I've been reading on the forums that red in a certain category is maxed out. However often times with my teams, they'll gain a point or two during the offseason, despite being in red at the end of the previous season. How are you supposed to know when they are "maxed out"? Can I still get away with putting 0 practice minutes once they turn red? Also, I read there is any way to tell with free throws? Any input is greatly appreciated.

Red can mean up to 3 points of growth remaining. You'll basically need to track color changes for yourself to determine where a player's "real" cap is or whether there is minimal growth remaining.

Free throws will turn red as well now (initially they didn't, which led to all manner of confusion...), but you really don't know if the player is at the max within that letter grade or just near the max. I've been 0'ing out my reds for FT's and haven't had one turn back to yellow in-season yet, but keep in mind we're talking a fairly small sample size across three teams. I'm sure I"m probably sacrificing some fractional percentage point by playing it that way, but better that than wasting practice minutes on something that's reached its hard cap because I can't see the cap in that category.

You can tell the exact maximum potential rating by noting any of change green-blue = 28; blue-black = 21; black-orange = 7; or orange-red = 3...above the rating at that change.

It's very helpful if the rating history shows the same number with 2 different colors, then you know the precise maximum rating. So, 28 blue and 28 black = 49 maximum rating.

Free throws are far less clear, but I think you are
unlikely to get, for example, a red C to ever do better than a C+, but FT just recently became a 5 category potential rating, so only the admin really knows.

Thanks for the info guys. I could be wrong, however I think it's still hard to figure out exactly when they will max out. Mostly because they tend to max out at a decimal number, i.e 74.8, 89.7, 81.1 etc. and there is no way of knowing, because you only can see whole numbers. Other reason being the improvement slows drastically as you reach getting "maxed out" A player just may never get there if his work ethic is too low and you have no way of knowing really. The fortunate part is if you do put the minutes to 0 right when someone reaches red in a category and they aren't maxed out, you might get the off-season improvements to get you there anyway.

You can track a guy that will max at 100 in a rating. I've got David Cue, for instance. In defense, he started at 72 (green). That turns immediately blue. At 79, it turns black. At 93, it turns orange. At 97, it turns red. His BLK rating showed 69 and 69. Max rating was 76...no doubt.

I don't think you are right about players having non-integer maximum potential ratings, but, even if you are right, then you'd still be very confident. The confusion boils down to how the integer ratings between the max and initial ratings are displayed. I got convinced that the ratings were displayed truncated, but I keep getting the sneaking suspicion that rounding is used in some places.

The slow rate of growth near the max potential rating certainly makes it more confusing. I can "know" there's 1 more point, but also know that I cannot get there.

It is my belief that recruits are *always* generated as a whole number (i.e. no decimals values so everything starts at X.000000). Growth caps are also specified as whole numbers (ex. 35.000000). You can observe this easily by seeing no green recruits > 72, blue > 79, black > 93, orange > 97 when they are generated.

The number you see on the ratings page is now shown rounded (where as in HD 2.0 it was being shown truncated). This is on the observation on the large increase in the # of 100 rated players you are now seeing across the production worlds where those were more rare in HD 2.0.

Once you see the transition from one color to the next, you can precisely calculate the exact maximum rating that attribute will achieve (keep in mind that the very last point is very tough to reach during the season).

Growth increases are also shown rounded and are not based on what is visible (which is why sometimes you see increases on the season change but not in the actual ratings and vice versa).

Please bring back the maxed out messages. Most of us don't have time to track this.

Such a simple thing ... bringing back the maxed out messages.
No one would be opposed (except for maybe Spud and I've blocked him).
Has there been a SINGLE small change since the 3.0 update??
I don't think so.
I'm not even sure the "developers" left are savvy enough to make even the simplest of changes.
Sad.

TRrrr...really? There have been several patches. Here's the critical update link.

No one seems to be able to grasp this fact, but the maxed message could be delivered at any time the remaining potential was ~2 or less. I often received the message at 98 for a category that definitely had a max of 100, for example. If you got one at 98 one season, then, if he went to 100 during the off season, you would get another the next season.

The ratings history tab gives you far more information than you had before. More emails need to be stripped out of the game and the big ones highlighted. A warning that recruiting is bout to start, job applications are being accepted, and the like need to be added.

Posted by rogelio on 10/28/2016 6:18:00 AM (view original):
TRrrr...really? There have been several patches. Here's the critical update link.

No one seems to be able to grasp this fact, but the maxed message could be delivered at any time the remaining potential was ~2 or less. I often received the message at 98 for a category that definitely had a max of 100, for example. If you got one at 98 one season, then, if he went to 100 during the off season, you would get another the next season.

The ratings history tab gives you far more information than you had before. More emails need to be stripped out of the game and the big ones highlighted. A warning that recruiting is bout to start, job applications are being accepted, and the like need to be added.

agreed completely.

Posted by rogelio on 10/28/2016 6:18:00 AM (view original):
TRrrr...really? There have been several patches. Here's the critical update link.

