SUGGESTIONS FOR DDSCB2023

[PointGuard]

Alternatvestats: Thanks for your more complete thoughts about your suggestion. I had already added your basic suggestion to the List but now will include your comments to my questions as an addendum since they don't fit into the Suggestions List format I use to provide a very long list of suggestions to Gary.

[Wayne23]

How about transfers: Scouting them should have the potential to increase their interest. Offering to them even more so.

Editing this: What I mean is, if I Scout a player, or even more so, if I Offer to a player in the first round of the Transfer period, it should increase the likelihood that he'll have me in his Top 10, or even Top 5 in the next round, and subsequent rounds of the Transfer period. Not a guarantee, but increased likelihood.

[hotdawg33]

Scheduling!

More games scheduled for each team...right now most teams in DDSCB play 29 regular season games (unless a team is playing in a preseason tournament and advances past the 1st round then they will play more games) but in reality most teams play well over 30 regular season games before getting to the conference tournament...those 2-4 extra games can make a difference in my team making the tournament or not making the tournament obviously depending on the outcome of the games.

Not quite... Per Andy Wittry on ncaa.com, teams not participating in an early season tournament are allowed up to 29 regular season games, including conference play. The teams that do receive and accept an invitation to one of those events though may play up to 28 regular season games, plus that tournament, totaling as many as 31 games before their conference tournament, as no multi-team event allows any team to play more than 3 games in real life. From what I've seen over the last few years of playing the DDSCB games, each version seems to do a pretty outstanding job at maximizing every team's schedule according to those restrictions, with the most notable example being that the 2k classic and NIT season tip off allow for up to 4 games for the teams that participate in their respective championships.

Thanks for checking into this, ShamWow. I was planning on doing in, but might not have found the reference you did.

Then there should be more preseason tournaments...I just checked the 2021-2022 preseason tournaments and there were 20 preseason tournaments that had 8 teams and numerous other tournaments that had 4 teams...and each tournament had consolation brackets...The 2019-2020 (pre-covid) tournaments...there were 26 tournaments that had 8 teams and numerous others with 4 teams with consolation brackets.

[KeVbK]

I had been writing things down over the past couple weeks about possible suggestions. There are probably some repeats in my list, but I figured I'd post everything I had written.

Recruiting
Remove “Buy Reports” – remove the fog of war to make recruiting more transparent and immersive

• For each prospect, allow us to see, in their individual prospect cards, their top 10 schools, the schools that have visited them, the schools where they have taken official visits, and the schools that have offered them scholarships.
• I don’t believe the current system accurately portrays how recruiting works because the fog of war hides much of the information about a prospect’s recruiting process from the player (i.e Me). Prospects in real life have every incentive to tweet out when they receive a scholarship offer or take an official visit. There are multiple different scouting services that track this stuff. I know that when you get into low rated prospects those online services aren’t as complete, but I believe giving players more information about who they are recruiting against, without requiring them to buy a report or manage a budget, would improve immersion. Right now when playing as a small school, if you don’t have a premium reports package, you are essentially recruiting in a vacuum. The teams you are competing against might as well not exist because you can’t know about them until the player you are target commits somewhere else.

Make assistants matter more in recruiting – Pipeline states for select assistants

• The game current has a pipeline state mechanic for head coaches, but I don’t believe it is too impactful. It would be interesting if that idea was expanded on by giving some assistant coaches a permanent buff to aid you in recruiting from certain states. At my alma mater, Xavier, Jonas Hayes was known for his recruiting ties in the south, specifically Georgia. In the last few years with him on the staff, Xavier has gotten like half their signees from Georgia, based on Hayes’ work.
• This change would also give players something else to think about when hiring assistants, as opposed to just hiring the guy with the highest number for his particular role.

Reimagine Camps – give us more “attribute level” info, less “overall level” info

• Right now, what we get from camp data is a view into a prospect’s overall level: top 5, top 10, top 25 etc. In general, I feel like that information is too instructive. My coaches can really tell if a prospect is the 11th best overall prospect at a camp? I would say we should replace the top X designation with an “all-camp honors”, a top 10 list of prospects at the camp (2 for each position). But, actually being in the “all-camp honors’ should be a roll of the dice (i.e not always the 2 best prospects at each position, but a weighted thing to give more variance).
• Beyond that, I would like to see us get more granular info about prospects from the camps. Something like:

o “Joe PG was one of the top shooters off the dribble at camp” – giving us insights into the ranking on mid-range shooting, scoring, dribbling
o “Billy C was one of the better passers from the post (passing among PFs/Cs), but was often overmatched on the offensive glass (not great offensive rebounding)”
• Balancing what info we get from scouting vs camps is challenging, but I’d like camp data to move beyond just a check box looking at a prospect’s current ability. Doing so would give more info for the players to interpret for themselves, instead of just a binary number.

