Posted by usvtheman on 11/4/2022 6:43:00 PM (view original):

Posted by cimmy426 on 11/4/2022 5:39:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Crawdaddy44 on 11/4/2022 5:07:00 PM (view original):
Ok. It's very rare for me to read the forums (shame on me I guess), and never comment on here, but after reading (watching the tennis ball go back and forth the last several days) I felt the need, unfortunately for some, to put my two cents in. First of all this, in my mind was a fun game that takes away some of the BS in the real world. I'm definitely sure its naive for me to think that HD would be any different and somehow without shenanigans. However, I truly was under the impression we were all playing with the same published/understood rules and it was up to me/you all to figure out the nuances of the game, be it with a mentor or by reading the HD player guides. Not by either looking for or stumbling into loopholes that can be exploited. I've been playing HD since 2015 and while I feel like I'm still a newby searching for my first NC, this uncovered aspect of HD I find extremely frustrating to learn about. For example, because of this current Recruiting "exploit" investigation, I am now just learning about the "International recruit RS" loophole, the "SR RS" loophole, and now the "RS not RS" loophole. How many more am I missing? Sounds like probably a few.......Many of the coaches on here claim everyone knew about these, but I had no clue. I have no doubt some would say, shame on me for not pushing the envelop to find an upper hand. Perhaps that is true.......but that's not why I'm playing HD and not part of my DNA. What made this game fun, in my mind, was competing with you all using the same rules, getting our teeth bashed in while we learn core attributes and how offense and defenses compare, and work your way to the top.
This sucks and is truly disappointing to find out I've been competing all along against a few who know how to work the system or loophole their way thru each season. I only know one of the banished coaches, from being in the same DII conference with him for many, many seasons. He is an excellent coach and conference mate. Was always friendly and helpful. I never suspected anything shady from him. And I'm very disappointed to know he was apart of whatever this is. This whole thing stinks, for everyone involved in HD. I guess I was under the impression we were all innocently trying to do our best within the rules........the rules everyone is equally aware of. In this case evidently nobody but the 5 or 6 guys doing it new about it. Just be transparent with us all next time you open pandoras box so we can all compete without a distinct unfair advantage. No matter how small or great the advantage may be. I hope these guys make a come back. I'm disappointed because I feel "hornswoggled" so to speak (probably not by cheating but deception or lack of transparency). What ever it is, doesn't seem right. That's all.

That's a totally fair reaction crawdaddy. I've only asked that this one thing be treated the same way as these other aspects of the game that aren't all that obvious or intuitive, that are known to the community to varying degrees. The most widely known was probably that you weren't held to promises made to ineligible recruits until recently. WIS fixed that and notified everyone, but nobody was called a cheater. I guarantee the vast majority of the people out here throwing stones have benefitted from promises to ineligibles, or redshirting a senior, or some other "trick" that isn't "published" as part of the rules of the game. But it appears the only difference between those things and this nonredshirt thing is that apparently less people realized it. I didn't know how many people realized it until CS posted their findings (I would have guessed a lot more). In fact, and this point has been made many times over, informing a player you won't redshirt him providing recruiting benefit makes a whole lot more sense from a game design perspective than any of these other things, so while it wasn't what I originally expected, it wasn't that hard to believe it was part of the game after I asked CS about it and they told me that the inform of nonredshirt does provide positive recruiting effort.

edited for grammar

I never redshirted a senior or made a promise to an ineligible. Am I allowed to call you a cheater? Because you are one.

See? Very simple. Now can we go back and restrict their access again so we stop seeing all these excuse laden posts? Just leave.

Just rename this the “Whataboutism” forum already.

And the cheat wasn’t as simple as pressing 1 button that said “promise not to redshirt”. That’s not a bad idea! But that’s not how it worked. You had to go around to numerous players, tell them that you were going to redshirt them, wait for the inevitable negative reaction, and then press the button again numerous times saying ‘just kidding!!” And all of a sudden they love you.
No reasonable person thinks that’s ok or normal.

