I'm not ignoring the possible effects of increased or decreased populations of human coaches at all. My point was that we had an artificial and unrealistic time frame for scouting and that undoubtedly had a big effect on players dropping to lower levels. And if players do drop to lower levels, who is to say whether that makes improved teams across the board or whether that makes "super teams?" That remains to be seen, not a conclusion for you to jump blindly at one way or the other. And before you jump to conclusions, also consider the possibility that D1 and D2 sims will scoop up a lot of players that human coaches don't recruit. One season with an unrealistically compressed time frame and coaches learning a completely new system doesn't form a basis for crying "the sky is falling" nor for praising the beta. But it does seem to be a step in the right direction.

I like a whole lot the changes to recruiting, except the recruiting should not be in the period directly before tournaments....I just think it needs to be in season, during the NC period.

IF SEBLE would just PLEASE< PLEASE< PLEASE address the job change problems that us long time customers really want addressed, there is no reason in the world HD will not grow and prosper. The Coaches who are crying now because they are "Elite" and do not want to relearn a new system, will be ELITE again in the New Version.

Address Jobs Change Process PLEASE (I already said that).

D1 and D2 sims then should've picked up these recruits this time whats the excuse for the sims not getting them did the computer not get enough time to scout? yes not all players that go down levels means they are good, but there are players that did and will go down that make teams better than they are.


wvu they won't adjust jobs if by some miracle they do they might make it easier to move up but they will never touch firings.

Posted by CoachSpud on 6/13/2016 10:49:00 AM (view original):
I'm not ignoring the possible effects of increased or decreased populations of human coaches at all. My point was that we had an artificial and unrealistic time frame for scouting and that undoubtedly had a big effect on players dropping to lower levels. And if players do drop to lower levels, who is to say whether that makes improved teams across the board or whether that makes "super teams?" That remains to be seen, not a conclusion for you to jump blindly at one way or the other. And before you jump to conclusions, also consider the possibility that D1 and D2 sims will scoop up a lot of players that human coaches don't recruit. One season with an unrealistically compressed time frame and coaches learning a completely new system doesn't form a basis for crying "the sky is falling" nor for praising the beta. But it does seem to be a step in the right direction.

How can you possibly think that players similar to the one dropping won't make D3 teams better? It's safe to say at this point that the populations in each world will decrease, even if only slightly, and that's just by seeing what coaches have posted on the forums. With less human coaches, examples like this will become more common, this I can guarantee.

What is happening now is EXACTLY what happened with the "potential" roll out. It was supposed to be beta tested, then beta tested some more, and then beta tested even more than that. What REALLY happened is what's happening now with this update. It was supposed to be tested, tested, and then tested some more. Instead, it's being fast forwarded out the door, with OBVIOUS errors, because someone would apparently rather meet a deadline with half assed work then be a little late and have it done correctly. This is standard WIS protocol and it sucks because all of us end up paying for a flawed product while they scramble to fix it behind the scenes.

It's very obvious from all of your posts that you're an optimist and good on ya for that. I'm not. I'm a pessimist. I expect the worst and hope for the best, that way I'm not disappointed when something inevitably fails. Call it......getting boned too many times by the government or whatever people in charge you want to use as an example. Fact of the matter is, with everything I've read and seen so far, this IS a sky is falling scenario. One, because this update is so very obviously NOT ready to be rolled out yet we're getting it anyway and soon apparently. Two, if as many coaches do leave or drop teams as it appears, then there won't be a game left, unless you like playing in 10 Sim conferences every season. As I said on a different post in a different thread, between two ID's I run 16 teams (well, already down to 15). I will slowly drop teams as each season ends until I have probably 3/4/5 teams left. So best case scenario, 11 teams become Sim coached, worst case 13 and that's just from one user.

Make no mistake, without some major marketing push and just keeping the status quo, there WILL be a decrease in coaches and most likely a significant one. I've been playing non-stop for over a decade now and I simply cannot go through another debacle like the roll out for potential but as someone who has seen it before, seen the effects, fair warning. The game is about to take a huge hit, one it may not be able to recover from this time. The sky IS falling my friend. The only question is, will it hit the ground or not? My guess? BOOM!!!

