A change from the First Access in the last iteration

[tanqtonic]

has made this iteration a change from a 'good experience' to one that I think will cause me to shelve the game.

In the First Access, the coach grades were accessible for every player being recruited. I have tended to play the 'build em style' --- that is build up a really bad program to one that is better over time. I.e. taking a CUSA doormat like Rice to competitive in the CUSA and to actually knocking on the door to a ranking.

This entailed one thing in particular -- being very astute on whom to pay attention to in recruiting (i.e. the way that a 'build up' program *has* to do it)

I thought the full grades made this somewhat too easy.

But the change put in has literally made this impossible. Now, the only way to have a coach grade is to 'attend a game'. In the 'build em up' teams you have at most 14-15 outreach points per week. That translates to only being able to assess in any way, shape, or form for literally 2 or 3 players per week. That makes this type of playstyle almost impossible.

And, unrealistic to boot. Being a fairly good alumni supporter of my alma mater (a very small D1 school), I absolutely know from my interactions that recruiters dont 'go blind' to 2-3 games per week. The staff literally watches tapes of hundreds of prospects in order to narrow their interactions. And, these tapes have the benefit of showing these schools the abilities of the types of athletes they target --- all before visiting. As an example, in my area of Austin, I hosted the lower staff members to a dinner when they traveled here who showed a very detailed knowledge of the few 3 stars that they felt that they 'had a shot with', as well as the 2 stars and below. That is, *before* the game visit.

In short, at least some opinion had been formed without 'going to a game' through a combination of scouting, tape, and outside rating services who can collect vast amounts of the same.

Granted, the previous First Access may have been 'too easy' to winnow that information out; but the current method of requiring a high school game visit makes it impossible for anything other than the 2-3 / week that is now possible. It is easy as Oklahoma to simply do the 2-3 top prospects per week -- that is made possible by the already in place star system, and allows them not to throw their outreach points out the window --- they implicitly know where to look.

For a middle level or low level program -- that ability to have any chance at finding a decent player in the mass is now shrunk to mere chance.

Imo, that has made the recruiting aspect pretty much unplayable *except* when playing the best of the best.

As an analogy, this would be akin to you having *zero* grades on the draft prospects, and requiring every team to do their own search *and* run their own diligence to ferret out every aspect with zero common knowledge available. I know for a fact that in your NFL game, a preliminary 'idea' is available for the draft, and a team can do certain things itself to expand their knowledge on prospects. Here, one is literally flying blind. And, if you cant 'bid' effectively for 4 and 5 stars, you are forced to randomly turn over rocks to find any idea how to assess them.

Not good.

In fact, this is a game breaker for me.

edited to add: just went through the first recruiting season under this new scheme. Absolutely terrible. Attempting to find anything even a smidge outside of 'just mediocre' is made to be effectively trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle while blindfolded. This is both unrealistic, and in any event, makes trying to do anything with recruiting aside from flipping the switches to let the AI 'do it' very unplayable for me. And, to be honest, recruiting is a serious differentiator for a college based game --- if this is the differentiator and can only be effectively done by the AI then I will say 'no' with a hard stop --- and also if so I am *very* far from happy about putting money into this game based on that massive difference between the First Access and this version.

[KingNeb]

I think there has to be a middle ground between how it was before (where you could look through all low rated prospects & easily find diamonds in the rough) and how it is now (only being able to look at the scout grades which help some but not a lot).

I feel like adding something along the lines of "watch game tape" or something else that costs scouting points would help a lot. Maybe this doesn't unlock a fully accurate coach grade number like before but maybe either a letter grade (A/B/C/D/F) or a worded statement on how he is compared to how he is ranked nationally (way better than ranked, way worse than ranked, about how he's ranked, etc).

As it stands I went through one position looking at scout grades & reading commentary and it took a lot longer than it should. I can't imagine doing this for each position I need to fill.

Not sure if I would call it a game breaker but it definitely is hindering my enjoyment so far. I'm at the start of a new season with a new team (hooray for promotions) but I don't really want to finish recruiting which is a crucial part of the game.

Any input from the devs would be appreciated.

[tanqtonic]

Agree that a middle ground would be good. Maybe start with a very rough, fairly inaccurate coach grade. As you expend scout points, that grade becomes more and more clear. *That* is actually the process that happens, mind you. The low level intern or grad assistant gets the mounds of tape and a very rough scout firm assessment. The very low intern then pores over the tapes, getting a better and better idea of what each prospect can do well and has issues with. At the end of the research slog, the HC and the various assistants that deal with that position do a deep dive themselves on the accumulated data, and in turn make the calls to interview.

And, the finding of the diamond in the rough with right off the bat sharp and roughly decent coach grades at the outset as it was was too easy -- I noted that and fully agree with you on that point.

But now, at least for me, it is really bad.

Sim the process via using scout points, and have the scout points deliver up that better and better picture. And, given that, I would also slightly increase the weekly scout point allotment.

That will allow a staff to do a decent assessment with medium and low-level teams for those that play those 'build them up' type games, and still really doesnt ixnay the built in advantages that the big players have in the system.

+1 to you King Neb

[KingNeb]

Just realized that scouting a high school game costs 5 outreach points. I took over Northwestern & I have 7 total outreach points. This means I will get the coach grades for only around 20 players TOTAL for the entire season!

If this is how it will be going forward then could the high school visit either cost fewer outreach points or have it be reallocated to scouting points instead of outreach? As it stands I don't know how I will be able to put together a strong class with these guidelines/restrictions.

