Posted by kmasonbx1 on 2/13/2014 12:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by fd343ny on 2/13/2014 11:23:00 AM (view original):
I think some randomness is good, but I think the scouting reports should be set so that each report covers skills not covered in prior reports.  It may take 2 or 3 evals to learn what you want, but you should get all skills with a few evals.

Yea, seriously. How quickly would a head coach fire his scout if he went to watch a guard play 5 times and not get any comment about how he handles the basketball?

This was the subject of the thread, no?  I disagree, but not on the grounds of realism precisely.

I have no idea how long that takes to decide whether a player has the potential to improve greatly.  Famously, Bill Guthridge scouted out a kid named Jordan to Dean Smith and said "he's unmilked".  It seems to me that a lot of recruits get missed and a great many that are guaranteed 5 star recruits with scouts at every high school game are just unable to compete in college, let alone the NBA.  How do you simulate results that are hailed in over-priced magazines as certainties and turn out, in reality, to be anything but?

It would be fair to say that the game would be improved by having some scouting tool that gave a better likelihood of getting the results that you want to know, but I don't think that it should guaranteed in just 3 scouting trips (each scouting trip referring back to any previous ones and eliminating redundant responses).   At some point, the way scouting works in this game is going to separate from reality.  Speaking only of the way that recruiting competition works in this game, having 3 or 4 trips absolutely guarantee responses in all categories would completely eliminate the, probably unintentional, similarity to reality in scouting recruits; that you don't get a certain answer with a certain amount of scouting effort.

I've made a suggestion that would go halfway from the current system to what is suggested here.  The response has been...well...damn crickets!   So let me offer an even less popular suggestion: the real problem with recruiting is that FSS is TOO accurate!  I would suggest implementing competing scouting services: vague, competent, identical to the current FSS, FSS PLUS (including some or all HH or LL).  To keep the recruiting game from collapsing completely, those different levels would need to have wildly different cost structures.  In general, though, IMO standard FSS itself should be more expensive than it is...or more vague.

What say ye crickets?

Posted by Trentonjoe on 2/16/2014 9:12:00 PM (view original):

Posted by ettaexpress on 2/16/2014 3:03:00 PM (view original):
What I find really bizarre regarding scouting is that I can get better information about a player in the recruitment process than I can from my assistant coach. Why can't my assistant tell me if a guy is a low-hi or hi-hi in a particular area once he's already in the program, but he or another assistant can during recruiting?

The head coach should know if you know what to look for. It just takes a little observing to figure it out. The game doesn't come right out and say, " hey he has 34 points to grow in x skill" but once they are on campus you should be able to get a pretty close estimation in half a season or so.

My point is you can't get the same info during the season from your assistant that you can on a single scouting visit when the guy is a recruit.

Along the same line, and to address rogelio, perhaps FSS should give less specific information on potential?

Posted by ettaexpress on 2/17/2014 1:26:00 AM (view original):

Posted by Trentonjoe on 2/16/2014 9:12:00 PM (view original):

Posted by ettaexpress on 2/16/2014 3:03:00 PM (view original):
What I find really bizarre regarding scouting is that I can get better information about a player in the recruitment process than I can from my assistant coach. Why can't my assistant tell me if a guy is a low-hi or hi-hi in a particular area once he's already in the program, but he or another assistant can during recruiting?

The head coach should know if you know what to look for. It just takes a little observing to figure it out. The game doesn't come right out and say, " hey he has 34 points to grow in x skill" but once they are on campus you should be able to get a pretty close estimation in half a season or so.

My point is you can't get the same info during the season from your assistant that you can on a single scouting visit when the guy is a recruit.

Along the same line, and to address rogelio, perhaps FSS should give less specific information on potential?

Since the rate of growth is impacted by practice minutes, WE & remaining potential, you can get a pretty good sense of a HH category after a few games. Also, once the player improves 8 points in a category, then, if the rating is still blue, then you can be sure that it was HH at signing. When it turns black, 20 remain; red = 7.

