Scouting in Text Sims - Am I the Only One?

[CraigSca]

Am I the only one out there who considers the idea of hiring good scouts and firing bad ones on par with doing the laundry as far as fun factor is concerned?

It seems there's been very little creativity regarding implementation of a scouting network in text sims across the board. For instance, in TCY and FOF, you must (every few years) click on every single scout to find the one with the best ratings, hire him and off you go. In the Football Manager series, almost the same exact process occurs.

All scouting ratings are right there in front of you, you then have to go through a list of every scout that's available, compare them, and pick the best one. It's almost as fun as having a list of random numbers from 1 to 100, and it's your job to pick the highest one. What's the fun in that?

A simpler method would be to have an operating budget and devote $$$ to a scouting network. A built-in checks and balances will the occur. Should I spend more money on my payroll (or recruiting budget in a college game), or on my scouting network? The more money devoted to scouting, the more accurate the scouts will be. The more money I devote to payroll, the better my current crop of players, but the less I know about the new guys.

When I purchase a game like TCY, FOF, FM2005, etc., I want to play the game! I want to simulate seasons, sign contracts, build a team. While other aspects of these games have really come a long way, I don't see this evolution in the scouting model.

Am I the only out there who considers the current, "pick the best scout out there every few years" at the top of the yawn list?

[Tekneek]

At least in CM/FM2005, you can't always get the best scout to come to you regardless of what you are willing to pay him (at least when I play, since I never manage a major club).

I did think about something, while reading your post, that I had never thought about before. Isn't it a bit strange that you cannot sort out the skills/ratings of the players, but you have mystical knowledge of the scout's abilities? Is it just easier to know everything about scouts than it is quarterbacks? That now seems like a tremendous inconsistency within these games...

[KWhit]

I agree with both you guys. I think it would make sense to have a budget that fluctuates based upon the profit of your team. Then you can set a percentage to use for scouting, a percentage for facilities, for marketing, etc. That way you can decide where your money goes and would make more sense than hiring a particular scout, IMO.

I also think it's weird that we see all the ratings of coaches too. I mean, how the heck do we know how good a coach is at injury avoidance?

[CraigSca]

Correct, Tekneek. That's why picking a scout is such drudgery - you know who is good and who is bad. Why, if there are no other issues involved, would you ever pick a poor scout?

I think not knowing anything about scouts (are they good or not?) would be too difficult to implement in a game. You'd have to hire a scout, make decisions based on his recommendations and then track those recommendations to see if they are indeed correct. Although it's more realistic, having to track each individual scout and his opinions over the years would be a huge grey area (as well as timesink). That's why I still think the simplest (yet accurate) approach is to devote money to assorted aspects of your team, scouting being one of them. Your scouting accuracy would then be determined by the amount of money you throw to it, with a little random factor thrown in so it's not completely straightforward.

[CraigSca]

I hate to say this - because at this point I loathe the game - but Baseball Mogul used this method way back in...1995 (?).

[CraigSca]

another dola...

One thing it would also solve is the hoarding of money in some games. I know in the past in OOTP some owners, over the years, would have 100's of millions of dollars in their coffers and able to bid on any free agent. If one had to devote part of their budget to scouting, with the incentive that the more money devoted to this the better the scouting, a built-in checks and balances would result.

[Ragone]

tdcb used scouting networks as well.. which honestly.. is kinda unrealistic.. you think Rick Pitino, Bill Self, Coach K, etc.. boot up their home computers.. and surf on over to rivals.com to find out where the players at at.

[CraigSca]

Not at all, Rag. When I refer to scouting network I'm referring to an abstraction of your own personal scouting network (i.e. scouts on your payroll).

I actually think having something like a rivals.com simulated in-game to supplement your own scouts is a good idea. However, your own scouts will always obviously have a much greater skill level and their opinions would be judged accordingly.

[Tekneek]

tdcb used scouting networks as well.. which honestly.. is kinda unrealistic.. you think Rick Pitino, Bill Self, Coach K, etc.. boot up their home computers.. and surf on over to rivals.com to find out where the players at at.

While TDCB was, perhaps, not the best game for that idea, a similar concept would be much more realistic for these other games. It wouldn't be 'subscribing' to a scouting service like it was in TDCB, but funding your own scouting service. The more money you pump into it, the better your scouts are, the more you have of them, and the more players they can get out and find.

