I'll just throw in my 2 cents, because everyone else seems to be doing so.
I've been playing the game for about 3 or 4 years with pretty decent, not amazing success. I've won 2 national titles in Iba and have quite a few unsuccessful final four appearances across a few worlds.
I only play under one username, bbunch, and have teams in 5 worlds. I've lost and won many battles. I've never gone through something as strange as what dshook went through, which started this issue. I feel like under any system, there are always people that want to take advantage of it. I like FSS and what it added to the game, and don't feel the need for a change. I believe that the high-high recruits and scouting visits bring a really cool level of strategy to the game. I don't believe I've been out-recruited by someone using muItiple user-names to cheat and gain a scouting advantage, but it's possible that it's happened before. I do think that those cases are pretty isolated, though they do happen.
I think that recruiting is one of the most engaging and interesting parts of the game, and it's what keeps me playing. I've managed to be a pretty successful coach playing within the rules, and most other successful coaches here can probably say the same. I know and compete against many coaches with multiple usernames in one world, and I'm pretty confident that they're not using that to their advantage (with FSS recruiting) - or more specifically, I don't feel particularly disadvantaged when I recruit against them.
Here's the real issue (and I don't think it's with the game in and of itself).... I think the reason we're all having to react to this is because dshook had to get so much support from others on the forum before CS would issue an appropriate response. I wish that CS would be more willing to give users benefit of the doubt. It's obvious that dshook was screwed and he should have most probably been reimbursed much more immediately.
Look, there's a loophole in almost every system, and I don't feel like we need to over-react to this one. I believe that the game(at least in DII and DIII), for the most part is fine, and its' biggest problems are
1. complete lack of promotion
2. Customer Service either being understaffed or uninterested in addressing concerns of the game players.
3. D1 mostly sucks because of a major recruit generation issue where the big 6 conferences basically dominate the national tournament. In addition, the lack of firings sucks, and baseline prestige is mostly stupid.
Many of the veteran coaches with multiple usernames are kind of the lifeblood of the game - they're very active in forums, they set up non-conference tournaments, and often keep the game more interesting and entertaining (especially alblack with his bizarre small-school history lessons in the conference corners). I don't think it's smart to punish many of those that bring the most to this game.
I think FSS is fine. I'm fine with the 1000 mile rule, I voted to keep the status quo. I think that DII and DIII are wonderful, and DI needs some major fixing. I think that FSS shouldn't be our biggest focus. If we want to really push seble hard to change something, maybe we as users should help give suggestions to fix DI, and push some ideas toward seble. I would have lots of fun if I thought that I could realistically be competitive by building up a mid-major D1 program (like Butler, VCU, and Wichita in real life) but that's way less possible in HD.
I think by bickering over FSS for so long (which is generally a pretty good program IMO), we're worrying too much about closing loopholes (which aren't taken advantage of that often) rather than focusing on pushing for real fixes to improving the game.
I'm tired. I hope this post was coherent.
-b
4/19/2013 10:52 PM (edited)