Developer Chat

Welcome to the Dev Chat about the November 2011 update. This update includes improvements to the job process, tournament selection logic, a number of user interface items, and more. More details can be found in the forums here. Feel free to ask about anything in the update or anything about the game in general. Thanks.

Will the change in Loyalty ratings logic reduce the penalty for making lateral or upward moves? If so, will changes be applied retroactively where large drops were experienced? I left Memphis after 6 seasons of 20 plus wins, moving from B Prestige to B+ at the end of my last season for B+ Florida. Loyalty dropped from A+ to D+ ! C-USA had deteriorated to 10 sims and 2 humans. I didn't expect a penalty for going to a major conference, where I could play against top flight human coaches on a regular basis. (kilgore - Hall of Famer - 2:00 PM)

Yes, the main difference in the new logic is that lateral moves generally will not hurt your loyalty nearly as much. There won't be any retroactive effects of this change.

First: Is there some place where conferences are rated to make sure we aren't going down to a lower-rated conference and being penalized for it when we choose our next coaching assignment? Secondly: Can acquiring a new team be based on the last half dozen or so seasons instead of being based so heavily on the last season a coach has? (johns45 - Hall of Famer - 2:04 PM)

The first part of the question was basically answered in the last response. There will still be some loyalty hit for moving down, but it won't be as severe as previously. As for the changes in evaluating a coach's success, the new logic will incorporate more seasons than just the last four. It will consider up to about 10 seasons, with slightly more weight applied the more recent the season is. The weighting will be much more balanced across all seasons as opposed to the current logic which places a large amount of weight on the most current season.

With the new "job success" system weighting all seasons will there ever be a situation where a player is forever precluded from getting a top tier job? I worry that 10 bad seasons at D1 might be enough of a drag that it would take 100 great seasons to qualify for a job at somewhere like Duke even if those more recent seasons were exceptional. (redsox666666 - Hall of Famer - 2:08 PM)

As mentioned in the previous response, the max is about 10 seasons back. If a coach struggled for multiple seasons, then yes, it will take longer now to recuperate your resume. The new logic should be more fair though, and put less pressure on a coach to move up after a good season.

With regard to item 2, the new method for informing of player potential -- Is this "new method" going to help alert coaches to the potentials for players already on their roster, or will this affect the recruiting process as well by making new/different information available pre-signing? (rednu - Hall of Famer - 2:11 PM)

I should have provided more details about this change, but I wasn't sure what form it would take. What I've decided on is to show color-coded ratings (similar to what you see for scouted players during recruiting) in a few spots. The roster table at the bottom of the page and the individual player profile in the sidebar of the practice plan page will now show the color-coded potential. This should be a major time-saver to set up practice plans. There won't be any changes to recruiting.

Player potential - In addition to displaying better, please consider a way to make potential info available to the new coach immediately upon his arrival. My proposal would be to have the assistant find the player thoughts email from the prior season and forward it to the new coach - with a snarky message like "I found this in the ol' coach's desk drawer, he didnt seem to pay much attention but thought you might be interested." Just a copy of the prior season's message would help - and it would be funny (metsmax - Hall of Famer - 2:14 PM)

These changes will allow a new coach to immediately see the potential of the players on the roster. Having to rely on the Player Thoughts inbox message was unnecessarily cumbersome.

EE's more fair and more predictable !!! yeah. Consider giving real meaning to the messages we get during recruiting about a kids chances of EE. Right now, tons and tons of kids get roughly similar messages. IF the coach or eval comment gave a serious indication of odds of EE (I dont mean that it needs to be stated in %) that would add amusement to recruiting + reduce the feeling of unfairness. yes please make this more rational (metsmax - Hall of Famer - 2:18 PM)

The only change in this release related to early entries was to limit the impact on one particular team. After the release, a potential early entry player will decide to stay if his team is set to lose 5 players already. That 5 player number is the sum of graduating seniors and early entries that have already decided. It does not include walk-ons. There may be further tweaks to that feature down the line, but this addresses the major concern...that a team is decimated by losing too many in one season.

Does the 10 year weighted promotion system mean that a coach could move up even if his last season was "bad" if the previous 9 seasons were "good"? (Weena - Hall of Famer - 2:20 PM)

Potentially, yes. Depends on how bad the last season was and how good the rest were.