Reveal prospects SAT scores earlier, maybe give them a chance to improve it later

• Prospects are almost always going to have taken the SAT earlier that January of their senior year. Give players the chance to see those numbers earlier to remove some of the unnecessary fog of war the game currently has with GPA Russian Roulette.

o If you want to keep the January SAT period in, maybe give prospects the ability to improve their SAT score in January.

Transfer Portal
#1 new feature – totally revamped transfer portal. Right now the transfer portal feels tacked on, especially compared to the recruiting process. It needs to be given the same sort of love as recruiting season because it is just as important, if not more so for a lot of schools now. These are the things I think should be included in a revamped transfer portal.
Prospect Priorities – Similar to “recruit info” in recruiting season, that are directly tied to why a prospect would choose your school, and why they left their last school

• Right now we have no info on what a prospect is looking for in their next school. A system similar to “recruit info” should be developed for each player that influences what school they may choose. These priorities should be different than they were as a high school senior. Thing like playing time, prestige, and facilities could be included, but also include things like “winning culture” (your record in the last several years), or “scheme fit” (does the player know the offense/defense you run?). There could be other ideas, but it would be interesting if those priorities were different than the priorities of a high school prospect.
• Those prospect priorities should also tie directly to the reason a player decided to transfer in the first place. If someone decides to transfer for playing time reasons, it should be their top priority in their next school. If they transfer because the team stinks and they want a change of scenery, “winning culture” could be their top priority.

Declaring to transfer to follow a coach to a new school

• You see this quite often when coaches take a new job at a bigger school, they are often followed by players from their old job. In Wes Miller’s first year as the coach at Cincinnati, 3 of his former players at UNC-Greensboro followed him to his new job.
• In general, when a coach leaves a job there should be an increase in the number of players who leave the program, even if they don’t follow the coach to a new school.

Opportunity to re-recruit your guys who enter the portal

• It isn’t uncommon for guys to enter the portal, then return to their old school. KC Ndefo entered the portal last season, but decided to return to St. Peter’s after he didn’t get the sort of offers he was looking for.

“Auto scout” players who player more than 15 minutes/game the prior year

• It feel pretty bad to go through contacting players to try and scout them, but then they sign with a different school before your coaches even had a chance to form an opinion about their abilities. Given how easy it is to find tape on college players, it shouldn’t take a week for your assistant coaches to have them scouted. Automatically scouting any player that played significant minutes the prior season would be a reasonable compromise in my mind.

[Billdozer]

I have a few more suggestions.

In the transfer portal I wonder if it would be possible to sort by stats I think it would be cool to show the school a player transferred out of when they decide on their new school. In addition a watch list for transfer players including players you have offered a scholarship to might be helpful.

Would it be possible to add the number of non-conference tournaments won to a coaches profile?

I think I have an idea of where players shoot from based on the offense. However, sometimes I wish players had a shot chart for each offensive set.

[Wayne23]

You make some very good points:
Yes, a great deal of info regarding recruits is known by coaches these days. What you are suggesting would be a MAJOR change in recruiting ,but hopefully Gary will consider it for next season.
I would LOVE to see more specific info from the camps. Again, that would probably involve a lot of work by Gary.
In real life high school kids get to take the SATs multiple times and in fact, most do.
The transfer portal is brand new. i think we need to be patient as bugs are worked out and as Gary sees how it is working and thinks about it in general and in specific terms. User input will definitely assist him. I expect this to get fleshed out in coming editions. I think it's a pretty good first effort!
Great post!

I had been writing things down over the past couple weeks about possible suggestions. There are probably some repeats in my list, but I figured I'd post everything I had written.

Recruiting
Remove “Buy Reports” – remove the fog of war to make recruiting more transparent and immersive

• For each prospect, allow us to see, in their individual prospect cards, their top 10 schools, the schools that have visited them, the schools where they have taken official visits, and the schools that have offered them scholarships.
• I don’t believe the current system accurately portrays how recruiting works because the fog of war hides much of the information about a prospect’s recruiting process from the player (i.e Me). Prospects in real life have every incentive to tweet out when they receive a scholarship offer or take an official visit. There are multiple different scouting services that track this stuff. I know that when you get into low rated prospects those online services aren’t as complete, but I believe giving players more information about who they are recruiting against, without requiring them to buy a report or manage a budget, would improve immersion. Right now when playing as a small school, if you don’t have a premium reports package, you are essentially recruiting in a vacuum. The teams you are competing against might as well not exist because you can’t know about them until the player you are target commits somewhere else.

