Here's a example battle from Beta that I included in the recruiting guide.

	Team A	Team B
Prestige	A-	A-
Attention Points	980	996
Home Visits	20	20
Campus Visits	1	1
Promised Minutes	15	15
Promised Start	1	1
Scholarship Offer	1	1

	Team A	Team B
Playing Time	Neutral	Neutral
Distance	Good	Good
Success	Very Good	Very Good
Play Style	Neutral	Good
Offense	Neutral	Neutral
Defense	Very Good	Very Good
Conference Strength	Neutral	Neutral
Coach Longevity	Neutral	Neutral

Seble told us that Team B had a 55% chance to sign the recruit. This battle is much closer than the OP example due to the huge AP difference so I'd speculate that Vandy had at least a 60% chance to sign the recruit. But again... we're just guessing and will never really know.

Posted by johnsensing on 9/30/2016 11:26:00 AM (view original):
A follow-up on my original post -- we were both very high on the recruit. And to be clear, I do not (necessarily) object to the idea of 416 APs outweighing the prestige and preference advantage. I just want to know -- or at least, have a better sense -- of whether that's the case. I think jpmills comment above is exactly correct -- there's really no strategy anymore; it's just a crapshoot because there are too many variables and unknowns.

See, here's where we differ. With a cap on HV at 20 and dramatically limited recruiting budgets, then the fact that AP does not seem to be meaningfully scaled by Prestige (let alone Division or Conference Prestige) makes this game unplayable.

To be sure, just using this 1 example, I am O.K. with UNC & Missouri boiling down to a coinflip. I think preferences could legitimately do that and still wind up with a very fun and playable game. However, the inability to pivot onto backup options, because some lower tier D1 or D2 team has poored a massive amount of AP into all of your target backup options, for example, makes that loss crippling.

Posted by piman314 on 9/30/2016 11:35:00 AM (view original):
If prestige hasn't changed should the attention points been a wash. In 2.0, at DI each 1/3 of a letter grade in prestige was thought to be about a 15 - 20% multiplier (I believe) depending on where in the range of the 1/3 of the grade each team was. So John should have had about a 50% advantage depending where on the A+ and B+ range both teams were. That would make the attention points a wash. I assume that the HVs and CV of the A+ school have more value than the B+ giving John and advantage, then the +1 in preferences should have given him a bigger advantage. If that thought logic is correct (and I'm certainly not sure it is) then John had the advantage and just got a bad result.

I really wish after the battle you could click on the considering tab and see the actual percentage chance that each team had to win. They keep who was high and who was very high listed anyway, just put a percentage next to the team. I personally could live with "I was a 90% favorite to win the recruit and got a bad result but at least I know I did what I needed to do to usually win" much more than "I lost, but I really have no idea if I was ahead, behind, or how close it was".

We suggested that but Seble preferred his black box.

He was always afraid the users would "learn" from the experiences if we had too much information. God forbid we actually gain knowledge in this game.
One of the reasons I am so glad he is gone. Although WIS keeping information in their little black box is probably a company fault.

FYI - for whatever it's worth, Illinois was also High to me and John's Very High.

prestige isnt as undervalued as you may think. For example, I way overestimated what a C prestige big conference team can do and small schools with B- or higher are hard to catch even if you throw the kitchen sink at them.

The quote above is not mine but from a long time user of this game posted on their CC message board two days ago so I guess it's all a matter of opinion and I don't think it's fair to say that APs are overvalued vis a vis prestige or any other recruiting action because opinions on that vary from user to user and honestly none of us know, we're all speculating.

What I get as the primary takeaway from the comments above is that the game isn't fun for some people unless they can reduce it to a formula that allows them to easily assess whether they will win or lose a battle.

There was just such a conversation on the message boards the other day with kcsundevil and Benis in which kc said how fascinated he was that the game that was meant to be developed (one which eliminated the idea that it would be reduced to just a math formula to be "figured out") had become one that was now nothing more than a math formula to be figured out.

Yet on this board we have people arguing the complete opposite, that because of the uncertainty in all of the variables and the RNG, it can't be so easily "figured out" any longer. Say what you will, but we all know going into recruiting what our prestige levels are, we all know that taking certain recruiting actions increases our recruiting efforts and the idea is to be listed at VH with a recruit to have the best odds.

There is still plenty of strategy in this game but there is now far more risk as well because WIS implemented a level of uncertainty that can't be gamed or calculated.

The game was designed to increase battles, for that to be effective their needs to be incentive for teams to battle. To provide that incentive the trailing team needs a reasonable chance to win and there has to be enough uncertainty that teams cannot easily assess when they will win or lose a battle. If those elements don't exist then people playing the game will just return to conceding players to the guy who has the favorable math formula and WIS will be right back to having the issues that they were trying to eradicate.

