I hear what you’re saying. I actually agree that it shouldn’t stop D1 teams from getting back ups. That doesn’t seem like the way it’s supposed to work. But it’s harder to recruit and understand recruiting in D3. That doesn’t seem fair to the system.

Look- what do I know? I’ve been here about two months now. I just think the most fair thing is not to make it hardest to understand for the new guy. That being said, I’m reasonably happy with the two D2 and 1 D3 recruit I got when I basically didn’t even realize getting D1s was something a D3 team could realistically do a lot of. Once I started trying to, it was too late to make a real impact. Definitely do things different this next recruiting session.

Posted by shoe3 on 4/27/2022 7:05:00 PM (view original):
It’s truly hilarious that benis thinks inadvertently leaving out FT potential (which was fixed immediately upon discovery) is the same kind of “error” as allowing D1 pool players to be recruited by D3 teams. After all the pages of talk about the “red light” during which, if it was an error, seble could have…. you know… fixed it the way he fixed FT. But he just forgot. Lol.

Once again.

It. Was. Too. Late.

He had to make compromises and band-aid fixes. There wer 10,000 other things going on. He could only patch and adjust during Beta.

Show me where he mentioned D3 teams recruiting D1 players before beta. Even just once. Let's see it.?

Posted by Benis on 4/27/2022 7:21:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 4/27/2022 7:05:00 PM (view original):
It’s truly hilarious that benis thinks inadvertently leaving out FT potential (which was fixed immediately upon discovery) is the same kind of “error” as allowing D1 pool players to be recruited by D3 teams. After all the pages of talk about the “red light” during which, if it was an error, seble could have…. you know… fixed it the way he fixed FT. But he just forgot. Lol.

Once again.

It. Was. Too. Late.

He had to make compromises and band-aid fixes. There wer 10,000 other things going on. He could only patch and adjust during Beta.

Show me where he mentioned D3 teams recruiting D1 players before beta. Even just once. Let's see it.?

Lol, no. You’re the one making a stupid assertion. You prove it.

Posted by johnroberts on 4/27/2022 7:21:00 PM (view original):
I hear what you’re saying. I actually agree that it shouldn’t stop D1 teams from getting back ups. That doesn’t seem like the way it’s supposed to work. But it’s harder to recruit and understand recruiting in D3. That doesn’t seem fair to the system.

Look- what do I know? I’ve been here about two months now. I just think the most fair thing is not to make it hardest to understand for the new guy. That being said, I’m reasonably happy with the two D2 and 1 D3 recruit I got when I basically didn’t even realize getting D1s was something a D3 team could realistically do a lot of. Once I started trying to, it was too late to make a real impact. Definitely do things different this next recruiting session.

Bingo. You are spot on.

If there was such a competitive imbalance then why wasn't it called out when the update was being worked? It wasn't called out because there wasn't a problem. Here is Seble's post where he listed things 3.0 was intended to fix. See if you can spot where D3 teams need to recruit D1 players to help with competitive balance for noobs.

-----
We've hammered out a high-level plan for overhauling recruiting and I want to start getting some feedback from you guys.

First off, here are the problems that I see with the current system:

1. Elite schools have too much advantage, with the combination of prestige and extra recruiting money.
2. There is not enough battling going on for the top recruits, most likely due to the belief that elite schools can't be beaten and the fear of losing that money.
3. The status of your school related to a recruit can be confusing and hard to track due to vague messages.
4. Some battles last until the end of recruiting, leaving the losing schools in a bad position.
5. There are not enough schools willing and able to recruit outside of their region.
6. Scouting players is rudimentary and frustrating.
7. Player decisions come down mostly to money spent (assuming other factors are fairly equal), making it a glorified auction system.
8. Recruiting takes place at the beginning of the season, which is tough for new coaches, who haven't had a chance to learn the game.
9. Due to the benefits of postseason money, there is way too much cooperation between teams in the same conference.
10. SimAI teams are pretty terrible at recruiting, leaving many undesirable rosters.

The ideas we've come up with should address all of these problems to some degree.

-----

Posted by johnroberts on 4/27/2022 7:21:00 PM (view original):
I hear what you’re saying. I actually agree that it shouldn’t stop D1 teams from getting back ups. That doesn’t seem like the way it’s supposed to work. But it’s harder to recruit and understand recruiting in D3. That doesn’t seem fair to the system.

