There is one glaring problem with recruiting in my opinion. This problem is not consistent with realism and is not fun for D1 coaches. I will make this simple and clear for everyone.

• If a D1 coach loses battles right before Phase II, there is no recovery. Here is why- it's basically impossible to find new recruits to target, so you are forced to take multiple walk-ons. If you do take on new recruits that are completely un-targeted, they are guys that might barely play on a DIII team.

This is the reason:
In the first cycle of phase II, every half decent recruit that is not about to sign with another D1 team is labeled as "moderate" by a DII school who has been waiting until phase II to sign their guys. It seems as though no matter how much attention you put into these particular recruits in the first cycle of phase 2 (you could be an A+ D1 school and give max attention), you will lose all of them to the DII school waiting to move from moderate to very high. Therefore, it is inevitable that if you lose some battles early in phase 1, you have to take multiple walk-ons. The idea to counter this would be to give AP to more players than you need, but IMO, If you have a "backup plan" and spread your money/AP too thin, you lose all battles most likely and have to take MANY walk-ons.

Some possible solutions. Not saying all are good, just throwing ideas out there

1. D1 attention should count significantly for much more than DII attention. It's crazy that I can put 400 AP and 6 home visits into a player as a A- DI school fresh off the sweet 16 and lose a battle to a DII school because they visited the kid's home more often.

2.No signings at all for the first full day of phase 2 OR extend phase 2 a day.

3. More top-notch recruits wait for phase 2 (late preference)

4. (Kind of off-the-wall, but i really like it) - have all of the unsigned recruits from D1 to DIII after signings walk on to the D1 schools with available openings for walkons. The top rated recruits left over will of course walk on to the schools with higher prestige, and it will scale down. Your DII and DIII walkons will still suck (but DII coaches have much less of a problem with taking on walk-ons...I know from my DII teams). This makes sense on many levels, especially if WIS is unwilling - uninterested in implementing ideas #1 through #3.

5. No caps (or higher caps) on HV/CV spent (from another thread).

If a D1 team's walkons are guys that can play spot minutes, and with luck, maybe one or two could be eventually signed, it would improve the game. This is also realistic - D1 walkons are often guys that can realistically play a few minutes here and there.

One more thing - I plan to ignore/block posters that litter this thread with "YOU ARE A WHINER" or other non-substative attacks that derail the substance of this thread. If you think 3.0 is perfect, please respond with substance and attack the ideas, not the person. These forums have become intolerable in that sense so I understand why WIS rarely respond to anything.

Reasonable posters....what do you think of these ideas? Are the problems stated pretty well? Are the solutions realistic? I don't hate 3.0 entirely and would like to continue playing....but this one factor just continuously irks me.

Thx
bbunch

#3 I suggest the other day that the top 50% of recruits wait until the 2nd phase to sign. That would essentially be all of D1 and half of D2 projected. And, although the thread turned into yet another ******* match on Page 4(as is the norm), it was not a very popular suggestion. Not sure why.

I think it's a solid point Bunch. But I would cap D3 recruiting to D2, so battles for recruits get heated and it stops being a last day , 2nd session, D1 signings, which gives too much importance to location.

Posted by bbunch on 2/18/2017 7:55:00 AM (view original):
There is one glaring problem with recruiting in my opinion. This problem is not consistent with realism and is not fun for D1 coaches. I will make this simple and clear for everyone.

• If a D1 coach loses battles right before Phase II, there is no recovery. Here is why- it's basically impossible to find new recruits to target, so you are forced to take multiple walk-ons. If you do take on new recruits that are completely un-targeted, they are guys that might barely play on a DIII team.

