Operation Sports Forums - Recruiting Tips (NCAA 14)

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Quote:

Originally Posted by BleedGreen710 (Post 2045323437)

I agree with jello. I always try to schedule my visits early so I can hopefully get the recruit to commit before he even goes on his other visits. It works for me a lot, and sometimes the CPU does it to me. As an experiment, one year of my dynasty I scheduled all my recruits I had leads on to visit on the last week of the season, and I watched as other schools took their visits and caught up to me. I lost 3 recruits to other teams because they committed before it came time for my visit. Scheduling early is really the way to go in my opinion.

I thought the game instructs you to schedule visits as late as possibly for maximum points? Or is that not the way to go?

Re: Recruiting Tips (NCAA 14)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redskinsfan26 (Post 2045323527)

I thought the game instructs you to schedule visits as late as possibly for maximum points? Or is that not the way to go?

It can work either way, really. If you schedule late, you'll get more points, but there's no guarantee that the player won't sign with someone else or lock you out prior to that late visit. I personally try to load up all visits around weeks 8-10, and aim for as many complementary visits as possible.

Re: Recruiting Tips (NCAA 14)

Quote:

Originally Posted by jello1717 (Post 2045323410)

I'm amazed at how many differences there are between 360 and PS3 this year.....

They can't use locksmith if you sign the recruit first.

If you're emphatic about "no early visit will put a 4* recruit out of reach after a campus visit" then I'll have to chalk that up to another difference between 360 and PS3. In year 3 of my Michigan dynasty (by which time I had RT3) all of the circled recruits were signed after early visits before they could visit anyone else. For a lot of them there were other high prestige schools spending weekly points on them too.

If you plan your visit such that the recruit is about 65%+ locked, then it's very, very likely to sign him with that visit if you have RT3 and he'll never visit anyone else.

You don't need much of a lead though. You only need about 200-300 points of a lead to be pretty much guaranteed of signing him with a RT3 visit (at least with Michigan on 360). There are even some recruits (the ones that lock around 1300) that you can sign immediately without a lead.

Just to reiterate, it has for me, more than a few times.

Again, it's a relative process when you compare team to team.

Using Michigan, you have inherent advantages over 90% of the schools in the game since most of your pitches are hovering around A or so + a decent coach skill rating.

To get a recruit to the stage of visiting/50% interest, you need a few weeks of recruiting (light or heavy point input). You will also have bonus advantages over most schools.

But say you and Ohio State go after the same recruit... you have similar pitch scores, similar trees and they could put all their points in recruits. By time your recruit wants to visit, OSU is not going to be too far behind.

Get a decent early trip, but OSU can still put 1,000+ points per week into a recruit. The 800 point difference after a visit isn't too difficult for them to make up. Matter of fact, they can certainly make that up since they won't be locked out and they will have a visit in the future worth more points.

However, recruit against another lower level big 10 school. Indiana, Northwestern, or any of the MAC Michigan schools... yes, you have advantages they don't. You can build a greater lead against smaller competition & continue to build a lead after an early recruit.

Using Michigan has those built in advantages, but if you were to try this strategy with mid tier schools (majority of the game), it's not as effective.

Re: Recruiting Tips (NCAA 14)

Quote:

Originally Posted by BleedGreen710 (Post 2045323437)

Agreed. Scheduling early, especially if I have points into RT and a lead, is the way to go. That's how I get most of my commits, honestly. Also, like you said the cpu does it to me sometimes too. Just last night, I had a lead on a Missouri 4 star DE as Missouri since week 1, but Arky had kept themselves as -310 heading into Week 6. Well, they had scheduled him a visit for week 5 and I scheduled for week 8, and sure enough, he commited to Arkansas when I advanced to Week 6. Ticked me off because I thought this recruit would be an easy get.

I only schedule later if I'm behind on a recruit and know that I won't get a commit and will just lose that ground gained when the cpu gets their visits. In those cases I hope I am able to pair a lock break with a visit to get a massive boost and maybe a commit. I've done that before a couple of times at least.

Re: Recruiting Tips (NCAA 14)

This has probably been covered a bunch but in our OD we started all coaches off at Level 1 (or Level 0, whatever the lowest is). Everyone is at a 5 or 6-star prestige school.

We just hit our first off season and everyone's class was atrocious. Guys lost out on recruits to 3-star schools (recruits who's top choice was a user school). We had no pull with our targets. Most of us scheduled visits early in the year which turned out to be disastrous.

So are we screwed for a few seasons because we all have terrible coaching attributes? Should we just start over and make our coaches better from the jump?

At this rate it looks like Bama, ND, USC and other user powerhouses are going to have at least half their starters in the low 70's in a couple of years. :lol:

Re: Recruiting Tips (NCAA 14)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ehh (Post 2045323730)

What you should have done as the season went on is go through the list of recruits who aren't being recruited and put them on your board to replace the guys you were losing out on, assuming you don't have house rules preventing that.

Re: Recruiting Tips (NCAA 14)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ramminyou (Post 2045323787)

Oh we did that and still got burned. I found a diamond-in-the-rough QB in Week 12 or 13 (3-star guy that was a 69 ovr, jumped up to a 79 ovr) and there was no one recruiting him. I went to work on him and got to be his #1 going into Signing Day and I ultimately lost him to New Mexico State (I'm Penn State). I threw 2,000 points at him during the off season recruiting period. :confused:

Do coaching attributes mean THAT much that I can't sway a guy over NMSU? I just won the B1G regular season, conference championship game and the Rose Bowl to boot.

Re: Recruiting Tips (NCAA 14)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ehh (Post 2045323807)

Week 12 is too late. You need to look for those guys by weeks 3 or 4.

And yes, coaching attributes mean too much, probably. I want the school prestige to matter more. Recruiting point totals should be based on prestige, with coach skills giving small boosts here and there. Bonus points do a decent job at separating the big schools from the small, but not enough IMO.