Comments on Recruiting

[SkyDog]

I posted this at FOFC, but didn't want it to get lost. I'd like to see a realistic calendar. I *love* the way FBCB moves seamlessly from one month to the next, with logical actions for each month of the calendar year. I've revised my thoughts a bit... Kids are being recruited NOW for next February's signing day. Junior days have already happened at several (if not all) SEC schools. *Tons* of recruits are heading to the G-Day game in Athens this weekend, and a bunch were there watching practice last weekend. Texas already has 16 verbals. Most top-tier teams will have 16-20 verbals by the time the season [u]starts.[/u] The December-February period may have a few blue-chippers left in it, but most of the big schools will have their classes 70-90% full by then. For big schools, Dec-Feb. is spent mainly making sure all those verbals don't de-commit, and then focusing on the small handful of target guys left. I like the FBCB model of having a continuous calendar, [u]especially[/u] for college football: January 2005: finish Bowl (or playoff) section, mop-up recruiting for 2005 Signing Day if you're at an elite school, heavy recruiting for 2005 signing day if you're a non-BCS D-1 school like a Tulane, a Memphis, a Miami of Ohio. February 2005: Signing day! News of which underclassmen decide to declare for the NFL Draft. March 2005: Hold Junior Days for 2006 recruits, visits to high schools, first verbal commitments for Class of 2006. April 2005: spring practice (work on new formations, some particularly smart incoming signees already enrolled in school and can practice, getting a boost in development, chance of injuries if you decide to have a spring game, but if you DO have one, can increase alumni donations and loyalty, as well as be a showcase game where Class of '06 HS players check out your school, players who were injured in the season and can't practice, like Kregg Lumpkin, get minimal/no boost in development, ) May 2005: visits to high school spring practices to evaluate players (can't tell you how many recruiters I saw at Tucker's spring practice last year....probably 6 or 8 different D1 schools every day), find out if any of your returning players will be academically ineligible for 2005 season. June 2005: summer training for current players and incoming freshmen, host summer camps for high schools (would give a BIG boost to attendees in both propensity to sign with you and in accurate evaluation of talent) July 2005: new weight room, 40 times, etc. recorded for returning players and new players. (UGA usually does this the last week of July.) August 2005: Practice! Players can potentially get injured, (see Kregg Lumpkin again...out for the year in '04 in a non-contact drill), potential for "breakout" players at this point (guys who perform well in practice unexpectedly), first "accurate" evaluation of football skills of incoming freshmen, more high school summer camps to woo/evaluate 2006 recruits September-December 2005: play games, host official visits, call players, go to high school games anywhere on off weeks (within budget), go to high school games within x number of miles of your location on game weeks...going to high school games increases likelihood of coming to your school, and gives you a more accurate picture of the player

[Arlie Rahn]

I've talked with Ben about this, but I will let everyone in on the reasons for splitting our recruiting from the in-season. Through talks with different people and my own experiences, asking a commish or solo gamer to manage an inseason process with recruiting is just too much to handle for most people. If we set it up that way, gamers would have to set depth charts, update their play books and gameplans on their matchup (plus more advance scouting), monitor the change in HS stats and JC recruits very closely, setup recruiting allocations, watch academics, monitor stats and deal with scholarships EACH week. That's just too much and would make the game more "work" than "fun" - especially for a poor commish (imagine having 40-50 teams, maybe even more). In reality, much of the recruiting is done in the summer before the season as coaches are simply too busy to get involved during the season. And, of course, LOI's are signed in the Feb after the season. It seems to me that in a lot of college games (including TDCB), you do everything during the season and then take a deep breath and breeze through the offseason before undertaking massive micromanagement the next season. So, I felt that having the active recruiting actions start after the season would break up the work for commissioners, as well as make the game flow a little better. In this setup, you handle non-conf scheduling, redshirts, off/def strategy and budgets in the "Camp" stage. Then, you turn your focus to winning games, gameplans, playbooks, monitoring your players and keeping a bird's eye view on recruits in the "Season" stage. Finally, in the Offseason, you adjust your staff, look for college transfers, take recruiting actions and setup a summer training program before starting the cycle over again. Now, this is just my opinion, but I think this process makes each stage something to look forward to, yet nothing to really "dread". And, for both solo and multiplayer, it is very important to having people enjoy playing the game. I think the game will have a very real feel to it as you will get information on recruit breakdowns from Camp to the season and into the offseason. This process just helps break up the work to make the game more manageable to play.