Look- what do I know? I’ve been here about two months now. I just think the most fair thing is not to make it hardest to understand for the new guy. That being said, I’m reasonably happy with the two D2 and 1 D3 recruit I got when I basically didn’t even realize getting D1s was something a D3 team could realistically do a lot of. Once I started trying to, it was too late to make a real impact. Definitely do things different this next recruiting session.

Yeah, the biggest issue is knowledge. You need to know how to do it effectively, to have a plan. That’s why I put a scouting guide out there, and others have put guides in place, too. Getting your recruit pool in place is the biggest and hardest first step, but once you figure out a process that works for you, it’s very rewarding when you start pulling in the types of players championship caliber D3 teams pull in.

Some real gems from Gillispie in that thread I just bumped.

" the dropdown/pulldown rework is probably the most potentially alarming item of everything i've heard. dropdowns/pulldowns are a much loved part of the game, in the olden days, there was near consensus, that dropdowns/pulldowns had saved d2/d3 recruiting. to this day, its the best part, to many folks. a major rework is not required, what specific pain point are you even trying to address? i believe, the answer is none - that its just a ripple effect, from trying to limit scouting to same-division players."

Benis going deep into his way-back nostalgia hole is a thing to behold. I think I may just get some popcorn myself this time, and let him do his thing.

I read the guides but still thought somehow that D1 were not easily attainable for D3 teams. Must have misunderstood. And I’m still not sure how to tell what D1 recruits other schools won’t go after so I have a shot and am not wasting resources.

Posted by johnroberts on 4/27/2022 8:04:00 PM (view original):
I read the guides but still thought somehow that D1 were not easily attainable for D3 teams. Must have misunderstood. And I’m still not sure how to tell what D1 recruits other schools won’t go after so I have a shot and am not wasting resources.

Oh experienced coaches get burned too. There’s nuance to gauging who might end up getting on someone’s late target list, but you have to figure you’ll lose some. Most of the time, it’s best to hold off on visits until the last few cycles before they can sign, to make sure no D1 or high level D2 will make a push before the red light lifts, although for some recruits (the ones with ath or def too low to attract real attention from high level teams) early visits if sims try to battle can make sense.

The trick is, don’t get attached. There are very few guys who are so far above replacement level that are worth you sinking a lot of early resources on at D3. You’ll come across a difference maker now and then, but they will generally have to fall in your lap - otherwise, as up top, you can expect them to get snatched up late. Build a wide pool via scouting, watch a bunch of guys with low AP, see what sticks, keep your options open.

And we can discuss more via sitemail if you want. I’m sure others would be happy to chat as well.

Posted by gillispie on 4/25/2022 4:40:00 PM (view original):

Posted by johnroberts on 4/25/2022 4:15:00 PM (view original):
So I’ve only played one season. Here are my comments on this

1) I discovered HD probably ten years ago. I had almost no disposable income at the time. I saw one season was $5. I could do that! But to then up the price to $10 or $12 or whatever- I couldn’t justify it. So I didn’t play. I remembered it a few times over the years. I’d come and check in. I had forgotten about it since I had more disposable income. I finally remembered and came to play. If it was cheaper, I would have been here ten years ago though.

2) The first season is rough. If you don’t accept that upfront, you’ll be miserable. I took over the worst team I could find so I didn’t beat myself up about it. If I had had a team that could compete in year one and I struggled, I might not have done a second season. I convinced myself I did well going from 2 wins to 5 wins. If I’d gone from 20 wins to 15 wins, that’s a much tougher sell. Not sure how many people are willing to go the route I did though.

3) I would have loved a 10-15 minute video walking me through what some of this stuff meant. A tour of my team and what I could do with it. Instead, I’m still learning some of the things I can do that weren’t clear initially to me. I get that there’s a learning curve but good night!

4) I’m not sure if I want to play D1 or not. Sounds brutal. If I got there, I’d go through a small conference team for many years, building that program. Might never win a national title that way, but I’d love the annual mid major program building.

I’m sure there is more. But I’ll stop there for now.

interesting thoughts! its nice to see a new user's perspective, really.

2) they really should make this clear up front and offer a 5-pack trial package that is like, 15 bucks. basically a combo of setting expectations, and lowering the trial cost. i forget whose idea this originally was, its come around too many times, so not my idea but i like it.

