the game in the first place.

still worthless

Ambivalent on promises. I think they’re fine as is. Teams who are giving starts and significant time to freshmen are risking games and potentially postseason seeding, and that matters. It’s a pretty balanced risk/reward choice right now. Promises are most powerfully utilized by teams who are “punching up” for recruits, a C+ team battling an A team for a recruit, where the C+ team can promise a start and 25, while the A team may only want to promise 10 or 15, or nothing at all. Dis-incentivizing the promise will discourage these battles over time, which is probably the opposite of what we want.

I think it makes some sense to have players with a “wants to play” preference lose work ethic faster, and maybe transfer in progressive years in cases when they lose *significant* minutes. They don’t seem to ever transfer now, and that maybe isn’t necessary. But definitely don’t make it absolute, nor for all players. And it really shouldn’t apply to losing a starting spot, either. I don’t think any player in real life is guaranteed a 4-year starting spot, that doesn’t seem realistic. At that level, it should be understood you have to perform on the court every year, because coach is on the trail this year making the same kinds of promises to next year’s freshmen that he made to you last year.

And a hard pass on extending to the postseason in any year. LOL to the idea that any recruit is going to influence Coach K or Coach Cal on a postseason lineup decision with a “Now coach, I know it’s the Final 4, but remember what you told me that one time at my High School gym...”

I do hope at some point they either get rid of the "wants rebuild" preference or make it actually worth something. In my rebuilds I have lost out to clearly elite teams despite the recruit wanting a rebuild, and on the flip side on my good teams where I have beat out lesser schools on recruits with that preference.

Posted by shoe3 on 2/19/2021 1:54:00 PM (view original):
Ambivalent on promises. I think they’re fine as is. Teams who are giving starts and significant time to freshmen are risking games and potentially postseason seeding, and that matters. It’s a pretty balanced risk/reward choice right now. Promises are most powerfully utilized by teams who are “punching up” for recruits, a C+ team battling an A team for a recruit, where the C+ team can promise a start and 25, while the A team may only want to promise 10 or 15, or nothing at all. Dis-incentivizing the promise will discourage these battles over time, which is probably the opposite of what we want.

I think it makes some sense to have players with a “wants to play” preference lose work ethic faster, and maybe transfer in progressive years in cases when they lose *significant* minutes. They don’t seem to ever transfer now, and that maybe isn’t necessary. But definitely don’t make it absolute, nor for all players. And it really shouldn’t apply to losing a starting spot, either. I don’t think any player in real life is guaranteed a 4-year starting spot, that doesn’t seem realistic. At that level, it should be understood you have to perform on the court every year, because coach is on the trail this year making the same kinds of promises to next year’s freshmen that he made to you last year.

And a hard pass on extending to the postseason in any year. LOL to the idea that any recruit is going to influence Coach K or Coach Cal on a postseason lineup decision with a “Now coach, I know it’s the Final 4, but remember what you told me that one time at my High School gym...”

I disagree with you on postseason seeding mattering that much. Every season in every world you see teams that are hampered by starting freshmen get low seeds, only to start their upperclassmen in the postseason and make the FF as an 8-10 seed. I know we've all been stung as a top seed losing in the 2nd round to a great team that started 3 freshman in the regular season. I'd say the risk is much lower than the reward, especially since success in this game is 80% recruiting.

I also feel like having to manage promises/starts will help to separate the good coaches from the great ones. And if anything, I feel like it benefits lower prestige schools who can be a little more careless with promises. They won't be targeting multiple 5-star recruits each season and so they can afford to offer big minutes and starts to 1 recruit where top tier teams really can't.

Also, as an added benefit, there will almost certainly be more top-tier transfers which helps out with the EE situation.

No one gets terminated as a coach, they just get promoted to the Island world........