Posted by usvtheman on 11/4/2022 6:43:00 PM (view original):

Posted by cimmy426 on 11/4/2022 5:39:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Crawdaddy44 on 11/4/2022 5:07:00 PM (view original):
Ok. It's very rare for me to read the forums (shame on me I guess), and never comment on here, but after reading (watching the tennis ball go back and forth the last several days) I felt the need, unfortunately for some, to put my two cents in. First of all this, in my mind was a fun game that takes away some of the BS in the real world. I'm definitely sure its naive for me to think that HD would be any different and somehow without shenanigans. However, I truly was under the impression we were all playing with the same published/understood rules and it was up to me/you all to figure out the nuances of the game, be it with a mentor or by reading the HD player guides. Not by either looking for or stumbling into loopholes that can be exploited. I've been playing HD since 2015 and while I feel like I'm still a newby searching for my first NC, this uncovered aspect of HD I find extremely frustrating to learn about. For example, because of this current Recruiting "exploit" investigation, I am now just learning about the "International recruit RS" loophole, the "SR RS" loophole, and now the "RS not RS" loophole. How many more am I missing? Sounds like probably a few.......Many of the coaches on here claim everyone knew about these, but I had no clue. I have no doubt some would say, shame on me for not pushing the envelop to find an upper hand. Perhaps that is true.......but that's not why I'm playing HD and not part of my DNA. What made this game fun, in my mind, was competing with you all using the same rules, getting our teeth bashed in while we learn core attributes and how offense and defenses compare, and work your way to the top.
This sucks and is truly disappointing to find out I've been competing all along against a few who know how to work the system or loophole their way thru each season. I only know one of the banished coaches, from being in the same DII conference with him for many, many seasons. He is an excellent coach and conference mate. Was always friendly and helpful. I never suspected anything shady from him. And I'm very disappointed to know he was apart of whatever this is. This whole thing stinks, for everyone involved in HD. I guess I was under the impression we were all innocently trying to do our best within the rules........the rules everyone is equally aware of. In this case evidently nobody but the 5 or 6 guys doing it new about it. Just be transparent with us all next time you open pandoras box so we can all compete without a distinct unfair advantage. No matter how small or great the advantage may be. I hope these guys make a come back. I'm disappointed because I feel "hornswoggled" so to speak (probably not by cheating but deception or lack of transparency). What ever it is, doesn't seem right. That's all.

That's a totally fair reaction crawdaddy. I've only asked that this one thing be treated the same way as these other aspects of the game that aren't all that obvious or intuitive, that are known to the community to varying degrees. The most widely known was probably that you weren't held to promises made to ineligible recruits until recently. WIS fixed that and notified everyone, but nobody was called a cheater. I guarantee the vast majority of the people out here throwing stones have benefitted from promises to ineligibles, or redshirting a senior, or some other "trick" that isn't "published" as part of the rules of the game. But it appears the only difference between those things and this nonredshirt thing is that apparently less people realized it. I didn't know how many people realized it until CS posted their findings (I would have guessed a lot more). In fact, and this point has been made many times over, informing a player you won't redshirt him providing recruiting benefit makes a whole lot more sense from a game design perspective than any of these other things, so while it wasn't what I originally expected, it wasn't that hard to believe it was part of the game after I asked CS about it and they told me that the inform of nonredshirt does provide positive recruiting effort.

edited for grammar

I never redshirted a senior or made a promise to an ineligible. Am I allowed to call you a cheater? Because you are one.

“Informing a player you won’t redshirt him providing recruiting benefit makes a whole lot more sense from a game design perspective than any of these other things….”

WHAT?????? How?! Is every recruit in the country sitting around selecting their school with expectations they will be redshirted by all schools except the one that tells them they won’t? Why not add an option for “will not make the recruit a turkey sandwich”? I will not make recruit run sprints. I will not date the recruits mom. Let’s add them all, since it makes sense. And we’ll have like 500 buttons to push for positive effort accumulation. Do you see my point?

The redshirt button should be designed to only push if you NEED it. There’s no reason to have it otherwise. I do agree with you that that the Sr redshirt doesn’t make sense. And again, I’ve mentioned it should be changed. But that’s something different. Not the discussion at hand. It just gets brought in to detract from the real topic. And while we’re at it, the inel promise thing, no one was benefiting from it because everyone on the planet knew about it. That’s what separates it as well, from the redshirt issue at hand. It’s just another attempt to take away from the real issue of the moment.

All three are “something”. But let’s do one at a time and keep them all separate.

Just to be clear, the fact that internationals will all take a redshirt is not really a loophole in my mind. It's pretty clearly established that the recruits that will object to a redshirt are those ranked in the top 50 at their position, and internationals are not part of the recruit ranking system. So the fact that one group will accept a redshirt is just an obvious correlation between the two groups of recruits. And as said before it really doesn't come in to play because the internationals that would be ranked in the top 50 at their position generally have tough competition in recruiting that makes informing of redshirt an impossible or poor strategy.

