i mean i'm fine if they announce it right as (a couple days before?) it takes effect, avoiding a lengthy discussion / ***** fest. but to just start enforcing it retroactively - like what now all the sudden your juniors, sophs, and freshman all have promises? that would be a disaster. its like either code it to take effect for the new players only, like a different type of promise, or else tell us its going to hit retroactively in a few seasons - or something to similar effect?

Oh it will have huge effect, but it will affect everyone basically equally, and if they’re going to do something like that (again, I do NOT think they should make that particular change) then I don’t really care if they announce it before so everyone preps, or they just spring it. To some extent, I think the game masters kind of have to be constantly throwing curveballs at the longtime users, especially the ones who really like to feel in control of everything. As long as the problems are rational and fair, and not like either targeted or just random, I think that’s generally good for overall gameplay.

But one more time, I think 4 year promises are a pretty bad idea for a bunch of reasons. Year by year promises and increased transfers would be a much better way to handle that, if they thought something needed to be done to shake that tree.

wonder whether this change in HD treatment of nonqualifiers will change the patterns of their recruiting? Have to think that folks will have less interest - at the margins - in ineligibles (in DI). Interestingly, some folks may not read about the rules change - and continue to make big promises to nonqualfiers. Others will know and dial back - at least for nonqualifiers who are not worth the promises....

worth watching

At least the HD patch seems to me to be very low priority - but absolutely silly not to tell people it was coming a recruiting cycle in advance. The old rules were well understood, repeatedly articulated. Fine to change them - not fine to change status of guys already recruited. Weird to do so

Posted by mlitney on 4/23/2021 9:43:00 AM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 4/17/2021 1:38:00 AM (view original):
Oh it will have huge effect, but it will affect everyone basically equally, and if they’re going to do something like that (again, I do NOT think they should make that particular change) then I don’t really care if they announce it before so everyone preps, or they just spring it. To some extent, I think the game masters kind of have to be constantly throwing curveballs at the longtime users, especially the ones who really like to feel in control of everything. As long as the problems are rational and fair, and not like either targeted or just random, I think that’s generally good for overall gameplay.

But one more time, I think 4 year promises are a pretty bad idea for a bunch of reasons. Year by year promises and increased transfers would be a much better way to handle that, if they thought something needed to be done to shake that tree.

I'm a huge fan of 4-year promises because I think they add another layer of strategy to recruiting and roster management while taking a little bit of the luck out of the game. With that said, why not just add additional promise options instead of replacing the current 1-year promises with 4-year promises?

1-year starts
2-year starts
4-year starts

1-year 10 min
2-year 10 min
4-year 10 min

1-year 15 min
2-year 15 min
4-year 15 min

etc.

The longer promises would obviously have more value, but if coaches don't want to make that commitment, they could still give something. More options are better in my opinion.

4 year promises in this bidding-as-recruiting environment isnt “another layer of strategy” though. That’s like calling nuclear arms proliferation more strategy. It becomes just another thing people feel like they need to keep up with. And how realistic do we think it is? How often do coaches tell a kid “I promise, I will not recruit another player at your position good enough to challenge you for meaningful playing time while you’re here!”

Year by year would be better. Maybe some guys work ethic goes down as sophs and juniors because their court time is going down. They’re thinking about transferring. You can make them promises about the next season; and maybe you don’t get a warning email after that, if you fail to meet upperclassmen promises, they just leave mid season, and now you have a walkon.

I also like the GD process of promising starts as freshmen and also sophs. I’d add upperclassmen starts as well, but for a real new “layer of strategy” the best addition to promises is promised touches. Promised distribution. But I would only suggest adding that feature if the longer term (soph, upperclassmen) promises were added, and/or if promises are made year by year. Promised distribution to freshmen is dicey of course, and if it becomes necessary to land even marginal recruits, it would throw the balance off, lots of the same arguments against as 4-year promises.

I think another option, not necessarily disagreeing with anyone else, would be that players have more personality based on their recruit preferences. As it is right now, they only matter for recruiting purposes. A guy who has a "wants to play" preference wouldn't be happy riding the bench his sophomore year, and would be more likely to transfer. A player who wants success, but not "wants to play", might be okay riding pine if the team is winning. A guy who wants a rebuild and wants to play definitely isn't going to be okay riding the bench and will look to transfer. Guys who have a certain distance preference might get homesick or want to move further away, especially if they're not playing much. I'm not saying we need to open the transfer floodgates, but as it is right now, preferences mean nothing once they're on campus.

