Posted by kobo on 8/28/2016 3:06:00 AM (view original):
Yeah, I wasn't addressing you coachspud.

Cool. I'm not addressing anybody. I'm addressing the game.

Posted by kubasnack on 8/28/2016 8:11:00 AM (view original):
I don't think the "Produces NBA Players" is a good option. That means EE coaches are automatically guaranteed NBA talent every year and that should not be the case. I do believe what would help is adding a "DEAD" period after the season where you have 24hrs to scout and recruit before any players start signing. This will let an EE coach somewhat catch up on top recruits that are left. Right now, they start signing right away and many top recruits sign before you can even give them any attention.

This dead period is a good idea I think. No signings for first 24 hours or even 12 hours.

Posted by Benis on 8/28/2016 9:21:00 AM (view original):

Posted by kubasnack on 8/28/2016 8:11:00 AM (view original):
I don't think the "Produces NBA Players" is a good option. That means EE coaches are automatically guaranteed NBA talent every year and that should not be the case. I do believe what would help is adding a "DEAD" period after the season where you have 24hrs to scout and recruit before any players start signing. This will let an EE coach somewhat catch up on top recruits that are left. Right now, they start signing right away and many top recruits sign before you can even give them any attention.

This dead period is a good idea I think. No signings for first 24 hours or even 12 hours.

I wouldn't support a dead period for all players, but I would support one for the "late" players. As I've been saying since the start of beta, late should mean late. Not just somewhere in the last period, but I'd say in the last 4 cycles (last day).

Posted by kobo on 8/27/2016 10:10:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 8/27/2016 6:55:00 PM (view original):
Aidiamo, I agree there can be some tweaks. Ideas I could get behind for the second session include more elite prospects with the late preference, at least one signing-free cycle for those with late preference, and a number of moderately good jucos (think 650-700 range, with some potential) created to be unleashed for the late period. Maybe half as many jucos as early entries lost. All of those could be tried, and some combo may end up improving the experience. But I don't think they should be catering to players whose interest is to continue to be able to replace early entries with players of equivalent value.

Why shouldn't it be possible to replace ees with players of equivalent value? I don't see why a successful Div 1 coach should be disadvantaged solely based on his ability to recruit elite players. Perhaps a new preference could be added. Something like "Wants to play at a school which produces NBA players" (but less wordy lol). These players would be looking specifically for teams which send players to the NBA and ees would be an advantage with them. Not only would it help to alleviate the discrimination against success in Div 1...but it is a preference that has some basis in reality.

I wasn't very clear, I didn't mean to imply it shouldn't be *possible* to replace elite players. When I say WIS shouldn't cater "to players whose interest is to continue to be able to replace early entries with players of equivalent value", I'm talking about the expectation, not the ability, to replace those elite players directly with the resources from the vacated scholarship. Of course it is and should continue to be possible to replace elite talent every year. But it should be a difficult task requiring a lot of planning, and involving certain calculated risks. The process now in beta is just about right, I think.

I do like the idea of adding a preference for "future expectations", options being to play professionally (not just NBA, so it could cross levels) or academics. Another idea I brought up very early in the beta process.

I don't play at D1 and don't fully understand the EE problem, but I have a question. In the real world - How often do the same teams produced EE, and how is their level of play affected the next season trying to replace them?

If teams in TRW are able to reload and keep their level up, then HD should allow that this happens (perhaps less penalty to prestige because they had EE's.) If they aren't able to reload, and go through a slump for period of seasons, then it seems this is what the D1 coaches are experiencing.

Posted by katzphang88 on 8/28/2016 12:56:00 PM (view original):
I don't play at D1 and don't fully understand the EE problem, but I have a question. In the real world - How often do the same teams produced EE, and how is their level of play affected the next season trying to replace them?

If teams in TRW are able to reload and keep their level up, then HD should allow that this happens (perhaps less penalty to prestige because they had EE's.) If they aren't able to reload, and go through a slump for period of seasons, then it seems this is what the D1 coaches are experiencing.

In Real Life, the Kentucky Wildcats are probably the best example of a program which recruits EEs successfully (they are notorious now for recruiting "one and done" which are players which leave after their Freshman season, which is extremely rare in HD).

They have zero problems recruiting high level elite talent year in year out as their coach John Calipari is quite successful.

