Posted by magicdreamer on 11/25/2016 2:57:00 AM (view original):
Before, late in recruiting; you could look at anyone not signed in your projected Division, pick out a couple of attributes you need for the position, find high enough ratings and it didn't matter about potential because they would be passable with the starting rating. Now you can't do that and that why you don't think Level 1 ratings are useful even though they are. If you need to still sign players late and have used up your entire scouting budget, you are correct, you can't make an informed choice. Level 1 information at the beginning of recruiting - useful tool on who to look at closer, Level 1 information with very little or no scouting money left and you still need to sign players - not so much. The game will no longer save you at the end of recruiting to blindly sign players with known specific attributes if you do not first spend your scouting budget to scout them up enough. You need to use your scouting budget wisely and save some money for late scouting. Those are the parameters of the game. And there are different amounts of information you get at each level of scouting that differs from real life because it is a game.
You can get useful information at Level 1 just not at the end of late recruiting. This has been said in this thread multiple times, Level 1 is an introduction to the player with very basic information. It is an introduction of sorts, without it you don't know that player exists. If you don't know he exists, you can't sign him. Nobody sees all recruits anymore. The basic information can be useful even if you, or others, don't see it. An F rating virtually guarantees that the player sucks in all attributes in that category. If a player is rated F in defensive attributes that information is useful to me, spud and anyone else paying attention because we know damn well that player is not going to have a 60 for defense. I will repeat this for you: he will not have a 60 for defense. And for the 1 player that might be that outlier and does in the player pool I scouted, I am not spending additional money trying to find the needle in the haystack that might not even exist in that pool of players. At least for me, it is not worth trying to find the 1 or 2 players that have 1's in all categories except for the one I am hoping he would excel in the group so I say to him nice to meet you and move on. For players that show some promise, I will scout them to higher levels. If you feel differently and want to find the outliers, then you are correct, you need to get to Level 2. That doesn't mean the information in Level 1 isn't useful, just not as useful as you want it to be. No, I would never sign anyone just using Level 1, but I can eliminate players using information from Level 1.
If you want more information on every player, spend the money and do the additional scouting on everybody from the start. Maybe for you and others, you need everybody scouted at Level 2 because you are afraid you will miss that 1 or 2 players while others can make some initial decisions about players with Level 1 information. If you need Level 2 on everybody, there are multiple ways to get to at least level 2 from the start - use the scouting service, hold your own camp. You just are not going to get any information for free anymore so you need to save some scouting budget for later. However, Everybody, including DIII, has a bigger scouting budget to find and to get to know the players. In DIII, you are going to have a much smaller pool of players to work with then before (and for you an even smaller pool of players). If you run out of funds in your scouting budget and everybody's rated the same in the group attribute, then you do have to guess or throw a dart. You need to save some scouting budget for late signings to get the additional information you need if your only choices left are at Level 1 and they are very similar. But, you also have an opportunity to possibly sign an ignored projected DI player in DIII, so you have that tradeoff.
I'm not asking to be saved and am not referring to the old game. I'm discussing why we can pick and choose what should or should not be considered more like real life. See my last paragraph. At a bare minimum, If I know a guy is physically gifted, I should at least know why he's considered that. I don't think a scout is going to give me a players name and say, "I honestly don't know anything about this kid, but he's an A in physical attributes." If all I have is the introduction to the player, then I either shouldn't know anything about him other than his name and maybe measurables provided, or I should know some basic information which is what level 2 is (I know basic information with no potential or exact ratings).
What's the difference between the usefulness at level 1 in the beginning or at the end? It's still useless regardless of when it is. Your statement of an F rating guarantees a player sucks in all attributes in that category are completely false. I don't know exactly how they run the averages for the grades, but lets run a simple example. Let's say an A is anything 80-100, B 60-79, C 40-59, D 20-39, F 0-19. I have 3 categories. To get an A for the composite score, I need 240 points (80x3). Based on the number I gave, 60+1+1 = 62. Just to stay at a D the recruit would need a composite score of at least 60 (3x20), so in this case the recruit would be a D composite score, but his defense is really a B.
I already understand we need to manage our budget, but if I'm going to have a reduced number of recruits I can fully scout, then that information needs to be more useful is all I'm saying.