Recruiting questions...

[VTHokie32]

I've got a few questions about recruiting, and would appreciate some feedback.
1. When can/do you use location as a pitch? Only if the player lives close to your campus? In the past, with Notre Dame, I occasionally used location if the player didn't respond to the others. I thought since ND is located within a few hours of several major cities, who knows, maybe they would like that.
2. As far as in-season, at what point do you narrow your focus to 3-5 players?
3. Do you base your pitches on the schools against whom you are competing for the player? For example, say I as Notre Dame was looking at a kid who had Louisville, Indiana, and Central Michigan as his 3 choices, I would think that academics would be a good pitch against those schools. Or does it not matter, is each kid assigned a random pitch to respond to?
4. Does signing kids with high awareness have an effect on your team's academic prestige?
5. Does it matter what happens in your game on the kid's official visit? Is it better to wait and invite a kid to a game you're sure you will win, or does it not matter?

[Soccerbest7]

1. When can/do you use location as a pitch? Only if the player lives close to your campus? In the past, with Notre Dame, I occasionally used location if the player didn't respond to the others. I thought since ND is located within a few hours of several major cities, who knows, maybe they would like that.
2. As far as in-season, at what point do you narrow your focus to 3-5 players?
3. Do you base your pitches on the schools against whom you are competing for the player? For example, say I as Notre Dame was looking at a kid who had Louisville, Indiana, and Central Michigan as his 3 choices, I would think that academics would be a good pitch against those schools. Or does it not matter, is each kid assigned a random pitch to respond to?
4. Does signing kids with high awareness have an effect on your team's academic prestige?
5. Does it matter what happens in your game on the kid's official visit? Is it better to wait and invite a kid to a game you're sure you will win, or does it not matter?

1. When his state isn't too far away. LIke with Ohio st. I once used location as apitch to a guy from North carolina. If you are in the east, don't use it on the kids form the west and vice versa.
2. I actually once got 7 kids form in-season. Most people narrow it down to 5 the very 1st week of distributing points
3. Good question. Say you are Ohio st. and you are competing with Michigan and purdue. Thats a touhg one. A prospect could want program prestige. Look at his position and see what kind of play calls he'd want. QBs, WRs and TEs want passing plays. HBs, FBs, OL want running plays. Check with each coach to what they call what % of the time. Say it was a RB and by doing that, it pretty much eliminates Purdue from his "coaching style" wishlist. But, soemtimes recruits have a top 3 team that doesn't have what they want, no +s. If i'm a good team, i always go in the following order
week 1 program prestige
week 2 coach prestige
week 3 coach stlye (if appliable to his position)
wewk 4 academics or location if he's close by
week 5 whatever is left, if it makes sense. If you are OSU and you've pitched everything but loactaion to a recruit form cali, don't pitch it
4. i don;t think so
5. Yes, it helps a lot if you win, therefore if you are simulating, schedule a weak team late in the year, if you can

[wolverinejay]

I've got a few questions about recruiting, and would appreciate some feedback.
1. When can/do you use location as a pitch? Only if the player lives close to your campus? In the past, with Notre Dame, I occasionally used location if the player didn't respond to the others. I thought since ND is located within a few hours of several major cities, who knows, maybe they would like that.
2. As far as in-season, at what point do you narrow your focus to 3-5 players?
3. Do you base your pitches on the schools against whom you are competing for the player? For example, say I as Notre Dame was looking at a kid who had Louisville, Indiana, and Central Michigan as his 3 choices, I would think that academics would be a good pitch against those schools. Or does it not matter, is each kid assigned a random pitch to respond to?
4. Does signing kids with high awareness have an effect on your team's academic prestige?
5. Does it matter what happens in your game on the kid's official visit? Is it better to wait and invite a kid to a game you're sure you will win, or does it not matter?
1. If you have a school that is located in a central part of the U.S., you can use location on every recruit and vice versa (meaning any recruit from a centrally located state will potentially like the location pitch). I ran an Arkansas St. Dynasty and could use the location pitch on every prospect because the assistant coach call is 2 pts. for every out of state recruit.

