Recruiting Suggestion

[Ruthian23]

As I have played more and more of the game, one thing that I keep thinking is a bit of an issue is that I feel like recruiting should be extended a bit, timeframe-wise. One frustration I've run into is that I feel like I need to commit my recruiting points and scholarships before I really have a good feel of the players through scouting and interviewing, etc. I think it would be good if there was some sort of several stage recruiting "quiet period," maybe at the same time as staff signing or something, where you can only interview recruits or scout them so that you can better choose your targets for the recruiting season. Alternatively, all players could start with the equivalent of a 1 scouting point scouting report (maybe optional for those who like the current system) so you at least have a vague idea of what kind of player they are and whether they fit into the type of system you want to play. I just feel like by the time I've interviewed people and scouted people the ship has already sailed on most recruits and it would be too late to catch up on ideal targets that weren't identified right away. I've generally been very successful with recruiting, but I think it's more due to just seeing the star ratings and numbers rather than actually making smart choices about individual prospects, because I don't have the info to do that until later in the process.

[eel1987]

This would be really useful, and maybe also a way to help smaller programs get an idea of who bigger programs will pursue. I'm playing a small school so the first couple weeks of recruiter are mostly me putting points/offers into players just for Bama or Georgia to come walking up, so I have to move those offers and points to someone else. Over and over unt it all kind of settles.

[brooks_piggott]

We do have emails from coaches that make recommendations and recommended recruits in the filters to help narrow it down. If you want to recruit above your range though you need to spend a lot of points on recruiting early and consistently to have a shot. Recruits rarely sign early in the season if there are multiple teams still contacting them though so you should have a couple of weeks to scout prior to offering scholarships.

[frankinho]

i personally didnt get the experience that i cant scout all of my targets or that i need more time actually and i have played with low prestige teams. Can you describe which school are you playing with and what ranked recruits are you pursuing? As Brooks mentioned could be that you are pursuing unrealistic targets. A good thing to look at is to see no. of offers recruits have. As a small school i usually move away from recruits with more than 3 offers, unless they specifically mention they like my school the most.

[Ruthian23]

i personally didnt get the experience that i cant scout all of my targets or that i need more time actually and i have played with low prestige teams. Can you describe which school are you playing with and what ranked recruits are you pursuing? As Brooks mentioned could be that you are pursuing unrealistic targets. A good thing to look at is to see no. of offers recruits have. As a small school i usually move away from recruits with more than 3 offers, unless they specifically mention they like my school the most.

Oh, I usually can scout all my targets eventually, but the issue is by the time I have, it might be week 7 or 8 and if I'm trying to decide which of two similarly rated quarterbacks would be a better use of my scholarship offer, it might be too late by then. Like I said, I'm not having any difficulty putting together very good classes for whatever level I'm at, but sometimes I feel I'm just offering a guy because he's a QB and rated 141 rather than the QB rated 148, whereas I think in reality when coaches are making these decisions it's because this kid has a better arm or is more mobile or makes better decisions and those things will fit in better with the way we like to play. I think they generally have that kind of basic outline from watching tape etc WHEN they decide which players to target or go after or offer, whereas the way it is now you're doing that kind of scouting at the same time you're offering and visiting, etc, so by the time you figure out that maybe that 148 QB is a better fit than the 141 QB, you've already invested 70 points in the 141 QB and changing directions would likely mean just getting neither. I just feel like maybe the game could make me think more when I'm making these initial decisions rather than kind of going in blind based purely on recruit number and location. It's not that the way it is now is too difficult--I just think it hurts immersion a bit.

Maybe it's just that I should be spreading out my scouting more initially, like with one or two points per player to get a better idea of that kind of stuff. I don't even really consider this a criticism or anything; I find recruiting generally fairly rewarding and it's not hard. I am just kind of thinking aloud about ways that recruiting might be more immersive and feel a little less like spreadsheet managing, or could at least reward players who dig deeper.

[frankinho]

i personally didnt get the experience that i cant scout all of my targets or that i need more time actually and i have played with low prestige teams. Can you describe which school are you playing with and what ranked recruits are you pursuing? As Brooks mentioned could be that you are pursuing unrealistic targets. A good thing to look at is to see no. of offers recruits have. As a small school i usually move away from recruits with more than 3 offers, unless they specifically mention they like my school the most.