This is the reason:
In the first cycle of phase II, every half decent recruit that is not about to sign with another D1 team is labeled as "moderate" by a DII school who has been waiting until phase II to sign their guys. It seems as though no matter how much attention you put into these particular recruits in the first cycle of phase 2 (you could be an A+ D1 school and give max attention), you will lose all of them to the DII school waiting to move from moderate to very high. Therefore, it is inevitable that if you lose some battles early in phase 1, you have to take multiple walk-ons. The idea to counter this would be to give AP to more players than you need, but IMO, If you have a "backup plan" and spread your money/AP too thin, you lose all battles most likely and have to take MANY walk-ons.

Some possible solutions. Not saying all are good, just throwing ideas out there

1. D1 attention should count significantly for much more than DII attention. It's crazy that I can put 400 AP and 6 home visits into a player as a A- DI school fresh off the sweet 16 and lose a battle to a DII school because they visited the kid's home more often.

2.No signings at all for the first full day of phase 2 OR extend phase 2 a day.

3. More top-notch recruits wait for phase 2 (late preference)

4. (Kind of off-the-wall, but i really like it) - have all of the unsigned recruits from D1 to DIII after signings walk on to the D1 schools with available openings for walkons. The top rated recruits left over will of course walk on to the schools with higher prestige, and it will scale down. Your DII and DIII walkons will still suck (but DII coaches have much less of a problem with taking on walk-ons...I know from my DII teams). This makes sense on many levels, especially if WIS is unwilling - uninterested in implementing ideas #1 through #3.

5. No caps (or higher caps) on HV/CV spent (from another thread).

If a D1 team's walkons are guys that can play spot minutes, and with luck, maybe one or two could be eventually signed, it would improve the game. This is also realistic - D1 walkons are often guys that can realistically play a few minutes here and there.

One more thing - I plan to ignore/block posters that litter this thread with "YOU ARE A WHINER" or other non-substative attacks that derail the substance of this thread. If you think 3.0 is perfect, please respond with substance and attack the ideas, not the person. These forums have become intolerable in that sense so I understand why WIS rarely respond to anything.

Reasonable posters....what do you think of these ideas? Are the problems stated pretty well? Are the solutions realistic? I don't hate 3.0 entirely and would like to continue playing....but this one factor just continuously irks me.

Thx
bbunch

All would be an improvement on what we currently have going. And some of your tweaks address the issues facing EE teams/coaching moves, which is also vitally important if WIS is going to continue this two recruiting session thing.

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/18/2017 7:56:00 AM (view original):
#3 I suggest the other day that the top 50% of recruits wait until the 2nd phase to sign. That would essentially be all of D1 and half of D2 projected. And, although the thread turned into yet another ******* match on Page 4(as is the norm), it was not a very popular suggestion. Not sure why.

I didn't read that thread you are referring to - I tend to stop reading the threads that devolve into attacks.

I like #3 (and 50% is a good simple suggestion), but only combined with the other ideas i mentioned. Here's why.

By itself, idea #3 just pushes battles further back (because of the caps, not much can be done other than attention points), and teams are still taking on many walk-ons (when the battles are decided late and you lose, there's really no other option).

What option #3 does do is allow for more high-quality recruits to be available in phase 2 if some battles are lost in phase 1 - but if all of those battles get decided immediately at the beginning of the 2nd phase, the move is pointless. If all of the battles are just maxed-out top schools waiting for the (slightly weighted) dice roll as well, it's pointless.

My key issue: If the battles must involve an element of luck (which doesn't completely bother me), then there must be a reasonable way to recover if you lose a battle.

I've suggested removing the caps before and it didn't get much traction.

I think removing the caps is a good idea because we are now all on equal footing for resources. No more bonus money or rollover. Yeah, you have more openings means you have more cash but 3 openings to 5 openings isn't HUGE.

You add more strategy because you now longer have this "all in" or max effort thing. Max effort should be the max that a coaching is willing to use. If they want to use 100% of their budget on one guy, so be it. By capping the the HVs, you're artificially inflating the importance and impact of APs.

Posted by Benis on 2/18/2017 8:49:00 AM (view original):
I've suggested removing the caps before and it didn't get much traction.

