I’m taking a hiatus from HD. I tend to rotate around these types of games and have been more into my HBD team and a game on a competitor’s website lately. I think I’ve been playing HD for around 7 real life years and my attention to my team(s) has simply waned over time. I don’t think the HD game is suddenly a bad product and I don’t think it needs a complete overhaul.

I do think there are some changes around the margins that could really improve the game. What I’ve listed below are changes specifically aimed at helping new players and bringing a bit more parity. The latter focuses on decreasing strategies (some would say loopholes) that I commonly see both great coaches (including myself) exploiting and many other coaches consistently griping and sometimes rage quitting over.

1. Move Job Openings to after RS2. – The current cycle when you start a team is Job Opening – RS2 – Season/RS1. Because of this order, new coaches are stuck with whatever sh*tty moves the former coach made. Even experienced coaches struggle to succeed starting in RS2 and new coaches are completely lost. Also, the basketball coach elements are easier to understand than tossing the new fish directly into the RS2 blood bath. I strongly recommend changing the order of operations to Job Opening – Season/RS1 – RS2.
   
2. Cap the number of visits per recruiting cycle – As the game is currently designed, there is a SIGINIFCANT advantage to waiting til the cycle just before signings to drop 20HV/CVs on a desired recruit. I’ve laid out the reasons why this is a huge advantage in my manifesto so I wont re-hash here, but it’s sufficive to say, you should do it. The flip side is it makes no logical sense that a recruit could even accept that many visits in a small window of time and, boy, does it INFURATE other coaches when this strategy is deployed. I suggest the number or visits is restricted to 3 per cycle so coaches have to continuously put in effort with a recruit to achieve the highest possible outcome.
   
3. Make promise apply throughout a players career and post season – It’s pretty stupid that I can promise a player 25 minutes and a start. He’s then really committed to that promise for the regular season of his freshman year and then completely forgets about it after that. As is, basically every player I sign in D1 is promised that and then relegated to the bench after his freshman year regular season. I would both make the promises worth more AND require them to be honored throughout the players career. That way the blue bloods have to be particular about which 5 guys that make that offer and the smart coaches in the B prestige range can make offer promises to the good but not ELITE ELITE guys. That introduces a lot more strategy and hopefully shifts some talent away from the Duke/UCLA/Syracuses of the world.
   
4. Don’t let D3 recruit D1 players. – There’s a clear strategy to D3 that is very complicated for new players to understand and as such, new players get eaten alive in D3. It’s not very appealing for new players who are trying to get a handle on scouting/recruiting for the good D3 teams to be SO much better than the rest of the world.
5. Remove initial scouting for the top 100 recruits – This is a strange one, but the initial “free” scouting of the top 100 recruits makes it significantly more difficult to scout regions away from your school due to how the assistant coach search works. I would remove the initial scouting for these players so coaches a have a more strategy on how they want to scout.
   
6. Make the big board based on potential not current abilities – It pretty dumb that I put zeros in the practice plan for my elite players for their first few years so I can keep them til they are seniors. I sometimes make the argument that the way its currently designed allows for more strategy, but on the whole, its pretty counter intuitive and I know annoys many. Id change the big board to be based on potential.
   

And two controversial ones to close:

1. Introduce firings at D1 – It always stinks when your favorite team has some coach that’s made the NT once in the last 25 seasons and clearly is ghosting their way through the game.
   
2. Decrease the number of credits offered – I think this is especially true in D2 and D3, but even in D1 many of the most addicted and loyal “customers” arent really customers because they are playing for free. I know this suggestion will p*ss off many folks but one of the reasons this site has rarely gotten upgrades is because there simply hasn’t been enough revenue to support it. Users like me shouldn’t get to play a game for free season after season after season.

Anyway, Im sure ill be back at some point and I am cautiously optimistic the new ownership group will start to steer the ship in a new direction but I thought it was worth jotting down my thoughts including many ideas ive heard from others.

Texashick, I know they're circulating the forums more but it might be helpful to share this here.

feedback.whatifsports.com

This is the link they recently shared in the discord for users to begin sharing ideas.

These are all great proposals. Suggestions 2 thru 6 in particular are excellent.

Summarizing your list:
1. have RS2 first, then Job Openings.
2. cap HVs per cycle at 3 or 5.
3. promises apply all 4 years.
4. D3 cant recruit D1 players.
5. remove initial scouting for top-100.
6. Big Board uses potential to rank recruits.
7. firings
8. credits.

Posted by npb7768 on 2/7/2025 2:33:00 PM (view original):
These are all great proposals. Suggestions 2 thru 6 in particular are excellent.