My point on FSS boils down to gameplay and cost of gaining information on recruits. Many coaches, and this may be colonels point, buy FSS and jump recruits in the first cycle, without need to scout. IMO, that indicates that the information is either too accurate or too cheap. The advantage of skipping scouting is that you tradeoff accurate information on potential for preserving your budget for battles. Pricing FSS level scouting a little higher or creating a competing cut-rate service that has a different, less specific, scale would compel players back to scouting with scouting trips to find the best recruits and that, in turn, would change the choices that all players make based on their budget and desire for information.

Simply put, the relative cost of information between scouting trips and FSS is out of whack. FSS information is too complete, too cheaply and scouting trips are too incomplete, at too great a cost for the partial information/budget game (that is recruiting) to play out as I expect the designers intended and I think preferable.

D3 coaches IRL in particular recruit a lot of guys they never see. They rely on reports -- some free, some not -- and phone calls because there's no way they can afford to do a real recruiting trip. I asked a friend of mine to do a weekend about 6 hours from where his school was to see a showcase and he said he couldn't do it, the money just wasn't there. 

So I think the idea of taking FSS info and acting solely on it isn't necessarily out of step. I think creating a cheaper cut-rate service would just lead to schools having info on pretty much everyone in the scouting pool which would be ridiculous. 

It might be interesting, and somewhat realistic, if the info FSS provided was murkier (maybe you don't get blue info, only red and black), and scouting reports slightly more random (like you might show up when the guy has a bad game and get a terrible report). This would definitely make D3 recruiting a lot more difficult though.

I'm okay with FSS, but the idea of murkier info reminds me of one of my favorite ideas.  Wouldnt it be great to see the next season's recruits now?  but with murky info - like maybe rounded to nearest 5 or 10 on skills?  and no FSS for them?

at times, especially if you coach in a thinly populated area, it matters whether there is a great guard near your school who is a junior....etc

Posted by rogelio on 2/16/2014 9:53:00 PM (view original):

Posted by kmasonbx1 on 2/13/2014 12:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by fd343ny on 2/13/2014 11:23:00 AM (view original):
I think some randomness is good, but I think the scouting reports should be set so that each report covers skills not covered in prior reports.  It may take 2 or 3 evals to learn what you want, but you should get all skills with a few evals.

Yea, seriously. How quickly would a head coach fire his scout if he went to watch a guard play 5 times and not get any comment about how he handles the basketball?

This was the subject of the thread, no?  I disagree, but not on the grounds of realism precisely.

I have no idea how long that takes to decide whether a player has the potential to improve greatly.  Famously, Bill Guthridge scouted out a kid named Jordan to Dean Smith and said "he's unmilked".  It seems to me that a lot of recruits get missed and a great many that are guaranteed 5 star recruits with scouts at every high school game are just unable to compete in college, let alone the NBA.  How do you simulate results that are hailed in over-priced magazines as certainties and turn out, in reality, to be anything but?

It would be fair to say that the game would be improved by having some scouting tool that gave a better likelihood of getting the results that you want to know, but I don't think that it should guaranteed in just 3 scouting trips (each scouting trip referring back to any previous ones and eliminating redundant responses).   At some point, the way scouting works in this game is going to separate from reality.  Speaking only of the way that recruiting competition works in this game, having 3 or 4 trips absolutely guarantee responses in all categories would completely eliminate the, probably unintentional, similarity to reality in scouting recruits; that you don't get a certain answer with a certain amount of scouting effort.

I've made a suggestion that would go halfway from the current system to what is suggested here.  The response has been...well...damn crickets!   So let me offer an even less popular suggestion: the real problem with recruiting is that FSS is TOO accurate!  I would suggest implementing competing scouting services: vague, competent, identical to the current FSS, FSS PLUS (including some or all HH or LL).  To keep the recruiting game from collapsing completely, those different levels would need to have wildly different cost structures.  In general, though, IMO standard FSS itself should be more expensive than it is...or more vague.

What say ye crickets?

I think FSS is not far from fine, as far as its place in the recruiting economy goes.  I'd rather respond to your previous cricketed suggestion but I'll have to shake out the lazy first and go find it.  Generally, I agree that we should have at least one additional scouting trip option.