[fantastic flying froggies]

I hate to say this - because at this point I loathe the game - but Baseball Mogul used this method way back in...1995 (?).Reading down the thread, I was thinking exactly the same thing. It worked great in Mogul, and i agree with you, was a much better way of doing it than the FOF/TCY way...

[Ben E Lou]

For a college game, it would seem to make sense that a multi-layered approach could work very well. Based on your financials from the previous season, you'd have an overall budget. Your revenues from the previous year would take into account:

Attendance (along with parking/concessions)
Money From Your TV Appearances
Donations--high prestige and good on-field/court performance last year would heavily impact this
Tournament/Bowl Game revenue--from your team
Conference Split of Tournament/Bowl Game revenue--Even if you're Vandy, you get a cut of the big boys from the conference playing in Bowl Games.

You would choose to spend money on:

1. TRAVEL--Going to see a player in person increases the odds that he'll come to your school, and also gives you a much more accurate picture of how good he is, depending on how much you spent on....

2. ASSISTANT COACH SALARIES--Spending more money on this attracts better assistants, which therefore accuracy of your impression of guys that they see in person, and of course improves performance of the players at their position groups. There would be two figures here: total amount for coaching salaries, and salary per coach. In other words, you might choose to spend $1M total, but $50K per coach, giving you 20 marginal assitants. You'd get to see more players in person, but not get as accurate of a picture. Or, you could spend $1M total, but $100K per coach: less coverage of the country, but more accuracy. Each team, of course, would have a minimum number of assistants that they must hire: one per position group. "Extra" assistants would help with visiting players and with....

3. WATCHING FILM--The more money you spend on assistant coach salaries overall, the more you or someone on your staff would have time to watch film sent to you by high school coaches (or parents). I'd love to see this modeled. If you've got 20 assistants, you could decide to send 16 of them out visiting players during the week, but assign four of them to watch film of guys you might not have the time or money to see in person. Colleges get WAYYY more film than they have time to watch. Watching film wouldn't give as good of an impression as seeing a guy in person, but it would be better than relying on...

4. SCOUTING SERVICES--Smaller schools without big recruiting budgets should have to offer schollies "sight unseen" to some players. The next tier of spending money would be relatively cheap subscriptions to one or more recruiting sites, and also you could pay for a report from one of the many high school combines that Nike and others put on. These would be no substitute for seeing the kid in person or even watching film, but they'd help. Of course, perhaps the most cost-efficient method of player evaluation would be...

5. SUMMER CAMPS FOR HIGH SCHOOL PLAYERS--You could choose to spend part of your budget to put on a camp. You, and all of your assistants would be present. You'd get to evaluate their on-field abilities, as well as run tests of 40 times, vertical leap, bench press, shuttle run, etc. Of course, players who have gotten to know you, your coaching staff and some of your players (who are in summer school and helping run the camp) would be more likely to decide to come to your school. The quality of players who attend your school's summer camp would heavily have to do with your school's prestige rating, but even a lower-prestige school might get a good look at a nearby stud who can't afford to travel very far. For example, the top player in the nation, if he's from near Tucson, might end up at Arizona's camp rather than going 450 miles away to Southern Cal or UCLA.


As far as overall budget goes, my primary beef with TCY in this area has been that there is not a wide enough delta between the travel budget for Oklahoma (tied for highest Prestige at 97, 3240 travel budget) and a lowly SC8 school (59 Prestige, 2655 travel). FBCB does this pretty well--there's a big difference between your Sav. State recruiting budget (60,000) and your Duke recruiting budget (266,667)

[ScottVib]

I've always thought that a method where the scouts actual abilities were hidden, but you had a "reputation" rating instead. While the scout from a good team may have a great reputation, is that really because of his skill? Or because the coaches he was with were so good they got the best out of marginal talent he brought. Similarly you might have a pretty good scout, stuck on a team with a lessor coach.

The reputation would be a guide... but it would never be absolute, and as a result there may be a reason to try a lower reputation guy, who may come cheaper, if you can find evidence at his other job that he may be better then his reputation lets on.

[Buccaneer]

This is an issue I am torn on. On one hand, if the scouting element has no other role than give you player's ratings (ala FOF/TCY/FM?), then it should be simplified as in FBCB - where you have one rating for the scout and as SD said, a recruiting budget with a wide delta. There is great joy in moving a low prestige team in a level-1 conf up to a high-prestige in a level-5 conf and seeing the yearly budget (and the amount you can do) go up.

I agree that in TCY, recruiting and scouting should be tied together into something that makes sense. I have always argued for a more realistic travel/recruiting model (more point-to-point instead of regional) - but this is where I am torn - I don't want this to become The Scouting Years, where one would have to micromanage pct of time and such.