Another somewhat related topic, people talk about the need for more recruits. A simpler fix would be adjusting stamina to be more realistic. How many top-tier teams do you see going 10-12 deep in D1? Maybe a team that plays extremely fast. We saw the kid for Oral Roberts with multiple 40+ minute games this year. Deep benches just are not realistic. I think Loyola went 6-7 deep? There would be no need for more recruits if stamina was adjusted to more real-life situations. This would probably have some negative connotations that went with it like people having more recruiting money, but would also solve a lot of issues people complain about with recruits and EEs.

While there are a lot of great suggestions on the forums, I think a lot of times we are looking too hard at fixing the current system instead of considering some small changes to it.

Are you all still bit ching about this? It isnt that big a deal. It will effect one season.

Posted by shoe3 on 4/23/2021 1:08:00 PM (view original):

Posted by mlitney on 4/23/2021 9:43:00 AM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 4/17/2021 1:38:00 AM (view original):
Oh it will have huge effect, but it will affect everyone basically equally, and if they’re going to do something like that (again, I do NOT think they should make that particular change) then I don’t really care if they announce it before so everyone preps, or they just spring it. To some extent, I think the game masters kind of have to be constantly throwing curveballs at the longtime users, especially the ones who really like to feel in control of everything. As long as the problems are rational and fair, and not like either targeted or just random, I think that’s generally good for overall gameplay.

But one more time, I think 4 year promises are a pretty bad idea for a bunch of reasons. Year by year promises and increased transfers would be a much better way to handle that, if they thought something needed to be done to shake that tree.

I'm a huge fan of 4-year promises because I think they add another layer of strategy to recruiting and roster management while taking a little bit of the luck out of the game. With that said, why not just add additional promise options instead of replacing the current 1-year promises with 4-year promises?

1-year starts
2-year starts
4-year starts

1-year 10 min
2-year 10 min
4-year 10 min

1-year 15 min
2-year 15 min
4-year 15 min

etc.

The longer promises would obviously have more value, but if coaches don't want to make that commitment, they could still give something. More options are better in my opinion.

4 year promises in this bidding-as-recruiting environment isnt “another layer of strategy” though. That’s like calling nuclear arms proliferation more strategy. It becomes just another thing people feel like they need to keep up with. And how realistic do we think it is? How often do coaches tell a kid “I promise, I will not recruit another player at your position good enough to challenge you for meaningful playing time while you’re here!”

Year by year would be better. Maybe some guys work ethic goes down as sophs and juniors because their court time is going down. They’re thinking about transferring. You can make them promises about the next season; and maybe you don’t get a warning email after that, if you fail to meet upperclassmen promises, they just leave mid season, and now you have a walkon.

I also like the GD process of promising starts as freshmen and also sophs. I’d add upperclassmen starts as well, but for a real new “layer of strategy” the best addition to promises is promised touches. Promised distribution. But I would only suggest adding that feature if the longer term (soph, upperclassmen) promises were added, and/or if promises are made year by year. Promised distribution to freshmen is dicey of course, and if it becomes necessary to land even marginal recruits, it would throw the balance off, lots of the same arguments against as 4-year promises.

I actually like the counter-argument you made in that it isn't realistic for that promise to be made. However, with the current nature of HD D1, nothing is all that realistic. It's a rigmarole that goes...

1. Offer start to best (or all) recruits
2. Recruits improve a ton with most competent coaches making the postseason despite starting multiple freshman
3. Pull all freshman with most getting little to no playing time in the CT/NT/PI
4. Throw them on the bench their second year as they backup the new freshman...
5. Now they actually get playing time in the CT/NT/PI their soph/junior/senior seasons
6. ????

This process isn't realistic as it stands. However, high D1 is the worst with it all. A+ schools are simply too heavily weighted so they get most of the elite prospects. As it stands, the common belief is that 1 full letter grade should deter you from battling any big school. In a fair fight, a B+ shouldn't fight a A+.. but A+ schools have been show to be significantly higher so it might not even be in the best interest of an A- to fight (I'm going solely based on common beliefs I've read in the forums/discord). So the low tier D1 teams are constantly left fighting for mid-high potential scraps at times.

Now the elite prospect, who should likely be 1-and-done, is being sat in the CT/NT/PI (if this happened more than once in real life, this school would be ignored by every future prospect worth a damn). Then, the A+ schools can sit the prospect all second year and play them in the postseason BUT they also just inadvertently hindered the recruits ability to progress in ratings and eventually get drafted.... which means they may be able to hold the recruit another 1-2 seasons when they should likely be gone after the first. So that team now has an elite bench player (and starter in the postseason).

The idea of a 2,3,4-year start offer is so that smaller schools (not necessarily only low to mid-majors, but even low-tier B6 schools) have a chance to at least fight more for the top recruits. Even maintaining the starts into postseason (and not making it an option... either starts with postseason starts or no starts imo) would deter SOME schools with championship aspirations from making the offer but I'm guessing offering the starts into the postseason would become the new norm. I'd be cool with transfers BUT the high end D1 prospects are already likely leaving the program early so the risk isn't always there for them. I don't want to act like I know the best solution but I honestly do believe promises could be used to mitigate the current problems (or create more, talented recruits / ease the weighting of prestiges a little).

