I understand. So much of this game depends on recruiting results so it can be a very stressful time. My experience is almost exclusively D1 so I'm obviously going to see the situation through that lens.

When I first took over at Utah, I remember going after a late recruit in Texas. The D2 that was leading actually sent me a sitemail saying something along the lines of "you need to stay out of Texas". It really boiled my blood haha.

Posted by Benis on 2/8/2022 7:08:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gillispie on 2/8/2022 4:14:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 2/7/2022 5:00:00 PM (view original):
I miss the days when d3 recruited mostly from the d3 pool and you battled other d3 coaches for those players.

i am curious when these days were? i missed early and mid 1.0, but, i have never seen a time when d3 recruited mostly from d3 and you battled other d3 coaches for those players. i do recall when high d3 recruited mostly from d2 and battled mostly nobody but mostly lower d2 schools. but i suppose there were the unwashed masses of d3 coaches who didn't know about pulldowns or even dropdowns, who really were not even playing the same game as the pulldown crowd, and who basically just got slaughtered by the 5% for years on end.

more importantly, glad those days are over! the days of HD success through glitchy bullshit that is not remotely documented anywhere, where admins publicly and repeatedly denounce the existence of critical things that most certainly existed (and as best i can tell, the admins knew better, i still shake my head at that one)... that is not how it should work, you shouldn't have to know the secret handshake to have even a half *** shot of competing. now, i am no fan of today's 3.0 d2/d3 recruiting, i tried it and could not bear it, but old d2/d3 recruiting were a compete f'ing nightmare, too. just atrocious from a game design standpoint (send 200 phone calls and individually read the responses to see who is recruitable... are you kidding me? plus the secret handshake stuff - it HAD to go).

i do agree its stupid to have d3 recruiting d1 today, though!!

I agree, the previous version was tedious for pull downs and drop downs.

But I had quite a bit of success without having to do too much of that. I remember my first title in HD ever at CNU only had 1 guy that was a d2 pull down. So you didn't HAVE to do it but it was certainly beneficial if you did.

And I never ever got into battles with a d2 while at d3. It was super difficult to beat a school the division above you so I wouldn't even bother.

I miss more about d3 is that the players were all very flawed but combining them into a great team was the fun part. In my humble opinion of course

well... i agree with your sentiment. but from my standpoint, it was easy to beat d2 while at d3, i expected to win almost all of those. i would battle low d1 from d2 and win a good portion as well, that was way harder though. i snuck a couple players from B prestige BCS, even. i'm not saying it was smart to take those fights! but d2 humans were easy pickings from d3. any d2 coach who knew how to recruit was recruiting players you couldn't talk to, so the other 80% who you could end up battling were basically clueless (because that's how it was back then, most coaches had no idea how to recruit, and this isn't a 'gillispieism'. it was a truly classed society, we weren't even playing the same game).

recruiting up a division was mandatory for me and others, probably 100% of my players came from a division up but maybe it was only 95%. i didn't actually know this, but some d1 players were d3 eligible back then, too (i thought no d1 players were. i think it was a fairly small set but some folks talked about getting a decent % of their guys from there. nobody was like, only getting d1 guys though, i think).

when i first started, the pulldown/dropdown stuff had been hush/hush but was finally coming out. i saw it on the forums in my first month. it was so powerful that my 2nd ever recruiting class was probably top 5 in the country and was good for a 1 seed as seniors. i definitely didn't always have classes that good but i started having them on day 1, and eventually could basically do it every season. a lot of folks did, i think its pretty impressive to have won a title from that era with players from your pool, honestly! it happened from time to time but the 10% of coaches who did pulldown were winning 70% of the titles or something.

its really that system that pushed me from d2 to d1. my d2 program was really good but the recruiting just seemed so dumb. i wanted to compete with everyone, not just forum readers who used pulldowns. d1 recruiting was a million times better overall so that is where i went, but i really liked making good teams from imperfect players, too! from the lower divisions particularly. kind of sucks i got forced to d1 - feels that way still today, honestly.

I can appreciate your viewpoint, I think we all had different opinions of the previous recruiting system. Both 2.0 and 3.0 have their pros and cons. For me tho, the previous system just felt more real and fun. The ridiculous emails are sorely missed.

I think we could have a better game if we were able to combine elements of the two but we will never all agree on what that even looks like.

And yeah, I tried to recruit d1 guys at d3 and everytime I got someone willing to be pulled down, I would scout them and they were trash. I tried almost every season and never found a player worth having on my d3 team - even back then which is saying a lot.

I think this recruiting system is much better for D1. Old one for 2 and 3. I find 3.0 recruiting really fun at D1.