2. It depends on how high I am on the prospects list (If I am in their top 5 I will continue to recruit them).

3. As far as I can tell it is random.

4. Yes, but it takes some time to see a difference.

5. Yes, it matters a lot. Invite them to a game as soon as possible because he might commit to another school before he visits your school. A cheap way to get recruits is to schedule a patsy for a home game around the 9th to 11th week (by that time the prospect should be able to take official visits).

[DuckFan]

I've got a few questions about recruiting, and would appreciate some feedback.
1. When can/do you use location as a pitch? Only if the player lives close to your campus? In the past, with Notre Dame, I occasionally used location if the player didn't respond to the others. I thought since ND is located within a few hours of several major cities, who knows, maybe they would like that.
2. As far as in-season, at what point do you narrow your focus to 3-5 players?
3. Do you base your pitches on the schools against whom you are competing for the player? For example, say I as Notre Dame was looking at a kid who had Louisville, Indiana, and Central Michigan as his 3 choices, I would think that academics would be a good pitch against those schools. Or does it not matter, is each kid assigned a random pitch to respond to?
4. Does signing kids with high awareness have an effect on your team's academic prestige?
5. Does it matter what happens in your game on the kid's official visit? Is it better to wait and invite a kid to a game you're sure you will win, or does it not matter?


1. Location is an effective pitch for any pipeline state, most nearby states, and sometimes just plain anywhere (though not very often).
2. If you read my Temple thread (even just the first two years of it) you'll see my strategy on this. I recommend cutting to 5 or 6 the very first week, then down to 4-5 by week 3, then down to 4 as soon as you feel there are four "gettable" guys.
3. Yes, absolutely. As Temple, if the other top schools are Penn State, Rutgers and Syracuse I know he probably cares about location. If I am Temple and his top 3 are Temple, USC, and Texas Tech, you definitely know it's not location so you see what those schools have in common. You mention pitching academics against the Louisville-Indiana-Central Michigan kid, and that's just silly. Those wouldn't BE his top 3 schools if he was going to jump at your academics pitch. Guys start out with a percentage interest in each of the six pitches.

So this might be a Florida 4-star WR's interest:

55% - Coaching Style (team that throws the ball a lot)
20% - Playing Time (no more than 2 good WRs on depth chart)
12% - Program Prestige (at least 4 stars of Program Prestige)
6% - Coach Prestige (at least 3 stars of Coach Prestige)
4% - Location (close to Florida)
3% - Academics (at least 2 stars of Academic Prestige)

The system will run through all the available schools and score them based on how they fit his six criteria, then it will assign weighted scores based on his preferences above. That will form his initial top 8 schools of interest. Then as recruiting goes on, any school that pitches him will see their interest go up if they fit his categories. Any school that actually pitches him Coaching Style will go up even more (if they throw the ball a lot). But if two schools that both throw the ball a ton are both spending the same points and are both pitching the same thing, the ties will be broken by the other categories (even though they are not actually pitched).

4. Yes, but slowly.
5. Yes, it matters. But sometimes the fact that he visited at all is enough. If you have a huge lead in his bar, just having him show up will close the deal. If you are in a 2 or 3 school race where you all have full bars, you need a win, and probably a win against a decent team. I generally try to get a lead on a guy and schedule him immediately. That way if he signs that week I can slough the points to another guy and nab him too. Pulling gently on 12 guys will net you none of them.

[VTHokie32]

1. Location is an effective pitch for any pipeline state, most nearby states, and sometimes just plain anywhere (though not very often).
2. If you read my Temple thread (even just the first two years of it) you'll see my strategy on this. I recommend cutting to 5 or 6 the very first week, then down to 4-5 by week 3, then down to 4 as soon as you feel there are four "gettable" guys.
3. Yes, absolutely. As Temple, if the other top schools are Penn State, Rutgers and Syracuse I know he probably cares about location. If I am Temple and his top 3 are Temple, USC, and Texas Tech, you definitely know it's not location so you see what those schools have in common. You mention pitching academics against the Louisville-Indiana-Central Michigan kid, and that's just silly. Those wouldn't BE his top 3 schools if he was going to jump at your academics pitch. Guys start out with a percentage interest in each of the six pitches.

So this might be a Florida 4-star WR's interest:

55% - Coaching Style (team that throws the ball a lot)
20% - Playing Time (no more than 2 good WRs on depth chart)
12% - Program Prestige (at least 4 stars of Program Prestige)
6% - Coach Prestige (at least 3 stars of Coach Prestige)
4% - Location (close to Florida)
3% - Academics (at least 2 stars of Academic Prestige)

The system will run through all the available schools and score them based on how they fit his six criteria, then it will assign weighted scores based on his preferences above. That will form his initial top 8 schools of interest. Then as recruiting goes on, any school that pitches him will see their interest go up if they fit his categories. Any school that actually pitches him Coaching Style will go up even more (if they throw the ball a lot). But if two schools that both throw the ball a ton are both spending the same points and are both pitching the same thing, the ties will be broken by the other categories (even though they are not actually pitched).

4. Yes, but slowly.
5. Yes, it matters. But sometimes the fact that he visited at all is enough. If you have a huge lead in his bar, just having him show up will close the deal. If you are in a 2 or 3 school race where you all have full bars, you need a win, and probably a win against a decent team. I generally try to get a lead on a guy and schedule him immediately. That way if he signs that week I can slough the points to another guy and nab him too. Pulling gently on 12 guys will net you none of them.

Wow, did you design the game or something? How do you know all that?

[Razorbacker]

1. Location is an effective pitch for any pipeline state, most nearby states, and sometimes just plain anywhere (though not very often)....

I am with VTHokie...

How do you know all that??

[DuckFan]

When you have been through just over 2500 recruiting cycles, it's pretty easy to reverse-engineer exactly how the game is designed...

There are all sorts of things I could post here about the game that I doubt any of their playtesters even know...

But I have no doubt that I have played (the offseason schedule of) NCAA more than any five of their playtesters combined.

[BigBlue22]

DuckFan is a freaking Dynasty genius :)

[DuckFan]

And frankly, the six-pitch percentage scheme is not that hard to figure out.

If it wasn't that way, you would have every single recruit only interested in the same schools.

So every high schooler from California who loved location would just have 8 Cali schools on his list. Every high schooler from Cali who loved playing time would have eight schools with 0 returning players at the position on his list. Every high schooler from Cali who loved Program Prestige would have 8 six-star schools on his list... and so on...

The simple fact that WRs who love coaching style don't ALL have Texas Tech as their #1 choice every single year means that the system is built for the same player to have marginal interest in every category, some more than others.

If you have played a bunch of seasons in one of the big 3 states, you already know that you will have a bunch of guys who location is their big thing.

Example:

I am coaching at Rice. I look at the available WRs from Texas to see if anyone likes my school. I have no returning wideouts. I only throw the ball about 50% of the time.

I may see WRs like this in a given season
Top 3 schools:

TTech, Texas, UTEP
Baylor, UTEP, Texas A&M
Rice, TTech, Texas
TTech, Rice, Baylor

All four of these players have Location as their number one biggest priority. That led them to choose 3 Texas schools for the top 3.

But only one of them has Playing Time as his second choice (the guy who has me first). Two of them have Coaching Style as their number two choice (the guys who have Tech first). One of those two has PT as his third most compelling pitch (the guy who has me listed second behind Tech). Another has academics or something else as his second choice (the guy who has Baylor first).

Now after the first week, everything changes. You can't judge what a player is interested in after week 1 unless you are talking to him. If you are not talking to him, you have absolutely no way of judging his pitch interest based on his selections. Because it may very well be that he is simply ranking the guys that showed up on his door that he doesn't hate. A guy could have PT as his #2 choice and be listing Tech after the first week just because Tech showed up and no Texas school with PT did...

Also, a guy may like more than one thing about your school, but the only pitch that he will give a (+) to is whichever is the best strongest pitch from your school.

Example.

Guy loves Location, PT, Style, Academics, Coach, and Program in that order.

He is from Florida, you are from Tennessee. You have 3 guys at his position on the depth chart. You play a style he likes. Your academics are about what he is looking for but not better. Your coach is worse than he wants. Your program is about what he wants.

