I'm not saying the change was the best change. I'm saying change was needed. And, quite honestly, any change that knocked the top users down a peg or two would be met unfavorably. Maybe WifS went big so they wouldn't have to make minor changes time and time again because the change just wasn't enough. Then, time and time again, change would be met unfavorably. It will be possible for a coach to get 4-6 EE again. Will it be smart? That coach will have to decide. He knows the consequences.

I am making assumptions. I may be completely wrong. But change was needed. New owners were needed. We'll have to see how it plays out. HD might be a ghost town by mid-2017.

The changes are not about outplaying coaches now. It's about outplaying coaches years ago and having a built-in advantage because of it. It's probably better to look at the "advantage" the elite users had as a double-edged sword. Advantage 1 was that they were better at the game earlier than everyone else. They may have to adjust under the new program but, IMO, they'll likely still keep that advantage. Advantage 2 came due to being among the better owners. They got the better schools and the game tilted in their favor. WifS went about fixing that. And, as I said, the EE problem resolves itself in a season or 3(or it should). The days of 4-6 EE in one season should be over. Advantage 2 is gone. But Advantage 1 can only be self-removed.

Posted by poncho0091 on 11/30/2016 3:00:00 PM (view original):

Posted by pkoopman on 11/30/2016 2:54:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 11/29/2016 10:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by pkoopman on 11/29/2016 10:05:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 11/29/2016 9:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 11/29/2016 8:14:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 11/29/2016 6:45:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 11/29/2016 6:35:00 PM (view original):
At the risk of being chastised by sweetpapadad and vandydave, the game isn't marketable to the public when all the power sits with a handful of teams. If you have 5 EE, your team is too good. You can say "Well, that's not my fault" and it isn't but you can't sell the game to new users under those circumstances. My expectations is that teams will stop having 4-5 soon enough. The talent will be better distributed and the game, overall, will be better. And I fully understand that it will suck for those used to being at the top and battling each other.

I mentioned this before and the thread died immediately but this might just be a purge. I've seen posts stating "I haven't bought a team in years" and even more "I'll play out my credits and leave." Having customers who don't pay is a poor business model. Level the playing field, **** off a group that doesn't buy teams and start with fresh group who actually spend money. That seems more profitable.

What about the imbalance at D3 then?

I was told you could move to D2 regardless of success. Of course, imbalance might be found there too.

But, in my opinion, the vast majority of people join to coach at D1. At schools they see in March. Coaching at W Conn St is just something you have to do to move up.

And the same imbalance for brand new coaches is there at D2. If you move to D2 in your 2nd season of HD, you are at a ddisadvantage.

how many seasons are new coaches going to struggle through in order to get to a place where they are going to be competitive and have fun winning. moving up is just slowing down the process due to the changes that have been made.

That imbalance has always existed at D3 and (to a lesser extent) D2. And as long as the game allows veteran coaches to park in the division that new players must start with, it always will. I know you suspect the imbalance will get worse. I suspect it won't. It's way too early to say which of us has it right.

Why dont you think its worse in 3.0 for brand new coaches? Im talking their first 1-3 seasons.

Because I haven't been presented with any evidence for it. Championship level players recruited by championship level D3s have always looked like mid-major D1 starters after a couple years of development. Veteran coaches have always had an advantage in procuring those players. You could argue that D3s now have access to players who may be a little better out of the gate. But at the same time, recruiting at that level involves more risk now, because if a local D1 shows up with some resources, you're screwed. And those players are going to be available to all levels of D3, not just the elite; whereas before, A+ D3s had access to a level of drop downs that C D3s couldn't touch.

Removing drop downs would have easily fixed that issue with minimal change.

That's not what this part of the discussion is about, poncho. Benis asserted that there is currently more imbalance at D3. I don't see any evidence for it. If you want to get into why the specific change you think would have been "easy" wasn't adopted instead of the 3.0 revamp, fine, but we've been down this road before, and you're not going to agree with me.

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

I will concede that the pull downs thing is a good point. That was something that new players didn't know how to do and did give advantage to elite coaches. I agree.

But I do think that pull downs were harder and riskier to execute vs signing a D2 player today. Maybe others had better success at it but I was rarely able to beat a D2 sim and battling a D2 human was most likely a non starter for me. In 3.0, beating a D2 Sim is a piece of cake and beating a D2 human is definitely doable and a viable option.

1. Meh. You start a game, there's a learning curve. Did you make a good throw the first time you threw a ball? Hell, did you run a 40 the first time you got on your feet? Those seeking instant success with zero learning shouldn't even play games.
2. That did suck. I'd like to under-recruit my own sorry players and learn from it.
3. Meh. See last sentence of #1.
4. Probably. But a human coach won't be a SIM team and he can beat up on them while he builds his program.

I remember recruiting my first team in HD back in 2004. My strategy was to just recruit the highest rated players, but little did I know back then. It's a learning progression. You need to learn how to lose before you can win in this game. There isn't a coach that has figured it out on their first attempt.

For all you guys who want EE's made easier, here's the empirical fact you need to argue away: plenty of coaches are handling EE's just fine.