Posted by Benis on 2/9/2022 8:00:00 PM (view original):
I can appreciate your viewpoint, I think we all had different opinions of the previous recruiting system. Both 2.0 and 3.0 have their pros and cons. For me tho, the previous system just felt more real and fun. The ridiculous emails are sorely missed.

I think we could have a better game if we were able to combine elements of the two but we will never all agree on what that even looks like.

And yeah, I tried to recruit d1 guys at d3 and everytime I got someone willing to be pulled down, I would scout them and they were trash. I tried almost every season and never found a player worth having on my d3 team - even back then which is saying a lot.

i agree it was more real and fun, too (for d2/d3). i just had too much of a problem with the competitive balance at the top. but solving that problem by opening all divisions to everyone... sigh... terrible

Posted by gillispie on 2/10/2022 11:23:00 AM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 2/9/2022 8:00:00 PM (view original):
I can appreciate your viewpoint, I think we all had different opinions of the previous recruiting system. Both 2.0 and 3.0 have their pros and cons. For me tho, the previous system just felt more real and fun. The ridiculous emails are sorely missed.

I think we could have a better game if we were able to combine elements of the two but we will never all agree on what that even looks like.

And yeah, I tried to recruit d1 guys at d3 and everytime I got someone willing to be pulled down, I would scout them and they were trash. I tried almost every season and never found a player worth having on my d3 team - even back then which is saying a lot.

i agree it was more real and fun, too (for d2/d3). i just had too much of a problem with the competitive balance at the top. but solving that problem by opening all divisions to everyone... sigh... terrible

The funny part is that no one was even asking to open up all levels for D3. Seble just did it and didn't even mention it AT ALL during development. When beta came around, we were all like whoa whoa what's going on here.

My theory is that it was unintentional and Seble just missed it. Then decided to just stick with the change without ever really considering the implications.

Other than none of us have control or access to the game code, why not just populate 1 HUGE player pool, instead of the arbitrary projected divisions? [cue the real life lecture] When a coach shows up to a gym, does he ask just to be told about the "d1" or "d2" player? Certainly D3 schools knew not to recruit "d1" player getting looks from d1 school, but that is not the same as the d3 school not knowing that player existed and the talent comp. And maybe you dont get all the recruiting info from shoe's recruiting manifesto/guide. But then again, there are a number of instances where only the local school knew about and took a chance with a scholarship offer.

Posted by cubcub113 on 2/9/2022 10:19:00 PM (view original):
I think this recruiting system is much better for D1. Old one for 2 and 3. I find 3.0 recruiting really fun at D1.

Says the guy who is recruiting D2 for a D1 school

I miss the really old days when we could 100 calls to pull down any player. I also seem to remember pre any potential being able to make a player however you wanted with practice minutes.

Posted by brip87 on 2/14/2022 4:11:00 PM (view original):
I miss the really old days when we could 100 calls to pull down any player. I also seem to remember pre any potential being able to make a player however you wanted with practice minutes.

The game would be so much better if attributes had flexible ceilings, limited by growth rate potential (reflected in diminishing returns) instead of hard caps.

I also agree that splitting into 3 scouting pools was a bad idea. It always should have been one large pool of recruits. A lot of the problems we have stem from having multiple pools, and then trying to rig a system to accommodate that weird, unrealistic situation without incentivizing collusion.

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2022 7:12:00 PM (view original):

Posted by brip87 on 2/14/2022 4:11:00 PM (view original):
I miss the really old days when we could 100 calls to pull down any player. I also seem to remember pre any potential being able to make a player however you wanted with practice minutes.

The game would be so much better if attributes had flexible ceilings, limited by growth rate potential (reflected in diminishing returns) instead of hard caps.

I also agree that splitting into 3 scouting pools was a bad idea. It always should have been one large pool of recruits. A lot of the problems we have stem from having multiple pools, and then trying to rig a system to accommodate that weird, unrealistic situation without incentivizing collusion.

Honestly curious, whats to stop them from just making it one large pool? I feel like this would be incredibly helpful for new coaches as well. The current D3 system leaves many new coaches recruiting completely undesirable players until they catch on to how recruiting works, however long that takes.

Posted by tmacfan12 on 2/14/2022 7:53:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2022 7:12:00 PM (view original):

Posted by brip87 on 2/14/2022 4:11:00 PM (view original):
I miss the really old days when we could 100 calls to pull down any player. I also seem to remember pre any potential being able to make a player however you wanted with practice minutes.

The game would be so much better if attributes had flexible ceilings, limited by growth rate potential (reflected in diminishing returns) instead of hard caps.

I also agree that splitting into 3 scouting pools was a bad idea. It always should have been one large pool of recruits. A lot of the problems we have stem from having multiple pools, and then trying to rig a system to accommodate that weird, unrealistic situation without incentivizing collusion.