Any chance that we could make it easier to redshirt players? No reason that trying to redshirt a one star or zero star player should be difficult at all. I have less than 25% success without using inform of redshirt during recruiting. (pjbrankin - Hall of Famer - 2:21 PM)

There are a few minor improvements I'd like to make to redshirting. I'd like for the decision logic to be a little smarter, looking at the whole situation of the player and the team.

Any thought to adding a way to track your past recruiting battles? Maybe do it by showing who your offered a scholarship to and how much you spent recruiting them? It would be a great addition. (bjb2378 - Hall of Famer - 2:24 PM)

One of my biggest goals for the game is to start tracking and saving a lot more historical information. Currently, almost everything outside of high-level team performance is wiped out at the end of the season. I'd like to save player stats/ratings, standings, possibly some recruiting info, etc.

please tell me you are fixing the voting for awards/ all conference teams because the system in place is complete crap....ive had guys averaging over 20 points a game and not even make the all conference..... ive had guys lead in assists and scoring but still didnt make all conference just because i didnt make the NT... that is just retarded (jang_a_lang - Hall of Famer - 2:26 PM)

The logic for picking player awards, both conference and national, has been improved.

Are Study Hall minutes actually going to have any impact? What are you doing to reduce randomness? (Weena - Hall of Famer - 2:28 PM)

I've tweaked the logic that determines grades so that there will be less variance, meaning study hall minutes will have more impact in the actual grades.

Grades seem to have gotten very erratic just recently, with grades being both lower and harder to manage with increasing study hall. Has the grading "engine" been changed recently, or are my observations just a small sample? If the grading "engine" has been changed, is the outcome of lower, less predictble grades intentional? (dedelman - Hall of Famer - 2:30 PM)

That logic hasn't changed yet, but will soon as described in the last response.

Can you expand on the changes on complaining about playing time? Personally I don't see an issue as the teams it effects are those that are stacked from top to bottom. I don't see why a former 4 star or 5 star shouldn't leave after riding the pine for two seasons. (stinenavy - Hall of Famer - 2:32 PM)

I've made a small reduction in the expected minutes for players, so there should be fewer guys complaining. At some point I'd like to go even further to make the logic smarter, to look at the makeup of the roster and some other things.

Will the color-coded displays change whenever a player maxes out? If so, will this eliminate the AC emails telling a coach there is no more growth left in a skill? (Weena - Hall of Famer - 2:34 PM)

The colors will change as the player moves from high to average or average to low. Currently the assistant coach emails are still in there, but I've considered removing them. It seems like they're an annoyance for some coaches, but others appreciate getting them.

can you go into more detail about, "Improve the logic for players complaining about playing time". What changes will be made and will the logic be diff for a jr than say a sr? (jaisonline - Hall of Famer - 2:36 PM)

Only sophomores and juniors will complain about minutes (excluding promises to freshmen). Juniors expect more minutes than sophomores, so that doesn't change. The change is that both sophs and juniors will expect a little less than they do currently.

Hi Seble, New release topic: Improve the logic for tournament selection/seeding - Way too much emphasis is put on wins. Not enough on rpi/sos and strength of conference. I've seen too many times a 20+ win team from a D1 mid major with 70+ rpi/sos get high seeds.. Need to look at the conference rpi. Tough conferences are the reason really good rpi/sos teams dont have 20+ wins. They shouldnt be penalized. Thanks (coach_ms - Hall of Famer - 2:42 PM)

I'll give a quick recap of the changes coming to tournament selection. The new logic will go through each team's schedule game by game and score the results of each game based on game outcome (win/loss), opponent RPI, opponent rank, score margin, and game location (home/away/neutral). The overall score for a team will be the average of the individual game scores. I like this method better than just putting weights on RPI/rank/etc., because it allows me to give credit for a good win and take away value for a bad loss. For example a bunch of close losses to really good teams will give you more credit now than in the old logic. There will always be debates about which resume is really better, but I think this will be an improvement.

7.Create a page to track postseason resumes during the season What does this mean? Can you please explain? (Weena - Hall of Famer - 2:45 PM)

I've created a page that will show up after the non-conference portion of the schedule that will basically emulate the bubble reports that you currently get periodically. It will include more information though, and will include all teams. It'll be a cool way to track where your team ranks for the postseason on a game-by-game basis.

If in real life Duke stinks and Butler dominates for the next 20 college basketball seasons, Butler would recover its image (aka current prestige) faster after one bad season than Duke would. This implies a floating baseline prestige. Any thoughts of implementing such a feature? (cimmy426 - Hall of Famer - 2:49 PM)

After this release, the most pressing issues in my mind are prestige (mostly relating to baseline prestige) and looking at ways to balance the playing field for DI teams in recruiting.

Hi Seble..... Any possibility of adding something similar to "diamonds in the rough" to Hoops? Be nice to recruit a good player and have them turn out to be a Dwayne Wade or Calbert Cheaney. Or possiblly having a bit of randomness with recruiting...Instead of being a straight auction system just have certain schools a player won't play for no matter how much is spent? Thanks (r7gordon - Hall of Famer - 2:51 PM)

Recruiting is an interesting subject. There are a lot of ways we could go, from a few minor tweaks to completely revamping the entire system. It's the one part of the game that I don't feel is very realistic or fun. It's fun for a few people, but frustrating for many. I do like your idea in one form or another.

YOu said "IMproving the logic for player awards. . in what way? Less emphasis on team record? What sort of changes? (arssanguinus - Hall of Famer - 2:54 PM)

There is a bit less weight on team performance, but more importantly the logic is better at evaluating players than the old logic. It will evaluate a player's entire game instead of focusing too much on certain areas and ignoring others.

When will all of these changes go into effect? (gjp18 - Hall of Famer - 2:57 PM)

Most likely these changes will be released later this week or early next week. A lot of them (awards, tournament selection, early entries, coach success) don't really come into play until the end of the season, and the rest are mainly bug fixes and additions, so there's not really a need to push it off into the future.

Any thoughts on the long rumored Pre-Season tournaments and/or hiring our own coaching staff? (Weena - Hall of Famer - 2:58 PM)

Those are still good ideas, but there aren't any immediate plans to add them. I'd like to get the current features as solid as possible before adding more.

do rankings now affect tourny seeds? will rankings affect them after the changes? OR is it that rankings correlate with many of the variables used for seeding now and therefore APPEAR to determine seeds? (metsmax - Hall of Famer - 3:00 PM)

A team's rank won't directly determine seeding, but the logic uses similar inputs, so there will definitely be a correlation there. But it won't be a direct mapping of rank to tournament seed by any means.

Ever thought of lowering the road win multiplier in DIII since HCA isn't as much as a big deal as it would be to win at Duke? (Rails - Hall of Famer - 3:02 PM)

I'm not a big fan of the home/road multipliers, but I'm going to leave them for now. The new tournament seeding logic should make it harder to game the system by scheduling a bunch of winnable road games.

There are still quite a few questions, so I'll continue answering for a while. ( Moderator - 3:03 PM)

Not that I want to get saddled with injuries, but do you plan to make injuries a slightly more prominent feature of HD? Right now, I don't think anyone really pays attention to the durability rating. But if a low durability player was injured more frequently, it would add a bit more strategy to the game. (chapelhillne - Hall of Famer - 3:06 PM)

It's possible we might tweak injuries at some point, but that's a feature that could add a lot of frustration pretty easily.

Any chance conference realignment, similar to real life, will happen in HD? (gjp18 - Hall of Famer - 3:08 PM)

Currently it's not possible to change conference alignments on a world-by-world basis. We also like having all conferences with the same number of teams, which couldn't happen if we mirrored real life. Personally I would like to have the conferences match real life, so we'll definitely keep it in mind.

is there a prospect of changing fastbreak and/or full court press to subsets of other schemes? (metsmax - Hall of Famer - 3:09 PM)

Yeah, that's something I'd still like to do at some point, but it's a fairly major change. It may fit in for the next release that involves changes to the game engine.

Is there a way to add an option during recruiting to absolutely get a player off your school's consideration list? As it stands, the only way is to withdraw scholarship and use redshirt but not always successful. This would have to come with a penalty in that if you tried to recruit him again you'd have to start from scratch or better yet in the hole somehow. (cammby - Hall of Famer - 3:10 PM)

As long as you don't offer a scholarship then they won't sign with you. You can also remove them from your recruiting summary if you'd like.

please please find a way to let folks who want to post their opening cycle recruiting moves during the 6 or 12 or 18 hours before recruiting opens. I know that SIM recruiting wont have happened and I think it is fine to let folks take that risk. The two hour opening window is among the most annoying features of a darn good game. (mamxet - Hall of Famer - 3:12 PM)

This is something I'll look into the next time we work on recruiting changes.

according to the forums, rankings matter for seeding in the nt, prestige, recruiting, etc. - are you going to do anything to fix them? some examples of how messed up they are (from d2 knight): #1 team loses in a game that its favored by 4, retains its #1 ranking. same team eventually loses in its ct championship game (to the # 7 team); the #1 team - now with 3 losses - falls only to no. 2; the #7 team - which just beat the # team in the country - falls to #8. (jtt8355 - Hall of Famer - 3:13 PM)

The rankings aren't meant to work like a human voting system. In a human system, there is a natural inclination to drop a team after a loss no matter what. Our system objectively looks at the entire season on each update, so a loss may not drop a team.

Can the FSS "Word on the Street" change so it is updated 4 times per day instead of 2? (jaisonline - Hall of Famer - 3:14 PM)

Yeah, I think that information would be more useful if it were updated more. I'll add this to the suggestion list.

In some of the games on Knight and now in Phelan, I've seen some inconsistent results in the full court press defense as to their getting tired more quickly. Has there been a tweak to the logic? (lmschwarz - Hall of Famer - 3:15 PM)

Nope, no engine changes.

Do you have plans to balance the recruiting playing field for non BCS conferences? (cradaddy - Hall of Famer - 3:15 PM)

Yeah, I think there are various ways to do that, and it's something we'll look into.

Could you make the player names in the play-by-play active links? Sometimes I would like to know who the guy is who's lighting my team up while I'm still reading. Seems like an easy change with a nice benefit. (cimmy426 - Hall of Famer - 3:16 PM)

I'll add this to our suggestion list.

Are there any plans to alter the way the defense rating is calculated (ie more variation in top recruits)? Currently, I think a lot of coaches are experiencing staleness in recruiting, especially when coaching a man defense, due to the very high correlation between athleticism and defense. I understand that athleticism has to be tied into defense somewhat, but there are enough discernible events on the floor throughout the course of a game to differentiate between a good defender and a bad one. (wsut - Hall of Famer - 3:18 PM)

I haven't specifically looked into defense ratings and how they correlate to athleticism. It's something I can take a look at.

A dropoff occurred when FSS was intrduced.FSS is critical and by no means is potential as black and white in rl as it is with FSS.It needs to change from a cost standpoint--free perhaps.Recruiting should be about the evaluation of ratings/potential, not the decision to FSS Hawaii or Alaska.It should be about whether a guy with high potential at 50 will be better than a guy with low at 70, and combining that same thought process and analysis with all 12 ratings. (Rails - Hall of Famer - 3:19 PM)

FSS definitely isn't a perfect feature within the game. It will be evaluated the next time we look at changes to recruiting.

When Apple updated the iOS to iOS 5 for iPhone, iPad, etc., the drop down menus in HD stopped working.  They stopped working in GD as well.  When norbert released the update for GD on November 15 he included a fix for this problem in the update and the menus now work in GD but they still do not in HD. Do you plan to fix this issue in HD as Norbert did in Gad when you release the update for HD. (mduncanhogs - Hall of Famer - 3:22 PM)

I'll try to get this included in the update.

Is it possible, or is Whatifsports willing, to limit the number of user names an individual can operate in one world? I believe there is a group, or at least a couple of associated coaches in Phelan world, who are operating several teams and co-ordinatin their recruiting efforts(some operated as more/less ghost teams) at each level to allow for greater recruiting vision and scouting. (northstorm - Hall of Famer - 3:22 PM)

It's difficult to impossible for us to police multiple accounts. Our lives would be significantly easier if we could. Our policy is to give our users the benefit of the doubt and trust that they'll play fairly. If we are shown evidence of unfair actions, we'll investigate and take any necessary action.

is there a way to have an all conference tourny team and MVP? What about a preseason all conference team? on the coaches profile if they have won a national championship or a final four it should be listed upfront with their record instead of searching season by season for it to see when it happen. little cosemtic things like this would add some more realistic items to this great game. (willowcards2 - Hall of Famer - 3:23 PM)

Thanks, these are good suggestions.

Thanks to everyone who participated. Apologies to anyone who submitted a question that wasn't answered. ( Moderator - 3:24 PM)

Thanks for joining the Dev Chat. If you have any other questions or follow up questions, please post in the forums. Thanks!