[cody8200]

I have to agree with Arlie. For me, I rather play week to week during the season and not have to try to recruit between weeks. I would much rather get through a whole season and begin strictly focusing on the recruiting aspects. This keeps me more in tune with who I am going after and what I am doing week to week since I dont have to worry about my weekly gameplan or my depth chart at the same time.

[SkyDog]

[QUOTE=Arlie Rahn]I've dumbed down the process to accomodate the weenies who don't really want a realistic sim of running a college football program.[/QUOTE]Fixed it for ya. :p

[Pacersfan46]

Awwwwwwwmmmmmmm he said weenie. Ban the pervert! :) As far as running a league is concerned, I can understand what Arlie is saying. Yet, for single player I would rather it be the way Skydog wants. I severely doubt this is anywhere near possible, but just a personal want.

[Arlie Rahn]

The problem with Sky Dog's suggestion is that it would be extremely difficult to manage for online leagues - ie, making the recruiting process essentially go from Feb to the next Feb would make seasons take eons in MP leagues. Also, I don't think changing when the recruiting occurs equates a "dumbing down" of the process. It's not like I am making recruiting done in one week with all your recruits preset for you ;) I understand not everyone loves this change I've made at this point, but I would say to wait until the game comes out and see how it goes. Skydog mentions FBCB and others have mentioned other games ranging from TDCB to TCY to CM/FM. Each of these games have things added to make the game play better that might not reflect real life 100%. It's a delicate balance trying to make a game both realistic, but also fun. I mean, in real life, a college football coach has to sign off on about 70-100 report cards numerous times during the season. And I don't see that being something most gamers would want to deal with ;)

[Danny]

[QUOTE=Pacersfan46]Awwwwwwwmmmmmmm he said weenie. Ban the pervert! :) As far as running a league is concerned, I can understand what Arlie is saying. Yet, for single player I would rather it be the way Skydog wants. I severely doubt this is anywhere near possible, but just a personal want.[/QUOTE] Of course, someone at FOFC wanted it during the season in multiplayer and in the offseason for single player. I think this is one of those damned if you do, damned if you dont decisions.

[Pacersfan46]

Yeah, can't please everyone. Hell, it's hard to just please the majority once in a while. I don't know what that guy at FOFC was thinking. That's just .... backwards as can be to me.

[Danny]

I think I like it in the off-season either way. But really, what it comes down to is if the recruiting experience is fun and realistic. Whether that is the offseason or inseason doesnt really matter that much to me.

[Scott Vibert]

I personally like it in the offseason. To me "its about the game stupid" during the season, and in TCY recruiting is something I "have to do" prior to each game. When recruitings the only thing, your worrying about before moving on I feel like I'm better able to pay attention to all the informaiton I'm given about a recruit and try to use it to make a better decision on who to pursue. I can understand the calls for realism... but IMO this change may help to enhance the gaming experience and potentially allow for more depth in the recruiting phase. (Almost making recruiting a seperate "mini-game".) Of course we'll all have to reserve the ultimate judgement until after we get to play! :)

[st.cronin]

I am a huge fan of TCY, and I liked the way recruiting worked there. It especially made those occasional 1-10 seasons more fun to play.

[jbmagic]

Arlie is there a way you can make skydog plan for solo play only? and for online league, do it the way you want.