The equivalent would be in HD terms, is they are able to reload each season but due to their players leaving every season, they probably get elite level recruits and play with poor IQ (and still get deep runs during March Madness). The model which best suits them would be if EEs declare early as they have ZERO issues grabbing talent which want to go to the NBA and *not* stay in school.

Another way to address the EE issue would be to allow recruits to have a preference for schools which would produce NBA players where EEs carry even more weight and have that preference have a huge impact (and be fairly common) among the elite recruits (i.e. Top 100).

At least that way, a coach who has to put up with the EEs would get a huge advantage over the other coaches who aren't getting hit with EEs.

Kentucky is the only RL program that encounters this repeatedly. Multiple EEs from one school happens twice as often in HD as they do IRL (I compared RL to the last 10 seasons in Crum). IRL Kentucky has had three or more EEs that left and got drafted five times in the last 10 years, twice they have had 5 players leave and get drafted and once they had six players leave and get drafted. Florida (with 4) is the only school (other than Kentucky) in the last ten years to have more than 3 EEs leave and get drafted in a single season. Seven schools other than Kentucky (including UCLA and Kansas twice) have had three EEs leave and get drafted in the past ten seasons.

The number of EEs in Crum was nearly identical to the number of NBA drafted undergrads over ten seasons (I think it was 274 vs. 276) It's also worth noting that in Crum the EEs were from 43 different schools (all but one from the Big 6), IRL the EEs came from 86 different schools (although most were from Big 6 schools, a number were from mid-majors and traditional powerhouses like Oakland, Eastern Washington, IUPUI, Georgia State and Louisiana Lafayette).

Here's a summary of RL teams (excluding Kentucky) with multiple (more than 3) EEs in a single season over the past ten years:

• North Carolina in 2012 had three EEs get drafted and they were successful in replacing the players they lost.
• Ohio State in 2007 has probably done the next best job in replacing three EEs but they also had two graduating seniors (5 openings). With that they brought in two future NBA 1st Round Picks and one 2nd Round Pick.
• Kansas had three EEs in 2008 and brought in a nice recruiting class in 2009 that included three players that ultimately got drafted but considering they had seven openings (4 graduating seniors on top of the three EEs) I think it's fair to question how successfully they replaced their EEs.
• UCLA did a nice job of replacing Kevin Love, Russell Westbrook and Luc Mbah a Moute along with a graduating senior in 2008 but it was a definite drop off in talent. Jrue Holiday and Malcom Lee both got drafted but of the two only Holiday is still in the NBA while all three of the 2008 EEs are still playing.
• UCLA (2014), Michigan (2014) and Duke (2015) still too early to tell although Brandon Ingram from Duke and Kevon Looney from UCLA have already been drafted, all of the other recruits from these three schools are still in school.
• Kansas (2011) Texas (2011) and Florida (2007) all did relatively poor jobs of replacing their EEs.

Still without EE experience - it seems the easiest way to play the game with EE's is to 1) designate players during recruiting with a flag (like those that get the Ineligible Red Pencil, the Gold ratings stars) with a symbol which means "If I can, I'm a jumpin' to the NBA". This would at least give fair warning to a coach that this player has a desire to leave early. And maybe a little preference tick for them to teams that regularly showcase them in the NT (like a prestige**2 for these EE types)

Also - it seems that limiting the number of EE's to any team over maybe 5 seasons to max of 4. This would spread any EE's out to more teams (like IRL). and not penalize any one team excessively.

As I said - no skin in the EE game, but it does seem that HD needs to align more with real life per possum's stats and budda's recommendations.

Seble?

I'm obviously not the game developer, but if I was, my goal would be to have the EE "problem" work itself out through gameplay naturally. I certainly wouldn't be interested in an artificial limit on the amount of elite players a team can lose. The idea is for coaches to self-limit the amount of elite players they take on to fit their personal taste for risk. Buddha went all in, won some dice rolls, and got a great team with some elite players that he was then at risk for losing. EEs aren't punishing success, they're returning the team back to stasis. His team isn't worse off now over the long haul than it would have been had he lost some of those dice rolls and never had the players to begin with.

The reason I like ideas like adding some jucos, making late preference mean later than first cycle of the second period, and adding a pro/academic preference is not that I want the game to be easier for elite teams. It's to make the system work more as I suspect it's intended, especially for coaches who change teams.