And they will leave early often if you do manage a redshirt on a recruit with high points ratings, so the redshirt often would not get you an extra year.

Reading z's question, no if you made promises to an international you could not also inform of redshirt. They cancel each other out automatically, as you would and did guess.

By the way, I just started playing Hardball Dynasty, and this discussion cannot help me but compare it to how old coaches will operate there. I am in a world where no coaches would explain why some of them were demoting top players to aaa at the beginning of the season. No where was such a strategy explained in any official set of rules. And coaches would not tell new players when explicitly asked. That seems very parallel to what has happened here.

And it makes me wonder how many other tricks exist in that game that only a select few know about.

Posted by topdogggbm on 11/4/2022 8:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by usvtheman on 11/4/2022 6:43:00 PM (view original):

Posted by cimmy426 on 11/4/2022 5:39:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Crawdaddy44 on 11/4/2022 5:07:00 PM (view original):
Ok. It's very rare for me to read the forums (shame on me I guess), and never comment on here, but after reading (watching the tennis ball go back and forth the last several days) I felt the need, unfortunately for some, to put my two cents in. First of all this, in my mind was a fun game that takes away some of the BS in the real world. I'm definitely sure its naive for me to think that HD would be any different and somehow without shenanigans. However, I truly was under the impression we were all playing with the same published/understood rules and it was up to me/you all to figure out the nuances of the game, be it with a mentor or by reading the HD player guides. Not by either looking for or stumbling into loopholes that can be exploited. I've been playing HD since 2015 and while I feel like I'm still a newby searching for my first NC, this uncovered aspect of HD I find extremely frustrating to learn about. For example, because of this current Recruiting "exploit" investigation, I am now just learning about the "International recruit RS" loophole, the "SR RS" loophole, and now the "RS not RS" loophole. How many more am I missing? Sounds like probably a few.......Many of the coaches on here claim everyone knew about these, but I had no clue. I have no doubt some would say, shame on me for not pushing the envelop to find an upper hand. Perhaps that is true.......but that's not why I'm playing HD and not part of my DNA. What made this game fun, in my mind, was competing with you all using the same rules, getting our teeth bashed in while we learn core attributes and how offense and defenses compare, and work your way to the top.
This sucks and is truly disappointing to find out I've been competing all along against a few who know how to work the system or loophole their way thru each season. I only know one of the banished coaches, from being in the same DII conference with him for many, many seasons. He is an excellent coach and conference mate. Was always friendly and helpful. I never suspected anything shady from him. And I'm very disappointed to know he was apart of whatever this is. This whole thing stinks, for everyone involved in HD. I guess I was under the impression we were all innocently trying to do our best within the rules........the rules everyone is equally aware of. In this case evidently nobody but the 5 or 6 guys doing it new about it. Just be transparent with us all next time you open pandoras box so we can all compete without a distinct unfair advantage. No matter how small or great the advantage may be. I hope these guys make a come back. I'm disappointed because I feel "hornswoggled" so to speak (probably not by cheating but deception or lack of transparency). What ever it is, doesn't seem right. That's all.

That's a totally fair reaction crawdaddy. I've only asked that this one thing be treated the same way as these other aspects of the game that aren't all that obvious or intuitive, that are known to the community to varying degrees. The most widely known was probably that you weren't held to promises made to ineligible recruits until recently. WIS fixed that and notified everyone, but nobody was called a cheater. I guarantee the vast majority of the people out here throwing stones have benefitted from promises to ineligibles, or redshirting a senior, or some other "trick" that isn't "published" as part of the rules of the game. But it appears the only difference between those things and this nonredshirt thing is that apparently less people realized it. I didn't know how many people realized it until CS posted their findings (I would have guessed a lot more). In fact, and this point has been made many times over, informing a player you won't redshirt him providing recruiting benefit makes a whole lot more sense from a game design perspective than any of these other things, so while it wasn't what I originally expected, it wasn't that hard to believe it was part of the game after I asked CS about it and they told me that the inform of nonredshirt does provide positive recruiting effort.

edited for grammar

I never redshirted a senior or made a promise to an ineligible. Am I allowed to call you a cheater? Because you are one.

“Informing a player you won’t redshirt him providing recruiting benefit makes a whole lot more sense from a game design perspective than any of these other things….”