[Samdari]

Also, reposted from FOFC, but I think it brings up an important enough point to warrant the cross post. Arlie - I actually think your logic behind having recruiting during the offseason completely backwards as it applies to multiplayer. While I understand the idea that having too much involved in one step of the process can make it seem like micromanagement, and I agree from the standpoint of single player. I think in order to make any game better for MP, the key is to reduce the number of exports per season, where your current design minimizes the amount needing to be done per export in exchange for adding weeks (and thus exports) to the season. The biggest drawback to MP leagues is the exceedingly slow pace. In most cases, this pace is necesary because not everyone can find time on the same days or the same time of day to play the game, thus two or three days are required between exports, to give everyone a chance to get to the game. If the number of tasks required once they got there were increased (by having recruiting in-season) it would not seem to me to slow too many leagues down. The flaw in your thinking is that MP league players will have too much to do for a given export. In fact, the opposite is pretty much true. There is not nearly enough to do to for each export in FOF2k4, the big holdup is waiting for every other team in the league to do it. In fact, for many offseason stages, leagues wait 48 hours in order to get an export that takes 5 minutes from everyone. For the most enjoyable MP experience possible, you will as few exports per season as possible, which either requires reducing the number of tasks per season (which noone wants) or elegantly combining multiple tasks into each export (which in-season recruiting is an example of).

[streetballer67]

I like the idea of having recruiting done in the off-season.

[bryce]

[QUOTE=Scott Vibert]I personally like it in the offseason. To me "its about the game stupid" during the season, and in TCY recruiting is something I "have to do" prior to each game. When recruitings the only thing, your worrying about before moving on I feel like I'm better able to pay attention to all the informaiton I'm given about a recruit and try to use it to make a better decision on who to pursue. I can understand the calls for realism... but IMO this change may help to enhance the gaming experience and potentially allow for more depth in the recruiting phase. (Almost making recruiting a seperate "mini-game".) Of course we'll all have to reserve the ultimate judgement until after we get to play! :)[/QUOTE] I agree with this line of reasoning. Even if it's not realistic, separating roster turnover and game management would add a lot of enjoyment to the game, as far as I'm concerned. I also view the recruiting in TCY as more of a chore that must be done before the enjoyment of the game, but if it were separate, I think I'd get into the recruiting a lot more. (Of course, I think the recruiting setup in TCY is more than a bit cumbersome, so an improvement on that setup would help tremendously, too.)

[st.cronin]

TCY is probably my favorite game of all time, and I love the way recruiting is handled. A more realistic representation could be fun; separating it completely I think would make the game kind of dull.

[mikey1294]

I also like the idea of recuiting in the off season. At first I didn't but the more and more I read about it the more I like it. Keep up the good work.

[Arlie Rahn]

A couple things. First, there will be a total of 47 "weeks" in a full season (not all may require file sends though, depending on the league setup). And each season will have three main "stages" - Camp, season, offseason. Here's a high level view (with the idea that things may change): Camp - week 1 - Set budget - week 2 - set off/def philosophy - weeks 3-5 - schedule requests for non-conf opponents - week 6 - set redshirts and initial depth chart ***This should go pretty quick with weeks 1, 2 and 6 being fairly simple tasks. Weeks 3-5 are more setting up requests and seeing if you get the game. season - weeks 1 - 15 - weekly games (with most teams having 4-5 BYEs) - weeks 16 - conf championships for those involves - weeks 17-21 - playoffs or bowl games ***Most teams will play only 11-12 total games in the above 21 weeks. If you have a conf champ game and/or go the playoff route you could end up playing a few more. You will have to monitor some things, but most of the actions will involve on-the-field changes. Offseason - Week 1 - option to change jobs (if other offers given) - weeks 2-4 - three week stage to change your staff - weeks 5-9 - 5 week college transfer bid process - weeks 10-19 - 10 week recruiting action process - week 20 - set player training for the offseason So, you can look at the minimum case being a 5-6 season in the Pac-10 - where you don't bring in any transfer players and stay at your current job with the same staff. You have 6 weeks in camp to send files to the commish, 11 season games to send files, 10 weeks of recruiting to send files and one final training allocation. That would be 28 total "file sends" to do a season if you had weekly changes during the season and used all three stages to schedule. The worst would be around 40 total file sends in a given season - and that would if you participated in every week of the offseason, switched jobs, used all the weeks for scheduling and played in the playoffs and won the champ. If I merged the recruiting in season, the range would change from 28-40 and go to 18-30. But each file send would involve some level of recruiting and be a much more complex process. As it stands now, outside of the 10 weeks of recruiting and 11-15 games you play, much of the work is minimal before sending in a file. Plus, I would expect many teams use the "auto" function for coach bidding, transfers and some weeks in recruiting once they have all their players. And, again, there will be an easy way for a commish to slide a team to be "auto-managed" at any stage in the game. I don't think this process will be overly complex. Again, assuming a commish never doubles up on simming weeks, the entire process of simming a season would take 47 instances. If you did a sim Tues-Thurs-Sat, it would take you about three "real" months to sim a full year in BBCF. If you grouped some similar things together, you could probably get away with a full season in two months of real time. I would think that's on par with other similar games. Plus, there is no one week that will require numerous activities that hurt turnout and are often the reason for missed or extended sim periods.

