Lots of feedback for me to sort through on scouting and schedule, but I figured I'd go ahead and post my initial thoughts on recruiting so everyone can have a complete picture of what's planned.  This has already changed a bit from your feedback, so don't take this as set in stone.

Timeline

-          There will be two recruiting periods during the season.  Period 1 will be the final 5 calendar days of the conference schedule.  Period 2 will be 3 calendar days following the job change period.

-          Signings are allowed in the final 2 days of Period 1 and throughout Period 2.

-          Coaches who change jobs would have Period 2 to fill any remaining openings at the new school.  They would be given new scouting/recruiting resources based on remaining openings.

-          We could potentially allow new coaches to free players from their LOI to create more openings.  Players may accept or reject that offer.

Recruits

-         Will be generated with preferences

·        Playing time

  Wants to play right away

  Doesn’t care

·        Distance from home

  Prefers far away

  Prefers close-by

  Doesn’t care

·        School’s recent success (maybe relative to expected success)

  Wants high level of success

  Wants to re-build the program

  Doesn’t care

·        Conference strength

  Wants to be in a strong conference

  Doesn’t care

·        Tempo

  Wants high tempo

  Wants slower tempo

  Doesn’t care

·        Style of play

  Wants perimeter offense

  Wants paint offense

  Wants strong defense

  Doesn’t care

·        Offensive System

  Triangle

  Motion

  Flex

  Fastbreak

  Doesn’t care

·        Defensive System

  Man-to-man

  Zone

  Press

  Doesn’t care

·        Coach longevity

  Wants a long-time coach

  Doesn’t care

·        Specific conference

·        Specific school(s)

 

 

Resources

-         Each school gets “Attention Points” based on number of openings. These essentially replace the low level recruiting actions.

·        20 points per opening.

·        These points can be distributed to any number of recruits, in any proportion.

·        When each cycle runs (every 3 hours or possibly longer), points are credited for that team/recruit, with modifications for prestige and how recruit preferences match school.

·        Coach can re-allocate points at any time.

-         X number of campus visits total to use throughout the period.

·        Number varies by division

  DI gets 3 per opening

  DII gets 2 per opening

  DIII gets 1 per opening

·        Cannot be used until there is very significant interest between a recruit and school.

·        Each recruit has a limit of 5 total campus visits, so they will be picky about accepting them.

·        Each school may only offer one campus visit to each recruit.

-         X number of home visits total to use throughout the period.

·        Number varies by division

  DI gets 9 per opening

  DII gets 6 per opening

  DIII gets 3 per opening

·        Cannot be used until there is significant interest between a recruit and school.

·        No limit to total home visits by a recruit.

·        No limit to home visits between a school and recruit.

-         Promises

·        Starting spot

  Pretty big positive impact

·        Minutes

  Options of 10, 15, 20, 25

  Big positive impact

-         Inform of getting redshirt

·        Negative impact

·        Guarantees that the player, if signed, will be ok accepting a redshirt

-         Scholarship Offer

·        Major positive impact

·        Can be withdrawn, but major negative impact

Signings

-         Recruits may give a verbal commitment before the signing period if a school is a good match for the recruit’s preferences and one school is leading by a large margin.

·        Recruit may go back on a verbal, but it would take more effort than normal from competing schools.

·        At start of official signing period, most verbal commitments will immediately sign.

-         Each recruit has a tendency for when he will make a decision, which affects both verbal and official.

-         The recruit’s decision on a school depends on the cumulative points from the above recruiting tools. 

·        I’d like to make it an odds-based decision instead of always picking the leading school.  So, for example, school A has 10k points and school B has 8k points. So the odds would be something like 75% school A and 25% school B. 

·        This would give the final decision some suspense and give the underdogs a few wins.

Sorry, formatting didn't come across very well.

Initial thoughts: 

How strong are these preferences? Right now, players have close/far from home preferences and favorite schools, but these preferences mean almost nothing. It seems like the preferences are getting expanded, but are they actually going to mean something now? 

Additionally, are the preferences on a continuum or just straight prefer/don't prefer? It seems like a relatively normal high-level recruit might have a very mild preference regarding what offense they run but a very strong preference to be in a prestigious conference (and/or at a prestigious school). 

Section 1: Recruit preferences... 
I like the enhanced preferences, but let's be honest... who comes from high school and says "I want to play slow down!!!" or "I want a coach who could be gone in a year and is unstable! That'd be awesome" OR "I hope I am never on national TV in a good conference" 
I think we're trying to overcompensate here with a few of these. 

Section 2: resources...
This is a minority problem... but a HUGE KILLER problem that cannot be ignored for the small group effected by it. 

EARLY ENTRIES. How are you going to deal with this? I would assume all the top players will be gone in the first round of recruiting during the season. If I have one senior and 3 early entries, am I just screwed? Do I have to trade NBA level players for recruits leftover after early signing? ouch! 
A+ level teams will have to reload with leftovers if they can't offer scholarships beyond what they have. Here's where it hurts. 
My Georgia Tech team has had a lot of recent national success. I rarely have a senior on the squad. I regularly have 3-4 early entries. in season SCOUTING is great, but if all the players are recruited before I know how many openings I even have, that's ridiculous and will unfairly punish success. 

Example: My current GT Iba team has 1 SR & 8 players on the projection list. 
According to your proposal, I will get resources for 1 player and need up to six. I will get killed until all the good players are gone then try to sorta play catchup and be forced to rebuild with a bunch of scrubs on an A+ team. 