It would be fair to say that the game would be improved by having some scouting tool that gave a better likelihood of getting the results that you want to know, but I don't think that it should guaranteed in just 3 scouting trips (each scouting trip referring back to any previous ones and eliminating redundant responses).   At some point, the way scouting works in this game is going to separate from reality.  Speaking only of the way that recruiting competition works in this game, having 3 or 4 trips absolutely guarantee responses in all categories would completely eliminate the, probably unintentional, similarity to reality in scouting recruits; that you don't get a certain answer with a certain amount of scouting effort.

I would also suggest that the uncertainty of getting desirable information (inadvertantly) works well as a variable in the recruiting economy, and is a positive from a gameplay perspective.

Posted by ettaexpress on 2/17/2014 3:47:00 AM (view original):
D3 coaches IRL in particular recruit a lot of guys they never see. They rely on reports -- some free, some not -- and phone calls because there's no way they can afford to do a real recruiting trip. I asked a friend of mine to do a weekend about 6 hours from where his school was to see a showcase and he said he couldn't do it, the money just wasn't there. 

So I think the idea of taking FSS info and acting solely on it isn't necessarily out of step. I think creating a cheaper cut-rate service would just lead to schools having info on pretty much everyone in the scouting pool which would be ridiculous. 

It might be interesting, and somewhat realistic, if the info FSS provided was murkier (maybe you don't get blue info, only red and black), and scouting reports slightly more random (like you might show up when the guy has a bad game and get a terrible report). This would definitely make D3 recruiting a lot more difficult though.

My reading is that we are thinking along the same lines on this.  Reality could be simulated better by inaccurate results, but I don't think that this game would be playable on that basis (D3 would be harder than D1 - it would cause terrible confusion).  My idea for the discounted service is very similar to your idea of getting only "red and black" categories.

I would submit the idea of creating a competitor to FSS, call it DRD (Discount Recruiter's Digest) as a separate tab with similar functionality to FSS (under both recruiting and player profile screens), BUT it would only show (choosing terms at random to distinguish from FSS) "Good", "Fair" and "No" potential for improvement.  The split between Good and Fair would be ~13.4 (right in the middle of "Average") potential improvement and the split between Fair and No would be the 2.9 or Low-Low number (the precise numbers would not be publicly announced, of course).  FSS would receive a cost increase of say 20% across the board and DRD would come in about 15% less expensive than FSS is at present (notified by an updated AD email at roll-over) and, since the would be competitor services, any volume discounts would not apply between the two.

Coaches that could afford to purchase both DRD & FSS reports for the same state(s) would benefit from much clearer information overall, but at an appropriate cost and probably beyond the budget of most D3 schools.  The DRD split in the middle of the current "Average" range would actually add more information than currently exists, but would probably not be retained once the recruits show up on campus (so no change to the data displayed once the recruits show up on campus).

With all that implemented, then the addition of  a "player roles" scouting trip, that at least instructs the assistant coach to look for specific user-defined "core" categories (at a marginal cost increase) would give coaches more ability to actually scout players and get all the information that they want, while preserving the cost-benefit choices that are the premise of the game.

That's right, the player roles scouting trip.  I could go for that, assuming proper pricing.

Nope.

I've often advocated for more vagueness in scouting/FSS as well, but this didn't ever seem to resonate with coaches as there wasn't much discussion on those occasions either.  I'm always up for the involvement of more recruiting strategy and planning. 

Sadly, though, it's the fact that we all know good and well that none of these "major" changes to HD that we hope for, wish for, or advocate for will ever get done.  That would take effort on the part of seble and whoever else at WIS is responsible for product roadmaps.  Seems like they're spread way too thin to even have time to think about giving a $hit beyond the very near term to be honest.

And the idea of having some kind of idea about the recruiting population two seasons away is one that I've advocated for as well.  But see the second paragraph about that ever happening.

Fox definitely needs to free up some programming time for this SIM.  I'm sure they've allocated at least an hour a week to working on issues, but not much of anything to development.  That's why I have only tried to make suggestions that I perceive to be minor or would use functions that already exists in a different way.  There's no way Fox is going to allocate a bunch of internally billable time to a game that the corporate weasels don't see having demand growth independent of their own efforts.  

I could dream up much bigger changes that I think would be great.  However, I really like the SIM as it is and wouldn't want it butchered by Fox ordering a major revision, but allocating only 1/4 the budget that would be required to pull it off properly.