Posted by emy1013 on 6/12/2016 6:02:00 PM (view original):

Posted by kcsundevil on 6/12/2016 2:27:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Trentonjoe on 6/11/2016 11:02:00 PM (view original):
Any player not recruited by anyone will hopefully go juco. Also, wis creates juco players.

"Well, gee whiz, I'm the #17 rated PF in the country, and I was hoping to go to a D1 school, but I wasn't recruited. I could play JUCO and have a chance at catching on somewhere that makes logical sense given my abilities next season, like all the similarly situated kids before me did.

"But you know what, TinyTown College in Bumblefart Iowa is offering me a chance to forever give up on my dreams of playing at a higher level, and no human coach is preventing it, so I guess I'll do that."

This is the narrative WIS apparently wants us to embrace. I think this is stupid, and it was programmed out of the original game for a reason. But I guess we're going to be embracing it now.

That said, I realize nobody else sees this my way, and I know that means I'm the crazy one, so I'm gonna drop it.

More than just you see it the same way KC. How everyone doesn't see this as a major problem is beyond me?

you know, i have basically come out as this being not a big deal, but i do agree with you guys that its stupid. i don't at all disagree that the narrative above makes no sense. however, the ranking system is such a POS, that scenario would never happen if that wasn't the case, so we are talking about fixing what is essentially a window dressing problem. i do think there should be limits of how far players can drop, but, i am worried its a deep structural change, and also, that with actual d1 caliber players, this will not happen (after an initial window where people are clueless and smart d2/d3 coaches take advantage of that). meanwhile, there are some major issues on the table, the sniping replacing poaching, the EE issue, the random signing complaints, the time consuming nature of recruiting as a whole... i just want to see time spent fixing that stuff, which IMO is critical, and which will not "go away on its own", like this other issue (mostly) will.

so... i agree its a problem. i don't agree its a major problem, and i think there is more critical stuff seble needs to be fixing. simply fixing the stupid ranking system would probably be an easy hack that would get this 80% of the way there, but i suspect that would not pacify folks upset about this issue, and its just window dressing anyway. so to me, yeah, put it on the list - just not at the top!

Posted by dcy0827 on 6/13/2016 11:56:00 AM (view original):

Posted by CoachSpud on 6/13/2016 10:49:00 AM (view original):
I'm not ignoring the possible effects of increased or decreased populations of human coaches at all. My point was that we had an artificial and unrealistic time frame for scouting and that undoubtedly had a big effect on players dropping to lower levels. And if players do drop to lower levels, who is to say whether that makes improved teams across the board or whether that makes "super teams?" That remains to be seen, not a conclusion for you to jump blindly at one way or the other. And before you jump to conclusions, also consider the possibility that D1 and D2 sims will scoop up a lot of players that human coaches don't recruit. One season with an unrealistically compressed time frame and coaches learning a completely new system doesn't form a basis for crying "the sky is falling" nor for praising the beta. But it does seem to be a step in the right direction.

How can you possibly think that players similar to the one dropping won't make D3 teams better? It's safe to say at this point that the populations in each world will decrease, even if only slightly, and that's just by seeing what coaches have posted on the forums. With less human coaches, examples like this will become more common, this I can guarantee.

What is happening now is EXACTLY what happened with the "potential" roll out. It was supposed to be beta tested, then beta tested some more, and then beta tested even more than that. What REALLY happened is what's happening now with this update. It was supposed to be tested, tested, and then tested some more. Instead, it's being fast forwarded out the door, with OBVIOUS errors, because someone would apparently rather meet a deadline with half assed work then be a little late and have it done correctly. This is standard WIS protocol and it sucks because all of us end up paying for a flawed product while they scramble to fix it behind the scenes.

