My Two Cents

[Chipguru37]

I want to start by saying, I love this game; I've been playing for about 3 years now. I have probably logged a crazy amount of hours on this game. Just my thoughts on the current game – I am a High School Basketball Coach, so I could be overthinking it. But as a game developer – My goal would be: how can I keep you playing as long as possible each time

College Basketball is all about recruiting, and a good or bad coach can affect a program.

The budget should affect the grade for Training, Amenities, and Wellness.

Example: If you spend 50K on wellness, your training staff should get an A+. If you spend 5K on wellness, your training staff should get an F.

I know doing this would affect how much a school can get, but a school like Duke spends about 10M to 20M a year – in this game, that should be adjusted. You could adjust the cost of everything, but for a school like Duke, it could be 900K, and for a school like Austin Peay, it could be 400K. Coaches should have to negotiate contracts, and that should affect the budget also. A low-level school like Florida A&M should start with a budget of 200K.

Questions:

1. What happened to buying a National Package to see every kid in the database? - That could be 150K. You could still have the different camp for the schools that can't afford to scout everybody.


2. College Coaches recruit is currently in this order:

1. Re-recruit your own players

1. We should have more options to recruit a kid to stay or tell a player they probably need to find a team that fits them.

2. Re-recruit the transfer portal

A. I think we should know the player rating to start since they already played college basketball, but we need to find out what the player is looking for. Their star rating could change based on how they feel when they join your team.

B. I would add hosting a player for $1,000 – (thinking Flight/hotel and food) - 5 player a week.

B1. Email for $100 – check interest level

B2. You get 20 calls a week to get player details – That would be $500

1. You could easily spend $15k in week 1 of the transfer window being open.

3. Recruit JUCO

- Jr. College players should come in with 35 to 40 of knowing a playing style and basketball IQ should be higher because they played college basketball. That sets them apart from High School.

4. Post-Grad / not a part of this game.

5. Recruit High School players

A. I think it should depend on how good of a coach you are on how big your list is. If you’re a 1-star recruit ability – your call list should be 25 max. If you’re a 5-star, you should have 100, and the same number should be the amount of film you can watch.

B. When it comes to Live Scout:

B1. You should be able to scout 5 players a week.

B2. And the report should have weaknesses and strengths. Currently, I see what a player can’t do.

B3. Playing style and ability should be in the report. It would be right or wrong.

B4. If a player's parents have money, they can help/are more likely to help increase the school budget. I have seen that happen a lot when I was in college and as a High School Coach.

Lastly – I believe any team should be able to win a National Championship. If a team has the right group and coach, why not? It may take a team like Florida A&M 15 years with the same coach. I think a team with a prestige around 55 can make it to the big game. But with the transfer portal, the way it is. A small school will win a National Championship soon.

Thank you for making an amazing game.

[Gary Gorski]

Thank you for your kind words and for playing the game so much. Let me take a moment here and respond to items.

The budget should affect the grade for Training, Amenities, and Wellness.

Example: If you spend 50K on wellness, your training staff should get an A+. If you spend 5K on wellness, your training staff should get an F.

I know doing this would affect how much a school can get, but a school like Duke spends about 10M to 20M a year – in this game, that should be adjusted. You could adjust the cost of everything, but for a school like Duke, it could be 900K, and for a school like Austin Peay, it could be 400K. Coaches should have to negotiate contracts, and that should affect the budget also. A low-level school like Florida A&M should start with a budget of 200K.

I am not really sure what you are getting at here - in the game the budgets are already differentiated by the prestige of the school so your budget at a prestigious program is going to be much larger than one at a much less prestigious one. The facility grades are also differentiated with much higher grades going to much larger and prestigious programs. A poor program is not going to have an A facility grade. The budgeting and impact of those areas work in conjunction with the overall facility grade. If you have an A+ facility grade it means you have the best items - the best training facility, the best staff and items for the well being of your players, the coolest tech and gadgets...those items are in place and reflected by your facilities grade. With a higher grade comes a higher floor that must be allocated to the total spending on your facilities - if you fall below that floor then your facility grade can decline. You can improve your facilities by asking the board of directors to improve them - doing so would and does cost millions of dollars so it doesn't make sense in the context of the game to grade your facilities based on the spending amount. Think of it more like the board has already spent the millions of dollars to get the facilities you have - they can spend millions more to make them better. Your budget allocation keeps them up or lets them decline by not allocating enough to the upkeep and lets you have a focus on what you want to weigh more importantly in those facilities.