3) i agree! i think having resources for new users is important, but companies always lack this. even look at AAA titles (the 50 million dollar games and stuff), there is so often this layer of like, user content, that makes it work. i have to go on the internet and google for stuff constantly, no matter how 'platinum' a title is.

so i kinda think like, WIS should put a landing page together, that points users to HD forums and the discord. but i kinda think from there, to some extent, its on us. there are youtube videos and/or wikis and/or forums, for so many games, i almost consider a game unplayable if it does not have that kind of content, to assist with the ramp up (i tend to play big games where a hundred hours barely scratches the surface). even little kid games in crap like flash and whatever replaced it, will have wikis with couple dozen pages sometimes.

this isn't a huge game and there's not enough money to be made to 'sustain creators', like as full time jobs. and this game doesn't lend to streaming or game play videos (well, maybe i'm wrong? real life sports finds a way to make it work, like the games based on it, gambling and daily fantasy and regular fantasy and all that. maybe HD could work, somehow?). but WIS could offer incentives and stuff, and there's a lot of people who donate their time just to help out with these kinds of things. but what we end up with here is kind of like... massive block-of-text guides. which is far better than nothing. but an organized wiki, or some youtube content that covers a lot of stuff - it really goes far.

at one point, yatzr made a recruiting tool that a bunch of us enjoyed. he had a little donation page, i think i sent him a hundred bucks or something - more than the tool is worth to me, but he gave it away free to 100 people for every 1 who donated, probably. i think a handful of other people did the same. not enough to make it worth his time, but i'm sure it kinda like, helped encourage him forward? showed people cared, and appreciated? if people cared enough, we in the community do have the ability to contribute to creators, to incentivize it. its not like THAT much is required, like its not like 50 people can go do this. its a crap ton of work for a couple people and then some other people might contribute some, who knows?

side note - i think the discord was put in to help fill this niche, among others, and it is a good resource in a lot of ways. its just not very good for accumulating information over time. it has a nice page with links to other resources, but the non-threaded nature of the communications there, its just very hard to like, go search for the conversations on _______ and to actually find the robust ones. i think its more valuable as a help tool for people looking for near-real time help (within a day or so). and for that, its great! or at least, decent. definitely props to teemo and others who got that going! but i think for educational purposes, video series or wikis tend to be the best tools for those jobs, and second best is threaded forums like reddit or really the HD forums here.

4) d1 is a lot of fun and hopefully you don't let us scare you away!! a lot of people have successful d1 teams without putting crazy time and effort in, its not really intense like that. its just hard to be good at recruiting and really hard to be consistently good. but yeah, its a good time, for the most part!

WIS used to have a betting site that I think would be awesome to bring back. It was called WIS book or something similar, I think this would reach a specific market that may not have been reached yet. Even if you don’t have a team, it’d still be cool to text my buddies and say “hey check this out I’m +3 in the NT, anyone wanna bet on my team?”.

Posted by johnroberts on 4/27/2022 6:45:00 PM (view original):
I don’t understand 1. If a D3 coach came in competing for D3 recruits against other D3 programs, how is that worse than a D3 coach coming in and competing for D1 recruits against possibly other D1, D2 or D3 programs?

I’m not saying I disagree. I just don’t see how if you capped divisions a new player wouldn’t be able to compete for the same players as an experienced coach in D3 would e competing for, which you say is only possible because of uncapped divisions if I’m understanding you correctly.

If last season when I started, I could only recruit D3, against other more experienced coaches who could only recruit D3, that’s easier than trying to figure out which D1 player I can recruit, that no other D1 or D2 is going to go after, and that I can still land while not waiting so long that I miss out on good fallback recruits.

Recruiting is hard everywhere in this game I gather. But D3 is hard. If you said they could only get D2 starting at the second period, that would make more sense. And make it easier to follow. I get moving up one division to recruit. I don’t get how most human schools at D3 can fill their rosters with D1 recruits. Maybe they don’t. But enough do.

paragraph 3 - exactly. i get shoe's point, but i disagree. for a new coach to come in, without massive mentoring, and to have a sense of which d1 players are attainable and which aren't, and to manage that whole situation throughout all of RS1 and RS2 - its borderline unthinkable. you should NOT have to have a mentor to have a chance. its not like experienced d3 coaches can swamp new ones in recruiting resources and stuff. i'm sure they'd push the newer guys around a bit, but with d3-only players, the biggest advantage of the experienced coaches is going to be in evaluating which players are better, not in their ability to obtain said players once identified.

