Posted by hughesjr on 5/14/2014 10:39:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tcplotts on 5/14/2014 8:37:00 PM (view original):
I have a slightly different take on the D3 budget. I think if you have multiple players in a single state, it can be useful. But in the end, it doesn't give you any more than your scout trip does *if* you know how to read the scouting report, which I think is a much more valuable tool.
An example: I had a big class this season (8 open schollies) and two states with multiple recruits. I bought those two states from FSS. Saw the pretty blue numbers and went, "whee"!. I blew off the scouting reports. For one player, the blue changed to black after two lousy points of improvement. Whoops! For another, two blue categories went black after about the same. For the first player, that category that went black to early was a point guard's passing category. He went black at--get this--18. Had I mad my decision off the scouting report, I would have never made that mistake.

I just think the price is to high in D3 relative to what you actually get. Those blue numbers can be traps.

If the category is blue, he is going to gain at least 20 points. (Assuming he has enough WE)

Certainly the scouting reports are better than FSS (at least more detailed) ... BUT .. it is much more expensive to get all the info with scouting reports, and you might not EVER get every attribute.  If you need to send 3 scouting reports per recruit and if 3 of the recruits are in the same state and also close, you likely spent $1000 on just 3 recruits for info.  You didn't get any info about anyone else.

What if another team gets one of those recruits ... you don't know anything about any other recruits to maybe pick a replacement.

FSS is just way too valuable to pass up.

If you're correct about the twenty points thing, then yes. I really did see the blue go black after a couple of points. But it could be WE too low? Wi Tu Lo? I just typed that. Ugh.

So in short, ignore me while I play with these pretty crayons.

The issue of a player quickly going from blue to black in a category has been discussed at length on the forums. It just means the guy had just over 20 points to gain from his initial rating, so it was listed as blue, and then after a small gain he had less than 20 points left so it goes to black. Its always frustrating to see, but it has a perfectly logical explanation.

That is one area that scouting trips can be nice because you can tell if a rating is low-high or high-high, but its still far more efficient to use FSS for the most part. If you are trying to decide between two players then the scouting trip becomes valuable to differentiate between the two if one has more high-highs.