Scouting grades needs a revamp - does not function

[Cleasby]

The current scouting grades need a revamp, or a larger scale between them. During our time using the current grades for the multiplayer league called the CSFL we have experienced a problem with them that needs to be addressed for the game to get back a functioning draft scouting system.


Using a specific position and attribute in the game as an example, the Speed of a Wide Receiver can range in a balanced league from 65-66 through to 91-92.
Taking those as the upper and lower brackets and having a league average of 80, the current 13 grade system would have you assume that the grades could be split evenly above and below that.
For example of the lower bracket:
F <70
D- 70-72
D 72-74
D+ 74-76
C- 78-80
C 80-82

Obviously the above is with a 1 or 2 point buffer on either side, and then the upper bracket can be:
C+ 80-82
B-82-84
B 84-86
B+86-88
A- 88-90
A 90-92
A+ 92>
Again with the relevant discrepancies of 1-2 points.

However when Grades come back though in the scouting sim barely anyone is above a C+ and barely anyone is below a C-, it was found that C grades for speed could be between 67 and 82. This is simply to large a range to be within one grade category.

This same problem goes to every position, and every attribute. The range of C is far too great to be able to draft anyone with any ability short of it being a dice roll as to what you are getting.

Although not perfect, the 22 (23 if we include unscouted) grade system of '20 could at least allow you to have a better picture of the range of the player's attributes. Whilst we understand the decision to move away from worded text we want the ability to remain so that the draft grades for scouting give an indication of the players ability, not a wide ranging C grade which results in top 10 players not being distinguishable to round 6/7 players.

Currently the game scouting system is too simplistic for what scouting prospects comes down to, while at the same time, being so random youre just taking pot shots with any pick you make.

As a side not the notion the combine plays a role in scouting does not hold up as no data or numbers play any part in the player's abilities or ratings, as they seem little more than just RNG for some form of stats. For example faster players do not have high 40 yard times and strong players do not have higher deadlift amounts. This combined with the inability to see anything beyond a C grade means the draft has become a farce for multiplayer leagues.

I hope the detailed feedback above allows for scouting grades and their weightings to be fixed in a patch and not in DDSPF22 as we simply cannot wait another year for this kinfd of fix. I would also be grateful that when fixed there is an explanation of the fix in order for the CSFL to test thoroughly before the next offseason. For a multiplayer league we simply cannot have adequate scouting with the current grade system as everything is appearing as a C grade.

[KW77]

Seconding this request. B- or higher essentially meant that a player was straight up ELITE at a particular skill. I'd love to see this get tweaked so that there is a wider range. I understand the ratings are probably based on percentiles of the active players, but the D+ to C+ range is just way too condensed. PF20's scouting system was less convenient (had to use vlookups to match up the words to number grades, as the words on their own mean absolutely nothing) but significantly more functional, as there were about 23 different grades rather than 13 iirc.

I would imagine it is simply a matter of changing what percentile corresponds to a certain letter grade, so hopefully that isn't too much work to adjust for a patch.

[Cleasby]

Update. From a bit of research by our league GMs it seems the issue might be fixable if the game looks at all players who have not retired not just active players. As the draft is midway through free agency a lot of players are not 'active' at this point especially the lower overall players that the game needs to make scouting effective.

[TheRivals40]

Also can we talk about how the player card screen for scouted players is honestly super ugly? Why not use color bars to represent the scouted grades?

[zac]

To add to the above discussion on scouting, I think there's a lot that can be improved. The issue we saw in DDSPF 21 is that there are way too many players that come in scouted with an attribute grade of "C". First round guys and 2/3 round guys all having the same letter grade even though they ended up being pretty different players in talent. It was hard to tell the difference between who your scout liked or not (which I do enjoy some fog of war which I'll note below but this is going about it the wrong way).

I think the issue above might be more specific to our league as we have 500+ players rated over 80+ overall (with specific skill attributes also higher compared to a default league maybe) so ratings aren't spread out enough for the scouting system to give a more various in letter grades? Just a thought. As Cleasby pointed out, this could be helped out if the scouting system looked at all non-retired players and not just active players since the draft takes place in the middle of free agency. Most teams in an online competitive league don't sign bench-type guys to more than one-year deals and don't sign them in free agency until after the draft. That means during the scouting phase, most active rosters only have 80+ type guys on a roster adding to the problem noted above potentially.

On the note of the draft though, I feel like scouting should be more varied than having draft class guys either scouted 100% or not scouted at all (and having certainty between 10-20%). In my opinion, scouting should be during the season or at least multiple weeks during the offseason and you should have to scout guys 3-5 times to get them to 100% or maybe you have to allocate points and max out the points to get a player to 100% similiar to scouting in college (and not just checking a box whether is he fully scouted or not scouted). The point is that you should be able to scout some guys to 60% and other guys to 40% and others to 80%. And if you want to scout guys to 100%, it should cost an arm and a leg to do so. So you have that cost/benefit analysis battle as a GM as to whether you spend on your resources scouting 15 1st round goes all the way to 100% or go for a more well-rounded draft scouting plan and scout 100+ plus guys to about 50-60% certainty.

Long story short, I feel like it's way too easy to scout way too many guys to 100%. I know 100% scouting doesn't mean his scout grades are perfect but if you see a guy is B in speed, it's pretty easy to nail down what his actual speed grade will be. It should be tougher to find gems in the draft and vise versa. There should be greater fog of war in scouting in general and really hard to get a large number of players fully scouted.

[brooks_piggott]

Added words back into a future patch. Also confirmed scouted players and ratings do include free agents when doing comps.

[zac]

Added words back into a future patch. Also confirmed scouted players and ratings do include free agents when doing comps.

I think the grades themselves were fine over words. I would expect most people like the grades over the words for the most part. The words I had to export to excel and translate them to a 1-23 point scale as it was really hard to remember which word was better the other word.

I think the notes above just were about too many Cs and ideally seeking solutions within the letter grading scale to lengthen the scale (more use of As and B, less all Cs, etc). But if words are needed to address a potential issue, understood. From my point of view, i just wanted to be clear it wasn't a 'words' are better than "letter" grades. I do konw the one bad think about letter grades is sorting. If you wanted to sort to the fast scout grade, it would show you the Cs, then C+, then C-. But I believe that was also an issue with word grades as well.

There was a thought the active players only were being considered if on a roster but that seems to be confirmed as a non-issue. Thank you!

If the words help things in the short term to be reviewed later, thats always cool too.