Hardwood - Suggestions: Fixing Recruiting

Forum >> Suggestions >> Fixing Recruiting

Post ID	Date & Time	Game Date

#7603	07/05/2019 8:32:31 am	Dec 30th, 2006
ryhaggs Joined: 01/30/2019 Posts: 34 Eckerd Tritons III.2	I like that idea dcmrulz! Some thought would have to go into the right number, but 9 does sound good to me without putting much thought into it.

#7604	07/05/2019 9:25:30 am	Dec 30th, 2006
pschwartz Joined: 05/07/2019 Posts: 857 Inactive	I considered the walkon scholarship idea but I am not sure that is going to do anything. If you take St Marys all of their JRs would have scholarships as well as their RS SR. Next season they are bringing in 3 and losing 1 (the RS SR) so you are now up to 11 scholarships (3 to FR and 8 to SR). They are targeting 3 more JRs - let's say they get them all. So the season after they now 6 scholarships to good players (3 FR and 3 SO). 3 more go to walkons who will be SRs (currently they are SO). St Marys is targeting 3 SO, assume they get all 3. That season they will have 9 scholarships to good players (3 JR, 3 SO, and 3 FR). Another option would be to give the scholarships to your walkon FR so that they take up the scholarship for 4 years. But how would that even work with St Marys? They currently have 17 players - 1 is graduating. They are bringing in 3 next season so their roster is up to 19 players. Now you need to add 6 random FR scholarship players so the roster size is up to 25. Is there a maximum roster size? I thought I read somewhere that it was 18 but I could be wrong.

#7606	07/05/2019 10:11:50 am	Jan 4th, 2007
Rock777 Joined: 02/02/2018 Posts: 1532 Inactive	This is definitely a bad direction. Consider the unfortunate teams on the venting thread who are losing all the recruits they are going after. Now we would penalize them for failing to land recruits on top of it...? I think the best approach is the most realistic. Players don't want to play for bad/flagging teams. We should just increase the impact of that effect. If you have a losing record or demote, then players should lose a lot of interest in your team. That would force people to always trying and be competitive.

#7607	07/05/2019 10:36:29 am	Jan 4th, 2007
pschwartz Joined: 05/07/2019 Posts: 857 Inactive	Rock - that's a good point. My idea to have number of scholarship players impact recruiting won't impact the teams in venting though. I have cutoff at 5, so unless someone can't fill their 8 open scholarships it won't be an issue. I worry that putting more weight on promotion / demotion would make it harder for new players. I took over Campbell last season from a bot with 2 post players and an 0-8 conference record. If you hurt a team that is getting demoted more it would make it a harder hole to climb out of.

#7608	07/05/2019 12:46:10 pm	Jan 4th, 2007
pschwartz Joined: 05/07/2019 Posts: 857 Inactive	My idea is actually a bad one. Teams could still tank and just put a contact into some garbage 1* recruit and give a scholarship. All you need is a handful of bad 1* recruits (which they are doing already since they have all walk-ons) to avoid the penalty. I am assuming there is some kind of multiplier for whatever division you are in - higher the division the higher the multiplier. When you get demoted you get the multiplier of your new division which causes your recruits to lose interest. If you make the penalty for demotion greater then those teams are really screwed because now the impact is greater than teams in their new conference. If they were going after the same recruit now the demoted team is at a huge disadvantage relative to teams in their same division. This could lead to further demotions and forcing players to bottom out in division 6 before turning it around.

#7612	07/05/2019 9:30:53 pm	Jan 4th, 2007
Blackbeard Joined: 03/17/2019 Posts: 561 St. Johns Red Storm IV.2	I don't agree with placing any penalty on teams that demote to lower leagues and I will tell you why. Maybe this isn't how things are done in real life but this is a computer game thats online. With that said, making it too difficult for managers to be ble to make their teams better and to win is not a good thing. maybe its the way things are in the RL but its not good for a computer game that wants to attract as many human managers to the game. If the penalty is great and greater for low level teams that demote and it make winning even worse then human managers will quit the game versus staying on because they are making progress. Thats the difference between this game and say a sports manager game like HA or Hockey Arena. As a team in HA builds their stadium, their trainng facility and on and on the team is able to train players better and eventhally even the most inept players can win. You can not do that in HW because lower ranked team are stuck recruiting the worst players in the game. I don't like playing and getting beat by bot managed teams and it really seems like no matter what I do, worst teams that mine that have bot managers seem to do better and they also suck up better players. maybe their AI is able to do better than somebody like me, I don't know but letting human managers at the least have an advantage over bot teams might be something to be doing in order to start keeping managers here. Thats what I think..... My self, I don't much care because I'll be here whether its hard or not. When my time to move on comes they that will be the end. Thats my opinion on getting a worse penalty for demoting.

#7614	07/06/2019 7:35:30 am	Jan 4th, 2007
pschwartz Joined: 05/07/2019 Posts: 857 Inactive	What about something like mandated coach firing if your team is demoted in two consecutive years? I don't think that happens that often - it seems the teams that get demoted generally do pretty well in a lower conference. We could also add a W/L component that the overall W/L percentage over those 2 years needs to also be below .250 or something. This would making tanking no longer a viable strategy because new coaches kill your recruiting of underclassmen - which the tanking teams are going after. I think the solution to tanking should try to only impact those teams. If we try to rebalance the game by including soft caps or recent success to recruiting I worry those adjustments would need to be very large to make tanking no longer viable.

#7615	07/06/2019 8:15:07 am	Jan 4th, 2007
ryhaggs Joined: 01/30/2019 Posts: 34 Eckerd Tritons III.2	I really like this line of thinking, too. Again, haven't thought deeply about it, yet but I think it merits more thought and discussion.

#7617	07/06/2019 10:08:56 am	Jan 6th, 2007
pschwartz Joined: 05/07/2019 Posts: 857 Inactive	Ok - so I have looked at some of the worst teams by W/L that are in Division 2 and up. Division 3 can't be demoted further so I ignored those (for now). I think the logic could look something like this: - Demoted 2 seasons in a row - W/L percentage in those 2 seasons is below .250 - Has not hired their head coach in those 2 seasons If all 3 of those metrics are hit then the coach is automatically fired during the offseason and another coach must be hired. For bots this could happen automatically. For a human player they need to hire a new head coach. For St Marys - they would get screwed this offseason and lose out on the underclassmen they are currently recruiting. For Hawaii - they might get demoted this year but probably not. However, next season they are getting demoted and probably the season after that (and most likely will have a record below .250). Most of the teams at the bottom are run by bots. The ones run by humans are either about to quit (haven't logged on in a few weeks and the last log on was a few days after signing up) or they were recently promoted (which would explain why they are struggling). I can look at more teams but I don't see any red flags of potentially screwing over a human player that is trying to win. I agree with ryhaggs that this needs more discussion.

#7623	07/07/2019 6:16:14 am	Jan 6th, 2007
Rock777 Joined: 02/02/2018 Posts: 1532 Inactive	Humans have a pretty huge advantage over bot teams in this game. More-so than in BB. In BB it can take a several seasons for a bot to mess up a team, but in HW the player turn around is very quick, so a bot will ruin a team in 1 or 2 seasons. I think playing gymnastics to try and penalize a certain behavior is anti-productive. The undesired behavior: Team owners tanking seasons to improve their recruiting ability. The reality: Teams that did this would lose a lot a be less desirable to recruits. The fix: Make it like the reality. If you lose a lot, players are less interested in joining. As a bonus, this makes the "build a team" route much more interesting a challenging then it is today. Instead of all teams being "easy mode", lower level teams would be more challenging, while only upper level teams would be easy to play.