WHAT?????? How?! Is every recruit in the country sitting around selecting their school with expectations they will be redshirted by all schools except the one that tells them they won’t? Why not add an option for “will not make the recruit a turkey sandwich”? I will not make recruit run sprints. I will not date the recruits mom. Let’s add them all, since it makes sense. And we’ll have like 500 buttons to push for positive effort accumulation. Do you see my point?

The redshirt button should be designed to only push if you NEED it. There’s no reason to have it otherwise. I do agree with you that that the Sr redshirt doesn’t make sense. And again, I’ve mentioned it should be changed. But that’s something different. Not the discussion at hand. It just gets brought in to detract from the real topic. And while we’re at it, the inel promise thing, no one was benefiting from it because everyone on the planet knew about it. That’s what separates it as well, from the redshirt issue at hand. It’s just another attempt to take away from the real issue of the moment.

All three are “something”. But let’s do one at a time and keep them all separate.

To quote myself, after thinking about it, the inel promise thing isn’t “equal”. So I take that back. A+ prestige very good Is different if competing against C+ Very good. So my error in that part

also for those saying it’s not that strong….. I “think” Benis said 24 players OFFERED by cycle 5. Not unlocked, but already offered. So all 24 would have to be unlocked by cycle 4. How many guys can I unlock in 4 cycles? Say 40 AP each while I have 100 per cycle. 10 players compared to 24.

Obviously no one was doing what Swenske did. I don’t even think combined! But two and a half times the power in early cycles is MEGA strong. If I had 240 AP for each cycle, I’d run people off for sure.

if someone else broke that down already. Pardon my tardiness. I got lost in fifty pages of this stuff!

I've got to say that I tend to think this is an overboard attack. It was discovered, it's published, it can become part of the conventional wisdom, and let's continue to play. I don't think wholesale changes are necessary.

For a parallel, I am not asking for a fix to the above Hardball question. Some people do more much more math than others do in this game, and they learn things about how the game works as a result. Are they under some obligation to share the results of their math with everyone?

Some tinker and explore the various options given them, experimenting with the game, much more than others. Why are they under an obligation to share the results of their experimentation?

Posted by topdogggbm on 11/4/2022 8:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by usvtheman on 11/4/2022 6:43:00 PM (view original):

Posted by cimmy426 on 11/4/2022 5:39:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Crawdaddy44 on 11/4/2022 5:07:00 PM (view original):
Ok. It's very rare for me to read the forums (shame on me I guess), and never comment on here, but after reading (watching the tennis ball go back and forth the last several days) I felt the need, unfortunately for some, to put my two cents in. First of all this, in my mind was a fun game that takes away some of the BS in the real world. I'm definitely sure its naive for me to think that HD would be any different and somehow without shenanigans. However, I truly was under the impression we were all playing with the same published/understood rules and it was up to me/you all to figure out the nuances of the game, be it with a mentor or by reading the HD player guides. Not by either looking for or stumbling into loopholes that can be exploited. I've been playing HD since 2015 and while I feel like I'm still a newby searching for my first NC, this uncovered aspect of HD I find extremely frustrating to learn about. For example, because of this current Recruiting "exploit" investigation, I am now just learning about the "International recruit RS" loophole, the "SR RS" loophole, and now the "RS not RS" loophole. How many more am I missing? Sounds like probably a few.......Many of the coaches on here claim everyone knew about these, but I had no clue. I have no doubt some would say, shame on me for not pushing the envelop to find an upper hand. Perhaps that is true.......but that's not why I'm playing HD and not part of my DNA. What made this game fun, in my mind, was competing with you all using the same rules, getting our teeth bashed in while we learn core attributes and how offense and defenses compare, and work your way to the top.
This sucks and is truly disappointing to find out I've been competing all along against a few who know how to work the system or loophole their way thru each season. I only know one of the banished coaches, from being in the same DII conference with him for many, many seasons. He is an excellent coach and conference mate. Was always friendly and helpful. I never suspected anything shady from him. And I'm very disappointed to know he was apart of whatever this is. This whole thing stinks, for everyone involved in HD. I guess I was under the impression we were all innocently trying to do our best within the rules........the rules everyone is equally aware of. In this case evidently nobody but the 5 or 6 guys doing it new about it. Just be transparent with us all next time you open pandoras box so we can all compete without a distinct unfair advantage. No matter how small or great the advantage may be. I hope these guys make a come back. I'm disappointed because I feel "hornswoggled" so to speak (probably not by cheating but deception or lack of transparency). What ever it is, doesn't seem right. That's all.

