Posted by Benis on 11/30/2016 4:11:00 PM (view original):
Here's why I think there is even greater imbalance and why it will be harder to retain new coaches. Note- my assumption is that new coaches will not enjoy losing and therefore not find the game very fun.
1. Scouting and recruiting are way more complex. Scouting is just simply WAY more complex and there is much more to learn, I think we can all agree here. It will be easy to blow through your money very quickly if you don't know what you're doing. Also, what do you go for, D1 guys? D3 guys? It's not clear for a noob what guys to scout. And yes there was ambiguity with the high-high in the scouting reports in 2.0 and calling out the high high and low low clears up a lot but that is not the impacting the base level understanding of recruiting in my opinion. Recruiting is more complex as well. How do I send a scholarship- Oh, I need to unlock actions... How do I do that? And what exactly are attention points and how many should I spend- oh they replenish? Why isn't this guy signing with me since I'm the only team who has offered a scholarship and he says he's an early signer - oh it's because I'm D3 and he's D1? Not intuitive for a new coach and unless you read the forums, you will be lost.
2. First season is a throwaway. Since you can't recruit before the first season, you're stuck with who the SIM signed previously. Sure, you can argue that a brand new coach wouldn't have done a great job recruiting in their first season in 2.0 but at least they got a chance to try. Sim teams are typically pretty bad and you can't even cut these chumps until after suffering through 1 season with them. So we're talking 1 extra season of losing a lot of games unless they took over a team with a lot of upperclassmen.
3. Preferences! How can we deny this? Preferences do not benefit new coaches. If I'm an Elite D3 coach, not only do I know the ins and outs of how to recruit, I have an additional advantage of having superior preferences. I have the 'wants long time coach' preference locked down. I also have the "wants success" one as well. more recruits want success vs don't want it. So a brand new coach is supposed to come in, know how to scout properly and therefore have a large pool of players to choose from, by which they can pick out recruits that don't want a long time coach and want a rebuild. Maybe they'd have the strong conference preference... which would mean he gets more games against humans who are good coaches with good teams. Basically they will have a much harder time matching up preferences which will allow them to win more battles. Good luck finding a good player who happens to prefer your O/D and wants a rebuild who doesn't care about long time coach. This is not exactly easy.
4. I suppose some people are still debating this one and time will tell but I've already seen some MONSTER classes (take a look at Cal Tech in Phelan. Wowza). I think the gap between incumbent D3 coaches who have been there 5+ seasons and SIMs will be large... and that's who the new coach will be taking over for.
In the end, these things don't benefit a new coach. They just simply don't. If they stick with it, yes they can compete and build a dynasty of their own. I'm not denying that. But, will they stick it out through several losing seasons so they can eventually learn the game and start being competitive? I suspect that many will not.
TL:DR
1. Recruiting is more complex and not intuitive
2. Can't recruit or cut first season
3. Preferences favor long time coaches
4. Talent gap between human coach teams and SIM teams increases
Very well said Benis. I've been beating this drum for awhile, but it falls on deaf ears (or blind eyes in this case). I've heard so many contradictory statements throughout this process as people would rather just dig their heels in than admit they're wrong. First 3.0 was supposed to even the playing field for new guys and allow new guys to compete early, because too many long time coaches were entrenched in their comfy roles with too many advantages. Now its, every game has a learning curve and they shouldn't expect to compete right away, or the goal of the game is to move up to DI. DIII should not be your goal (forget the fact that the goal should be to build a dynasty regardless of what level you do it).
There was also scouting and recruiting will be easier, yet it's currently more complex than I've ever seen it in 9 years. I keep hearing it takes less time which baffles me to no end, and has me wondering what people were doing before vs now as I spend easily 3-4 times more in recruiting now than I ever did before, but to each his own as everyone has a different strategy, I won't argue that point with them. I will admit it's nice not having to deal with the scouting emails and getting the same one over and over, or trying to determine HH vs HL, but I spend significantly more time scouting now than I ever did before.
One of my favorites is the vets held all the secrets and new guys had to scour the forums for difficult to find answers and all the guides were out of date. Now it's a new product and they need time to make updates to the guides and have can always come to the forums. Users have banded together to make guides now (forget the fact that WIS themselves needs to do their job and update their tutorials, and we already had users band together to make guides previously).
I've heard this will close the talent gap for new guy, because they can recruit higher level players. Too bad, they won't have a clue how to do that, and the rich are only getting richer at the lower divisions, making it harder for new guys to progress.