Possum's post is very thoughtful, but I'll say this one more time -

if the goal is new user gain and retention then wis is essentially banking on coaches ability to restrain themselves from going all in after the top recruits they in theory have the capacity to get but in reality will lose more often than they win, with the result being lots of empty scholarships or awful last-second backup options.

The old game literally required you to build a dynasty slowly and work your way up. The promise of "everyone has a chance" is a double-edged sword I don't think people are going to have the patience or willingness to continue paying for.

I'm not sure the weight of APs are exactly right for optimal gameplay, but I do think that it's reasonable to assume a significant AP advantage within the same division is going to affect the decision. It signifies the recruit was a higher priority, and maybe earlier, and that should have some weight. My bigger concern is where it plays out between divisions, or between teams with significantly (more than a grade or 2) varying prestige. I think some of that could be mitigated by putting promises behind the "red light", where you have to be at high consideration for those promises to matter.

Good point possum. Ultimately I don't want everything to be a known factor and math problem. There should be some unknown. There's definitely WAY more unknown than we're used to, which some people don't like, but I think there's also a much different random component in conjunction with the total rewrite of recruiting.

Paying for FSS was silly really, knowing just with one click what every kid in the state could be was probably too much knowledge for too cheap. But the new system is very far in the other direction.

Also good point pkoopman on division vs division. That still is the biggest net negative to me, the fact that everyone's in a pool together. New people absolutely will waste money on guys they'll never sign because they don't know. And I'm sure that will push some away. But there will be walkthroughs and guides? So what. Why should the #17 PF be visible to D3 east backwater U?

Two D1 teams ... one grade apart in prestige ... "We both maxed out CV/HVs -- I spent 784 APs, vandydave spent 1200" so a 53% advantage to vandydave. You didn't say who was putting effort in earlier (it matters). From this, where is the problem that vandydave got the recruit? Was a one grade difference in prestige that significant in HD2.0 that you would expect it to overcome such a recruiting advantage to the other team?

+1 to possumfiend's post.

Posted by CoachSpud on 9/30/2016 12:23:00 PM (view original):
Two D1 teams ... one grade apart in prestige ... "We both maxed out CV/HVs -- I spent 784 APs, vandydave spent 1200" so a 53% advantage to vandydave. You didn't say who was putting effort in earlier (it matters). From this, where is the problem that vandydave got the recruit? Was a one grade difference in prestige that significant in HD2.0 that you would expect it to overcome such a recruiting advantage to the other team?

+1 to possumfiend's post.

The issue is that attention points on appearance are a glorified simplistic version of 2.0 phone calls. And now they are the single biggest factor in signing a recruit as compared to other factors which most coaches would agree should be much more significant. Factors other than the coin flip of course.

Posted by guyo26 on 9/30/2016 12:18:00 PM (view original):
Good point possum. Ultimately I don't want everything to be a known factor and math problem. There should be some unknown. There's definitely WAY more unknown than we're used to, which some people don't like, but I think there's also a much different random component in conjunction with the total rewrite of recruiting.

Paying for FSS was silly really, knowing just with one click what every kid in the state could be was probably too much knowledge for too cheap. But the new system is very far in the other direction.

Also good point pkoopman on division vs division. That still is the biggest net negative to me, the fact that everyone's in a pool together. New people absolutely will waste money on guys they'll never sign because they don't know. And I'm sure that will push some away. But there will be walkthroughs and guides? So what. Why should the #17 PF be visible to D3 east backwater U?

Wish they would have just capped D3.

Posted by vandydave on 9/30/2016 12:31:00 PM (view original):

Posted by CoachSpud on 9/30/2016 12:23:00 PM (view original):
Two D1 teams ... one grade apart in prestige ... "We both maxed out CV/HVs -- I spent 784 APs, vandydave spent 1200" so a 53% advantage to vandydave. You didn't say who was putting effort in earlier (it matters). From this, where is the problem that vandydave got the recruit? Was a one grade difference in prestige that significant in HD2.0 that you would expect it to overcome such a recruiting advantage to the other team?

+1 to possumfiend's post.

The issue is that attention points on appearance are a glorified simplistic version of 2.0 phone calls. And now they are the single biggest factor in signing a recruit as compared to other factors which most coaches would agree should be much more significant. Factors other than the coin flip of course.

This is 2.0 thinking, though. In reality, attention points are very significant. Because everyone will have the ability to (and we should assume they will) max out on visits for elite recruits, it makes sense that (along with preferences) probabilities in these battles are going to be predominantly impacted by attention points; they are the prime way of establishing how high of a priority this recruit is for you.

