The most unrealistic dynasty feature is never mentioned

[Colorado Cooler]

Gamers have gotten riled up about minor cosmetic issues, but continue to overlook the flawed recruiting algorithm that makes dynasty progression completely unrealistic among 1 and 2 star teams. Let me demonstrate how AI recruiting takes your dynasties down the wrong road.

According to Rivals, in 2012 1-star teams averaged signing 5.6 3-star recruits and 2-star prestige teams averaged slightly higher 7.8 3-star recruits. In short, there wasn't much difference in recruiting results.

In a handful of lab sesssions I discovered 1-star teams land approx 1.8 3-star recruits per team while the 2-star teams sign 10.5. In short, AI recruiting turns 1-star teams into doormats while giving 2-star teams far more influence than they have in real life. It skews your dynasty progressions way out of reality.

But here's the worst part. I put the state of Louisiana under my lab microscope because it has two 1-star teams (ULL and ULM). At the onset of the recruiting year an average of ten 3-star recruits in the state listed ULL it their top three. If this happens in the real world, the ULL staff would be on those recruits like butter on toast. Two months later in my lab dynasty how many of those recruits do you think ULL had offered? If you said zero, you're right. Would you be shocked to learn ULL had five 1-star commits by then? In sum, the AI ignored the interested 3-star prospects and stuffed the ULL roster with weaker players. Generally, the Offer/Interest feature of the game's recruiting cycle is a sham for lower-prestige teams and is basically an eye-wash feature throughout.

What must EA do? 1) Tweak programming to bring the number of commitments in line with real-world results for bottom-tier teams. 2)College football recruiting is highly competitive, (some say cut-throat) and EA must allow far more offers into the recruiting cycle early-on to add suspense and realism to the process. It's just plain silly for the off-line player to find tons of unoffered quality prospects 3/4 of the way through the recruiting year.

[dommegr]

This comes down to coach prestige.

[Colorado Cooler]

Quote: Originally Posted by dommegr

This comes down to coach prestige.

It's a function of poor game design. Teams from minor conferences don't disregard interest from stronger 3-star players in order to pursue weaker players with lower ratings.

[dudo670]

There just aren't enough recruits in general. Way too many 5*s (there shouldn't be 40-50 of them) and not enough 3 and 4 stars. The recruiting flaw is a result of 70 man rosters; they make teams recruit differently since they only need 17-18 a class instead of 21-22.

[scfan7]

Quote: Originally Posted by dommegr

This comes down to coach prestige.

I don't think the guy who posted this thread is a high prestige college football coach, and he still has common sense obviously to not disregard interested prospects who could make the team better.

[Razer1066]

I agree with that, if the guy is interested you should go after him.

The other problem with the recruiting part of it is that they only max out their points. So in any season the team is only 'really' going after 10-12 players. Which is fine

but I think the hardest part for us is that we know teams in reality fill 24-28 spots every year...its hard for us to adjust and only concentrate on 10-12 (which I've started doing).

But 1 star teams do not need to overlook higher caliber players. Unless its the 4th week of the season and they are already 600-800 pts behind