Make assistants matter more in recruiting – Pipeline states for select assistants

• The game current has a pipeline state mechanic for head coaches, but I don’t believe it is too impactful. It would be interesting if that idea was expanded on by giving some assistant coaches a permanent buff to aid you in recruiting from certain states. At my alma mater, Xavier, Jonas Hayes was known for his recruiting ties in the south, specifically Georgia. In the last few years with him on the staff, Xavier has gotten like half their signees from Georgia, based on Hayes’ work.
• This change would also give players something else to think about when hiring assistants, as opposed to just hiring the guy with the highest number for his particular role.

Reimagine Camps – give us more “attribute level” info, less “overall level” info

• Right now, what we get from camp data is a view into a prospect’s overall level: top 5, top 10, top 25 etc. In general, I feel like that information is too instructive. My coaches can really tell if a prospect is the 11th best overall prospect at a camp? I would say we should replace the top X designation with an “all-camp honors”, a top 10 list of prospects at the camp (2 for each position). But, actually being in the “all-camp honors’ should be a roll of the dice (i.e not always the 2 best prospects at each position, but a weighted thing to give more variance).
• Beyond that, I would like to see us get more granular info about prospects from the camps. Something like:

o “Joe PG was one of the top shooters off the dribble at camp” – giving us insights into the ranking on mid-range shooting, scoring, dribbling
o “Billy C was one of the better passers from the post (passing among PFs/Cs), but was often overmatched on the offensive glass (not great offensive rebounding)”
• Balancing what info we get from scouting vs camps is challenging, but I’d like camp data to move beyond just a check box looking at a prospect’s current ability. Doing so would give more info for the players to interpret for themselves, instead of just a binary number.

Reveal prospects SAT scores earlier, maybe give them a chance to improve it later

• Prospects are almost always going to have taken the SAT earlier that January of their senior year. Give players the chance to see those numbers earlier to remove some of the unnecessary fog of war the game currently has with GPA Russian Roulette.

o If you want to keep the January SAT period in, maybe give prospects the ability to improve their SAT score in January.

Transfer Portal
#1 new feature – totally revamped transfer portal. Right now the transfer portal feels tacked on, especially compared to the recruiting process. It needs to be given the same sort of love as recruiting season because it is just as important, if not more so for a lot of schools now. These are the things I think should be included in a revamped transfer portal.
Prospect Priorities – Similar to “recruit info” in recruiting season, that are directly tied to why a prospect would choose your school, and why they left their last school

• Right now we have no info on what a prospect is looking for in their next school. A system similar to “recruit info” should be developed for each player that influences what school they may choose. These priorities should be different than they were as a high school senior. Thing like playing time, prestige, and facilities could be included, but also include things like “winning culture” (your record in the last several years), or “scheme fit” (does the player know the offense/defense you run?). There could be other ideas, but it would be interesting if those priorities were different than the priorities of a high school prospect.
• Those prospect priorities should also tie directly to the reason a player decided to transfer in the first place. If someone decides to transfer for playing time reasons, it should be their top priority in their next school. If they transfer because the team stinks and they want a change of scenery, “winning culture” could be their top priority.

Declaring to transfer to follow a coach to a new school

• You see this quite often when coaches take a new job at a bigger school, they are often followed by players from their old job. In Wes Miller’s first year as the coach at Cincinnati, 3 of his former players at UNC-Greensboro followed him to his new job.
• In general, when a coach leaves a job there should be an increase in the number of players who leave the program, even if they don’t follow the coach to a new school.

Opportunity to re-recruit your guys who enter the portal

• It isn’t uncommon for guys to enter the portal, then return to their old school. KC Ndefo entered the portal last season, but decided to return to St. Peter’s after he didn’t get the sort of offers he was looking for.

“Auto scout” players who player more than 15 minutes/game the prior year

• It feel pretty bad to go through contacting players to try and scout them, but then they sign with a different school before your coaches even had a chance to form an opinion about their abilities. Given how easy it is to find tape on college players, it shouldn’t take a week for your assistant coaches to have them scouted. Automatically scouting any player that played significant minutes the prior season would be a reasonable compromise in my mind.

[3manweave]

In the same recruiting vein, has the ability for signed recruits to back out of LOI's for coaching changes been discussed in this thread? Apologies if I've missed it.

[Wayne23]

Good point! No discussion in this thread that I can recall.

[SirMichaelJordan]

The ability to create preseason & post season tournaments with tournament maker inside of a game. More importantly in universe and sandbox modes.

[PointGuard]

Phew: finally caught up on all this and added everything.

BTW for Billdozer: in the Transfer Portal you can already sort by stats (or by skill levels or whatever) by clicking on the desired column's header.