It's very obvious from all of your posts that you're an optimist and good on ya for that. I'm not. I'm a pessimist. I expect the worst and hope for the best, that way I'm not disappointed when something inevitably fails. Call it......getting boned too many times by the government or whatever people in charge you want to use as an example. Fact of the matter is, with everything I've read and seen so far, this IS a sky is falling scenario. One, because this update is so very obviously NOT ready to be rolled out yet we're getting it anyway and soon apparently. Two, if as many coaches do leave or drop teams as it appears, then there won't be a game left, unless you like playing in 10 Sim conferences every season. As I said on a different post in a different thread, between two ID's I run 16 teams (well, already down to 15). I will slowly drop teams as each season ends until I have probably 3/4/5 teams left. So best case scenario, 11 teams become Sim coached, worst case 13 and that's just from one user.

Make no mistake, without some major marketing push and just keeping the status quo, there WILL be a decrease in coaches and most likely a significant one. I've been playing non-stop for over a decade now and I simply cannot go through another debacle like the roll out for potential but as someone who has seen it before, seen the effects, fair warning. The game is about to take a huge hit, one it may not be able to recover from this time. The sky IS falling my friend. The only question is, will it hit the ground or not? My guess? BOOM!!!

potential was not beta tested at all, was it? i thought that was only internally tested by WIS. maybe i just wasn't part of it, but i can't remember a single comment about a beta test for it, which seems weird. the beta test that was a worthless POS was the beta test for the engine rewrite.

Posted by therewas47 on 6/12/2016 5:46:00 PM (view original):

Posted by rednu on 6/12/2016 12:20:00 AM (view original):
I actually think quite the opposite will happen and this will become MORE common if something isn't done. The beta world has 70 percent human ownership in D1, which I think eclipses the highest percentage of humans in any "real" HD world. So there are more thinking minds who are able to look for talent.

Yes, the number of D2 coaches is low, but overall I think the D1 + D2 count of humans is pretty close to what we see now in all worlds (and someone can correct me if that assumption is wrong...). As more people at lower divisions become aware, they will start looking for chances like this (because I'm guessing a large number of folks didn't think to reach THAT high for talent from lower levels...). These aren't the sorts of players that lower D1 programs are going to actively swing at. If they're going to battle, it'll be for the prize recruit, not someone who will be a career bench player. Lower divisions will get their pick of guys who used to find their way onto Sim D1 rosters because there was a floor below which the player wouldn't sign. That will also be amplified by sable's encouragement to "have lots of backup options" -- now D1 schools are being asked to spread their resources thinner in case they lose a recruit that they're in the lead on due to the random nature of signings. D2 and D3 schools are free to roll the dice and load up ,knowing there will be an abundance of players they can "fall back" on and get at minimal expenditure if they swing big and miss. I signed 6 players for barely 10% of my recruiting budget. Most of that expenditure went toward one particular JUCO player who fit a key need area for my team and I was insulating myself from being sniped. One of my signings was for just a scholarship, another for 10 AP and a 'ship. If I can get talent for that cheap, why wouldn't I load up and swing for the fences for a program-transforming player?

Spot on. Largely though I think it goes ignored. We pretty much have two sides. Unreasonable positivity and unreasonable negativity. The unreasonably positive categorize any legitimate criticism as part of the group of unreasonably negative (who oppose all change) and denounce the criticism with weak arguments that other unreasonably positive come through and +1 into the ground. The only way to get a criticism to be recognized by that group is to have it effect their teams. So pretty much in this beta we only correct things that are right in front of the coaches face but ignore issues that will exist 6 months to a year from now.

Agreed.

Posted by zorzii on 6/12/2016 2:41:00 PM (view original):

Posted by kcsundevil on 6/12/2016 2:27:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Trentonjoe on 6/11/2016 11:02:00 PM (view original):
Any player not recruited by anyone will hopefully go juco. Also, wis creates juco players.

"Well, gee whiz, I'm the #17 rated PF in the country, and I was hoping to go to a D1 school, but I wasn't recruited. I could play JUCO and have a chance at catching on somewhere that makes logical sense given my abilities next season, like all the similarly situated kids before me did.

"But you know what, TinyTown College in Bumblefart Iowa is offering me a chance to forever give up on my dreams of playing at a higher level, and no human coach is preventing it, so I guess I'll do that."