No one seems to be able to grasp this fact, but the maxed message could be delivered at any time the remaining potential was ~2 or less. I often received the message at 98 for a category that definitely had a max of 100, for example. If you got one at 98 one season, then, if he went to 100 during the off season, you would get another the next season.

The ratings history tab gives you far more information than you had before. More emails need to be stripped out of the game and the big ones highlighted. A warning that recruiting is bout to start, job applications are being accepted, and the like need to be added.

The "critical" updates are mostly inconsequential cosmetic changes.
The only updates of ANY substance are the change to have more "whenever" recruits sign in the first session (which some people are already bitchin' about)
AND the one the update released TODAY that maxes the AP given to one recruit at 80.
That's it.

And Rogelio and hughes jr- this has been discussed before - it is total FANTASY that players would improve after getting the "maxed out message". I've had many players that have maxed out every category before graduating. I would then stay with around 25 minutes conditioning and distribute the rest of the minutes evenly across the remaining categories (usually around 10) to make sure they remain "maxed out".
NEVER, EVER, have one of these maxed out categories improved a single point.
To repeat .... NEVER happened.

Absolutely it would be a plus to bring back the maxed out messages. And should be easy to do. There is NO downside to doing this.

Posted by phalla on 10/28/2016 2:26:00 PM (view original):

Posted by rogelio on 10/28/2016 6:18:00 AM (view original):
TRrrr...really? There have been several patches. Here's the critical update link.

No one seems to be able to grasp this fact, but the maxed message could be delivered at any time the remaining potential was ~2 or less. I often received the message at 98 for a category that definitely had a max of 100, for example. If you got one at 98 one season, then, if he went to 100 during the off season, you would get another the next season.

The ratings history tab gives you far more information than you had before. More emails need to be stripped out of the game and the big ones highlighted. A warning that recruiting is bout to start, job applications are being accepted, and the like need to be added.

The "critical" updates are mostly inconsequential cosmetic changes.
The only updates of ANY substance are the change to have more "whenever" recruits sign in the first session (which some people are already bitchin' about)
AND the one the update released TODAY that maxes the AP given to one recruit at 80.
That's it.

And Rogelio and hughes jr- this has been discussed before - it is total FANTASY that players would improve after getting the "maxed out message". I've had many players that have maxed out every category before graduating. I would then stay with around 25 minutes conditioning and distribute the rest of the minutes evenly across the remaining categories (usually around 10) to make sure they remain "maxed out".
NEVER, EVER, have one of these maxed out categories improved a single point.
To repeat .... NEVER happened.

Absolutely it would be a plus to bring back the maxed out messages. And should be easy to do. There is NO downside to doing this.

Translated: Whenever I received the "maxed-out" message in any category, I would drop the practice minutes in that category to the point where no further improvement was going to occur. So...there was no further improvement to be had.

Except that just isn't accurate. If you knew that your player could reach 80 and got the msg at 78, then you could have moved more minutes into that category, as other categories maxed out, and tried. [Edit: You're right. We have discussed this before and this is where I explained the same thing to you.]

Here's a quote from that explains that the max potential rating was set when the recruit was generated (I looked for the one I recall stating that the message could be triggered by a variety of factors...still looking for that...):
Quote post by seble on 12/13/2011 9:13:00 PM:
"Even though there is no visible improvement, that doesn't mean there is no improvement. If a player has 7 points of potential, then after one practice maybe they have 6.9, they're still no longer at or above 7, so they're no longer average."

Your translation makes no sense.
My maxed out categories retained 10 minutes practice time, if there was a possibility for improvement, it would have happened sometime.
NEVER has happened.
When you got a maxed out message- the player WAS maxed out.
You need to quit spreading misinformation.
The maxed out message was helpful and there is no downside to getting it back.

Posted by phalla on 10/28/2016 2:55:00 PM (view original):
Your translation makes no sense.
My maxed out categories retained 10 minutes practice time, if there was a possibility for improvement, it would have happened sometime.
NEVER has happened.
When you got a maxed out message- the player WAS maxed out.
You need to quit spreading misinformation.
The maxed out message was helpful and there is no downside to getting it back.

I'm trying to be polite here. You're just wrong.

Does the last point or two in any category necessarily change the overall team outcome? No, but the maxed message was often delivered before the player had achieved their maximum potential rating. Fact. You are implying, and apparently believed, that the maxed message changed something or had some impact on the maximum potential rating itself. No, but it probably referred to the rate of improvement in the category and could be delivered any time the current rating was within ~2 of the potential maximum.

It never meant that no further improvement was possible. Only that improvement was very slow and you might want to redistribute practice minute elsewhere. The receipt of the maxed message did not mean that there was no chance of improving further during that season.

The maxed out was NOT sent before a player was maxed out.
It absolutely meant that no improvement was possible.
Really, you're just making stuff up.
And there is no reason not to return the message to the game for people who don't want to waste time tracking such things exactly.