[Dutch]

I've always thought that a method where the scouts actual abilities were hidden, but you had a "reputation" rating instead. While the scout from a good team may have a great reputation, is that really because of his skill? Or because the coaches he was with were so good they got the best out of marginal talent he brought. Similarly you might have a pretty good scout, stuck on a team with a lessor coach.

The reputation would be a guide... but it would never be absolute, and as a result there may be a reason to try a lower reputation guy, who may come cheaper, if you can find evidence at his other job that he may be better then his reputation lets on.
I think this system would work if it was understood by the game player. Also, the reputation would HAVE to be driven by information you can see in the game. It can't be seemingly random.

And when you have a guy on your team, his "reputation" ratings are refined to more closely appear as the hidden absolute ratings...but nobody else would be privy to this "refined" rating but you.

[Tekneek]

And when you have a guy on your team, his "reputation" ratings are refined to more closely appear as the hidden absolute ratings...but nobody else would be privy to this "refined" rating but you.

This would be because of more direct contact with him? I would hope that these "hidden absolute ratings" change over time, just as players develop and regress. It's not hard to imagine that staff also would improve and decline throughout their careers.

[Dutch]

This would be because of more direct contact with him? I would hope that these "hidden absolute ratings" change over time, just as players develop and regress. It's not hard to imagine that staff also would improve and decline throughout their careers.
I would hope so (irt hidden ratings fluctuating...just that, no matter what they are, they are the true-absolute rating). I would go so far as to say that many scout and and coaches ratings would even be "unknown" when they are brand new (young) in the game for a sort of "fog of war" approach to getting to know the scouts and coaches.

[Tekneek]

I would go so far as to say that many scout and and coaches ratings would even be "unknown" when they are brand new (young) in the game for a sort of "fog of war" approach to getting to know the scouts and coaches.

This is something I never really thought about before today. Those are the sorts of things that seem to be static in every game I am aware of, regardless of the sport.

With that "fog of war" type approach, it would be great if you could effectively 'groom' a young coach by bringing him into an experienced and successful staff.

[dixieflatline]

A simpler method would be to have an operating budget and devote $$$ to a scouting network. A built-in checks and balances will the occur. Should I spend more money on my payroll (or recruiting budget in a college game), or on my scouting network? The more money devoted to scouting, the more accurate the scouts will be. The more money I devote to payroll, the better my current crop of players, but the less I know about the new guys.

I really like this idea but it has some pitfalls as well. For NFL teams the ammount of money they spend on scouts is a tiny drop in the bucket. There isn't a trade off in spending money on scouting and payroll or training facities etc... because scouts are getting paid so little in comparision. Maybe this would be more successful in college games were sending a scout across the nation to see a recruit costs a larger percentage of funds.

So why aren't NFL teams paying top scouts huge sums of money? Maybe it's because teams have enough scouts that even if one scout is horribly wrong about a player the collective group will correct these mistakes. Also, certain skills seem to lend themselves to higher scouting errors than others. Breakaway speed and pass rush strength seem like they would be much easier to determine than say pass rush technique. Everyone knows that Micheal Bennett has world class speed. No scout would disagree with that. But does he have the vision to find the hole? That maybe is a better question to ask the scouts.

[gstelmack]

Finding good scouts in FOF hasn't been such drudgery since I added the ability to export scouts to FOFExtractor. Now I just run the export, fire up Excel, and sort...

[jbmagic]

Finding good scouts in FOF hasn't been such drudgery since I added the ability to export scouts to FOFExtractor. Now I just run the export, fire up Excel, and sort...


hi

i install the FOFExtractor and i have windows xp.

i loaded fof 5.1c and went to view staff to show view scouts, then i loaded FOFExtractor and hit Extract.

i get an error it says could not find any windows. make sure you have open FOF and either open a player report, scout, or staff member..

i try them all no luck.

thanks

[OldGiants]

I'm glad to see this thread for I've been thinking about scouting, recruiting and randomness recently, particularly in the college sims. Most of these comments apply to TCY and TDCB, the games I've been playing recently, but somewhat to FOF.

There are two aspects to recruiting, knowing which kids are good, and then getting them to sign.

Knowing who is good can involve lots of real life methods, but typically starts with a network of HS coaches that the college coach and his staff know personally. These networks are built through summer camps and conferences and simple "old boy" networking. Boosters, too. I look at this as well-represented in TDCB by the choices of scouting services. You either put lots of money into your network and develop good leads, or take the direct approach and spend the bucks on the kids, trying to impress them.