That's a totally fair reaction crawdaddy. I've only asked that this one thing be treated the same way as these other aspects of the game that aren't all that obvious or intuitive, that are known to the community to varying degrees. The most widely known was probably that you weren't held to promises made to ineligible recruits until recently. WIS fixed that and notified everyone, but nobody was called a cheater. I guarantee the vast majority of the people out here throwing stones have benefitted from promises to ineligibles, or redshirting a senior, or some other "trick" that isn't "published" as part of the rules of the game. But it appears the only difference between those things and this nonredshirt thing is that apparently less people realized it. I didn't know how many people realized it until CS posted their findings (I would have guessed a lot more). In fact, and this point has been made many times over, informing a player you won't redshirt him providing recruiting benefit makes a whole lot more sense from a game design perspective than any of these other things, so while it wasn't what I originally expected, it wasn't that hard to believe it was part of the game after I asked CS about it and they told me that the inform of nonredshirt does provide positive recruiting effort.

edited for grammar

I never redshirted a senior or made a promise to an ineligible. Am I allowed to call you a cheater? Because you are one.

“Informing a player you won’t redshirt him providing recruiting benefit makes a whole lot more sense from a game design perspective than any of these other things….”

WHAT?????? How?! Is every recruit in the country sitting around selecting their school with expectations they will be redshirted by all schools except the one that tells them they won’t? Why not add an option for “will not make the recruit a turkey sandwich”? I will not make recruit run sprints. I will not date the recruits mom. Let’s add them all, since it makes sense. And we’ll have like 500 buttons to push for positive effort accumulation. Do you see my point?

The redshirt button should be designed to only push if you NEED it. There’s no reason to have it otherwise. I do agree with you that that the Sr redshirt doesn’t make sense. And again, I’ve mentioned it should be changed. But that’s something different. Not the discussion at hand. It just gets brought in to detract from the real topic. And while we’re at it, the inel promise thing, no one was benefiting from it because everyone on the planet knew about it. That’s what separates it as well, from the redshirt issue at hand. It’s just another attempt to take away from the real issue of the moment.

All three are “something”. But let’s do one at a time and keep them all separate.

The people who created the game made the informing of non-redshirt an action in the game. You could argue it was done by mistake I guess but, like I said, when the Inform of No Redshirt processed they got an icon on their recruit page that said "Informed of No Redshirt" or "Informed of Non-Redshirt". So that seems intentional, not just some mistaken thing. And then, like I said, if you tried to redshirt those guys once they were on your team they would say, "You told me in recruiting you wouldn't redshirt me so I'm very angry about this." So, again, seems like the option to Inform of No Redshirt was an intentionally created aspect of the game. And why would you ever use that intended aspect if there was absolutely no positive benefit from doing it? It has the negative result of guaranteeing (from what I saw) that the guy won't take a redshirt. So why would it even be an option in the game if there were no upside? All that being said, it's not crazy to think that there's some benefit from promising a recruit you won't redshirt him.

As I've said in other places: we all agree that telling a recruit you'll play him 10 minutes a game has recruiting benefit and that makes sense. So, just based on that, promising a recruit you won't redshirt would conceivably also have recruiting benefit, albeit less than the benefit of promising 10 minutes.

Not to beat this dead horse any further but I don't think I addressed in this thread the question about following up on my original ticket.

In light of all of us eventually getting the game of thrones shame bell treatment, I certainly regret not following up. And I get how it's not a good look for me in the current context of being accused of a grand cheating conspiracy. But I certainly didn't see it as a "directive" at the time. In my CS ticket I very explicitly laid out the recruiting steps I took on a certain recruit and asked why that was enough to unlock his scholarship. And they responded with "It is possible that informing that you won't redshirt has [enough] effect [to unlock his scholarship] if the player is low relative to your prestige." And also said that since recruiting had ended they couldn't give me a concrete answer in this case. To me the noncommitment and suggestion to follow up next time was in regards to IF the nonredshirt (on top of 1 AP) was ENOUGH to unlock the scholarship in this case, as that was my question. Not whether or not it helped in general. They seemed unsurprised that it helped. And in my subsequent experimentation I realized that it usually took 20-25 APs on top of the nonredshirt to unlock a decent player, as opposed to the 1 AP as it was in the original case (who I think was a zero star juco). So that all fit with what they said to me and I didn't have any follow-up questions.