I think removing the caps is a good idea because we are now all on equal footing for resources. No more bonus money or rollover. Yeah, you have more openings means you have more cash but 3 openings to 5 openings isn't HUGE.

You add more strategy because you now longer have this "all in" or max effort thing. Max effort should be the max that a coaching is willing to use. If they want to use 100% of their budget on one guy, so be it. By capping the the HVs, you're artificially inflating the importance and impact of APs.

Sure - that's a pretty good argument.I can't disagree with much of that. What's the scale of difference in funds between 3 to 5 openings? I would want to be sure that the advantage wouldn't be too ridiculous for a coach with multiple openings. Right now, it's the opposite - it feels like a major disadvantage to have many openings.

Here's another issue I could see - you're the coach that puts EVERYTHING into the one main recruit in this scenario - you are VH. Someone else is H, they put less into the recruit. The high coach wins over the VH coach, something like 33% to 67%. The VH coach has to settle for nothing but walkons, and is very bitter. The luck element is still there.

The more I think about it - if walkons were just leftover recruits that nobody picked up rather than worthless bums that can't walk without falling down, that would lessen the blow of the luck factor of the game.

2 and 3 fix the problem, IMO


We've been saying this for months, I am not sure why they haven't addressed it. Either they aren't listening or don't think it's an issue.

By the way - I lost a battle reccently to DII Bemidji St. I was A- prestige D1 colorado st. I gave a recruit 6 home visits and offered playing time. There should be no reason I lose that one. Bemidji had a 70% to 30% advantage despite my efforts. I understand that their coach gave more effort, but this still makes no sense to me.

The recruit basically said..."Hey coach - so here's the deal. I'm really honored that Colorado St. considered me, and wants to give me playing time on a team just returning from the Sweet 16. Thanks for visiting me and my family 6 times. Unfortunately, I'm going to Bemidji St. because they visited my family 15 or so times. I know that I won't get to play top-level D1 ball, but they did come to my house more often."

REALLY??? LOL.

3 openings to 5 openings is
14k vs 21k

Yes, significant. But it's not like in 2.0 when teams would have quadruple the funds.

And yeah sure, you can put in 20k while another coach put in 18k and one of you will lose. That's the risk you're taking and if you get burned then you may not want to do it anymore.

From a pure strategy standpoint, this seems more strategic (at least to me) than - you send 20 HVs and I send 20HVs and we'll see what happens. That's what it feels like sometimes.

It does not fix the random roll problem.

Posted by Trentonjoe on 2/18/2017 9:03:00 AM (view original):
2 and 3 fix the problem, IMO


We've been saying this for months, I am not sure why they haven't addressed it. Either they aren't listening or don't think it's an issue.

I fear they are not listening, or just too busy. They have admitted back about 4 or so months ago that it is an issue.

I'm totally okay with a random roll, as long as the percentages make sense.

The random roll is a design choice, not a problem. That isn't going to change. They may tweak some #'s but it's gonna stay.

Posted by zorzii on 2/18/2017 9:04:00 AM (view original):
It does not fix the random roll problem.

You're sort of technically right, but the rolls will feel less random when it's possible for there to be a noticable difference in effort between coaches. So by solidifying other aspects of the game, it minimizes the impact of the random roll. (Again, that's why I like my walk-on idea as well - helps to minimize that impact of punishment from losing a dice-roll battle - you might get a walk-on that could actually play a bit). There will be less 50-50% battles if there are higher or no caps on CV and HV and more late recruits.....and if that comes into play, the coaches have more strategic responsibility in their decision to leave it up to the dice roll.

The probability/weighted dice roll aspect is flawed, but seems to have been a central tenet of 3.0. Some people like it as well. I don't love it, but it doesn't bother me if other aspects of the game are tightened up. Focusing on trying to get this changed will likely not get much traction IMO. Right now, the random dice roll has too much power because there's no strategy in other aspects of recruiting.