SUGGESTIONS FOR DDSCB2023

[Wayne23]

Gary is going in this direction for 2023. Last night he mentioned it in Twitch. BIG changes coming in almost every area of the game. The Wolverine Studios Facebook page has a link to last night's video if anyone is interested.

[jlemmen43]

Yes I heard that. Sounded much better!!

[Bryan]

it's not a major thing. You do your suggestions, I'll do mine. But since you asked, I made my case.

I appreciate your response. I don't take the 'each suggestion is it's own thing' approach because it doesn't reflect reality. Developer time is finite, and in the case of an aggressive schedule like the one WS maintains, quite limited indeed. That means that conversations about the relative impact and importance of suggestions are essential.

Recruiting could use lat/Lon like the college football does. You don’t have to know where a hometown is, as you can sort recruits by miles from your university (100,200,300,etc). Makes complete since to me. For example, if I’m playing South Alabama, I can recruit south Miss, Louisiana, panhandle of Florida much easier (should be less costly) than I can in my own state in North Alabama (ie huntsville)

That sort of gets in to what I was talking about in terms of how it relates to other mechanics. For example, while I don't know the football game as well, there's a conflict between what you've described here and how pipelines work. If you're recruiting based on distance then it doesn't make sense to have pipelines covering a whole state. If you recruit the panhandle heavily but not Southern Florida, then why should any recruit in Miami or wherever give a darn about your 'Florida pipeline'?

In DDSCB, unless I'm very much mistaken recruits are still generated on a state basis, not a city basis or a high-school basis. The NWST (sp?) reports are still split up by regions defined by state lines. So what ends up happening is you have inconsistent mechanics fighting each other, rather than working together in a coherent design. For a distance-based approach to work well all of these kinds of elements need to be reworked.

[Bryan]

From the developer video I thought there were some very good things, esp. the change in how much recruiting info is available and other features for modernizing. I do want to make one suggestion on the Budgeting stage at the start.

I think the allocations there should be simplified. If you have 25k going into wellness or amenities or whatever, there's no way for the player to know the impact of 25k versus 24k or 26k or 30k or whatever other value. It's a choice that's not connected to anything concrete that the player can make a reasonable decision based off of. You can always just use the AI Suggest, but that's the game playing itself not the player doing it. I would propose instead using a choice based off of something like Low/Medium/High or whatever levels of facilities for the current year, and then similar low/medium/high for each individual category of training, wellness, and amenities to subdivide that. Having the increased granularity of inputting exact amounts in my opinion just complicates and confuses the situation with no benefit.

[ECHood]

Some "realism" things that I'm hopeful to see in the new version or beyond:

- Eliminating the improvement of walk-ons over time, not letting walk-ons play at all unless absolutely necessary or in garbage time, especially at high major programs.

- Not letting the AI play injured players below a certain threshold (say, 85% health). Right now, it appears even if you take a player who is hurt (even 0% health with like a broken leg), the AI could play him in a game because of foul trouble. There should be an option to put a player in street clothes for a game or more so that they don't play. If all 300+ AI coaches are playing injured players like this, it skews the stats, awards, etc.

- Smarter coaching and recruiting AI. Recruiting/building a team based on positions or using secondary positions in a better way. I've seen teams recruit two 5-star small forwards but only one plays a lot and a walk-on starts at power forward. The AI has to be able to put together a great depth chart in order for these teams to be the best they can be. The reason I started looking at this stuff is because I often found it too easy to start with a bad program and get good really fast - by putting together a good depth chart. But I don't want to be the only coach out of 300+ teams to do this. My second-year Lafayette team shouldn't win 30 games and finish #9 in the country (it did, and I didn't sign great players or inhert particularly good players at all). I'm not really sure what the answer is to this. But I've had some of my best successes by moving players around to their secondary positions to get my best 5 on the floor as much as possible.

- Along those lines, the prestige improvements of small schools shouldn't be so overpowered. After several years of a sim, the best mid-major and small schools become incredible, nationally ranked every year and like #3 and 4 seeds, and I assume this is because they are now nabbing the nation's best recruits. It should be a Halley's Comet situation (like Gonzaga) where a smaller school evolves into an annual powerhouse. Happens too much in this game. Right now in a long sim I'm doing Belmont, Iona, Colgate, South Dakota State, Louisiana Tech, Harvard and a few others are incredible - better than Kentucky, Michigan State, many other power schools.

- High major programs, even after poor seasons, should on average consistently out-recruit even the best smaller schools and mid-majors.

Just my two cents. I realize it's way too late for 2023 version changes (I have mentioned some of these before) but these are just some thoughts I've been meaning to get down on "paper". Curious as to if anyone else has the same feelings.

[PointGuard]

Yeah, you're late.

But those are good...I added them to the list and re-submitted it to Gary.

[Billdozer]

I have a suggestion regarding the box score for overtime games. I recently started a new association as head coach of the Houston Baptist Huskies.
In the last regular season game of the year I lost on the road in overtime against Incarnate Word 105-108. The overtime score was 28-31

I would like to see some indication of how many overtimes were played. Would it be possible to show each overtime individually in the box score or maybe have a number above the score showing the number of overtimes? I think my game was probably a triple overtime game but it could have been double or quadruple overtime.

[PointGuard]

Agree wholeheartedly with your suggestion. I end up totalling up minutes to determine the number of OT's if the overall OT score is high. But it would be nice not to have to do that.

[jlemmen43]

I have a suggestion regarding the box score for overtime games. I recently started a new association as head coach of the Houston Baptist Huskies.
In the last regular season game of the year I lost on the road in overtime against Incarnate Word 105-108. The overtime score was 28-31

I would like to see some indication of how many overtimes were played. Would it be possible to show each overtime individually in the box score or maybe have a number above the score showing the number of overtimes? I think my game was probably a triple overtime game but it could have been double or quadruple overtime.

Yes, Thank you! I've had this bug me and totally forgot to suggest a remedy.

[drummerJ99]

Figured I'd post in here instead of starting a new thread. Hopefully it gets seen. I'm mentioned on these forums multiple times that I'm not a fan of the black and grey, much preferred the look of 21. But it seems we are stuck with this theme, so if that's the case I'd like to make a suggestion for the sim score overlay. I feel the players get lost and blend in way too much to the black background. A easy fix would be to make it look like 21 or if even better would be to make it look like my edited one below.

Default in 21:


Default in 22:


Edited suggestion: