Recruiting in NCAA 13 - What would you like to see?

[griffin2608]

I know it's early but I have been thinking about some things.

I hope next year the recruiting gets some work. I would like to see some type of zone system for the states. Take the big football states for example Florida, Texas, California ect. There are multiple big programs in Florida. UF, FSU, MIA then USF and UCF are up and coming. FAU and FIU are lower tier but still D1. Take a map of the state with county's on it and where the school is located and give a small boost to schools in their area. Just like UM when Schnellenberger was there schools had a hard time going into south Florida and pulling recruits.

Top tier recruits are not going to sign with schools that are not offering them a scholarship period. These guys know their worth and they will not accept a prefered walk on status when other big programs are offering and I am tired of seeing it happen.

More to come....

[JeffHCross]

Take a map of the state with county's on it and where the school is located and give a small boost to schools in their area. Just like UM when Schnellenberger was there schools had a hard time going into south Florida and pulling recruits.

Pretty sure this is what Pipeline (and Proximity to Home) is designed to do, but I agree that re-doing pipelines would be nice. No matter how many players Ohio State has from Florida, Luke Fickell is not going to have the same pull in Florida that Jimbo Fisher or Will Muschamp will. I think the A+ Proximity to Home rating is supposed to differentiate between a local school and a pipeline school, but it doesn't count for enough, imo. Or too many guys don't consider Proxmity to Home important.

Top tier recruits are not going to sign with schools that are not offering them a scholarship period. These guys know their worth and they will not accept a prefered walk on status when other big programs are offering and I am tired of seeing it happen.

Agreed, but I don't think the fix for this is in the player logic. Based on my observations, a player will only be getting interest, yet not getting a scholarship, from a CPU school if he's on the school's board but not "important enough" to get an offer.

As human players, I think most of us have three states for our recruits: Targets, Keep Him in the Back Pocket, and Not Important. It's pretty rare that I hear about an NCAA player keeping a guy on his board that he has no interest in recruiting. They're either current targets, or players that we're keeping on the board as backups in case we can't sign our primary targets. But I don't think the CPU has that middle tier. It seems to me that the CPU makes a scholarship offer to every player they want, but also fills the board with 35 targets every week. If you look at the CPU time usage, they're only talking to 10-15 players each week (maybe more at the beginning of the season).

Basically, I don't think the problem with walk-ons is that they're not considering the scholarship. I think the problem is that the CPU is keeping them on the board, even though they have no interest in signing them. That's one reason you end up with things like Alabama signing 3 5* QBs in the same season -- they sign two of them early on, and then never drop the third guy from their list. The way the point system works, 60 minutes is 60 minutes, whether or not the player has a scholarship offer.

Unless they thoroughly revamped the recruiting point system, I don't see it changing that a player will sign without a scholarship offer. I agree with you that it shouldn't happen, but I think the fix is in getting the CPU to properly drop players from their board.

[Rudy]

I'd like the ability to sway DOWN a topic. If a kid lives far away and being close to home is a big thing for him then I would like to be able to convince him that it's not such a big deal.

I'd also like to see some of the time in recruiting to be used to scout the prospect instead of always just talking to the kid. What if you use some time to review game film (20 minutes) or actually be at one of his games (60 minute pitch). Maybe they can show you a video clip of the kid (just for fun) and then you get a hard lock on some attributes and/or potential. (ie maybe that B+ arm on that QB is actually an A/93 THP). Watching game tape might let you unlock 1-2 attributes, watching in person might let you do 3-5. It would certainly make it more interesting and add another twist.

Having kids rated for discipline and having discipline in dynasty would certainly add another dimension. Are you willing to recruit a troublemaker or do you only want clean cut kids?

[cdj]

This is a great thread idea, griffin2608. I think a lot of people feel like recruiting may be getting stale or they want an improved methodology to the existing system.

Share any and all ideas here and we'll make sure to pass it on.

[baseballplyrmvp]

---decommitments would add a lot of fun to online dynasties. imagine stealing that prized qb or rb from your rival, who had a verbal from that kid all year long, and at the last second, you steal him away. oh to see the look on your rival's face when he sees that his prized recruit went somewhere else.....priceless!

---maybe being able to offer recruits a preferred walk-on spot? this would act like how a promise is treated, where if you dont reward him with a scholarship before his career is up, it negatively affects your coach prestige.
ideally, though, this would need require bigger rosters for your team. maybe team size limits could be changed from 70 players total to 70 scholarship players and up to 15 walk-ons? maybe too, this could be a user-only feature, so the cpu wouldnt be able to have walk-on spots? this would only make the roster file 180 players bigger (assuming 12 users getting 15 more players) rather than 1800 if it were applied to every school.

