Recruiting Tips (NCAA 14)

[claybomb]

Here’s what I have so far:
• Recruiting
- Must have 35 prospects on board at all times.
- No Scouting At All.
- No more than 10 visits per season.
- No more than 20 commitments. (Helps me focus on team needs and some other players for depth)

• Coaching/Schedule
- Must finish 50% of my contract before leaving.
- Only 1 cupcake game per season (or 0).

• Players Leaving
- Realistic Decisions. If a player wants to leave as a junior, and in real life he would have, I must let him go.
- If a junior has a breakout season and in real life may leave for draft, but in the dynasty doesn’t chose to leave, I will likely cut him in the preseason so that he “left for the NFL”.

• Transfers
- Players who don’t get much playing time and in real life likely would transfer, I’ll recreate them onto another team, and cut the from my team.
What do you guys think?


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[NoleFan]

So I’m trying something in year 3 of my UMass coach mode dynasty where I make sure kids that get added to my board have at least 2 of 3 pitches as yellow for my school. In just a couple weeks I’ve gone from not being considered to in the top 5 of some 4-star and 3-star kids.

Do you think that type of strategy will pan out for me?


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[WaitTilNextYear]

Quote: Originally Posted by Spectre3724

Spoiler I've logged around 60-70 seasons, playing every game, both online and off. I've figured out the best ways to recruit- for most cases. There's one area that I don't know much about though, which is how to sign a recruit when you're losing points every week. In the past I would just find somebody else, it has always been easy enough, but I'm in this online dynasty and I NEED this specific guy. Only fighting with CPU teams, in 2nd place with 2 CPU teams fighting, so there might be a chance to utilize the lockpick perk. There might be some way to finesse this that I haven't ever tried or thought of. This is me turning over every rock and leaf. I'm turning to my OS brethren for expertise. Here is the exact scenario: It's week 2, I'm down by 250 points. I'm going to lose 100 points a week to 1st place. 3rd place is 65 points behind me and gaining 20 points a week on me (so 3rd is losing 80/week to 1st place but will pass me by week 6). So I know that chances are slim to none. I guess what I'm asking is this: Better to bring in the player for a visit BEFORE 1st place brings him in order to gain a brief lead? Better to try to get to a lockpick position as soon as possible? What is the best play in this (nearly?) hopeless scenario? Have any of you been able to overcome something like this?

A bit late on this one...but if you are losing ground and will continue to lose ground you can try the following to stay in the hunt:

1) Obvious first steps are to offer a scholarship and max out your weekly allotment of recruiting points on this recruit. If your coach has any levels up to allocate to the recruiting tree, apply them in ways you can dump extra recruiting points on this player. Has the lead team already offered a scholarship? If not, then they'll cap out at 73% lock and you'll pass them eventually. Losing 100 pts/wk is not that huge of a deficit.

2) Finesse the recruit's interests. If there are any recruit bonuses for play style or playing time, you can try to fit your gameplan around it and/or remove other depth at that position from your recruiting board. Being a better match for the recruit's interests could make the difference between -100/wk and -60/wk. The bonus is dynamic for the other teams as well and what is a +100/wk for them now could shrink or grow as the weeks go by.

3) Schedule a visit in a way that staves off elimination. Make sure you have him visit before the lead school if you are going to be knocked out by that team's visit. Make sure to have the recruit visit after (and with a bunch of fellow recruits that can juice up the bonus points) if you're running about even. Make sure you accomplish all of the relevant in-game goals during your visit. A good visit to your school and a meh visit to the rival can make a few hundred points of difference. You only need to stay in the hunt/locked battle until the offseason where you can dump your 10k on him to seal the deal.

4) If you do get locked out despite your best efforts with all of the above, a well-timed lock pick can get you back in the game. If there are 2+ teams in a locked battle, use your lock pick after all of them use up their visits on the player. It's no good to use your lock pick(s) only for a visit to a rival school the next week to knock you back out again. You do run a risk that one team in the locked battle knocks out all of the other teams with a great visit -- and if that happens you're sunk.

[GGGswim]

First time I've ever seen this happen....in any EA NCAA football iteration.

A couple years into an offline Dynasty I decided to experiment with preseason to opening week/scholly offers re: insta-commits and rank on my recruiting list. (meaning: no auto-save, and rearranging recruits on the list).

What happened was I'd get scholly offers to a couple, or even several, recruits for whom I'm listed as #1 Locked (red lock icon) instead of Committed. But when scrolling to the Visit tab it'd read "This recruit has committed to ,". Literally. No team name.
After many, many experiments (of which, it doesn't seem like ranking has any effect) I decided to sim the week and move to wk-2.
The midway screen would pop up telling me I had x number of recruits -- all the Locked, not committed responses -- ready to visit. And when heading into my recruiting board I saw that they were all, indeed, already up to 90+% in locked and looking for visits.

Good thing I did that as I was originally thinking it was a re-do glitch; that I'd get to wk-2 and they'd actually be committed (in response to the Visit tab screen).

Anyone ever seen this before? Does this circumstance really make it a (pretty-) sure lock that the recruit will commit?
One reason I'm asking is that I've taken to custom scheduling early games as away contests, trying to put the home ones at the end (this last 'season' I got bit when the conference schedule was heavy on away games late and I lost several recruits whom I had no choice but to bring them in around wks 6, 7 or 8). If this is accurate, my visits this year wouldn't be able to come until wk-6, which I'd think would be leave too many wks for locked out teams to jump back into the fight.

[NoleFan]

Each week, I use the sort button to list my recruits by largerst deficit and I go down the list adding max points to them until I run out. Adds that “you have to really go after kids who aren’t as interested” feel to recruiting.

[Hellisan]

Quote: Originally Posted by WaitTilNextYear

4) If you do get locked out despite your best efforts with all of the above, a well-timed lock pick can get you back in the game. If there are 2+ teams in a locked battle, use your lock pick after all of them use up their visits on the player. It's no good to use your lock pick(s) only for a visit to a rival school the next week to knock you back out again. You do run a risk that one team in the locked battle knocks out all of the other teams with a great visit -- and if that happens you're sunk.

Great advice, all of it, and way more detailed than I could give even though I've been playing the game so long.

I'm highlighting this because the lock pick is one of the most exciting moments in recruiting. I find I don't even need the max number of picks because the most I've ever managed to do has been two. It's overpowered, rare, exciting... Hell, I don't think I've ever actually figured out how to best take advantage of it, which might be good.

[JoeTheShow]

Does anyone know if two lock picks can be used on one player in the same season?

[scdb12]

Quote: Originally Posted by JoeTheShow

Does anyone know if two lock picks can be used on one player in the same season?

Yes you can.