A change from the First Access in the last iteration

[AKH]

What brooks said.

We can possibly look at adding teh athletiv/physical/techniquie/intangigles grades to some grid if we find ourselves with spare time on our hands. We like the coach grades being unlockable, but we may tweak further - e.g. maybe decrease the cost to 3 like it was at a point in early access. But in general we like there to be tough choices about who to spend points on.

Also: Im not sure I understand why its hard to whittle down the recuiting lists. Start by looking at the ones you have a chance to get. Set distance to something relatively low to get the locals who like you. That should easily whittle it way down a lot. Then look at each position that you need to recruit, and you will see theres probably not a huge amount with recruiting rank close to what you think your highest realistic signing rank is. If there is no one at the position that fits your goldilocks zone rankwise, looks a little further away. Sprinkle in state filters at you pleasure.

[arodtwlv]

What brooks said.

Also: Im not sure I understand why its hard to whittle down the recuiting lists. Start by looking at the ones you have a chance to get. Set distance to something relatively low to get the locals who like you. That should easily whittle it way down a lot. Then look at each position that you need to recruit, and you will see theres probably not a huge amount with recruiting rank close to what you think your highest realistic signing rank is. If there is no one at the position that fits your goldilocks zone rankwise, looks a little further away. Sprinkle in state filters at you pleasure.

I think for guys playing big schools (Clem, Bama, etc) they worry less about "narrowing" down via realistic (distance sounds like lead factor w/ how it's modeled") since we think we can get anyone, so our #1 filter has changed to "skill" rather than "who we can realistically get" which is different from how when running the small schools, what you say is deff the most likely work flow.

For me when I do small schools, I already know 1 stars and for most part 2 stars are so lightly recruited that I can usually get any of them, and so at that point I'm like Bama as in can once again pick anyone, so now I'm sifting thru 100s of 1/2 stars and my first filter is now "skill" rather than "who I can realistically get aka close by". This part is more of a gamey aspect and some cheese factor, but that's another topic.

What I gather is most users are using some sort of mix of cheese (I know I do) + nfl type big board scouting process + irl tactics which makes for a headache on which model is 1) closer to irl NCAA if that's the developer's vision and 2) what is fun for a game.

My biggest hang I can think of is most, if not all for me at least, of the scouting/big board filling prep work is done pre-season/before cpu's board fill in week 2 and realistically most users probably think they have way better shots for players than they should (compared to irl Old Dominion (Virginia iirc) ain't getting a 4 star or even a 3 star from California). The way the game flow seems to work is it's not until AFTER week 1 (so really week 2) that players get "knocked back into reality" whereas they see who the real competition is and I would guess most guys start trimming their board drastically. This is where I think it's closes to irl and how it fits game mechanics is this window around week 2 and 3 when users see who they're competing against.

My thought is somehow this mechanic needs replicating sooner (like in pre-season or whenever ppl first setup their boards for the year), but I'm not sure how since I'm guessing there's a reason the devs have clearly kept knowing which teams pursue what players away from pre-season and don't reveal until season has started. Some ideas I've had are
1) obv during redshirts and training don't have cpu's "know their board" yet since rosters are still being shifted, but week 1 (before simmed) have cpu's have their board's set (offer's out etc)
2) on player card like where it says interest, have pre-season interest in the sense of this player is interested in these schools (but don't know if they're interested back). I think? that the college bball has a mechanic like this? This tho would be only for pre-season/before week 2 recruiting actually starts. This way users can at least have a feel of who a player is looking at and this keeps users "in check" on who they can realistically get. I think irl this is often replicated by 1) small schools usually know they don't have a chance and 2) without spending many resources sites like 247 do interviews all the time where they have early ideas before senior year of who the kid is looking at. Which gets to another point, think it's a tough job due to how recruiting irl is often done before senior year, and so it being compressed makes it hard to model (doing multi year recruiting would be awful imo so I'm glad) so can see that messing with how ppl view the game.

Somehow I think there's some sort of mechanic that needs to push players to have a tighter board earlier, which the distance etc factor is one, but visually unless a user sees x school who is bigger than me is going after this guy, users are way to confident in who they get and this creates bloated boards and ignore the "distance / prestige factor" suggestions until actually told by the game other wise. Favorite or top schools pre-season/week 2/cpus start recruting may be simplest fix, but also know whole 'nother level of data that makes saves bigger and cpu slower so not sure.

Rambling, lmk if need something thought out better lol. Thanks

[AKH]

even if youre bama it applies.

You have 20-ish scholarships - there are 50 ish 5star players. Sure you CAN get everyone, but you still want to be smart about it, so you start with the ones who did not grow up in the backyard of other elite prestige schools. So you start by ignoring the ones who are close to maybe ohio state and clemson and possible others. Then you look at what positions you need and you are down to 30-ish players as initial targets.

Its not that distance is a "super factor" but it is an easy place to start optimizing your chances.

Similarly - if you are a sucky team - start by ignoring the 1 and 2 stars - as you said you will be able to get those - so look at the bottom half of 3 stars and start from there, figure out where your celing is (look at recommended targets - and remember those are risk-averse, so you can go a little higher than the top rated there), then try different distances etc.

At SOME point (even if we put it earlier than right before week 1) the user will have to look at the recruits for the first time - we want this 'first time' set up to be more than just 'sort by this rating' add from the top...

[tanqtonic]

One other thing that would be a real help is to enable an 'add target' from the scouting view screen, and/or have the recruit card hold buttons for scout/recruit point; or the offer scholarship/target button on it.

I have realized that one problem in addition to the mass of information, is that there is a constant motion back and forth to actually do something on a different page (the Action View) based on information in the recruit card and the scouting view.

Anything to reduce view swaps to get to or execute an action would be much appreciated, especially in this very granular level part of the program.

As an aside, have you all considered an 'untarget' action? Sometimes there might be 12 or 13 targets for a position with two slots on the roster. If those slots become filled with commitments, it would help to be able to de-clutter the target screen to those positions/players that are under active scrutiny or monitoring.

[brooks_piggott]

You can check the "Hidden" column checkbox so it hides them from most of the views.

[arodtwlv]

You can check the "Hidden" column checkbox so it hides them from most of the views.

Can we have back the ability to hide commits at least to other schools if not also ours too to save space on the recruit board?

[C-Bailey24]

Coach grades were never meant to be for recruits. They were for assisting people in depth chart selections, adherence to play styles, etc.

Can you expand on this? Cause I've only ever seen Coach grades on the recruiting cards...

[brooks_piggott]

I may have mispoke, the grades were never meant to be shown for all recruits... it was a bug we introduced when going from CF20 to CF21.I honestly can't recall when in CF20 the grade appeared... I didn't check because we decided to tie them to the new outreach system.