Way more options than to just go “all in” in recruiting. Besides a traditional actually having back-ups plan, I’ve seen massive success with a get to 25-30% on as many talented guys as possible plan and an offer schollys early on backups to drive off competition only to rescind the period before signings plan.

Posted by bpielcmc on 7/8/2021 3:08:00 AM (view original):
Way more options than to just go “all in” in recruiting. Besides a traditional actually having back-ups plan, I’ve seen massive success with a get to 25-30% on as many talented guys as possible plan and an offer schollys early on backups to drive off competition only to rescind the period before signings plan.

Define "massive success".

Posted by Benis on 7/8/2021 8:31:00 AM (view original):

Posted by bpielcmc on 7/8/2021 3:08:00 AM (view original):
Way more options than to just go “all in” in recruiting. Besides a traditional actually having back-ups plan, I’ve seen massive success with a get to 25-30% on as many talented guys as possible plan and an offer schollys early on backups to drive off competition only to rescind the period before signings plan.

Define "massive success".

yes, i'd like to know what your other login name is because there's no evidence of massive success nor even the opportunity to execute what you're talking about on your current alias.

This would be my suggestion for making D1 recruiting more dynamic and competitive. The downside is that my proposed changes would benefit the coaches that spend more time planning their team while hurting the more casual coaches.

1. Limit the number of HV's per cycle but don't cap the total number of HV's you can give to a recruit. HV's 16-20 are only 75% effective. HV's 21-25 are 45% effective. HV's 26+ are only 20% effective. That way you can decide to spend more on a recruit but it would become more inefficient. Either way, at least you have the option. And more options/choices/strategies are the way to make recruiting more dynamic.

2. Add more consequences to promises. Everyone gives them out like candy now and its almost automatic to throw a start/minutes when you're in a battle. Even if its only 50% of the original promises required in seasons 2-4, that would go a long way in having to plan these out and when to use them.
2b. Losing a player to transfer hurts your coaching prestige (and future recruiting effort). This prevents people from abusing promises just to land elite talent, knowing that they will transfer eventually anyways.

3. Add more recruiting options/resources. Some ideas that I've had in the past:
3a. Allow us to hire an assistant coach every 6 seasons that gives you a recruiting bonus. You can hire a player's dad and get a 50% bonus for that recruit (but you can't use again for 6 seasons). Hire a High School coach and get 15% bonus for a 200 mile radius of that HS (get the effect all 6 seasons). Hire an area scout and get a 5% bonus for that region like Northeast, Southwest, etc (get the effect all 6 seasons).
3b. You have to schedule the CV for a certain date. The result of your game that night either enhances or devalues your CV. The strength of your opponent is also considered. For example, you can schedule the CV for when you're playing #1 UNC, which would give you a huge bonus if you win. But a loss could hurt the value of the CV, so its risky.

"Limit the number of HV's per cycle but don't cap the total number of HV's you can give to a recruit."

Yes! Been saying this since day 1. Removes the issue with the HV bomb. Gives more "credit" to getting in on a player early. A LOT more strategies and choices.

It makes taking over a new job worse but that already sucks and is messed up. Can't even offer visits if previous coach did.

At d1, there needs to be a preference or bonus for players who wanna get to the League. Coaching prestige should have that included somewhere. Players go to UK for the school but mostly because Cal will turn them into a lottery pick. Yeah you get a small prestige bump for drafted players right now but it's not a big part of the game.

d1 recruiting has always been cutthroat, but it was never this hectic, as i recall it. back in 1.0 without potential, there were a lot less pure trash players - the viable population was more meaningful, there were a lot more good but not great players to go around, because you could mold guys into what you needed. also d2/d3 were not allowed to take those top 500 or so recruits so it gave d1 more time to move to backup options.

then in d2 with potential, there were a lot of trash players, but there were a LOT more really good ones. also population took a big hit from the 2.0 debacle, which was worse than the release of 3.0 by a wide margin. teams were initially too good - so admin's adjusted the players down, and things were relatively reasonable for a while. one big problem was the distance advantage and 100/0% scheme created too much tiering for some folks - and i can see those criticisms for sure. the distance advantage at least was a bad thing, and it created higher pop and lower pop areas, where things were significantly more or less competitive. that was also bad.

now in 3.0 with the dice rolling, and the risk of targeting LATEs as primary options not just nice to have players, and the sparsity of fallback options from all the trash recruits, combined with lower division eating into those top 500 players, combined with less mid level recruits than we used to have in the recruit pool... it feels overly competitive. you have to really work or really settle. competition on the 5*s is great - big improvement - but everyone else is competitive too, it seems. i feel like its pushing past that tipping point of reasonable, its just too competitive for moderate to casual players. there's almost infinite room for C to B prestige mid majors, from a prestige standpoint, and with so many more of those stocked, its jsut crazy out there.

i'm not sure what the answer is. firings doesn't really help the problem, unless it just reduces world population enough... which is obviously the worst way to solve the problem. recruit generation takes into account the # of openings, but it doesn't take into account the # of humans. maybe that is where they should start. i obviously take exception to a lot of the changes from long ago to now that brought us here, but those have been discussed ad nauseum. it just feels like there are too few decent players, too few fallback options, and something has to give - either the competition for medium caliber players needs to drop, or the population will.