This is the narrative WIS apparently wants us to embrace. I think this is stupid, and it was programmed out of the original game for a reason. But I guess we're going to be embracing it now.

That said, I realize nobody else sees this my way, and I know that means I'm the crazy one, so I'm gonna drop it.

I totally agree with you.

No way a top 100 nor a top 300 player in the country goes to a D3 team. He would not even go to a top D2 team...

So be logical...

the flip side is, only by an insanely broken, outdated bit of window dressing, is that guy a top 100 or top 300 player in the country. in reality, hes not even close. i don't think its fair to characterize these players based on that POS window dressing ranking code, but rather, to categorize based on reality. a non-d1 caliber player dropped out of d1, and some horribly broken window dressing called him the #17 PF, when in reality hes not a top 100 PF. that is what happened.

Posted by gillispie1 on 6/13/2016 11:59:00 AM (view original):

Posted by dcy0827 on 6/13/2016 11:56:00 AM (view original):

Posted by CoachSpud on 6/13/2016 10:49:00 AM (view original):
I'm not ignoring the possible effects of increased or decreased populations of human coaches at all. My point was that we had an artificial and unrealistic time frame for scouting and that undoubtedly had a big effect on players dropping to lower levels. And if players do drop to lower levels, who is to say whether that makes improved teams across the board or whether that makes "super teams?" That remains to be seen, not a conclusion for you to jump blindly at one way or the other. And before you jump to conclusions, also consider the possibility that D1 and D2 sims will scoop up a lot of players that human coaches don't recruit. One season with an unrealistically compressed time frame and coaches learning a completely new system doesn't form a basis for crying "the sky is falling" nor for praising the beta. But it does seem to be a step in the right direction.

How can you possibly think that players similar to the one dropping won't make D3 teams better? It's safe to say at this point that the populations in each world will decrease, even if only slightly, and that's just by seeing what coaches have posted on the forums. With less human coaches, examples like this will become more common, this I can guarantee.

What is happening now is EXACTLY what happened with the "potential" roll out. It was supposed to be beta tested, then beta tested some more, and then beta tested even more than that. What REALLY happened is what's happening now with this update. It was supposed to be tested, tested, and then tested some more. Instead, it's being fast forwarded out the door, with OBVIOUS errors, because someone would apparently rather meet a deadline with half assed work then be a little late and have it done correctly. This is standard WIS protocol and it sucks because all of us end up paying for a flawed product while they scramble to fix it behind the scenes.

It's very obvious from all of your posts that you're an optimist and good on ya for that. I'm not. I'm a pessimist. I expect the worst and hope for the best, that way I'm not disappointed when something inevitably fails. Call it......getting boned too many times by the government or whatever people in charge you want to use as an example. Fact of the matter is, with everything I've read and seen so far, this IS a sky is falling scenario. One, because this update is so very obviously NOT ready to be rolled out yet we're getting it anyway and soon apparently. Two, if as many coaches do leave or drop teams as it appears, then there won't be a game left, unless you like playing in 10 Sim conferences every season. As I said on a different post in a different thread, between two ID's I run 16 teams (well, already down to 15). I will slowly drop teams as each season ends until I have probably 3/4/5 teams left. So best case scenario, 11 teams become Sim coached, worst case 13 and that's just from one user.

Make no mistake, without some major marketing push and just keeping the status quo, there WILL be a decrease in coaches and most likely a significant one. I've been playing non-stop for over a decade now and I simply cannot go through another debacle like the roll out for potential but as someone who has seen it before, seen the effects, fair warning. The game is about to take a huge hit, one it may not be able to recover from this time. The sky IS falling my friend. The only question is, will it hit the ground or not? My guess? BOOM!!!

potential was not beta tested at all, was it? i thought that was only internally tested by WIS. maybe i just wasn't part of it, but i can't remember a single comment about a beta test for it, which seems weird. the beta test that was a worthless POS was the beta test for the engine rewrite.