[Arquinton]

agreed. I wish there was a tutorial on how the system works. This is my first time playing the game and i feel like a fish out of water. I like the concept but I am kinda just clicking around hoping i am doing stuff correctly. are there any kind of resources that cover recruiting and how to do it? When I was building my coach I didnt know what any of the ratings were and how they effected the game or my recruiting (if at all). Like what in the world is "youngsters" rating lol

[AKH]

The coach grades and outreach points are new to the 21 version. These are auxiliary aspects to the main scouting that was already in the game.

People have been doing fine identifying good targets and getting a grasp of their ratings using the main scouting system since the first version of the game. And it works exactly in the way you guys describe by accumulating knowledge as you put in more time (scout points).

So, while I am not saying we wont tweak it and make adjustments, understand that the coach grades are not supposed to be - and was never meant to be - your main source of scouting knowledge.


The guides are here:
https://wolverinestudios.freshdesk.com/ ... ting-guide

https://wolverinestudios.freshdesk.com/ ... ting-guide

[tanqtonic]

The coach grades and outreach points are new to the 21 version. These are auxiliary aspects to the main scouting that was already in the game.

People have been doing fine identifying good targets and getting a grasp of their ratings using the main scouting system since the first version of the game. And it works exactly in the way you guys describe by accumulating knowledge as you put in more time (scout points).

So, while I am not saying we wont tweak it and make adjustments, understand that the coach grades are not supposed to be - and was never meant to be - your main source of scouting knowledge.


The guides are here:
https://wolverinestudios.freshdesk.com/ ... ting-guide

https://wolverinestudios.freshdesk.com/ ... ting-guide

I disagree to a certain extent with some of your comments above.

The main problem is that when you remove the coaches grades, the only delineation you have to 'where do I start' is in a bunch of raw numbers and a huge pool of people.

if you want to make the system of recruiting wading through player by player and only the 5 scout grades and 13 attributes for the most part, I can tell you that that is an experience that I will pass on.

Most sports management games give at least some raw idea of 'where to look' (albeit somewhat inaccurate.) Front Office Football (in the draft) has one number end grade, from which you can dive into the specifics. Out Of the Park Baseball has very much the same system. This allows you to pare your search very easily to 20-25 people, and at the same time you can do the full mondo 'dive into the weeds' if you wish. Iirc your pro version of football at the draft has that same 'very raw' grade that gives the user a very gross idea of 'where to look', and then it has an ability for the user to 'drill deep'.

Here, effectively if my team cannot realistically land a four star or 5 star (say, UAB), then your system as presented says 'oh well, have fun with the 100-220 people and 18 attributes per position. Effectively, it is raw chance at that point, or a Master's degree in speed scanning and mental calculation (since there is no way I can see to export the recruit information out into a spreadsheet).

If your alls idea of that gross look is 'for running backs, start looking at the 222 people that all have the same star rating, then run a mental calculation on the attributes on all of them', and only with about 1% of them do I get a very small set of numbers to have to compare -- I would pass.

If the idea of fun is slogging through 2000 or so players and having to ballpark 18 attributes, that is *not* the definition of productive time for me. In fact, what it means to me is going to the AI to do that mind numbing slog. And that means that the differentiator in a college sim is made where it doesnt matter.

If that is the case, I should have waited to real release, done the demo, and then done the hard pass without shelling out money.

And, in the real world, while the basic attributes are available to the recruiting staff, at the end of the day even with an unscouted and the only information is 'paid for', the results arent 200 names all in a single mass. There are fine gradations in a final grade at that point to allow a staff to concentrate. And, with the expenditure of scouting and outreach services, that one letter or one number final grade that was pre-supplied can (and does) change with that effort.

[AKH]

ok

[arodtwlv]

I did prefer the pre-final build "coach #" too due to what tanqtonic kind of described as the work flow of having some "rawish" # to help give guide on the thousands of recruits available. I also get the idea of wanting to make the outreach points actually "mean something" and going to a HS game and having it "unlock" something is deff a cool idea, so not sure how to balance these two.

One thought, and was wanting this even when coach grades were in, was to have the scout grades (A- athletic, B- IQ etc) available on the scout table from the start since technically you already had all the grades for all the players (just had to go thru each player card) and that way it's 1) not 100% accurate since u need scouting to get the truer grade and 2) still not a specific exact # which leaves ambiguity similar to irl

Another thought is to instead of such detailed grade from a coach (like 22.4), maybe bring like a wider ranged bucketed type that is way less acurate (looking or sounding), but still allows the user to have at least one anchor grade for all players (besides rank in country) to sort by. Something like change coach grade back to being shown (on player card at least would be nice to be on table too) to say a 1-5 (1-10, I think NFL draft they sometimes use 1-8?) scale (or heck alphabet to match the scout grade system)) and then keep the scout HS game mechanic in where that 1-5 grade turns into your old 22.5 grade or whatever.

Some quick thoughts, have some more ideas on how to possibly hit middle ground, but not sure how to articulate just yet

[brooks_piggott]

Coach grades were never meant to be for recruits. They were for assisting people in depth chart selections, adherence to play styles, etc. For recruits we've always used recruiting points and scouting points to learn more about players and get information on their ratings. The more points you put in, the more accurate the ratings. I didn't feel right completely taking it away since it can be another valuable source of information, but it was never intended to replace normal scouting.

Teams get emailed about players from their scouting department, you get recommended targets in your lists to help narrow down the pool, and you have AutoRecruit you can turn on for a week or two if you want to see who the CPU is targeting. Most teams will only have 20-ish scholarships to give out anyway, so getting coach grades on 10-15 of them just to confirm or reject your scout's opinions seems reasonable to me. (We can certainly have a discussion about unlocking with other various methods or change up point costs) but we will not be unlocking the whole coach point thing for every recruit again.