Scouting / Drafting House Rules

[Helios12787]

So per usual since the new scouting mechanic came out I am finding it way too easy to scout and draft a minimum of 5-6 starters and rebuilding into a super bowl contender by season 2.

Ive toyed around with some ideas in terms of making scouting and drafting harder for myself but haven't found that one setup that I really like. I've thought about letting the CPU auto-draft but even they tend to draft fairly well ratings wise even if their position choices aren't good.

Anyone have any house rules they use to make it so I might actually get some busts here and there or at least make it so I don't end up with 5+ starter caliber rookies each season?

[oneamongthefence]

Re: Scouting / Drafting House Rules

Not investing in the scouting coaching package would be a handicap.

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[EricFreakingBerry]

Re: Scouting / Drafting House Rules

What my brother and I do in our league is do a random position selection (excluding specialists) that we literally cannot scout. So if it lands on QB's that means we're completely picking QB's blind that year.

[Helios12787]

Re: Scouting / Drafting House Rules

Yea I never buy the scouting package to limit the already large pool of scouting points you get.

[StefJoeHalt]

Scouting / Drafting House Rules

Only pay for the first two traits..makes very difficult imo


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[cusefan74]

Re: Scouting / Drafting House Rules

Just don't scout any players at all.

[ripcandlestickpark]

Re: Scouting / Drafting House Rules

I doubt this will make a huge difference, but one new house rule for me is to have all of my UFA signings pre-determined prior to the draft. That way, I can't just cherry pick the ones with the best ratings. Also, this forces me to use up quite a few scouting points on projected late 7th rounders and UFA's as opposed to projected earlier round picks.

[AmericasTeam1]

Re: Scouting / Drafting House Rules

For 1st rounders I'll scout all 3 stats, 2nd and 3rd rounders 2 stats and 1 stat for all rounds after. I also try to limit reaching for players. Like if I have a late 1st can't reach more than an early 2nd.

[Helios12787]

Re: Scouting / Drafting House Rules

Yea I like the idea of scouting all 3 stats for 1st rounders, 2 for 2nd/3rd rounders and 1 for the rest.

I've always had a "limited reach" rule in place for myself. I never draft more than 1 round or less of what their projection is.

[timhere1970]

Re: Scouting / Drafting House Rules

I would go the opposite route if I was trying to make drafting harder. No scouting first round projected players. The first round is where good teams are made and lost. Especially, early in the first. Picking early year after year in real life seems to keep teams bad. The reason is you are paying super star money to someone you are betting is going to be a star but has proven nothing at the nfl level.

The consistently good teams don't lose that bet because they don't make it. To make busts have consequences you need to have first rounders fail at a large cap hit. That is what differentiates between teams that make a low first round pick and move up the standings getting a worse pick as they go and those teams that are picking a low first rounder again next year and the year after.

[Helios12787]

Re: Scouting / Drafting House Rules

I mean for me it's just a matter of being more realistic in terms of the players projected to go earlier in the draft usually get scouted more thoroughly than say a 7th rounder outta some no name college.

[ednaaard]

Re: Scouting / Drafting House Rules

I no longer read the draft stories as I know which relates to Superstar, Quick, Slow etc. That's it really, I had a lot tougher first two drafts after doing this, so I'll continue to do it. It's a shame really, the same stories have been in the game for four years.

[vrtkolman]

Re: Scouting / Drafting House Rules

It would be nice if you could re-rate a player's projected talent level. After the combine, if there is a player projected in the 4th round that is obviously one of the best players in the draft, it would be nice to edit him and set his projection to early 1st round. That would even the playing field for the CPU a bit. I love scouting too much to where I don't want to handicap myself.

[SpyPirates]

Re: Scouting / Drafting House Rules

This is one thing I don't do a good job of... I always end up with the best prospects and 10+ 1st round picks in each draft because the CPU is terrible at trading future draft picks. Outright banning scouting/trading would make the game significantly less fun for me, so here are a few minor things I do to "nerf" my GM skills a bit:

- When making trades for draft picks, use the empirically-derived draft pick trade value chart when trading down, and use Jimmy Johnson's chart when trading up. This will make you pay dearly for higher picks, and give you quite small returns when trading down. Use a ~15% discount rate for future picks. (I don't use this system when selling off my trading block players or when using the draft day trade down feature, which is why I have all the surplus picks). The charts can be found here: http://www.footballperspective.com/draft-value-chart/

- Don't take advantage of the free agent offering system. This encompasses a lot of different tricks I've found, such as: 1. Offering multi-year non-guaranteed contracts (i.e. 4 yrs, 5M salary, 0 bonus) because this is basically 4 team options that a rational player would never accept. 2. Adjusting your offers multiple times in the same week up and down to make sure your offer is barely ahead of the others. 3. When (re-)signing previously on your team in unrestricted free agency, offer them the same deal or higher you were offering them before. Too often they receive fewer offers than they should and you have the option of saving millions by low balling them along with the other teams. For example, my 93 OVR 38 yrs old Aaron Rodgers was asking $25MM during the season, I wanted to pay him $18MM max, he rejected, but when his offers in FA were in the $10-12MM range, I kept my offer at $18MM because of this rule.

- Do not sign any free agents in week 1 of the preseason. There's still a lot of talent leftover after free agency, and it makes it way too easy to fill your roster with cheap talent on non-guaranteed contracts. Also, if you sign free agents week 1, you're essentially getting a bunch of free players before the CPU has a chance to do anything, so starting in week 2 gives all teams a chance at the players.

- Do not trade for a CPU's players unless they're on the trade block. My past experiences with this makes me think this isn't needed because the CPU is rightly protective of its good players when receiving unsolicited offers, but just in case.

- Don't trade free agent signings or high round draft picks within 2 years of acquiring them.

At the end of the day, EA just needs to do a better job of programming the AI to manage its teams smarter. Future draft picks need to have a greater value, and they need to be smarter in free agency. Sometimes they pay a guy over asking price when there is little to no competition, and sometimes they make no offers on a very skilled player when they could make a lowball offer that a player would theoretically have to accept because he has no other offers.

Also scouting talent needs to be made harder for users. Some positions are hard to scout, and you can sometimes get screwed on the dev trait, but it's just way too easy to remove 90% of the draft pool with 15 pts and remove most of the remaining 10% with combine results so you know exactly who is worth drafting. They should consider completely overhauling the system to be more subjective and even random. Send out your scouts and have them come back with field reports so you know if they fit your general scheme and playstyle preferences. The only hard numbers are from the combine.

Sorry for the long post, TLDR I've put a lot of thought into handicapping myself as a GM, but I still suck at it and EA needs to step up its game so we can enjoy the good features EA has put into the game without worrying about this stuff

[Helios12787]

Re: Scouting / Drafting House Rules

I miss the days of player comparisons.

For me this is what I'd like scouting limited to.

1) NFL Comparison
2) College stats
3) combine results
4) General statements about the player (this player is a good route runner, this one struggles in press)

If they make the statements varied enough or the ratings that stem from those scouting statements it would make the process more hit or miss which is what it needs.