If you pitch Location, you get (=)
If you pitch PT you get (-)
If you pitch Style you get (+)
If you pitch Academics you get (=)
If you pitch Coach you get (=)
If you pitch Program you get (=)

But here's the thing. He will respond positively to your Style pitch because it's the best thing you have to offer. But someone from Florida who is pitching location will be getting a positive response as well and theirs is stronger than yours. This is why sometimes you get a (+) response and pound away at a guy and he still goes elsewhere and never moves your bar. You found YOUR best pitch. But your best pitch wasn't as good as someone else's best pitch.

[DuckFan]

DuckFan is a freaking Dynasty genius :)

There's a reason why I am referred to as "The Original Chise Guru" on the Madden side. :cool: In fact, when I was offline for a few months last year, there were dozens of threads where people would ask questions about Chise stuff and the guys would reply with, "Well DuckFan posted about that in this thread (here) and this is what he said." Like I had come down from the mount with the sacred tablets or something.... LOL

Seriously though. I just really enjoy that side of both games. And resource management games come very easily to me. I still have never lost a game of Civ3 on Deity level. Breaking down the programmer's choices and mistakes just comes naturally.

Believe me when I say you do NOT want to know some of the truly broken stuff I have found in Chise for Madden and Dynasty for NCAA.

Now if I could just get better at User-Catching I would be set... lol

On a personal note, not that I expect it to be a big deal to anyone else. My wife and I got the call about an hour ago and our offer on a house was accepted. So I will be out of touch for about two weeks while we get the move done. It's our first house and we are still on cloud 9 about the whole thing. So there won't be much DuckFan on the boards the next couple weeks, but I expect that once I am in the new house I will break down and go online with these EA games, and let some of you guys lay the smack down on my weak stick skills. :)

[VTHokie32]

Believe me when I say you do NOT want to know some of the truly broken stuff I have found in Chise for Madden and Dynasty for NCAA.

Try me. I'd love to read about it, and I know guys don't like to share glitches and stuff, but since you can't play dynasty online, it wouldn't hurt anybody else if you shared this info. I probably wouldn't use it, but it would be fun to read about. You should work for EA or something... and congrats on the house... now it's time for a kid!

[JimOttoFan]

DuckFan is a freaking Dynasty genius :)

Yes, he is.

[Brooksey]

Wow, did you design the game or something? How do you know all that?

Cause DuckFan is a God of NCAA Football games.

Also Duck when you say a few weeks that doesnt mean your going to vanish into the Dark until the 08 games come out does it?

Grats on the house BTW

[JustJuan]

I've got a few questions about recruiting, and would appreciate some feedback.
1. When can/do you use location as a pitch? Only if the player lives close to your campus? In the past, with Notre Dame, I occasionally used location if the player didn't respond to the others. I thought since ND is located within a few hours of several major cities, who knows, maybe they would like that.
2. As far as in-season, at what point do you narrow your focus to 3-5 players?
3. Do you base your pitches on the schools against whom you are competing for the player? For example, say I as Notre Dame was looking at a kid who had Louisville, Indiana, and Central Michigan as his 3 choices, I would think that academics would be a good pitch against those schools. Or does it not matter, is each kid assigned a random pitch to respond to?
4. Does signing kids with high awareness have an effect on your team's academic prestige?
5. Does it matter what happens in your game on the kid's official visit? Is it better to wait and invite a kid to a game you're sure you will win, or does it not matter?

This is how I pretty much use the pitch angles...

PROGRAM/COACH PRESTIGE: If your team has a prestige of 3 stars of better, this is a safe pitch to give but be wary of higher prestige schools recruiting that player as it could turn out to be a negative

LOCATION: If a player's hometown is close to your school, geographically, this pitch is safe but be wary of higher prestige schools recruiting that player as it could turn out to be a negative

COACHING STYLE: If your play calling style would give a target player a lot of playing time, this is a good safe pitch

PLAYING TIME: If the target player is most likely to be a starter, use this one but be careful because if you are recruiting multiple players at that position using this pitch and one commits, the others may respond negatively

ACADEMICS: If all else fails, this ALWAYS works