Based on the data I am not specifically advocating any solution to the EE problem. I would be in favor of a 24 hour quiet period to start Round 2 of recruiting, and wouldn't be adverse to the idea of having more recruits with late signing preference but I don't think I would do anything further. I also don't think it's much use to continue debating the issue because I think seble made pretty clear that he doesn't plan to take any action on it for the time being but will instead continue to monitor it.

I think the only other thing I would reiterate, based on the data, is that outside of Kentucky (and let's be honest, so much of RL college basketball recruiting is dictated by AAU coaches, Agent Runners and Shoe Companies that it's hard to read too much in to RL elite level recruiting) multiple EEs that exist in HD just don't occur all that often IRL, and when they do, the track record of teams successfully replacing those guys with like kind is spotty at best. It shouldn't be a surprise then that Kentucky is the go to example of how unrealistic the current HD EE problem is because they are the only good example of it in the real world.

Posted by possumfiend on 8/28/2016 11:02:00 PM (view original):
Based on the data I am not specifically advocating any solution to the EE problem. I would be in favor of a 24 hour quiet period to start Round 2 of recruiting, and wouldn't be adverse to the idea of having more recruits with late signing preference but I don't think I would do anything further. I also don't think it's much use to continue debating the issue because I think seble made pretty clear that he doesn't plan to take any action on it for the time being but will instead continue to monitor it.

I think the only other thing I would reiterate, based on the data, is that outside of Kentucky (and let's be honest, so much of RL college basketball recruiting is dictated by AAU coaches, Agent Runners and Shoe Companies that it's hard to read too much in to RL elite level recruiting) multiple EEs that exist in HD just don't occur all that often IRL, and when they do, the track record of teams successfully replacing those guys with like kind is spotty at best. It shouldn't be a surprise then that Kentucky is the go to example of how unrealistic the current HD EE problem is because they are the only good example of it in the real world.

I've been pretty outspoken about the issues around the 2nd cycle but agree with Possum in that these two areas of improvement is the best solution while also the least invasive to the way in which the current system runs.

Employ a short dead period which at least allows coaches a possibility to compete and actually use recruiting money. There are still sacrifices - I.e. You may have to super target allocation to one or two players (depending on your openings) so it's still a gamble. If you have one opening and it takes 5 cycles to actually reach a point to spend money on a player the dead period may still be an issue but that plays back towards strategy as you probably shouldn't target a 5 star guy high on another school if all you're armed with is 20 allocation points heading into the dead period. At least give coaches a chance to play the game though.

And then shift more players to wait for the 2nd cycle. Current player preferences favor this really, ensuring coaches return to schools (stability), playing time (ee's leaving, actual amount of time for a team to promise) etc. In RL a lot of players wait and actually pivot on a school if they sign another kid at their position. At it stands now, I can promise time to 6 different shooting guards (example) and guards 2-6 would sign just the same as the first despite no realistic chance they're all going to get promised minutes or starts. Sure I would likely lose players to transfer if I don't make good on my promise a season later but in RL guards 2-6 are going to be more skeptical and say "hey, I'm the number 25 shooting guard in the country but the number 12 guy just signed at the school I'm considering, maybe that changes my mind a bit since we both can't be starting at SG." Slippery slope here since we can't necessarily communicate strategy - I.e. moving one to PG or SF but still the area could have more in season logic applied based on other actions.

a few notes on EEs

1. some are rather clear
2. lots of EEs are hard to predict - you can have 2 or 3 guys on the margin - all or none might go - leaving gaps at different spots
3. in the beta, I was surprised by an EE and could not get any DI worthy guy - not an equivalent elite guy
4. with planning, one might create a shot at some sort of useful replacement - but no hope if a lot of guys sign in the first cycle of the second period

small changes that could mitigate the issue

a. announce EEs earlier
b. no signings for one or two cycles in the second recruiting period - so you have a shot at catching up
c. bonus attention points for EEs - because that kid going to the NBA gets the "attention" of recruits - and because you have a schollie where you got ZERO attention points during teh first recruiting cycle..... like, instead of 20, you get 40 for an EE

alas, seble has decided not to even try to fix this - which is a shame. We know this will be a problem for 2 or 3 transition seasons. I think it will be a problem for those who decide to continue to play - guess y'all will see.