---i like rudy's idea of having some kind of scouting involvement, and i'd actually like to see a range for the recruit's ratings. how good the coach is at recruiting, could determine how big or small that range is. combined with rudy's scouting idea, going to a game, could lead to an exact grade for a couple of different ratings.

[Pig Bomb]

I'll come back and give some ideas later but i wanted to say really quick to griffin... it's NOT EARLY!! EA are already working on NCAA 13!
If we don't hurry up and give suggestions it just gets harder for them to add it later. The sooner you give them something the better the chance it gets in the game and actually works!

[JeffHCross]

Here were some of my "Little Things" wishes last year:

Redo Pipelines: Having 4 players on the roster from the same state doesn't establish a pipeline, at least not in real life. I guess they're trying to replicate that in real life certain coaches establish ties to areas, know the HS coaches, and are known to the parents. Sure, that's all true. But that's established over time, not by X number of players on your roster. Pipelines should be created and lost with time and successful recruiting in the states, not X. They should be gained and lost by who you play and who you beat. Ohio State shouldn't have to work to establish a pipeline to Indiana, Pennsylvania, or Michigan ... conference states should come automatically, at least at some level. And there should be varying levels of pipelines. No matter how many Florida players come to Ohio State, Jim Tressel is not going to recruit Florida at the same level that Urban Meyer will.

(Ironic, neither of those coaches are around this year ...)

When using "Find Prospects" in Recruiting, instead of "View All Matching Prospects", the option to only view Matching Prospects above a certain percentage would be awesome. If I search 3 different sets of criteria, more often than not, I only care about the guys that are 100%. In fact, the vast majority of the time I'm using Find Prospect, I only care about 100%. Yes, I can sort on percentage, but why load all 300+ prospects that match the search when I'm really only interested in 22?

MVP mentioned "bragging rights for beating a school in a recruit's Top 10" last year, and I think that would be huge to see. Especially if you bring a recruit in for a rivalry game, and the two schools are #1 and #2 on the recruit's Top 10. That outcome should have some kind of an influence on the recruit.

And my thoughts on Dealbreaker pitches:

Now, along those lines ... I don't like when a player had Early Playing Time as a Most, and I have it as a D, yet I'm still able to get him to come to my school. Yes, on the one hand, I clearly put more effort into him than I would otherwise. But if a player is most concerned with getting playing time ... he's not likely to choose a school where he's not going to get that playing time. That's something I think the team should think about in the future, though I wouldn't put that high on the list.

if I, as a football recruit, am saying that the absolute most important thing to me is Early Playing Time ... that should be a dealbreaker. And deal-breaker's don't exist in NCAA recruiting.

It's something worth thinking about though. At the very least, I think there should be a "Dealbreaker". Where if I pitch a D to a Most+Dealbreaker, I actually get Negative points rather than just very few.

The problem there is the differentiation between "Low" meaning "It's not that important to me" and it meaning "I want a school with Low Prestige". If you look at the responses the recruits give, it seems like it means either one.

[Dr Death]

Obviously I am the only one to vote for a new system so far! But I will say this... Early Playing Time should NOT be determined by how many players you have at a particular position. Some may have 6 RB's and the highest is a 71... if he's recruiting a 5-Star RB, he should be able to tell that kid that yeah, my RB's are deep, but don't worry, you will start. I know we can do this w/ the promise of Significant Playing Time or whatever it's called... but it needs to go deeper than that and the rating should NOT be based on how deep you are at whatever position it is.

Edit: In fact, I believe that WE should be able to set up Early Playing Time when we set up our recruiting board. You recruit a 5-star player, you determine his EPT... A+. You're recruiting a 2-star CB who you want to Red-Shirt to give him a year to learn and improve, you set his EPT at D but... and this is key... we also need to be able to explain to them our plans for them.

Example: "Okay, here's the deal. I have 3 CB's who are all Juniors, next year they'll be Seniors. I want you to come in and learn the D and learn from them. They're good and one year will make you even better. Then, your first year of eligibility you can expect to play because you will go from... {whatever his rating will be}... say 62... to 67-70..." If we could do things like this... real life stuff... recruiting would be much deeper and much better!

[morsdraconis]

It actually does do what you're saying with their abilities, but it's also based on the number of guys you are going after. Doing what you're doing in recruiting to try and get one of them is actually sabotaging your ability to have A+ Early Playing time. I went after a WR with my lower rated team and was able to pitch A+ Early Playing Time even though I had like 7 WRs on my roster and was only going to lose one or two of them to graduation.

[Dr Death]

Yeah, but that doesn't work for my style. I must have 10-12 WR's. W/ formation subs I can put my starting 5 in and also have sets where the 6-10 guys are on the field, allowing me to constantly switch sets thus keeping all my WR's fresh throughout a game. I know I am in the minority but dammit... minorities are always taken care of in this country!

