Recruits have to be A LOT Deeper

[devinewon]

Quote: Originally Posted by jbrew2411

If added it would make Athletes well athletes. I hate looking through the grades to only find more DB's then anything else. I know in past NCAA games I could find good WR's, RB's, QB's, and even O-linemen & D-linemen. That was not the case in NCAA 11. I also don't know how many time I saw Athletes who can only play one position. By adding a better Athletes to the recruiting pool and the ability to recruit them at one position over their other position then that would add some decent depth to recruiting.

90% of the Athletes are DB's but to be honest most are garbage that would never make my team.

[jbrew2411]

Quote: Originally Posted by devinewon

90% of the Athletes are DB's but to be honest most are garbage that would never make my team.

The thought process behind the Athlete is that they are not good enough to be listed at a position so they should not be as good. In real life that is not the case. Most of those kids are good enough to play 2 positions at the college level. Some of the best players in college played more then 1 position in high school. The thing that is missed or not represented well in the game is that Athletes grade out well at 2 positions. I know what you mean about the 90% are DB's and not very good. I really hope they address the lack of true Athlete recruits in the game. I would love to see more combo players. Some more HB/CB, TE/DE, WR/S/CB, QB/HB/WR/DB, OL/DT, FB/LB combos. I hope someone from the NCAA team reads this thread and does some research on why a kid is labeled an Athlete in real life so they can fix an issue that has been in the game for some time now.

[kcarr]

Quote: Originally Posted by devinewon

90% of the Athletes are DB's but to be honest most are garbage that would never make my team.

Athletes in this game are extremely valuable if you are a 1-3 star school. Once you can get at the higher rated recruits the athletes just don't seem to measure up as well. Really the difference between the top end 1 star athletes and the top end 4 star athletes is so small and the difference between the top 1 star and top 4 star recruits is so large that it really changes athletes roles as your school improves.

[LambertandHam]

Quote: Originally Posted by kcarr

Athletes in this game are extremely valuable if you are a 1-3 star school. Once you can get at the higher rated recruits the athletes just don't seem to measure up as well. Really the difference between the top end 1 star athletes and the top end 4 star athletes is so small and the difference between the top 1 star and top 4 star recruits is so large that it really changes athletes roles as your school improves.

I've found some steals when it comes to ATH players. Sure I could recruit by position, but finding a 4* guy who is an 81 overall OLB is always a plus.

[UniversityofArizona]

honestly the ability to edit how the computer generates recruits would solve all of this.

instead of ea pre-making recruits one by one you could let the user set up parameters that allow the computer to make the desired recruits

also this could be done for both online and offline. in the case of an OD these settings could be posted on the ea site for all members to see

the parameters i am speaking of would allow the player to:

set a range regarding the total number of recruits in each star grade out of the total number of recruits
set the ranges for player overalls that determine which star grade they are assigned
set a percentage based range regarding the total number of recruits for each position
set a percentage based range for the number of recruits within each sub position (blocking TE)
set all the base min and max ranges for recruits individual ratings for each sub position
a percentage range regarding the number of busts in a class for each star level (because even a prized 3 star at sjsu can bust too)
set a percentage based range regarding the number of break-out players in a class for each star level (the more general potential ratings should stay secret)

Also there should be two parts to the potential rating
one being the ceiling that a player can reach rating wise (potential)
another being the speed with which a player gets there (progression)
the second rating should also be affected by coaches (heres to hoping!), and facilities
Users should of course be able to customize these ratings as well and heres how

potential should have various levels such as high or low which get assigned to recruits
users should be able to change percentage based ratings determining the number of recruits who get high or low potential in a class
users should also be able to define what high or low means as a ceiling by defining the max and min possible ranges for the max increase in overall a recruit can have over his career.
for instance high could be a 20-30 point increase over an entire college career with this number being handicapped by the 99 overall limit.

e.g. baby senior in high school john gets assigned a high potential rating of 23 as his rating when he is generated which then becomes the max that his overall can increase while he is in school. his physical limit so to speak.

progression should also be customizable by users. users should be able to determine when an in season and off season progression point increase is assigned and when.

e.g. user sets the range for an in season progression point increase in catching for now wr john to 2% or roughly +1 for every 50 catches.