I'm a busy man and I asked CS a question about the game and they answered it to my satisfaction. Is it really my job to keep following up with them just in case the game isn't working as intended? Even if they provide no indication to me that they were suspicious that might be happening here?

And further, it being a new management regime who didn't even know that ticket existed until I pointed it out to them after I was banned, how do they have more insight into what that response meant than I do? I could very well have understood correctly that the response at the time essentially meant "yeah nonredshirt helps but we can't say for sure it helped enough to unlock that particular scholarship". Or perhaps I could have misinterpreted and the onus was put on me by CS gather more data on this bug and report back (which would have been pretty unprofessional IMO). Hard to say without the old management around, but if I misinterpreted the CS response I got when I asked about the nonredshirt, I would certainly apologize for that.

"Is it really my job to keep following up with them just in case the game isn't working as intended? Even if they provide no indication to me that they were suspicious that might be happening here?"
May not like this answer, but yeah, it kinda is. This game works because of a great user base more than great CS. The top HD players undoubtedly know more about what's going on in the game than a CS rep picking up a ticket does. CS can certainly answer a question in a very literal sense, they can see what an action does to the game, but they don't get the context or ramifications behind it like someone who's been playing daily for years. Users have a long history of reporting bugs in this game, keeps it working well.
When 1% of users are aware of a useful action and 99% of users are not, whether or not it's intended to be there, that's a problem. I believe you didn't know you were such a minority in knowing about this, so I think it's an honest mistake, but yeah, I think in situations like that it is on the user to keep bringing it up. That or poke around a bit and see if anyone else has mentioned it, maybe more people know about it.
If it's something that's decently well known like offering starts/minutes to ineligibles then I think that's fair game, it becomes part of the game meta. This clearly was not well known, and whether that's fair to you or not, that's the difference. It's on you to make sure CS understands what it does and/or make sure the broader community is aware of it.

Posted by doogan on 11/4/2022 11:36:00 PM (view original):

Posted by topdogggbm on 11/4/2022 8:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by usvtheman on 11/4/2022 6:43:00 PM (view original):

Posted by cimmy426 on 11/4/2022 5:39:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Crawdaddy44 on 11/4/2022 5:07:00 PM (view original):
Ok. It's very rare for me to read the forums (shame on me I guess), and never comment on here, but after reading (watching the tennis ball go back and forth the last several days) I felt the need, unfortunately for some, to put my two cents in. First of all this, in my mind was a fun game that takes away some of the BS in the real world. I'm definitely sure its naive for me to think that HD would be any different and somehow without shenanigans. However, I truly was under the impression we were all playing with the same published/understood rules and it was up to me/you all to figure out the nuances of the game, be it with a mentor or by reading the HD player guides. Not by either looking for or stumbling into loopholes that can be exploited. I've been playing HD since 2015 and while I feel like I'm still a newby searching for my first NC, this uncovered aspect of HD I find extremely frustrating to learn about. For example, because of this current Recruiting "exploit" investigation, I am now just learning about the "International recruit RS" loophole, the "SR RS" loophole, and now the "RS not RS" loophole. How many more am I missing? Sounds like probably a few.......Many of the coaches on here claim everyone knew about these, but I had no clue. I have no doubt some would say, shame on me for not pushing the envelop to find an upper hand. Perhaps that is true.......but that's not why I'm playing HD and not part of my DNA. What made this game fun, in my mind, was competing with you all using the same rules, getting our teeth bashed in while we learn core attributes and how offense and defenses compare, and work your way to the top.
This sucks and is truly disappointing to find out I've been competing all along against a few who know how to work the system or loophole their way thru each season. I only know one of the banished coaches, from being in the same DII conference with him for many, many seasons. He is an excellent coach and conference mate. Was always friendly and helpful. I never suspected anything shady from him. And I'm very disappointed to know he was apart of whatever this is. This whole thing stinks, for everyone involved in HD. I guess I was under the impression we were all innocently trying to do our best within the rules........the rules everyone is equally aware of. In this case evidently nobody but the 5 or 6 guys doing it new about it. Just be transparent with us all next time you open pandoras box so we can all compete without a distinct unfair advantage. No matter how small or great the advantage may be. I hope these guys make a come back. I'm disappointed because I feel "hornswoggled" so to speak (probably not by cheating but deception or lack of transparency). What ever it is, doesn't seem right. That's all.