Posted by CoachSpud on 11/30/2016 5:17:00 PM (view original):
For all you guys who want EE's made easier, here's the empirical fact you need to argue away: plenty of coaches are handling EE's just fine.

You've said this in multiple threads. An observation and two questions:

Observation: "Plenty" is not a word that lends itself to empiricism.

Question 1: Who are these coaches? Name some names.

Question 2: As the poster who has beat the "plan better" drum more than any other in response to the EE issue, I'd like to give you a not-at-all hypothetical situation which I am currently undergoing in LSU in Knight. I had 0 seniors on my team and 4 EEs. With only 20 APs in session 1 recruiting, could you please advise me on how I am supposed to have a successful recruiting session 2, defining "successful" as able to sign multiple players who will be productive in high-D1 (not necessarily superstars)?

If anyone besides spud has guidance for my Question 2, I'd love to hear it -- because I genuinely do not understand how I'm supposed to do anything other than max out on one or two local recruits and hope I get lucky in the battle despite a massive AP deficit, or just take tons of walk-ons.

Posted by johnsensing on 11/30/2016 6:28:00 PM (view original):

Posted by CoachSpud on 11/30/2016 5:17:00 PM (view original):
For all you guys who want EE's made easier, here's the empirical fact you need to argue away: plenty of coaches are handling EE's just fine.

You've said this in multiple threads. An observation and two questions:

Observation: "Plenty" is not a word that lends itself to empiricism.

Question 1: Who are these coaches? Name some names.

Question 2: As the poster who has beat the "plan better" drum more than any other in response to the EE issue, I'd like to give you a not-at-all hypothetical situation which I am currently undergoing in LSU in Knight. I had 0 seniors on my team and 4 EEs. With only 20 APs in session 1 recruiting, could you please advise me on how I am supposed to have a successful recruiting session 2, defining "successful" as able to sign multiple players who will be productive in high-D1 (not necessarily superstars)?

If anyone besides spud has guidance for my Question 2, I'd love to hear it -- because I genuinely do not understand how I'm supposed to do anything other than max out on one or two local recruits and hope I get lucky in the battle despite a massive AP deficit, or just take tons of walk-ons.

John I'll sum up the response you're going to get. Next time you should avoid taking the risk of signing guys who might go EE and field a team that you can hope will make the NT, because you already received the benefit of having better players that you fairly recruited for 1-2 seasons. You should also budget your 20 APs better, because you obviously are not willing to put in the effort to learn the new game. There's master recruiters on here who think that with 20 AP, you could sign a whole team in the 2nd recruiting period alone (who cares if you can actually win with that team). How dare you expect to recruit with fair resources just because you signed someone good 2 seasons ago!

In summary: Lower your expectations and learn to budget noob!!!!!!!

Honestly, I keep hearing this budgeting argument, but I've not once heard of anyone being competitive with this starting from behind recruiting strategy.

Next time you should avoid taking the risk of signing guys who might go EE

It's pretty sad that I had actually considered this strategy for my D-1 Missouri team as recruiting starts in a couple of days in Phelan.

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.

I'll just throw my $.02 in here, for what it's worth. I played HD a number of years ago with moderate success at the D3 level. Never felt the urge to move up. I enjoyed the game somewhat at that time, but hated recruiting. There was a definite "black box" feel to it This was maybe 6-7 years ago.

So now I'm back, and am playing my first season under the new version, and we're currently in the recruiting phase (I'm waiting to sign my first recruits). And I can definitely say that my first impression with the new scouting/recruiting system is positive. I feel that I have a lot more flexibility and control over the process. I feel like I have more information to work with to make better decisions on who to pursue. I'm sure I'm making some mistakes as I'm learning the new process, but think I'll be better prepared and a little smarter next season.

Maybe I'll feel differently if the recruits I'm pursuing end up being "stolen" from me at the last minute (a common occurrence that I remember from my first go-around all those years ago). But even though scouting and recruiting may be somewhat more complex than it used to be, I'm finding it to be much more usable and in my control.

"Question 1: Who are these coaches?"
Well, there are about 30 EE's per season per world, give or take a couple, and only a handful of coaches are asking to be indemnified for EE's on the forums. You do the math. And BTW, as long as this continues I believe all the consternation in the forums will fall on deaf ears at WIS, as it should.

"Question 2: ...I had 0 seniors on my team and 4 EEs."
Fortunately for everyone here, multiple EE's like that are soon to be a thing of the past now that actual competition has returned to the top of D1. (Yay!) Everyone knew that during the transition from HD 2.0 to 3.0 some of the stacked teams would have to pay the piper for their hording of EE's. It was discussed a lot in the beta forums; it is no surprise. Give it two or three seasons in each world and the so-called "problem" will have resolved itself.

hoarding in this context means doing the best you can under the rules then in effect

the transition problem for teams with large numbers of EEs or unpredictable EEs is large and WIS decided not to care - hoping that in the long term it works out

shafting folks who had optimized under 2.0 was the WIS deciiion after the issue was identified in the beta.

folks should distinguish when discussing EEs whether they mean the transition issue or the ongoing issue.