TCY has good regional scouting system, but you can get to perfection too easily. There should be a budget that forces you to make choices between the exellence of your network and how many regions you won't be crappy in. for example, be Excellent in the South and crappy everywhere else, or decent in the South, Northeast and Midwest, and crappy everywhere else. And you get better in a region over time as you pump money into it to build up the network. Your home region is easier and cheaper, of course.

I've read comments from Frank Beamer recently where he says VT has pulled out of Florida and spent more in GA, SC and NC over the past few years and that paid off handsomely this past recruiting season. I think the tedium factor would be too great to have TCY go state by state, but a regional approach appeals to me.

TDCB handles scouting in a way i"m getting used to. That is, the longer a player is with you, the better you know his real talent level. In TCY players stay green, but the scout keeps displaying the green, as if he could develop. In TDCB, the coache's report gets more pessimistic as the years progress, until the kid graduates as an underachiever.

Once the kids are identified and graded, the recruiting begins.

I think TCY does a decent job with academics, distance and prestige as factors but they should be expanded to include:

1) type of offense

Kids know what kind of offense the colleges play. A solid RB chose Virginia over Alabama because he liked the Virginia offense. "It can display my skills" he said, more or less. A top notch RB should be less likely to go to a run-and-shoot program, while WRs should love that. In TCY, this is easliy accomplished by matching some recruits with an offensive option, which already can't be changed once the season starts in TCY.

2) winning and losing

Recruits are influenced by results and TCY does this nicely. Win your week 8 game and 4-5 top kids sign with you. Lose it and you're lucky to get one signing. Other games need to emulate this.

3) Coaches reputation

I'll this Al Groh vs. Frank Beamer to describe the styles I'm talking about. Groh flashes his ring and says "I know what it takes to make an NFL player out of you. Come to Viriginia and I'll prepare you for the pros."

Frank Beamer is more of "We win games at VT. I'll make you into a first class college player and you'll fit into a championship team."

the Groh reputation would apply to recruits who think they are good enough to play in the NFL. This does not automatically include only the best recruits, simply it is a factor. Players with lots of current skills would choose a Groh-like coach. But as anyone knows who follows the list of HS all-americans in TCY, this is not the way to build a strong program in the game.

Beamer types would appeal to HS kids with lots of potential, but lower 'red lines.'

3) Bribery

I love the TCY bribery option, but it shouldn't be unlimited. That is, you can bribe away with only the threat of discovery to curtail your efforts. In real life, there is a budget for SUVs, even at Georgia and Alabama. Bribes should be a part of your budget.

And there's the "Colorado" option, too, if you want a XXX factor. You could even link to "cheerleader" sites.

4) feedback

I like the TDCB player feedback. I like that they don't tell the exact truth. I like the bars that tell you if you are getting close. Is it real? Perhaps not, but it does make for a better game. TCY needs more player feedback, something beyond, "his HS coach says no more visits will impress him." I like the TDCB ranking of the schools that shows you the score, and the ability to keep recruiting and make an impression until the kid commits. Perhaps the difference between recruiting three baseketball players and 15 football players, but I like the feedback.

5) After the recruiting is over, a report back that lets you know why each recruit chose as he did.

the reason for this is that random noise of the simulation overwhelms the game aspect too many times. I lose interest when the game results, recruiting and player development all start to get too random and it looks like I'm simply watching spread sheets change numbers with no meaningful input from me.

The problem is that from a macro-level, recruiting and game results form a random pattern, but I want to see my choices impact the randomness.

[Young Drachma]

I agree with both you guys. I think it would make sense to have a budget that fluctuates based upon the profit of your team. Then you can set a percentage to use for scouting, a percentage for facilities, for marketing, etc. That way you can decide where your money goes and would make more sense than hiring a particular scout, IMO.

I also think it's weird that we see all the ratings of coaches too. I mean, how the heck do we know how good a coach is at injury avoidance?

Yeah, I agree with this.

[OldGiants]

Certain recruits, again not limited to the best ones, should demand playing time guarantees. If you guarantee PT, then you have a better chance of landing the kid. But, if you don't play him, even if the reason is because your scouting was wrong and he's really crap, then you lose credibility and recruits won't believe your future promises of PT.

[Ragone]

I think maybe the reputation ideal is the way to go.. perhaps with some sort of "Star" tracking that can attribute scouts to special finds in the past?