That's a totally fair reaction crawdaddy. I've only asked that this one thing be treated the same way as these other aspects of the game that aren't all that obvious or intuitive, that are known to the community to varying degrees. The most widely known was probably that you weren't held to promises made to ineligible recruits until recently. WIS fixed that and notified everyone, but nobody was called a cheater. I guarantee the vast majority of the people out here throwing stones have benefitted from promises to ineligibles, or redshirting a senior, or some other "trick" that isn't "published" as part of the rules of the game. But it appears the only difference between those things and this nonredshirt thing is that apparently less people realized it. I didn't know how many people realized it until CS posted their findings (I would have guessed a lot more). In fact, and this point has been made many times over, informing a player you won't redshirt him providing recruiting benefit makes a whole lot more sense from a game design perspective than any of these other things, so while it wasn't what I originally expected, it wasn't that hard to believe it was part of the game after I asked CS about it and they told me that the inform of nonredshirt does provide positive recruiting effort.

edited for grammar

I never redshirted a senior or made a promise to an ineligible. Am I allowed to call you a cheater? Because you are one.

“Informing a player you won’t redshirt him providing recruiting benefit makes a whole lot more sense from a game design perspective than any of these other things….”

WHAT?????? How?! Is every recruit in the country sitting around selecting their school with expectations they will be redshirted by all schools except the one that tells them they won’t? Why not add an option for “will not make the recruit a turkey sandwich”? I will not make recruit run sprints. I will not date the recruits mom. Let’s add them all, since it makes sense. And we’ll have like 500 buttons to push for positive effort accumulation. Do you see my point?

The redshirt button should be designed to only push if you NEED it. There’s no reason to have it otherwise. I do agree with you that that the Sr redshirt doesn’t make sense. And again, I’ve mentioned it should be changed. But that’s something different. Not the discussion at hand. It just gets brought in to detract from the real topic. And while we’re at it, the inel promise thing, no one was benefiting from it because everyone on the planet knew about it. That’s what separates it as well, from the redshirt issue at hand. It’s just another attempt to take away from the real issue of the moment.

All three are “something”. But let’s do one at a time and keep them all separate.

The people who created the game made the informing of non-redshirt an action in the game. You could argue it was done by mistake I guess but, like I said, when the Inform of No Redshirt processed they got an icon on their recruit page that said "Informed of No Redshirt" or "Informed of Non-Redshirt". So that seems intentional, not just some mistaken thing. And then, like I said, if you tried to redshirt those guys once they were on your team they would say, "You told me in recruiting you wouldn't redshirt me so I'm very angry about this." So, again, seems like the option to Inform of No Redshirt was an intentionally created aspect of the game. And why would you ever use that intended aspect if there was absolutely no positive benefit from doing it? It has the negative result of guaranteeing (from what I saw) that the guy won't take a redshirt. So why would it even be an option in the game if there were no upside? All that being said, it's not crazy to think that there's some benefit from promising a recruit you won't redshirt him.

As I've said in other places: we all agree that telling a recruit you'll play him 10 minutes a game has recruiting benefit and that makes sense. So, just based on that, promising a recruit you won't redshirt would conceivably also have recruiting benefit, albeit less than the benefit of promising 10 minutes.

The problem is that it was both a hidden option and that you didn't have to build a rapport with recruits before using it. For those two reasons it doesn't make sense.

Every other action that helps you (starts, minutes, visits, scholarships) has to be unlocked with a bunch of APs. For this one the only way to access it was to first say you're going to redshirt the recruit and then pull it off. That's not a legitimate way to build a relationship with a recruit. Some random coach who I've never talked to saying he wants to redshirt me and then later says he won't with basically no other contact should not be equivalent to 80 APs. That would just be weird from a recruits perspective, why would I be totally into the guy who just said he was going to redshirt me a cycle ago? Seems kind of erratic.

If there was just an action next to "Inform of Redshirt" that said "Promise No Redshirt" I think that would make sense, that would basically be a lesser version of offering minutes. I would still say it should cost some APs to unlock, but at least it makes and wouldn't be hidden behind an action that many users avoid ever using because it's known for hurting your recruiting effort. I've played this game for years and I'd guess I've used the "Inform of Redshirt" option maybe two or three times. To me there was never much of a point, because the guys who you would want to redshirt would accept it 90% of the time anyway without informing them.

Posted by cimmy426 on 11/5/2022 6:42:00 AM (view original):
Not to beat this dead horse any further but I don't think I addressed in this thread the question about following up on my original ticket.