there is a ton to learn in this game. its much more approachable to come in and recruit guys in the walled gardens of a d3-only pool, starting from cycle 1, and signing guys on the normal time periods like in d1, than it is to try to unlock d1 recruits for signing in the last 5 cycles when there's no time for quality replacements. of course, as shoe always points out, good coaches should think about backup options earlier. but IMO, new coaches should not.

besides, with a d3-only pool, they can just make it 2-3x bigger if we want to cut down on intra-d3 competition. it should be based on population, so that today's 30 man d3s have fewer recruits than if there's suddenly 200 coaches again. but my point is, you have a lot of options when d3 is isolated from the rest. things like ORs suggestion to give way more money to d3 for scouting, or whatever, to make it free... its much easier to tune d3 when d3 is 100% irrelevant to the competitive balance of other divisions, and vice-versa.

Posted by oldresorter on 4/27/2022 7:14:00 PM (view original):
if one wants d1 to be uber competitiive and 100% fair (there would be no such thing as 'good' areas and bad ones), make all recruiting national, i.e. take away the local discounts, make all HV's and CV's one fixed rate.

then at d2 make the recruiting more regional, maybe like the current structure, where the pull is a state or two, with occasional furher away pulls.

Then finally, make d3 more local, i.e. make the structure even cheaper than the current for hv's and cv's.

then, the reduced budgets would make sense.

I would guess d1 would be a bloodbath though, I'm not sure, but would the 10-15 A+''s in most worlds all try for the same top recruits, leaving windows of opportunity for those shrewd enough to work along the fringes? be fun to find out

trouble is with any changes, it would require a pretty massive study, as the current user base IMO is largely d1 and largely happy, aren't they?

the ? I was trying to look at, maybe I got the intent of the thread wrong, is what could be done to make d3 (and maybe d2) better?

I still think no pools, more CV / HV power in d3, and maybe an intro rate that could keep NEW coaches captivated for 3-5 yrs at a nice price would be my list of ideas.

I posted this when the last major change was made, it was spot on, I posted that no matter what is changed, a subset of the population will emerge who will learn the game and excel at it. this is true for new users and old ones, those who study it or have an aptitude for it or both. But I refuse to condede that there are NO answers or hope for ideas to make things better without throwing the whole current game away. I still think that my list of ideas is hardely the best 3 or anything like that, but I feel if the game designer was so inclinded, improvements could be made

my only concern about d1 national recruiting is, we tried that in d2/d3 back in the day, and sifting through all those players was a bear! limiting the pool via the distance cost, it really helps keep things manageable IMO. if i had to look at every single recruit in the country again, i don't think i could do it.

Posted by Benis on 4/27/2022 7:34:00 PM (view original):
Some real gems from Gillispie in that thread I just bumped.

" the dropdown/pulldown rework is probably the most potentially alarming item of everything i've heard. dropdowns/pulldowns are a much loved part of the game, in the olden days, there was near consensus, that dropdowns/pulldowns had saved d2/d3 recruiting. to this day, its the best part, to many folks. a major rework is not required, what specific pain point are you even trying to address? i believe, the answer is none - that its just a ripple effect, from trying to limit scouting to same-division players."

man, i totally forgot that 3.0 started out as an attempt to simply rework scouting. crazy. i also forgot he dumpstered d1 population by a full third with that disaster of a recruit gen change. i remember the change for sure, but i didn't remember the fallout was so severe. really a shame he always bundled so many things together that he mostly just got crap for the bad stuff instead of getting praise for the good ones he had, which there were legitimately a bunch of.

and for what its worth, this problem we have today where d1 competition is probably too much to sustain current population - it ties back directly to that disaster of a d1 recruit gen change. where the pain point was, there are too many amazing teams, and the amazing teams are just too good... and the response was to take the top 100 players and make them even better, while gutting the population of decent recruits, creating a tier of even more amazing teams to lord over the now-crappier rest. how can you lose a third of the user base and not adjust? sigh. i know recruit gen is hard, i don't fault seble for screwing it up so bad. i do fault him for setting the place on fire and walking away for 5 years.

Hmm.... you know, it would incredibly interesting to learn what happened From 2.0 to 3.0, I know there are many a returning coach over the years who missed out on huge HD events. If only someone with extensive game knowledge and a love for writing was around to help.... :)

I mean if we don't learn from the past, aren't we doomed to....