Posted by pkoopman on 9/30/2016 12:37:00 PM (view original):

Posted by vandydave on 9/30/2016 12:31:00 PM (view original):

Posted by CoachSpud on 9/30/2016 12:23:00 PM (view original):
Two D1 teams ... one grade apart in prestige ... "We both maxed out CV/HVs -- I spent 784 APs, vandydave spent 1200" so a 53% advantage to vandydave. You didn't say who was putting effort in earlier (it matters). From this, where is the problem that vandydave got the recruit? Was a one grade difference in prestige that significant in HD2.0 that you would expect it to overcome such a recruiting advantage to the other team?

+1 to possumfiend's post.

The issue is that attention points on appearance are a glorified simplistic version of 2.0 phone calls. And now they are the single biggest factor in signing a recruit as compared to other factors which most coaches would agree should be much more significant. Factors other than the coin flip of course.

This is 2.0 thinking, though. In reality, attention points are very significant. Because everyone will have the ability to (and we should assume they will) max out on visits for elite recruits, it makes sense that (along with preferences) probabilities in these battles are going to be predominantly impacted by attention points; they are the prime way of establishing how high of a priority this recruit is for you.

until they cap AP's ...

Really the only variables are AP and preferences (I suppose prestige as well). To me that's a huge difference in AP's, but I don't know if that moves him to 50% or it's still 30% and the RNG worked for him

Posted by pkoopman on 9/30/2016 12:37:00 PM (view original):

Posted by vandydave on 9/30/2016 12:31:00 PM (view original):

Posted by CoachSpud on 9/30/2016 12:23:00 PM (view original):
Two D1 teams ... one grade apart in prestige ... "We both maxed out CV/HVs -- I spent 784 APs, vandydave spent 1200" so a 53% advantage to vandydave. You didn't say who was putting effort in earlier (it matters). From this, where is the problem that vandydave got the recruit? Was a one grade difference in prestige that significant in HD2.0 that you would expect it to overcome such a recruiting advantage to the other team?

+1 to possumfiend's post.

The issue is that attention points on appearance are a glorified simplistic version of 2.0 phone calls. And now they are the single biggest factor in signing a recruit as compared to other factors which most coaches would agree should be much more significant. Factors other than the coin flip of course.

This is 2.0 thinking, though. In reality, attention points are very significant. Because everyone will have the ability to (and we should assume they will) max out on visits for elite recruits, it makes sense that (along with preferences) probabilities in these battles are going to be predominantly impacted by attention points; they are the prime way of establishing how high of a priority this recruit is for you.

But why? What are attention points - what do they equate to in real life? A home visit, a campus visit, a phone call, those have real life counterparts - as much as 3.0 isn't supposed to be a "math formula" anymore, attention points are being revealed to be simply a math formula that don't seem to be reducing poaching which was likely part of their design.

This is all just a cluster, wasn't thought through and wasn't properly tested.

Posted by possumfiend on 9/30/2016 12:08:00 PM (view original):

prestige isnt as undervalued as you may think. For example, I way overestimated what a C prestige big conference team can do and small schools with B- or higher are hard to catch even if you throw the kitchen sink at them.

The quote above is not mine but from a long time user of this game posted on their CC message board two days ago so I guess it's all a matter of opinion and I don't think it's fair to say that APs are overvalued vis a vis prestige or any other recruiting action because opinions on that vary from user to user and honestly none of us know, we're all speculating.

What I get as the primary takeaway from the comments above is that the game isn't fun for some people unless they can reduce it to a formula that allows them to easily assess whether they will win or lose a battle.

There was just such a conversation on the message boards the other day with kcsundevil and Benis in which kc said how fascinated he was that the game that was meant to be developed (one which eliminated the idea that it would be reduced to just a math formula to be "figured out") had become one that was now nothing more than a math formula to be figured out.

Yet on this board we have people arguing the complete opposite, that because of the uncertainty in all of the variables and the RNG, it can't be so easily "figured out" any longer. Say what you will, but we all know going into recruiting what our prestige levels are, we all know that taking certain recruiting actions increases our recruiting efforts and the idea is to be listed at VH with a recruit to have the best odds.

There is still plenty of strategy in this game but there is now far more risk as well because WIS implemented a level of uncertainty that can't be gamed or calculated.

The game was designed to increase battles, for that to be effective their needs to be incentive for teams to battle. To provide that incentive the trailing team needs a reasonable chance to win and they're has to be enough uncertainty that teams cannot easily assess when they will win or lose a battle. If those elements don't exist then people playing the game will just return to conceding players to the guy who has the favorable math formula and WIS will be right back to having the issues that they were trying to eradicate.

Good memory possum. Of course, as I also said in the thread you're referring to, probabilities are fractions. Probabilities are part of any decent math curriculum.

Comparison: Poker is largely about probabilities too, but the overall parameters and rules of the game are clear. OTOH, HD 3.0 has a good amount of non-probability math ("Sweet, I'm exactly 42% of the way to unlocking X") tied to foundational Rules of the Game that shift for each recruit. 3.0 offers an illusion of precision and rationality on the front end of the process that is often undercut on decision day.