Posted by Benis on 7/8/2021 11:01:00 AM (view original):
"Limit the number of HV's per cycle but don't cap the total number of HV's you can give to a recruit."

Yes! Been saying this since day 1. Removes the issue with the HV bomb. Gives more "credit" to getting in on a player early. A LOT more strategies and choices.

It makes taking over a new job worse but that already sucks and is messed up. Can't even offer visits if previous coach did.

I think increased transfers would go a long way towards fixing the EE and new job issues in RS2. Whether that's accomplished through increased consequences for promises or some other method, it doesn't really matter. Another potential solution is to just generate some new recruits for RS2.

I find it hilarious you all think they really care what you think. They will never do anything to fix this thing to be more realistic i.e. the new firing process (which is a complete joke)

I would like to see it where you have to be "very high" to sign a recruit.

Posted by jimmagnum on 7/8/2021 12:51:00 PM (view original):
I would like to see it where you have to be "very high" to sign a recruit.

i started here too, when i came back to 3.0, but i actually don't think that anymore. i think the higher level of competition on legit top tier players is good. you still see A/A+ teams bring in a great player without rolls here and there, but its like, a much smaller % than it used to be.

i think they really need to add more solid players... lower starting ratings higher potential type guys, based on the population or something. i think all the angst over lost rolls and such would be much less severe if there were more decent/good (but not great) players to go around (which is kinda the short version of my too long post above)

Hear me out. How about we cap the divisions?

I wonder if anyone has ever thought of that before...

Posted by Benis on 7/8/2021 1:28:00 PM (view original):
Here me out. How about we cap the divisions?

I wonder if anyone has ever thought of that before...

agreed... i am not really for or against the myriad of ideas like capping hv per cycle, adding little things here and there like assistant coach whatevers, i just don't think they address the core competitive landscape issue. even if they added more moderate players, if most of them go d2 early in RS2, there's not really enough time.

of course you would agree with me that... the fundamental design of the 2 sessions is a barrier. i think it could be worked around - i think there's a lot of viable scenarios i guess - but *something* has to give, when everyone and their mother is battling like crazy for the great and good recruits, there needs to be a substantial bank of decent players to fall back on. i know those players exist, and that astute coaches can find them, and all those things - but the volume of players and the effort required to keep tabs on them, it just feels fundamentally out of balance with the number of folks competing for great players.

to shoe's point, maybe folks could just stop competing for those great players in such wide volume - but i think a lot of folks would agree that such is one of the only clear wins of 3.0 recruiting, the end of 4-5 5* players per class going to a+ schools without a fight and all that. and besides, with today's population, if you drop down 1-2 rungs of recruits - there are still battles everywhere! if you are going to flip, may as well flip for someone good, right? d1 recruiting should be competitive. it just needs a safety net.

If you come into the process thinking “I need to get only 4-5* players” then of course you’re going to be frustrated, because there are 100+ other D1 coaches in every world, and we can all see the the 4-5* players. We can all count. We all know who is good. Sure, stringing together 2-3 classes of only 4-5* players is the clearest way to build a championship team. No sh!t Sherlock. Pulling that off in 3.0 requires a lot of luck, and doing it cycle after cycle after cycle is virtually impossible, by design, as long as world population is reasonable, and the coaches around the A+ schools aren’t ridiculously timid.

So this is a feature, not a bug, of a college basketball recruiting simulation. Real life recruiting classes don’t consist entirely of 4-5* players who will all go on to play professionally. Even as it is, an absurdly high percentage of teams in every world have unrealistically high proportions of future draft picks on their roster right now.

There is already a safety net. There are plenty of players. Coaches simply choose not to pursue them until it is too late. It is a prioritization issue. As I said, I totally get behind a special addition pool of late session recruits, but that’s primarily for new coaches and secondarily for teams with EEs. *As long as recruiting is a resource allocation game* (which is kind of a separate conversation), if you’re spending all your resources on 4-5* in the first session, you’re still going to be out of options for the late session anyway, as it should be. That’s a gameplay choice, and the game shouldn’t bail us out from the consequences of our choices.

Gigrant is dead on with the absurdity of an elite team losing a coin flip and ending up having to offer a guy that had one offer from a D3 school. That's totally ridiculous and, while certain things can't be true to life in any simulation, this is just a situation that is laughably terrible.

I think recruiting should be less about managing limited resources, i.e. recruiting dollars, and should be almost all about prestige/preferences.