The impact from what you spend though is relative to other schools. If you spend only 5k on wellness while other schools spend 50k as long as the facility grades are relatively close the 50k will do much more for the players in keeping them healthy and happy than the 5k will. I thought about giving individual grades to the areas but in reality a school like Duke is not going to have state of the art gadgets and use beautiful high quality materials to build out the amenities and then go buy training equipment from a yard sale - its all going to be really high quality so the decision to have one facility grade and then let you emphasize what is more important to you (or balance it) made a lot more sense.

1. What happened to buying a National Package to see every kid in the database? - That could be 150K. You could still have the different camp for the schools that can't afford to scout everybody.

This was replaced in the game by adding in an in-game national scouting service called NXT Hoops - this is available to all teams just as anyone would have access to a rivals.com or the like so there is a star rating for all players and you can make judgments from there on who you want to learn more about.

2. College Coaches recruit is currently in this order:

1. Re-recruit your own players

1. We should have more options to recruit a kid to stay or tell a player they probably need to find a team that fits them.

2. Re-recruit the transfer portal

A. I think we should know the player rating to start since they already played college basketball, but we need to find out what the player is looking for. Their star rating could change based on how they feel when they join your team.

B. I would add hosting a player for $1,000 – (thinking Flight/hotel and food) - 5 player a week.

B1. Email for $100 – check interest level

B2. You get 20 calls a week to get player details – That would be $500

1. You could easily spend $15k in week 1 of the transfer window being open.

3. Recruit JUCO

- Jr. College players should come in with 35 to 40 of knowing a playing style and basketball IQ should be higher because they played college basketball. That sets them apart from High School.

4. Post-Grad / not a part of this game.

5. Recruit High School players

A. I think it should depend on how good of a coach you are on how big your list is. If you’re a 1-star recruit ability – your call list should be 25 max. If you’re a 5-star, you should have 100, and the same number should be the amount of film you can watch.

B. When it comes to Live Scout:

B1. You should be able to scout 5 players a week.

B2. And the report should have weaknesses and strengths. Currently, I see what a player can’t do.

B3. Playing style and ability should be in the report. It would be right or wrong.

B4. If a player's parents have money, they can help/are more likely to help increase the school budget. I have seen that happen a lot when I was in college and as a High School Coach.

The re-recruiting of your own players is something that will eventually make its way in I guess once more is settled with NIL - the landscape of how things work is changing drastically at this point so yes if things continue on this path I totally see part of the game in the future becoming basically treating every player as a free agent and convincing them (with money or playing time or both) to stay with your team. I disagree with knowing player ratings in the transfer portal - I doubt a coach knows much of anything about players who they don't come into contact with and that is consistent with the rest of the game. If you're coaching in the MAC why would you know anything about some guy who is like the 6th man on a WCC team if you never played them? You get that info pretty quick in the transfer portal by using one of your 20 scout player options per session so I think that's a good way of doing it. I appreciate the feedback on other areas - I think it works pretty well the way it is but there is always room to tweak things.

Lastly – I believe any team should be able to win a National Championship. If a team has the right group and coach, why not? It may take a team like Florida A&M 15 years with the same coach. I think a team with a prestige around 55 can make it to the big game. But with the transfer portal, the way it is. A small school will win a National Championship soon.

There is nothing that prevents any team from winning a NC - many people playing the game over the years have taken a school that never won one in real life and did it and there is certainly nothing coded into the game that only allows schools of a certain prestige to win - its all about how you build your team, the strategies that you use and all that goes with that. There is no one or "right" way to build a team to win either so really any team does have a chance.

[Chipguru37]

Thanks for getting back to me. Appreciate it