Honestly curious, whats to stop them from just making it one large pool? I feel like this would be incredibly helpful for new coaches as well. The current D3 system leaves many new coaches recruiting completely undesirable players until they catch on to how recruiting works, however long that takes.

Imagine how long and tedious scouting would be if it was just one huge pool of 1,000 recruits.

Posted by Benis on 2/14/2022 11:06:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tmacfan12 on 2/14/2022 7:53:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2022 7:12:00 PM (view original):

Posted by brip87 on 2/14/2022 4:11:00 PM (view original):
I miss the really old days when we could 100 calls to pull down any player. I also seem to remember pre any potential being able to make a player however you wanted with practice minutes.

The game would be so much better if attributes had flexible ceilings, limited by growth rate potential (reflected in diminishing returns) instead of hard caps.

I also agree that splitting into 3 scouting pools was a bad idea. It always should have been one large pool of recruits. A lot of the problems we have stem from having multiple pools, and then trying to rig a system to accommodate that weird, unrealistic situation without incentivizing collusion.

Honestly curious, whats to stop them from just making it one large pool? I feel like this would be incredibly helpful for new coaches as well. The current D3 system leaves many new coaches recruiting completely undesirable players until they catch on to how recruiting works, however long that takes.

Imagine how long and tedious scouting would be if it was just one huge pool of 1,000 recruits.

I think it could work with additional scouting / recruiting filters. I've previously suggested instead of 3 pools that "division" be a preference...that's essentially how it is IRL. There are kids who will choose to star in D2 vs ride the bench at a D1 mid-major. There are even a few examples of ranked recruits going as low as D3 to play for/with relatives or playing D3 due to academic struggles like A.J. Matthews: https://es.pn/2bJj6aO

Posted by Benis on 2/14/2022 11:06:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tmacfan12 on 2/14/2022 7:53:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2022 7:12:00 PM (view original):

Posted by brip87 on 2/14/2022 4:11:00 PM (view original):
I miss the really old days when we could 100 calls to pull down any player. I also seem to remember pre any potential being able to make a player however you wanted with practice minutes.

The game would be so much better if attributes had flexible ceilings, limited by growth rate potential (reflected in diminishing returns) instead of hard caps.

I also agree that splitting into 3 scouting pools was a bad idea. It always should have been one large pool of recruits. A lot of the problems we have stem from having multiple pools, and then trying to rig a system to accommodate that weird, unrealistic situation without incentivizing collusion.

Honestly curious, whats to stop them from just making it one large pool? I feel like this would be incredibly helpful for new coaches as well. The current D3 system leaves many new coaches recruiting completely undesirable players until they catch on to how recruiting works, however long that takes.

Imagine how long and tedious scouting would be if it was just one huge pool of 1,000 recruits.

Okay you immediately made a great point, definitely with you lol. I still think changes need to made to D3 to keep new coaches but don’t want to derail the conversation.

I miss the fun emails too! Sure after 50 seasons they were whatever but definitely was a fun part of the game for me, it enhanced my experience and I do think things like that should be explored more because they add more of a personal aspect to recruiting, it’s just fun to have an assistant coach who says funny things that are also informative.

Posted by gillispie on 2/8/2022 4:14:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 2/7/2022 5:00:00 PM (view original):
I miss the days when d3 recruited mostly from the d3 pool and you battled other d3 coaches for those players.

i am curious when these days were? i missed early and mid 1.0, but, i have never seen a time when d3 recruited mostly from d3 and you battled other d3 coaches for those players. i do recall when high d3 recruited mostly from d2 and battled mostly nobody but mostly lower d2 schools. but i suppose there were the unwashed masses of d3 coaches who didn't know about pulldowns or even dropdowns, who really were not even playing the same game as the pulldown crowd, and who basically just got slaughtered by the 5% for years on end.

more importantly, glad those days are over! the days of HD success through glitchy bullshit that is not remotely documented anywhere, where admins publicly and repeatedly denounce the existence of critical things that most certainly existed (and as best i can tell, the admins knew better, i still shake my head at that one)... that is not how it should work, you shouldn't have to know the secret handshake to have even a half *** shot of competing. now, i am no fan of today's 3.0 d2/d3 recruiting, i tried it and could not bear it, but old d2/d3 recruiting were a compete f'ing nightmare, too. just atrocious from a game design standpoint (send 200 phone calls and individually read the responses to see who is recruitable... are you kidding me? plus the secret handshake stuff - it HAD to go).

i do agree its stupid to have d3 recruiting d1 today, though!!

I started back in season 21 of Naismith and D3s could only recruit D3 pool players. There were no dropdowns or pull downs yet. I believe about 2 or 3 seasons later they introduced the dropdowns. Soon coaches found the loophole of calling the players 1000 times and pulling them down quicker to sign.