Oh, I usually can scout all my targets eventually, but the issue is by the time I have, it might be week 7 or 8 and if I'm trying to decide which of two similarly rated quarterbacks would be a better use of my scholarship offer, it might be too late by then. Like I said, I'm not having any difficulty putting together very good classes for whatever level I'm at, but sometimes I feel I'm just offering a guy because he's a QB and rated 141 rather than the QB rated 148, whereas I think in reality when coaches are making these decisions it's because this kid has a better arm or is more mobile or makes better decisions and those things will fit in better with the way we like to play. I think they generally have that kind of basic outline from watching tape etc WHEN they decide which players to target or go after or offer, whereas the way it is now you're doing that kind of scouting at the same time you're offering and visiting, etc, so by the time you figure out that maybe that 148 QB is a better fit than the 141 QB, you've already invested 70 points in the 141 QB and changing directions would likely mean just getting neither. I just feel like maybe the game could make me think more when I'm making these initial decisions rather than kind of going in blind based purely on recruit number and location. It's not that the way it is now is too difficult--I just think it hurts immersion a bit.

Maybe it's just that I should be spreading out my scouting more initially, like with one or two points per player to get a better idea of that kind of stuff. I don't even really consider this a criticism or anything; I find recruiting generally fairly rewarding and it's not hard. I am just kind of thinking aloud about ways that recruiting might be more immersive and feel a little less like spreadsheet managing, or could at least reward players who dig deeper.

Oh i see what you mean yes. I think an option to mitigate that would also be to have a scouting bonus for homestate and pipeline state recruits where you would already poses some % of scouting certainty and you can go hard for some guys earlier in the process. Additionally an idea would be to buy scouting service reports similar to DDS CB but perhaps having to choose limited to a few of positions. I presented these ideas in the thread here - viewtopic.php?f=346&t=34853&start=10

[eel1987]

i personally didnt get the experience that i cant scout all of my targets or that i need more time actually and i have played with low prestige teams. Can you describe which school are you playing with and what ranked recruits are you pursuing? As Brooks mentioned could be that you are pursuing unrealistic targets. A good thing to look at is to see no. of offers recruits have. As a small school i usually move away from recruits with more than 3 offers, unless they specifically mention they like my school the most.

I'm playing as GA State right now. I consistently get top 50 or even top 40 recruit classes, so it isn't so much that recruiting isn't fair or is too difficult as it's that it feels too "gamey." Like Ruthian said, I mostly pick targets by their ranking. I usually filter to distance < 200 and I'll try two or three 4-star players, and get 3-star targets for the rest. After the first week most of my targets end up with multiple offers from schools I can't compete with, so I have to reduce the points going to them to zero, remove the offer, and change to different targets with fewer schools chasing them. It's tedious and feels more like an algorithm than any kind of realistic recruiting process. There's very little information to go on, and very little opportunity to get any more since outreach points and such are so limited. I don't know what schools recruits are interested in, who is recruiting them, etc. The home visit activity is the most useful for getting some intel, but since it costs 5 outreach points and I usually only have 9-15 depending on the season, it takes a while to do home visits for most of my targets.

[Colly]

I've just a little over 300 hrs in CF2021 and now have around 110 hrs in CF2022 playing always as a team with 40 - 50 school prestige and while I understand the current system works and works just fine I do think it can be greatly improved in the future.

I think the biggest issue I have with the recruiting is that for such a large element of the gameplay every week there's still just a feeling of clicking boxes and spending arbitrary points to hopefully affect a recruit's decision to join my program within the allotted time.

I like the way there are emails giving clues to your coach's thoughts regarding the recruit, the recommended list, and how spending "points" on specific actions unlock information. I just feel it could be better presented to evoke a better immersive experience and get you actually involved in the actions and feedback more than just clicking boxes and hoping to unlock information. I love the phone system in CB. I know you have to try and recruit a lot more players in CF but that level of immersion and how you garner information is much better than assigning points and should be expanded on in my opinion.

Bowl Bound does a great job of breaking the recruiting up into the various elements of the recruiting calendar and limiting what types of contact can be made during these periods. This is something I'd like to see added (maybe it is somewhat there "under the hood" already but if it is it's not clear). I think making it a major feature would add realism and immersion.

Coupled with the recruiting calendar another area I'd like to see changed is to replace the currency of recruiting points with actual money $$$ currency, just like what we set at the start of the year. This would again add so much realism and immersion to actually manage your budget in terms of costs weighed against results. Seriously, what does it actually mean to spend 10 points on recruiting? It's all just too arbitrary for such a large gameplay element. Spending dollars, like in reality, on specific tasks, actions or administrative costs proportioned on certain recruits makes more sense to me. Again, I'll point to BBCF as an alternative to our current DDSSCF system.

Currently, our coaches send emails with information. This is good. Why can't these emails be tagged to the recruit and be visible for me to assess at a later time if my overall recruiting picture changes? Sure, I can not delete them and they'd be saved sequentially but that's clunky and not very useful. The information and comments from the coaches should be added to the recruit's profile.