Here's the possible "solution" I could see: Give the option to "push out" players who might go pro anyway. (have this option somewhere on the scouting/ recruiting page. This option would also be used for players teams want to cut). 
Example: I think 4 will go pro & I know one will be gone... so I "push out" 2 and get resourced for  those two plus my senior: 3 total. If at the end of the year, four go, I will get resourced ONE extra at the last cycle to total my four lost. If at the end of the year, only 2 go pro, I'm out of luck and one of my "on the fence guys" goes anyway (maybe they don't even get drafted like in real life). It hurts me as I would rather have the great player... but I have to gamble on whether or not a few go... it also levels out the competition without completely crippling good teams. This serves as an "equalizer" somewhat hurting good teams but not a "crippler" which would cause some great coaches to get very frustrated. I explain this in more detail on the scouting thread page 9. 

How often are recruiting cycles during the season?

If i understand correctly you will now be able to get players your first season from the 2nd recruiting period?  reasonable comprimise.  you miss out on signings from first period(why i think players should follow if you leave from period 1)

I think having tempo as a preference is too much, i pesonally vary my tempo a lot.

and stewdog just mentioned ee's

One more thing: 

I am a little concerned that this still becomes a bidding war that will be dominated by the team with the most openings. I guess you haven't given us the weightings here, and maybe we'll get a better idea in beta, but is the team with the extra home visits available going to win as consistently as the team with the extra cash available now? If so, it's probably not much of an improvement. Also, given the move to two signing periods, this would really, really hurt teams with EEs, unless the top prospects pretty much all waited until signing period #2 to commit/sign

I really like the idea of releasing players from their LOI commitments. But why would the player get the choice of accepting or rejecting? Because the point of that is if I move to another school and a Sim picked up a terrible player, I should be able to get rid of him no matter what. This would alleviate concerns about switching schools and not being able to start their rebuild until year 2. 

It's like if I'm going to break up with my girlfriend, she can't just say "nah, we're still dating" even if I don't want her hanging around anymore.

Now, I do think the player should get the option to either stay committed to program or reopening their recruitment if the coach that recruited them leaves. But if the new coach doesn't want him, no way should a coach be stuck with them.

Posted by Benis on 9/15/2015 2:59:00 PM (view original):
I really like the idea of releasing players from their LOI commitments. But why would the player get the choice of accepting or rejecting? Because the point of that is if I move to another school and a Sim picked up a terrible player, I should be able to get rid of him no matter what. This would alleviate concerns about switching schools and not being able to start their rebuild until year 2. 

It's like if I'm going to break up with my girlfriend, she can't just say "nah, we're still dating" even if I don't want her hanging around anymore.

Now, I do think the player should get the option to either stay committed to program or reopening their recruitment if the coach that recruited them leaves. But if the new coach doesn't want him, no way should a coach be stuck with them.

I mean your girlfriend could still think you were dating, you just might have to get the police involved when she breaks into your house at 3 am and tries to hook up with you the next day.

Posted by bullman17 on 9/15/2015 2:52:00 PM (view original):
Stupid idea about early entries.  Couldn't their decision be moved up?  I know it's not like reality, but it seems like it would solve some problems.

Are referring to my ideas? 
Sorry they are stupid.

I guess you have the issue a lot as well?
Anyway, Its a VERY real issue for me and a lot of other excellent owners. We need  a solution to a very real issue that will come up with these changes. 
I'm OK with moving the decision up (but know a lot of younger guys move up the board considerably throughout the year and don't really put themselves in a draftable position until the end). I just think it handcuffs good teams and owners SIGNIFICANTLY.

I think also it would be nice to have some sort of "general outline" on how strong each preference is.  Yes while each recruit may vary on individual preferences it would be nice to know a general guideline of what is most effective(kinda like we know the strength of current recruit actions)

I expect preferences to be important, but not so important that they overcome prestige, effort, etc.  They could each be either the same level of importance or we could assign an importance to each preference as well.  I don't want to over-complicate it though.

For early entries, we may be able to push player decisions earlier in the season if that proves to be necessary.  Then resources could be allocated earlier. 

Posted by Benis on 9/15/2015 2:59:00 PM (view original):
I really like the idea of releasing players from their LOI commitments. But why would the player get the choice of accepting or rejecting? Because the point of that is if I move to another school and a Sim picked up a terrible player, I should be able to get rid of him no matter what. This would alleviate concerns about switching schools and not being able to start their rebuild until year 2. 

It's like if I'm going to break up with my girlfriend, she can't just say "nah, we're still dating" even if I don't want her hanging around anymore.

Now, I do think the player should get the option to either stay committed to program or reopening their recruitment if the coach that recruited them leaves. But if the new coach doesn't want him, no way should a coach be stuck with them.

In real life, the school can always back out of a letter of intent, but I'm pretty sure a signed scholarship offer is a binding contract.  So the player has a right to stay for at least a year regardless of whether the new coach wants to cut him.  Normally when the school releases the player it's because the player wanted to leave, not because the new coach didn't want him.

Whether that makes the most sense for the game is TBD.

Also another quick question since scouting trips now have no recruiting value what are the new "values" of a cv/hv now that they are very limited I assume they just went up in value.  How do those compare to "action points"?  By low level replacement I assume you mean letters/calls.  Can you still be able to sign someone with just "action points"  also please can you not call them action points?  Just call them letters/packages or something real.

Posted by seble on 9/15/2015 3:15:00 PM (view original):
I expect preferences to be important, but not so important that they overcome prestige, effort, etc.  They could each be either the same level of importance or we could assign an importance to each preference as well.  I don't want to over-complicate it though.

For early entries, we may be able to push player decisions earlier in the season if that proves to be necessary.  Then resources could be allocated earlier. 

Important but not so important as to overcome a fair bit of effort sounds like the right place for them to be. 

I would say that they should probably vary in importance, with factors like playing time and prestigious conference being bigger factors than tempo and offense/defense. That or just ditch the latter preferences and stick with things like PT/prestige/distance from home/favorite school