4 year promises in this bidding-as-recruiting environment isnt “another layer of strategy” though. That’s like calling nuclear arms proliferation more strategy. It becomes just another thing people feel like they need to keep up with.

It's 100% another level of strategy. You can't just offer 2-3 max promises every season anymore. You'd have to think about what you've already offered to current players and consider what you can afford to offer to your new recruits. It's add strategy to roster management. You would need to consider what types of players you have and in which positions they are playing. If someone already has promises to start 3 guards, you won't really be able to offer a start to another guard this season. You would need to plan ahead and promises would become more of a last resort. How badly do you want the recruit? Are you willing to offer a 4-year start? Or will you have a big class next season knowing you'll need to offer some promises so you only offer a 1-year start? At the very least promises would need to be used less and with more reservation and thought. It's the exact opposite of a nuclear arms proliferation. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Year by year would be better. Maybe some guys work ethic goes down as sophs and juniors because their court time is going down. They’re thinking about transferring. You can make them promises about the next season; and maybe you don’t get a warning email after that, if you fail to meet upperclassmen promises, they just leave mid season, and now you have a walkon

I'm trying to understand why anyone would offer a promise to a player that's already on their team. Is this only to keep a player's WE from dropping this season because they're due to be getting more minutes next season? That's an interesting idea. I do like an increase in transfers as a way to improve the EE situation. Although I like 4-year promises as a way to achieve more transfers. In fact, I like the idea of having a very small hit to coaching reputation with future recruits for each transfer, as a way to sort of enforce the 4-year promises system. That way no one is abusing the system just to get recruits on their campus for a year or two knowing that they're going to break that promise and let the player transfer as a junior or senior.

Promised distribution to freshmen is dicey of course, and if it becomes necessary to land even marginal recruits, it would throw the balance off, lots of the same arguments against as 4-year promises.

If a major D1 offers a 4-year start to a marginal recruit, then their team isn't going to be very good in 2-3 seasons. You would really need to think about the effect this would have on your team. Once again, roster management comes in play here. I wouldn't call that an argument against 4-year promises. This is an example of how promises would need to be used more infrequently and with more consideration. That would also benefit the mid-majors quite a bit and maybe bring some parity to D1. A marginal player for an A+ might be a pretty solid 4-year starter for a mid-major.

It’s going to make one specific path to team building much more powerful, the “superclass” option. And for anyone who has played in a bad HBD League, the “tank, tank, tank, EXPLODE” approach will be painfully familiar.

And from a high level, it takes the game further away from recruiting and toward fantasy sports drafting, and that’s just the wrong direction. Coaches don’t tell recruits “I promise not to recruit good players at your position while you’re here so you don’t have to compete for playing time.” I mean that just doesn’t happen. It shouldn’t be an option here. This doesn’t work for the same reasons we shouldn’t have unlimited HVs, or unlimited APs. Giving a bunch of YOLOs more guns doesn’t make a more strategic game, it just makes a worse experience for everybody.

Posted by shoe3 on 4/23/2021 2:57:00 PM (view original):
It’s going to make one specific path to team building much more powerful, the “superclass” option. And for anyone who has played in a bad HBD League, the “tank, tank, tank, EXPLODE” approach will be painfully familiar.

And from a high level, it takes the game further away from recruiting and toward fantasy sports drafting, and that’s just the wrong direction. Coaches don’t tell recruits “I promise not to recruit good players at your position while you’re here so you don’t have to compete for playing time.” I mean that just doesn’t happen. It shouldn’t be an option here. This doesn’t work for the same reasons we shouldn’t have unlimited HVs, or unlimited APs. Giving a bunch of YOLOs more guns doesn’t make a more strategic game, it just makes a worse experience for everybody.

It’s going to make one specific path to team building much more powerful, the “superclass” option

How is that going to be any different than it is right now? Coaches already use the strategy of 6 scholarships in a single class to have more resources than mostly everyone else. The bottom line is that you can basically only have 5 starts offered in any given season. If you give 5 recruits promised starts and 25 minutes all in the same season, you're going to be bad for a few seasons, and then might be really good when they're seniors, but your bench is going to suffer.

But your argument is completely moot because being able to offer 5 starts and minutes in a single season doesn't give you an advantage for any single recruit. You can't offer multiple starts to 1 recruit so hoarding them for a "superclass" doesn't make sense. If any other team has at least 1 start to offer to the same recruit, they are on an even playing field with you.