[PDuncanOSU]

I think adding 2 attributes to coaches and removing the random pitch selecter would really improve recruiting. Each coach would have a Scouting rating that would affect what we see as the recruits ratings, and a Recruiting rating that would affect how many points can be earned for each pitch. The scouting rating for offensive coordinator will affect offensive recruits, deffensive coordinator affects deffensive recruits, and head coach affects athletes, kickers and punters. All coaches would see the same star rating for each recruit.
Recruiting next year would look something like this:
-Head Coach 1 has an A scouting rating and sees a 3* athlete has B+ speed
-Head Coach 2 has a C scouting rating and sees the same 3* athlete has speed in the range of B- to A-
-You choose 1-6 topics at 10 minutes per topicl for each recruit
-A 6 topic/60 minute call will have 3 topics that are recruits choice, and 3 that are coaches choice
-A recruits choice topic will always be an above average or higher interest level for that recruit regardless of the schools ratings
-A coaches choice topic will be any topic that you choose
-A 5 topic/50 minute call could have 3 recruit choice/2 coach choice or vice versa, possibly random depending on the recruit
-The 3* athlete has his interest in playing time as Most is being recruited and both teams have A+ for playing time
-Head Coach 1 has an A recruiting rating can earn 70-90 points for pitching playing time
-Head Coach 2 has a C recruiting rating can earn 60-80 points for the same pitch
This wouldn't be a huge change from the current system, so it shouldn't be difficult for EA to do, would add depth to the coaching carousel, and allow recruiting to be more realistic while still not too easy.

[psuexv]

The problem there is the differentiation between "Low" meaning "It's not that important to me" and it meaning "I want a school with Low Prestige". If you look at the responses the recruits give, it seems like it means either one.

Jeff this is a huge point. Especially as I've said I would love to actually be able to pitch in scenarios where interest is low. There really should be an "opposite" category for each rating. Proximity to home and I want to get away, Program Prestige and small school... etc. Then you should also have the "It's not that important to me" rating for all of them.

Redo Pipelines: Having 4 players on the roster from the same state doesn't establish a pipeline, at least not in real life. I guess they're trying to replicate that in real life certain coaches establish ties to areas, know the HS coaches, and are known to the parents. Sure, that's all true. But that's established over time, not by X number of players on your roster. Pipelines should be created and lost with time and successful recruiting in the states, not X. They should be gained and lost by who you play and who you beat. Ohio State shouldn't have to work to establish a pipeline to Indiana, Pennsylvania, or Michigan ... conference states should come automatically, at least at some level. And there should be varying levels of pipelines. No matter how many Florida players come to Ohio State, Jim Tressel is not going to recruit Florida at the same level that Urban Meyer will.

Personally think Pipelines are a joke, as you've stated Jeff just because I have 4 kids on my roster from Tx doesn't mean every kid from Texas should want to come to my school. They true Pipelines you see in Recruiting are Geographical, which I think Proximity to Home tries to cover. The only thing you might see is on a High School Level with Pipelines, so and so from my school went to this school and they're showing me interest... yada yada.

[Jayrah]

Personally think Pipelines are a joke, as you've stated Jeff just because I have 4 kids on my roster from Tx doesn't mean every kid from Texas should want to come to my school. They true Pipelines you see in Recruiting are Geographical, which I think Proximity to Home tries to cover. The only thing you might see is on a High School Level with Pipelines, so and so from my school went to this school and they're showing me interest... yada yada.

Oh I don't know. Wsu is recruiting some big kids out of Florida based on a few kids being from that area and some ties to the Florida area in real life. I like the 4 recruits deal, but it should have to be 3 star recruits and above. None of this stealing 1 star fbs for a pipeline.

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk

[psuexv]

Oh I don't know. Wsu is recruiting some big kids out of Florida based on a few kids being from that area and some ties to the Florida area in real life. I like the 4 recruits deal, but it should have to be 3 star recruits and above. None of this stealing 1 star fbs for a pipeline.

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk

You mean these guys they signed last year, the 2 stars? 2 of them are from the same High School and if you look at the ones they are targeting this year 2 are from that High School and 2 others are from the same school and they are 3 stars(not to play down WSU's recruiting but when you said Big Kids I think 4 and 5 stars). Like I said I do think there are pipelines to certain High School or if a coach has a tie to a specific geographic area, but definitely not an entire state.

[griffin2608]

[QUOTE=psuexv;101157]You mean these guys they signed last year, the 2 stars? 2 of them are from the same High School and if you look at the ones they are targeting this year 2 are from that High School and 2 others are from the same school and they are 3 stars(not to play down WSU's recruiting but when you said Big Kids I think 4 and 5 stars). Like I said I do think there are pipelines to certain High School or if a coach has a tie to a specific geographic area, but definitely not an entire state.

