I know I spoke of scouting for PF25 already but a quick idea popped into my head. Use the scouting from College pre-2024 and bring it into PF25. With the points every week that you could move back and forth and uncover a little at a time. For all the issues with CF23 recruitment, the scouting was IMO one thing that worked well.

I think this would be hard to implement in the pro version, solely because you import the draft class at the beginning of the off season. So during the regular season the draft class isn't known.

The draft class can be imported at any time though, right? Yes I guess this would be limited to auto-generated classes so I see that issue. But I think the overall mechanics are mainly what I'm talking about .

As an alternative, keep the draft scouting at the beginning of the season but just make it multi-stage. I know some people are going to bitch and moan about oh another stage it's long enough already, but I have a solution to that too:

Just run five staff hire stages, five free agency stages, and five coaching stages **concurrently.** That solves two problems - it gives people who aren't interested in staff hiring something to do so that doesn't have to be rushed through, and teams can learn about potential draftees while negotiating free agents to kind of go back and forth with strategy.

While I do think eventually getting to more in-season scouting is probably ideal for immersion I think there's a lot that can improved upon before in-season scouting is top of list for me personally. Also think you can make scouting a bit more strategic with points (vs just a check box) without needing to be in-season and dealing with the timing of draft import issue. For example, could have a points system where you can allocate points to players to scout them different % amounts. Not sure the best answer but a system that allows you to scout some guys 50%-70%, some 30% with less accuracy, etc. And then if you want to put all your eggs in one basket and scout a guy to 90+%, it should cost exponentially more to do so and scouting several players at this 90+% threshold comes at the cost of not scouting the class as a whole very deep.

To me though, I think making the scouting and drafting more fun and not so easy to predict would have a bigger impact on my enjoyment too. Mainly that predicting player talent is extremely predicable using coach grades (the number grades given to head coach, OC, and DC). As I think I wrote about in another post, all 32 teams have nearly the exact same coach grades so they don't even seem to really be coach grades. But those numbers can be dead give aways to who is the outliers in talent for a given class/position. That along with draft projected order being nearly perfect as well within positions. Again all notes on personal preference and not bugs but I prefer a system where projected order doesn't so perfectly align with ratings.

Also cpu picks seem to not use scouting the same way user GMs. If you say advance past scouting and edit a draftee projected 7th round who is 60 ovr and make him 99 ovr after scouting, the game will show him as 7th round projection and GMs will show as bad scouted attributes but cpu will take him 1.1.

Another big thing is trying to factor in future development and injuries more into scouting eventually. Outside of work ethic to a very small degree, there's nothing really factored into draft based on potential development. Same way injuries factor in very little outside of rarely seen injury tag. Let's say there was some sort of "potential" rating that was scout-able with chances of inaccuracy, it could add some strategy to the draft. Do you take the player with a C+ OVR rating and B- Potential scouted rating in round 3 that is more of a day1 playable pick but limited upside or do you take the the D- OVR player that you have as an A potential rating but more of a project. It shouldn’t at all be a guarantee at all that players reach their potential rating (just a scouted estimate) but right now seems like players develop way too similar too each other across the league. Starting out elite is only thing that matters. Not many bust (guys that just don’t develop at all or even regress early in their careers) and gems in draft (guys that develop crazy fast). The Gems should be very rare but would be fun to have a 65 OVR WR that develops into 88 OVR WR in just a few seasons. Similar having a lot more fragile guys or some sort of more detailed injury factor in the draft would put more decision making on do I take the 80 OVR WR that seems to be very durable in college or the 83 OVR faster receiver who seems to be a bit injury prone (just using ovr for simplicity of communication).

In summary, at the end of the day, playing in a GM type role to draft is all about making tough decisions. Right now the scouting process is nearly decision less as it's only a check box instead of some sort of weighted pt allocation system and you know nothing about the players when deciding to hit the check box. After scouting, the projected order and coach ratings combined with what is pretty accurate attribute grades basically tell you how to pick. IMO, by making this harder to predict, adding in more decisions on trying to forecast players development path and injury risk will create more fun decision scenarios.

Yeah the point that Zac made about using points, is kind of the way I was talking about it with the old college game. I think you're just talking about it in one week whereas I'm talking about it over a season, or if that's too much, just five stages instead of one (we can cut down on staff hiring to 3 if that seems too long)

I'd rather see it over a season ideally, but if it's still going to be one stage then yeah at least have shades of gray instead of "scout or not, interview or not" or you have 50-80 players that have 90-95 certainty and the rest none. I think it should be relatively easy to get at least up to 20-30% because in reality teams have varying degrees of info for many players. Maybe if the combines were more useful. The top 10 are cheap to scout because they have the bonus of being "well known" but why only 10 well-known players? In any event, you should be able to know SOMETHING about almost every player in the draft class, even if it's just maybe 20 certainty. Or ratings could get revealed if you really go hard-in on one player.

One other thing, if you guys bring the extra coaches that you have for college version over to pro, that could play a role in it too, with maybe you scout someone with the QB coach you'll get more accurate information than a HC who scouts hundreds of players but only a little?