Also in regards to individual year performances aside from the more general potential rating in place now dynasty users should have the option to customize the current system of hot and cold streaks.

for instance a user could set a random wr trigger of a hot streak to 30% (customizable) if 5 (customizable) catches (customizable) are made in a row resulting in a + boost of 5 (customizable) to that receivers catch (customizable) rating.

e.g. John catches 5 passes during a game and gets into a rhythm or hot streak and gets that boost to his rating. for a limited customizable period of 2 games (this game and next). he could then continue his hot streak if he catches 5 passes in a row at some other point during the hot streak for another customizable period of time say the next game only if he gets lucky on his 30% chance.
something similar could be done for cold streaks

I love your guys idea for break-out years and such and i feel not only should it be included but it should be customizable as well.

the percentage range of players with break-out years and off-years should be customizable.
break-out years could feature max off season progression, and customizably faster in-season progression say double whatever number of points they would normally get for an increase in a rating during season play. starting the year with temporary 1 year increases in ratings could also be customizable

off-years could be characterized by min off season gain and a temporary one season doubling of what is required for an in-season progression rating increase. starting the season with temporary 1 year reductions in ratings could also be customizable.


normal off season progression should also be customizable through "focuses." ranges for the increases in overall should be randomesque in that the range of potential increases increases should be customizable. if a user wants all players to gain 10-20 points a year or 1-6 points a year should be up to the user.
in the case of the other ratings though the user should be able to determine on an individual level what players focus on determining where the point increases take place. "strength and conditioning" or "blocking technique" would be examples of focuses and would determine where a majority of the points would go for that recruit. more specific examples such as "route running" could be included as well or limited based on if the coach is a better driller than say recruiter or not.

An example of how all this would work

User wants the option to run more effectively
User changes the ranges of various ratings such as ball carrier vision for the next class of scrambling quarterbacks up
User wants fewer scramblers in his quarterbacks class though so the user toggles the range for number of recruits within the quarterback position from 30-40% to 20-30%
User wants fewer overall qb's in his classes as well so he toggles that down from 6-9% to 3-5%
User wants his now decreased number of scrambling qb's to be better though so he increases the percentage based ranges that determine how many scrambling qb's are 3 and 4 stars and decreases the percentage based ranges that determine how many scrambling qb's are 1 and 2 stars.

User now has a class with fewer scrambling quarterback recruits
All these scrambling qb's have ratings that fall somewhere in his newly set ranges for ratings making them all varyingly effective at running the option but on the whole better
most of these recruits grade into the upper portions of the ranges the user set for incoming recruits because he wanted more "good" recruits than "bad"
nevertheless because the user redid how the star ratings are assigned many of these "good" recruits are still accessible recruiting wise to average and even bad programs.

once a recruit is signed this recruit can now also have meaningful hot streaks, cold streaks, break out years, off years, and progression all done in a manner reasonable to the user or completely automated by default standards set by ea if the user has no time to change them or if they feel these default settings are perfectly reasonable.

sorry for the novel but i am just trying to explain why the poster above tried to suggest more customization options.
also the effects of something like this would allow ea to focus more of its efforts on multiplayer
it would also allow user bob to have no busts so his precious 5 star pans out and allow user jane to have plenty of busts to be what she views as more "sim" making everyone happy
honestly people should be able to make the game what they want it to be. we are not children and can handle the responsibility.

[Noles4ever]

The recruiting needs to be re-done. the biggest problem with this past years was they put to much into ACC. as the main rating and then when you look at the ratings you had way to many running backs with b - as their ACC and they would be useless. To many safeties that are in the top 150 and would have B - C speed. You can never really tell where elite recruits are as they all seemed to be the same.

[89OneHanded]

UniversityofArizona, they just need to hire you onto the developmental team. I've never understood why EA has always kept recruit generation/progression/potential such a mystery to the user, especially when they have so many people griping that their formula is incorrect/broken. No one would complain about it any more if EA would make it customizable as you described.

I would spend hours just experimenting with recruiting classes.

Same thing with Madden, the FIXED potential grade is a dumb idea as well. Plus, it's such a crap shoot when you transfer draft classes from one game to the other, if they allowed the user to edit the draft class, it would make everything so much simpler.

[franko3219]

I agree with your points. I was in an online dynasty where most of us took mid level teams from the major conferences, but one guy took one of the teams you mentioned and by the 4th or 5th season we could not even compete because they would be A+ in everything and this happened year after year because I would say 85 - 90% of the recruits had his team as their top 3 schools at the beginning of recruiting.

Another thing that annoys me is that I will use my time the first week of recruiting and get some lows and very lows, and tell myself that means the next week of recruiting for that player should be a good week because I should have most, if not all of the low's out of the way. Not so much because then the next week, rather than giving you the 10 pitches you have not opened yet, they give you the pitches you have already opened which are lows and very lows. It gets frustrating.