In light of all of us eventually getting the game of thrones shame bell treatment, I certainly regret not following up. And I get how it's not a good look for me in the current context of being accused of a grand cheating conspiracy. But I certainly didn't see it as a "directive" at the time. In my CS ticket I very explicitly laid out the recruiting steps I took on a certain recruit and asked why that was enough to unlock his scholarship. And they responded with "It is possible that informing that you won't redshirt has [enough] effect [to unlock his scholarship] if the player is low relative to your prestige." And also said that since recruiting had ended they couldn't give me a concrete answer in this case. To me the noncommitment and suggestion to follow up next time was in regards to IF the nonredshirt (on top of 1 AP) was ENOUGH to unlock the scholarship in this case, as that was my question. Not whether or not it helped in general. They seemed unsurprised that it helped. And in my subsequent experimentation I realized that it usually took 20-25 APs on top of the nonredshirt to unlock a decent player, as opposed to the 1 AP as it was in the original case (who I think was a zero star juco). So that all fit with what they said to me and I didn't have any follow-up questions.

I'm a busy man and I asked CS a question about the game and they answered it to my satisfaction. Is it really my job to keep following up with them just in case the game isn't working as intended? Even if they provide no indication to me that they were suspicious that might be happening here?

And further, it being a new management regime who didn't even know that ticket existed until I pointed it out to them after I was banned, how do they have more insight into what that response meant than I do? I could very well have understood correctly that the response at the time essentially meant "yeah nonredshirt helps but we can't say for sure it helped enough to unlock that particular scholarship". Or perhaps I could have misinterpreted and the onus was put on me by CS gather more data on this bug and report back (which would have been pretty unprofessional IMO). Hard to say without the old management around, but if I misinterpreted the CS response I got when I asked about the nonredshirt, I would certainly apologize for that.

If you were a busy man, you never would have discovered the exploit in the first place, and you wouldn't have the time to write novel-length posts with ridiculous justifications for it over and over again. You clearly have all the time in the world to play the game like a math equation and hunt for exploits to abuse and share with your family only.

Posted by calman877 on 11/5/2022 7:20:00 AM (view original):
"Is it really my job to keep following up with them just in case the game isn't working as intended? Even if they provide no indication to me that they were suspicious that might be happening here?"
May not like this answer, but yeah, it kinda is. This game works because of a great user base more than great CS. The top HD players undoubtedly know more about what's going on in the game than a CS rep picking up a ticket does. CS can certainly answer a question in a very literal sense, they can see what an action does to the game, but they don't get the context or ramifications behind it like someone who's been playing daily for years. Users have a long history of reporting bugs in this game, keeps it working well.
When 1% of users are aware of a useful action and 99% of users are not, whether or not it's intended to be there, that's a problem. I believe you didn't know you were such a minority in knowing about this, so I think it's an honest mistake, but yeah, I think in situations like that it is on the user to keep bringing it up. That or poke around a bit and see if anyone else has mentioned it, maybe more people know about it.
If it's something that's decently well known like offering starts/minutes to ineligibles then I think that's fair game, it becomes part of the game meta. This clearly was not well known, and whether that's fair to you or not, that's the difference. It's on you to make sure CS understands what it does and/or make sure the broader community is aware of it.

A lot of vitriol around here for what boils down to "you should have reported this more than once.". And I had no idea how few people knew you could do this. But now I'm just repeating myself.

Yeah I’m tired of the “it’s not my job” excuse. You discussed the loophole amongst yourself plenty I’m sure but made sure to never mention it in a conference chat or anywhere else. You obviously intended to keep it secret otherwise it would’ve been brought up at some point in 3+ years. You knew it was a huge advantage that would go away if it became public so you said nothing.

Why would they have discussed it more than once?

Wouldn’t “hey guys if you inform a recruit of a redshirt and then you hit the button again to where you inform them you won’t redshirt them, it shows up on the recruit’s page as “inform of no redshirt” (I would definitely assume almost all players have seen the inform of non redshirt that I’m talking about here). Well you know how most of the time the recruit hates you too much to keep listening? Well sometimes when you inform them you won’t redshirt them, it will show up as a positive and this way you don’t have to give them AP? I let CS know about it and they didn’t seem too concerned.”
One time have been enough? Why would they have discussed it more than once? I’m not trying to be a smart

A just curious how you came to that conclusion. it’s definitely silly that you had to tell the recruit you were redshirting him in order to tell him that you weren’t.