Summarizing your list:
1. have RS2 first, then Job Openings.
2. cap HVs per cycle at 3 or 5.
3. promises apply all 4 years.
4. D3 cant recruit D1 players.
5. remove initial scouting for top-100.
6. Big Board uses potential to rank recruits.
7. firings
8. credits.

Instead of your number one, allow all New Coaches to revoke Scholarships from players signed in RS1.

Nice add wvufan

Posted by wvufan76 on 2/7/2025 5:09:00 PM (view original):

Posted by npb7768 on 2/7/2025 2:33:00 PM (view original):
These are all great proposals. Suggestions 2 thru 6 in particular are excellent.

Summarizing your list:
1. have RS2 first, then Job Openings.
2. cap HVs per cycle at 3 or 5.
3. promises apply all 4 years.
4. D3 cant recruit D1 players.
5. remove initial scouting for top-100.
6. Big Board uses potential to rank recruits.
7. firings
8. credits.

Instead of your number one, allow all New Coaches to revoke Scholarships from players signed in RS1.

A being stuck with a bad scholarship for a year is annoying, but doesn’t address what I see as the core problem. Coming into recruiting half way through puts coaches at a significant disadvantage that either they can’t overcome it, or they compound the issue by making stupid decisions that are even harder to undo.

Starting with the regular season is also way less overwhelming to a new player. Setting a depth chart and practice plan is alot more intuitive than scouting at a breaknet pace when your competition already has a significant leg up.

Posted by katzphang88 on 2/20/2025 4:15:00 PM (view original):
Most of the suggestions are good except for D3 recruiting D1 players. I have played all levels and here are my feelings about all levels.
At D-1 - Recruiting is too dependent on the coin flip. Adding the limits to home visits per cycle is good. But if you are going to limit D3 for D1 players then make D1 not able to recruit D2. Prestige is too hard wired into conference. Need more penalties for not filling the roster, too much of a strategy for top teams to take a sim and then having them dropped. Promises should apply to all four years.
At D2 - Too many players rated at D2 get poached by D1, especially late.
At D3 - Coaches realize that they may lose their recruits at any time. Can have disadvantages to new coaches that don't understand all players can be targets.

Response to some of these problems could be that all players are not rated to division. Keep the ratings, but don't pigeon-hole the other players. New coaches wouldn't be intimidated by what the game rates the players. Enough disparity is provided by recruiting money.

'Nuff for now.

I'd argue that scouting would be a nightmare without division borders. The pool of players to look at would be so large. I'm basically on the opposite side of this that borders are necessary and essentially pulling down recruits isn't that much different than it was before except it's accessible to everyone now. This makes it harder for new and inexperienced players to figure out appropriate strategies.

Posted by npb7768 on 2/7/2025 2:33:00 PM (view original):
These are all great proposals. Suggestions 2 thru 6 in particular are excellent.

Summarizing your list:
1. have RS2 first, then Job Openings.
2. cap HVs per cycle at 3 or 5.
3. promises apply all 4 years.
4. D3 cant recruit D1 players.
5. remove initial scouting for top-100.
6. Big Board uses potential to rank recruits.
7. firings
8. credits.

I'll take number 2 a step farther... or at least different. And I love a good nuke!! Lol. Has gotten me recruits I otherwise wouldn't, but it isn't realistic.

Take the HVs allowed down per 1 per cycle. I believe there is 13 cycles before first signing. So after cycle 1, you can only do 19 cycles. After cycle 2, 18 cycles... and so forth. This pays dividends to people who invested from the beginning. Admittedly RS2 would need to have sort of a rest, but not the full 20 because... once again... people who are on a recruit from the get go should reap some benefits.

Posted by npb7768 on 2/7/2025 2:33:00 PM (view original):
These are all great proposals. Suggestions 2 thru 6 in particular are excellent.

Summarizing your list:
1. have RS2 first, then Job Openings.
2. cap HVs per cycle at 3 or 5.
3. promises apply all 4 years.
4. D3 cant recruit D1 players.
5. remove initial scouting for top-100.
6. Big Board uses potential to rank recruits.
7. firings
8. credits.

Shout #2 from the rooftops. This would open up recruiting so much.

As it stands right now, if a B prestige school goes all in on a recruit only to have an A+ bomb them right before signings, that B school is really behind the 8 ball the rest of recruiting. By limiting the number of visits per cycle you not only take out that huge sneak attack, but you allow the smaller schools to pivot sooner.

If a B school has gone several cycles of visits and suddenly an A+ shows up and they know they'll never win, now they can pivot to a backup plan after only having done maybe 5 visits instead of the full 20. This would really help eliminate the scenarios where the middle tier schools lose 1 or 2 players and have basically no money left to recruit anyone else.