You mean when players gained +100 pts a season and maxed out midway thru the SO year and tarek didn't think that was a problem?
Yeah, HD does not have a good track record with rolling out new updates,

problem with all updates, it at the end of the day it is largely about one man's vision for the future game. I think all big rollouts will have fallout, i.e. lost coaches. I don't have a good feel for how much is normal. I asked on all my cc boards what the mood was, and by and large, there is a non zero number of coaches who will leave, and a substantial number on the fence.

I posted this on the main forum, I hesitated when I hit the first recruit window in the beta, and pondered, do I really want to go thru this? About 5-10 hrs later, I can navigate thru the beta game with ease, and I must admit, I think opportunity exists for top coaches to do much, much better in this new game, i.e. the rich always get richer, and usually these socialized changes only make it easier for the quick and nimble minded to get further ahead.

If I had to guess, and I've never asked anyone else if I'm faster than the rest at recruiting or not, but I probably spend 15-30 minutes in the current game on recruiting, and another 15-30 minutes total a day reading box scores and gameplanning for my 11 teams. If I had to guess, recruiting now will take me 2-5 hours, and I could see the top coaches even taking up to 10 hours. If you want to spend time, there is time to be spent. I haven't decided to give up any of my teams, but I sure might. Plus, you still have to show up for the first cycle, the first cycle is still 2 hrs long, and you maybe more than ever, need to follow your teams every 3 hrs, as if anything, the competition for each recruit is fierce. Again, those who work hard, should have a huge advantage.

Again, those who work hard, should have a huge advantage.

Or those that dont work hard (at real jobs)

I admit I am in this not working hard crowd, but even I dont want to schedule my life around a game I play for fun

Here is my question about SIMS and the Beta world that I haven't seen answered by Seble or anyone else (if I missed it, my apologies).

In the current worlds, SIMs put all of their effort into the first cycle and never deviate. In the Beta world, do SIMs adjust their recruiting and pick their battles. Lets say I am battling a SIM for PG Johnny B. Goode. On all of his important preferences (lets say location, conference strength and playing time), I am clearly a better fit. After two cycles, he has high interest in me and low interest in the SIM. At that point, does the SIM regroup and put the attention points that it been putting on Goode toward PG Elmer Fudd? How many cycles in does the SIM regroup?

If D1 and D2 SIMs regrouped quickly to avoid unwinnable battles and find good second options, I think the number of D1 recruits who fall through the cracks to D3 would greatly decrease. If the SIMs recruit in Beta like they do in the current worlds, they are going to get slaughtered even worse than they currently do.

these reports of time consumption are very consistent with what I do now - and what i was guessing would be involved based on the description of the new game. Thats exactly why I will for sure cut way down on teams.

Apart from the time demands, I find it frustrating that huge effort has gone into this project - rather than modest effort on four or five steps that I think could have been implemented discretely and improved the game. I believe this effort will fail. A big change that doesnt fix what ails the game and requires a months' long halt to the game. That leads me to consider seriously dropping all teams.

With a fraction of the effort and a fraction of the disruption of the product

1. ramp up firings, but give every fired coach a free season usable ONLY in that world.

2. tinker with recruit generation to produce more very good recruits - enough so that mid majors would get some with effort

3. change the first cycle so moves could be pre-loaded during say the prior 12 hours.

4. major marketing using fox internet and tv presence

#3 is just for customer convenience (what an idea!)

I bet that modest steps in direction of #1 and #2 could have improved the game.

marketing would also have improved the game by adjusting the competitive dynamic

I doubt that I have five or ten hours for each of five teams recruiting/scouting

instead of having prestige calculated 50-50 baseline and current switch it to either 70-30 or 60-40 current-baseline

lower job requirements but do not make them incredibly easy(firings will not be addressed unfortunately I realistically can never see that happening unless there is a huge spike in player base)

I thought the problem was there was already too many good recruits teams are already 90+ ath/def shouldn't we lower the number of good recruits and increase the above average recruits so that its more important to get those really good top 10 guys and make it almost necessary to try and battle for them? Teams are already so unrealistic and adding even more unheard of generational talent to have them be picked up by even lower teams is even worse.

for #3 just make coaches able to pre-load recruiting actions whenever the world cycles over, so you can preload actions right away when the world cycles or when you join.