Giving a bunch of YOLOs more guns doesn’t make a more strategic game, it just makes a worse experience for everybody.

You keep saying that 4-year promises would send HD into nuclear proliferation and give YOLOs more guns, but it would be the opposite of that. You'd only give able to offer 5-6 starts every 4 seasons. Promises would be used more infrequently and therefore require more thought and planning, which is very anti-YOLO.

And from a high level, it takes the game further away from recruiting and toward fantasy sports drafting, and that’s just the wrong direction.

I'm not sure what you mean by this? That users will use their resources to bid on a recruit and the recruit will go the highest bidder? I'd love to hear your reasoning as to how that is different from the way things work right now. I don't want 4-year promises to make the game more realistic. I want them because promises are cookie-cutter right now. When you add real consequences to them, you add strategy. The game becomes more dynamic. You need to be better at planning your recruiting and roster management. It replaces a little bit of luck with skill.

Coaches use the superclass, but it’s not dominant. It’s one path, among many viable paths, that’s one thing 3.0 made sure to fix. 4 year promises would completely change the balance, and if you’re not seeing this, you’re not thinking very far in front of what’s in front of you.

Folks are annoyed at the starts freshmen get, but lots of players in real life see playing time diminish as their careers go on, because the teams get better around them. That’s how teams work. The question is just whether there is a natural and rational consequence for the choice of offering a promise. Currently there is. Fulfilling a promise to a freshman almost always hurts good teams in the short term.

In a long term game, where people come and go, this is just a really bad idea with lots of unintended consequences. I just don’t think you’ve fully thought them all through. If it’s not bringing the game closer to a realistic college basketball recruiting experience, it’s not good for the game, that is the real bottom line.

Posted by shoe3 on 4/23/2021 4:34:00 PM (view original):
Coaches use the superclass, but it’s not dominant. It’s one path, among many viable paths, that’s one thing 3.0 made sure to fix. 4 year promises would completely change the balance, and if you’re not seeing this, you’re not thinking very far in front of what’s in front of you.

Folks are annoyed at the starts freshmen get, but lots of players in real life see playing time diminish as their careers go on, because the teams get better around them. That’s how teams work. The question is just whether there is a natural and rational consequence for the choice of offering a promise. Currently there is. Fulfilling a promise to a freshman almost always hurts good teams in the short term.

In a long term game, where people come and go, this is just a really bad idea with lots of unintended consequences. I just don’t think you’ve fully thought them all through. If it’s not bringing the game closer to a realistic college basketball recruiting experience, it’s not good for the game, that is the real bottom line.

To clarify, I don't think the 4-year start thing is the BEST idea but I do believe it's better than what is currently available. Just to touch on a few things...

1. "almost always hurts good teams in the short term" - I mean, not really? I'm super surprised at this comment. I just opened up Tark's NT now. #1 overall seed Duke: immediately sat his 2 stud freshman once the time came, #1 seed Syracuse: immediately sat his 2 stud freshman once the time came, #1 seed Illinois: immediately sat his 2 stud freshman once the time came, #2 seed Kentucky: immediately sat his 3 stud freshman once the time came, #2 seed UCLA: immediately sat his 3 stud freshman once the time came AND sat his 2 stud SOs to put in his actual lineup.. The other #1 seed, Delaware State, only had 1 freshman this season but I can confirm chapel differentiates in his season outlooks "regular season lineup" vs. "my actual lineup". My point being.. It's fine to not want 4 year starts but c'mon, you're reaching about how damaging it is in the short term..
2. You're saying how 4 year starts lacks strategy.. elite tier D1 HAS one strategy. Get the best recruits by any means. Let's also not reach like there is so higher strategies that we can't comprehend. Looking over the top schools, there's one big one that you need to follow. Offer start, fulfill start, revoke start.
3. "lots of players in real life see playing time diminish as their careers go on, because the teams get better around them" - look at all the teams I mentioned in point 1. ALL of those teams are traditional powerhouses. The team isn't 'getting better around the recruit', the team is hoarding talent and requires each player to move to the bench in order to succeed. It's about maximizing your talent and you can't do that without unrealistically sitting the best players after their first year if you have a future replacement coming in.
4. "If it’s not bringing the game closer to a realistic college basketball recruiting experience, it’s not good for the game, that is the real bottom line." - huge overreaction imo and also completely an opinion. NCAA Football, before the whole lawsuit stuff, was pushing towards this stuff.. promises for winning conference, winning NC, beating rival state AND promising players will be the starter for multiple years. In fact, they had promises like "I won't recruit anyone at your position in the next __ years (I don't recall how long it was)". What are the unintended consequences?

I hope I'm not coming across rude in my asking. It's just that your counters as to why it's a bad idea are super vague and being portrayed as obvious.