Scouting Reports need to be even more enigmatic

[poppin_fresh]

Did you guys ever play Madden 2003? I really enjoyed the scouting in that game because it was pretty similar to 2k's scouting system and made me think a lot before i drafted players. At the end of the season, you start off by picking a bunch of prospects that you want to scout. Once you pick your prospects, you scout them for a few rounds with new information being added each scouting visit.

This information would be in the form of 40 times, bench press reps, etc. and position specific abilities, like arm strength, run blocking, etc. Not only that, but the scouts also interject if they feel a player isn't as fast as their 40 suggests or if they play stronger than they're bench suggests. This really made drafting that much more challenging because if you didn't pay attention to what your scouts said, it could really hurt you.

[Radja]

Quote: Originally Posted by poppin_fresh

Did you guys ever play Madden 2003? I really enjoyed the scouting in that game because it was pretty similar to 2k's scouting system and made me think a lot before i drafted players. At the end of the season, you start off by picking a bunch of prospects that you want to scout. Once you pick your prospects, you scout them for a few rounds with new information being added each scouting visit. This information would be in the form of 40 times, bench press reps, etc. and position specific abilities, like arm strength, run blocking, etc. Not only that, but the scouts also interject if they feel a player isn't as fast as their 40 suggests or if they play stronger than they're bench suggests. This really made drafting that much more challenging because if you didn't pay attention to what your scouts said, it could really hurt you.

i don't think i did, but something like that is what i am leaning towards.

[Argooos]

To be honest I've always been really bored by the whole scouting process in Madden (and I generally love the boring parts of Franchise mode).

I agree that scouting should never give you a proper idea of a rookie's abilities.
Here's what you should have access to on draft day for every player in the draft:
- Their college stats, including what division they played in, and any awards/bowls they won.
- An estimate of their physical abilities (if they went to the combine)
- A draft board created by the AI (based entirely on the first two points - a player from a division 1 school who put up big numbers will probably be projected to go 1st round, no matter how good he actually is)

This is what you should have access to for players you have scouted:
- An estimate of their consistency score
- An estimate of their potential score
- An estimate of certain position-specific skills
- Where your scouts think the player belongs on the draft board.
The quality of these estimates should be based on the quality of your scouting/coaching staff.

I would also like to see a draft-only player role called "off-field issues", which would drop a player down on the draft board and could possibly mean that the player has a very low consistence or potential score. These players would probably have ratings higher than their draft board position would suggest, but they might also be very inconsistent or never progress in the NFL.

Now, in terms of scouting of players already in the league, it might be a cool idea to not be quite sure of a player's abilities until they have had a certain number of reps. You wouldn't need to particularly scout a player to know their abilities - you would simply gain a better understanding of their abilities the more they play. So if a player never makes it onto the field you might never know how good (or bad) they really are. How accurate the ratings would again probably depend on your coaching/scouting staff.
Also, you would learn the accurate ratings of players on your own team much faster than players on other teams. Likewise, the more you play against a team, the better you would know that team's player ratings.

[Broncos86]

Oh, how I "loved" the quotes of last gen scouting.

"This guy has amazing speed." 70 speed rating.
"Not very bright." 80 AWR rating.