I think action points and preferences are cool, however some of the preferences are terrible and they missed an easy one(team GPA)

Posted by oldresorter on 6/13/2016 12:20:00 PM (view original):
problem with all updates, it at the end of the day it is largely about one man's vision for the future game. I think all big rollouts will have fallout, i.e. lost coaches. I don't have a good feel for how much is normal. I asked on all my cc boards what the mood was, and by and large, there is a non zero number of coaches who will leave, and a substantial number on the fence.

I posted this on the main forum, I hesitated when I hit the first recruit window in the beta, and pondered, do I really want to go thru this? About 5-10 hrs later, I can navigate thru the beta game with ease, and I must admit, I think opportunity exists for top coaches to do much, much better in this new game, i.e. the rich always get richer, and usually these socialized changes only make it easier for the quick and nimble minded to get further ahead.

If I had to guess, and I've never asked anyone else if I'm faster than the rest at recruiting or not, but I probably spend 15-30 minutes in the current game on recruiting, and another 15-30 minutes total a day reading box scores and gameplanning for my 11 teams. If I had to guess, recruiting now will take me 2-5 hours, and I could see the top coaches even taking up to 10 hours. If you want to spend time, there is time to be spent. I haven't decided to give up any of my teams, but I sure might. Plus, you still have to show up for the first cycle, the first cycle is still 2 hrs long, and you maybe more than ever, need to follow your teams every 3 hrs, as if anything, the competition for each recruit is fierce. Again, those who work hard, should have a huge advantage.

i agree, the current version of recruiting takes much longer (although i'm sure that will go down as we get used to it), and also, you still have to check in every 3 hours (or every 5 minutes around critical times in the current version, but i suspect/hope that will change). the overall attempt at not forcing coaches to be as attentive has definitely failed, IMO. recruiting is also much longer, scouting more intensive, so it just really adds up.

i suspect your 15-30m in the current game is much less than the average, same on the game planning side, for those who game plan. i can see game planning 15-30m a day for 11 teams, because i simply do not game plan unless its the NT and even then, i have to care enough about the team/season. but that 15-30m for d1 recruiting is pretty impressive. i have had to cram it in and it is workable, not ideal - but you are also not competing for top recruits with the same intensity of others - you take the stance, if i may be so bold, that you can do plenty well enough with half "good" players, as in reality, the difference between good and great players is not so great, especially if a team is well crafted. that is all well and good (i mostly agree), and i've gotten solid classes on really rushed timelines, but its very hard for me to see that as sufficient to reach the best outcome i am capable of, on a consistent basis. basically, i think it is rather hard to shoot for a team full of 5 stars every year, on that 15-30m budget.

for comparisons sake, i feel rushed if i don't do anything before the 6:00 starting gun goes off, the two hours is ample but i hate having to force myself through it, and often end up missing details i'd rather not miss. with 1-3 openings, its a different story, then i might spend 20m scouting and come back 10m before 8 to make a decision. but big classes, if i really care, it can get pretty involved. i'll take the time to compute distances for every major local team to every major local recruit, things like that, which are pretty grind-y and time consuming. i'll also check the country for over served regions if everything i want isn't available locally - which is typically the case - and try to find any good players i might be able to snag at distance without trouble. in absolutely critical seasons on my main team, in recent times, i've spent a half dozen hours just prepping for cycle 1. i guess its pretty rare for me to go past 3-4 hours in preparation (plus an hour or so across the rest of recruiting, maybe more if **** hits the fan), but a while back i probably hit 12 hours in a single season i deemed vital to a particular outcome i wanted to achieve - just in cycle 1 prep.

so, i think its your style that makes you feel the paradigm today is not similar - i think for most folks, you can spend more time for better outcomes - but i do agree, its going to get more time consuming, and more beneficial to those who put in those long, long hours scouting, than it is today. that return will probably double or triple. i think the change is most pronounced for smaller classes, it seems like it will be much harder to fluff through them as is often the case today.

the overall increased workload really does concern me...