Thought / Test on Mentors (Effectivity over several seasons)

[sidewinder66]

First of all, if this topic has already been discussed, feel free to point me to the discussion, or just ignore this thread... ;-) (It has been briefly discussed in the mentioned thread. but I wanted to know more). Observations, etc. are very welcome.

Questions:
Reading this (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=63311) thread on mentors I started asking myself some more questions about mentors and their influence on young players.

My main questions are:
1. How long does a mentor influence the developement of a player?
2. Does a mentor influence the "potential" of a player?

Method:
I have pretty much copied Ben E Lou's methods from his mentor thread.
1. New Career on Main Street, followed by a preference draft
2. Chose some of my rookies and signed mentors for their position
3. Set injuries to 0
4. Set the rookies as starters on the depth chart, including all special defense depth charts for defense players, set their playing time to 100 %
5. Simmed 5 seasons with mentors and repeated this 5 times (total 25 seasons), simmed 5 seasons without mentors and repeated this 3 times (total 15 seasons)

Results:
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o267/sidewinder66/fofmentortest.jpg

Conclusions:
- Mentors influence the development of young players in their first two seasons, here the ratings are increasing more, when a mentor is on the team, than when no mentor is available.
- Players can probably reach the same level of ratings with or without a mentor (likely not enough data in my test to confirm this), they just need more time to reach the same level of ratings, BUT Quarterbacks seem to reach higher ratings when they have a mentor.


Let me know what you think, and if this was useful at all or just waste of space.

[Subby]

Nice work.

Previous research has come to the same conclusion, so congrats.

Bottom line: mentors speed unmasking.

[Jughead Spock]

Always good to have more work, but yeah, it was even on the first page -

Study On Mentors (Active vs. Inactive) - Front Office Football Central (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=63311)

I do think conventional wisdom has been that it affects the first THREE seasons, so that could change things. At least that was my understanding, may have to make some roster moves...

[Dutch]

The biggest reason we need a new version, so new fans don't have to feel dumb after showing interest in the old version!

[Autumn]

Way to RTFA guys. Sidewinder says right above that he took the methodology from Ben's thread. So, I think he knew about it ;-)

[Jughead Spock]

Fair point. :)

So is it just me, or is this part about it only affecting the first two seasons news? I thought it was the first three. Almost looks counter-productive in the third season.

[ddrrbb]

Fair point. :)

So is it just me, or is this part about it only affecting the first two seasons news? I thought it was the first three. Almost looks counter-productive in the third season.


I would think that the mentored players would be fully developed by year 3 so there would be less points to actually gain, whereas the non-mentored players would still be developing. That's my guess. QBs are the only real exception, or very low developed players.

[Alf]

Always good reading people testing out the game.