I miss Hoops Dynasty. You know the Hoops Dynasty I mean.

The one where you could search for recruits and know that they had a chance to improve at least a little in each of their ratings over a four career, rather than now when you see every other player with four or more ratings in red and know there is no hope for that recruit.

The one where you had a player who could keep improving rather than now when he is maxed out at multiple key skills even though he is a sop****re.

The one that didn’t fill your inbox with “there's no point in your player continuing to practice.”

The one that didn’t have as its prevailing ***umption that all athletes have reached peak skills at age 19.

The one where almost all players improved in meaningful categories rather than now when they only seem to ever improve in stamina and durability.

The one where Work Ethic meant something.

The one where there was actual strategy behind setting your practice times.

The Hoops Dynasty before they ruined the game with this “potential” nonsense.

Yeah, I miss that Hoops Dynasty.

I miss Hoops Dynasty, where on the first recruitng signing, myself,my girl friend Annie, Robert, Jeff and two others would have some finger food, drinks, salsa and chips and discuss strategy. We have went from 8 people playing to just myself after this season. I will have just two teams in two different worlds. I remember being helped with recruiting and game planning and really understanding the game. Learning which real life coaching techniques had been abandoned by WIS. It now appears all have been. The best part of playing these past 30 months is the people and friendships that have beern made. That is what is keeping most veteransere. If indeed all customer suggestions are discussed once a month, then our opinions dont mean anything. Customer service should be improved and so should the game. I now believe if we just mailed in our 12.95 that would suit the company more. The three things I will not miss about WIS is the stupid lack of improvement emails, All of potential and the lack of real gaming options that work Right now I have a 225 a year investment in WIS, if there are not responses to the problems, then my first obiligation is to entertainment sources that provide customer service and a quality product Sadly the changes WIS has made are driving away long time customers and that is what I miss the most.. The WIS of 18 months ago

amen to that

Doug, I could not disagree more. While there are some crappy red-low potential recruits, they fill a role. - The inbox thing sucks, and I am sure it will get fixed soon. - I don't see any of my recruits peaking at their sop****re year....maybe you should recruit some higher potential players?- I seem to find plenty of players with high potential in ath, spd, LP, etc.- WE is back to being relevant. Recruit a 1 WE guy now and see what I mean.- Practice time strategy is still there, if you recruit someone with high potential in p***ing, BH, Def & PER, which do you improve first?Potential is not that awful. Espcially now that is has been modified. Some players don't improve. I played HS basketball, and if you put me at UNC, on the team, I am never going to shoot 40% from 3. I taken lots on lots of shots, and its not happening. This is true for a lot of D2 and D3 players. If everyone kept improving, the world would be filled with NBA level talent....but people stop improving. In my senior year of HS I could run 400m in 48 seconds. I practiced and practiced and practiced and I could barely improve to 47.8. But my freshman year I started at 59 seconds and ended at 51.5 or something. So this model of big gains early, small gains late, seems to correlate to the real world to me.

Quote: Originally posted by douglasdao on 4/09/2009I miss Hoops Dynasty. You know the Hoops Dynasty I mean.

The one where you could search for recruits and know that they had a chance to improve at least a little in each of their ratings over a four career, rather than now when you see every other player with four or more ratings in red and know there is no hope for that recruit.

The one where you had a player who could keep improving rather than now when he is maxed out at multiple key skills even though he is a sop****re.

The one that didn’t fill your inbox with “there's no point in your player continuing to practice.”

The one that didn’t have as its prevailing ***umption that all athletes have reached peak skills at age 19.

The one where almost all players improved in meaningful categories rather than now when they only seem to ever improve in stamina and durability.

The one where Work Ethic meant something.

The one where there was actual strategy behind setting your practice times.

The Hoops Dynasty before they ruined the game with this “potential” nonsense.

Yeah, I miss that Hoops Dynasty.

Ah, that was the Hoops Dynasty actually worth paying for.

Doug, I can agree with you that D3 has been irrevocably damaged by potential. I think Potential works the best in D1 and D2, but D3 guys are all low/mid potential and then they stop improving pretty fast. So if you are only in D3, then I completely see your points.

low levels of d1 are the same......

The glory days are always better than the present and that's true for anything and everything. Eventually all the "veterans" will move on and then slowly but surely new people will emerge as "veterans." And then there will still be *****ing but everyone will be wishing they went back to potential instead of some crazy new change. It's a wonderful cycle.

More than half of the teams in DI are virtually identical.

I mainly just miss div III. It had what div I never could have - super stars. Under the old system everyone could get 90+ players in div I, this is still the case. The big difference was in div III where you had a wide gap. You could have a 88 rebounder going up against a 42. I had a center who was just so much better then anyone else there. He averaged 23 points, 11 rebounders and 2.4 blocks per game his JR season on 53% shooting. His SR year a new coach took over the program and he got 16 PPG 9 rebounds and 2 blocks on 49% shooting. These kind of super stars were really only in div III because of the variety of players you could find there. Now div III has just pretty much became div I - the bad div I. Every player is so even to each other ranging in the 40-70 ratings. There is no longer any super stars.

Thanks for the comments.

I think this thread fairly accurately reflects the general sentiment about the potential system: most people dislike it by a very large margin.

Yes, I play at DIII where the potential system has pretty much destroyed the game for the reasons several of you have mentioned. It does seem that people who play at DI are less irritated about the potential system, but I get the impression that is because it has alleviated some of the boredom of DI where, as vegas said so well, all of the players are virtually identical.

To Reinsel - Yes, I agree with you that people's perspective on the potential system seems to vary completely whether one is playing DI or lower.

I want to address one point some people keep bringing up. No one is suggesting that players should improve without limits and that every player becomes a superstar. That didn't happen in the old system and it seems that most people would be happy to go back to the old system.

The problem with the new potential system is not that it caps improvement (the old system did that too) but the way it caps potential: too harshly, too quickly, too predictably, and without regard to basic common sense.

I have had teams at all levels and quite frankly It is not the answer at any level

I can be on board with a softer cap or something. I still think that the ratings in general are too tight. With a decent D3 player having a 40 Athleticism, there just isn't enough space to acheive the desparate results that are needed when a D3 freshman encounters a D1 stud.

I miss it too. Potential has made me drop 7 teams so far. My D3 team went early. I still have one D1 and one D2. I figure I'll be gone by the fall as potential has taken the interest away. Even with my teams playing better than ever before. I have no investment in WIS anymore. I have been playing off my credits entirely for months. I have no plans to buy any more seasons.