This is why I would like to see the states broken up into zones in some way. Or a ever growing/ shrinking zone around the schools location. It doesn't have to be exact but it would add something to recruiting in your home state. The way the "proximity to home" is set up it is just too general. I am Georgia right now and when I have recruits on my board from louisana it is a B pitch for that. It is not like you can go home every day if you choose to come to Athens to play ball.

I have a question for some of you guys that interact with the devs. Is there any talk of putting in spring games, any type of scouting mini games or the discipline ratings? I really miss these features that were awesome on old gen.

[keyser soze]

- I would like to see the entire recruiting and player progression done in such a way that you end up with a similar roster to what is made for the original roster set. That is to say an equal number of talented guys at every stage of their college career instead of what we have today.
- I would also like to see STATS and playing style MATTER a great deal with recruiting. HBs should be lining up to go to schools that RUN THE BALL and schools that get more HBs involved and have second and third stringers who get meaningful caries should be more apt to get more running backs.
- Same goes for WRs and QBs. Schools that throw the rock should get kids who want to play at schools where they are going to get the rock thrown to them.
- Stats and game time snaps should factor into a player's progression ratings. Players "awareness" type ratings should go up with snaps. How well a player does or doesn't do should have some sort of possible impact with how a player progresses. Example: QB "A" finishes a season with 2,500 passing yards, 20 TDs and 5 INTs should get a bonus that a QB "B" who throws for 1,000 yards 8 TDs and 10 INTs does not get. Of course I would not want this overdone, but surely performance on the field should matter a little.
- I would like to see SIZE matter at the very least with potential UPSIDE. In real life recruiting a 6'9" offensive tackle is viewed as having more potential upside then a 6'1" offensive tackle. I would love to see a players frame matter and somehow, potential get factored into recruiting. Perhaps some recruits come in from better high schools more polished and ready to play early but there are guys who are less polished that are huge with tons of upside but might struggle with technique and awareness early but have high ceilings.

[BCEagles]

I know I'm asking for alot but I think the coolest thing they could add would be recruit videos where you got to see all that players highlights so you could truly see their speed, elusiveness, and other abilities on the playing field. Another cool thing would be breakout players so if you sign a 3 star recruit and make him a redshirt he might breakout the next year and gain 15 overall points in the offseason. A real life example would be luke keuchly of the Boston College Eagles who was not a great recruit but has turned into
one of the best linebackers in the ncaa

[JeffHCross]

Obviously I am the only one to vote for a new system so far!

I will, practically, never vote for a complete re-do of an existing system (unless we're changing console generations), simply because of the amount of time required. I can live with the existing system enough that I wouldn't put it higher than certain other items.

But I will say this... Early Playing Time should NOT be determined by how many players you have at a particular position. Some may have 6 RB's and the highest is a 71... if he's recruiting a 5-Star RB, he should be able to tell that kid that yeah, my RB's are deep, but don't worry, you will start.

As mors said, but I might be able to expand on ... the system already does this. The system knows the recruit's OVR rating, and compares that to the depth you already have. So if he's going to be a starter, chances are very good he'll have an A+ rating, your existing depth be damned.

Obviously, that doesn't work for a system like yours where you're talking about 10-deep WRs ... but it's also not as simple as just looking at the # at a position. It's a middle ground.

Oh I don't know. Wsu is recruiting some big kids out of Florida based on a few kids being from that area and some ties to the Florida area in real life.

Absolutely true, but you had the key phrase "being from that area". If they're from South Florida, that's not too likely to matter to a kid from the panhandle. Maybe it'll help, just to assuage any fears of "Washington's so far away and so different!", but it's not going to be nearly as significant of a factor as Pipelines are this year. If memory serves, it's around a 25% bonus for every call. That's insane, based on 4 players per state.

Ohio State has an inherent attraction to practically every high school athlete in Ohio. But our "pipelines" are to individual high schools, not the entire state. Just like I'm sure Nebraska will be able to utilize Bo Pelini's Ohio connections into individual pipelines as well. But, no matter how many connections Bo Pelini has, Nebraska isn't going to recruit Ohio like Ohio State does.

[baseballplyrmvp]

jeff, i absolutely love the idea of the "dealbreaker" you mentioned earlier. taking it further, it'd be awesome if the recruit actually hung up after that too. maybe even to the point of refusing to talk to you lol. it'd be like if a kid grew up in a very pro family and if came calling, he'd tell neuheisel to never call him again.

[JeffHCross]

jeff, i absolutely love the idea of the "dealbreaker" you mentioned earlier. taking it further, it'd be awesome if the recruit actually hung up after that too.

While on the one hand I'd absolutely like that, with the current roulette system, that would be too extreme of a punishment for something you have little control over. Of course, there'd have to be some tweaking to the roulette system to allow for something like a Dealbreaker. But yeah, I love the idea -- glad you do too. I just can't stand the idea of a player saying "Playing Time is absolutely crucial to me" going to a school where he's going to sit for 3 years.