[SkyDog]

[quote=Arlie, in his first post in this thread]making the recruiting process essentially go from Feb to the next Feb would make seasons take eons in MP leagues.[/quote] [quote=Arlie's most recent post in this thread]If I merged the recruiting in season, the range would change from 28-40 and go to 18-30.[/quote] Arlie, I'm not trying to be a jerk on this. I really want to understand this better. Help me reconcile these two statements.

[Arlie Rahn]

It comes down to having a user take an average of 30 minutes per sessions to do their file work for 30 sessions or have it take an average of 10 minutes per sessions for 40 sessions. While the number of sessions may be lower for the earlier group, the total time spent is significantly more.

[SkyDog]

[QUOTE=Arlie Rahn]It comes down to having a user take an average of 30 minutes per sessions to do their file work for 30 sessions or have it take an average of 10 minutes per sessions for 40 sessions.[/QUOTE]I guess that's where I'm missing something. I can't for the life of me figure out how the latter is the better option, but I guess that's what people want. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy TCY, and it isn't year-round, and I'd imagine I'll enjoy BBCF without it being year-round, but both will still be missing something for me.

[Tiger Fan]

Skydog, while I agree with you and would rather see a more immersive experience like you suggest I can see where it could become extremely cumbersome for online leagues. Just from an ease of use or simplicity sake it does seem to make more sense to seperate the in season game planning and recruiting aspects from each other.

[Moss84]

ESPN College Hoops 2K5 does a great job with there recruiting part of the game. It is in season though, which I prefer but what ever works. They break down the high school players as * 1 star, ** 2 star, *** 3 star, ****4 star, and ***** 5 star recruits. You than have players who are municipal, local, regional, and national. It also shows you the players that are interested in your school, all american, and mr basketball for there state. I think it would be a great option if you were able to create an HTML player card for each recruit with there high school stats and any high school records that they broke. Also, that same player card would continue through there college years and include there stats and any awards that they won. Recruiting to me would be the best part of a college football game. The draft was the best part of TPF.

[Bryan Swartz]

Arlie, Impressive first look so far. One thing though -- since redshirting is an element, will the AI take advantadge of this(as opposed to TDCB where they don't and therefore the player gains a huge advantadge).

[I. J. Reilly]

I would love to see much more flexibility in recruiting different positions. The high school position shouldn’t have that much affect on where a kid projects to. A 6’2” 200# speedster could project to virtually any position on the field. Perhaps recruits could be given multiple scouting grades for different positions. An example, a player projects to an 80 or 4 star at DB, but only 50 or 2 star at QB which he played in high school. To add another element recruits could be given preferences as to what position they want to play. That player may have his heart set on being a QB, which would give a smaller school a shot at recruiting him. This happens a lot. Even another layer to this might be a coaches recruiting reputation. If you recruited this guy as a QB and then on the first day of fall camp you move him to DB, your reputation will take a hit and the next time you promise a recruit that he will play a certain position he is less likely to sign with you. Apologies for the stream of consciousness, I got on a roll.