Scouting

[Koprnkc]

Just wondering what scouting will be like. Will we just get combine numbers and player stats, along with current / future bars. Or will scouting be much more in depth.

It would be nice to have the ability to have a scouting staff, no just 1 head scout. Then be able to delegate what region of the country I want my scouts to focuse on, or if I want them to scout just BIG10 schools.

It would also be nice to get an email from a scout saying they got a line on a player from a Division II or III school and inquire if I want him to scout and prepare a report on the player. Naturally, this would take away from his ability to scout, say the BIG10 like I wanted.

Will scouting reports just be numbers? Or will it be more along the lines of written assesments, such as WR Joe Mills has great straight line speed, but lacks burst when coming out of a cut.

Maybe having draft slot suggestions from my head scout. "The report on Joe Mills has me feeling strongly that we should select Mills in the 4th to 6th round. "

Naturally, I doubt much of this is in the current build, but, hoping it can be considered in future builds.

Thanks, and Im really looking forward to BTS, as my current football sim has grown stale.

[Francis Cole]

We are probably just going to have 1 scout (or maybe 2) in most. And they are in charge of your scouting department.

You can have one pro scout and one college scout and then their attributes tell you how well they set up your scouting department, without having to micromanage another 20 scouts yourself.

For V1 there probably won't be the text you described, though I'd love for that to be in a version asap.

As for the attributes, as I've mentioned in some other places, every team will see different attributes for a player.
If a team has been scouting a college player for all of his college career they probably have a pretty good idea how fast he is.

If another team hasn't been scouting the player at all, and just knows the guy got a 4.6 40 time on his pro-day (and let's pretend this person had a bad pro-day and this was very slow for him), they will think his speed is completely different.

As for stopping people just scouting every single player they see, I will have to work out some sort of sensible limit. Though this shouldn't be so hard.

[conception]

I just hope scouting is implemented in a way that makes more sense than in Front Office Football. I don't feel like I know anything about the players I draft until several years in, and it seems like there is more of a science to figuring out the game engine than knowing football. I'd like to be able to tell if a player is believed to be a highly talented player and then be able to look at some scouting numbers or info that will help me make a decision. Id also like to be able to tell if a player has a high potential but maybe a low chance of reaching that potential. OOTP has done a pretty good job of getting me enough info to know that some of my potential draftees have a high ceiling from my scout that other information suggests they may not reach, while other guys are "safer" picks in that they project to have a lower ceiling but my scout's opinion on that ceiling is probably accurate. OSA scout information and stats help me make those decisions, and a football game will need to have things similar.

Front Office Football fails in that regard because with combines so loosely correlated with actual football ability, I have very little way to gauge if my scout is crazy over a guy who likely doesn't warrant it or if guys have a high chance of being solid if not spectacular.

Obviously there are many things that interface, realistic results, and ability to set your teams strategy that will be a big factor in the quality of the game, but scouting and the draft is a crucial part to roster construction and thus to the game.

[Staples11]

Originally Posted by Francis Cole

We are probably just going to have 1 scout (or maybe 2) in most. And they are in charge of your scouting department.

You can have one pro scout and one college scout and then their attributes tell you how well they set up your scouting department, without having to micromanage another 20 scouts yourself.

For V1 there probably won't be the text you described, though I'd love for that to be in a version asap.

As for the attributes, as I've mentioned in some other places, every team will see different attributes for a player.
If a team has been scouting a college player for all of his college career they probably have a pretty good idea how fast he is.

If another team hasn't been scouting the player at all, and just knows the guy got a 4.6 40 time on his pro-day (and let's pretend this person had a bad pro-day and this was very slow for him), they will think his speed is completely different.

As for stopping people just scouting every single player they see, I will have to work out some sort of sensible limit. Though this shouldn't be so hard.

You could do a point based scouting system. For example, every team gets a 1,000 points a season to scout college prospects. It would be impossible to scout everyone, you would just have to focus on certain positions that you need. You could also have the CPU run a simultaed mock draft. Similar to Mel Kiper, some of the players slotted to go high will turn into all-pros and some will turn into duds. But that gives everyone an idea of where players are projected to go so that you dont spend all of your scouting allotment on first round guys. You need to scout other guys in rounds 2 through 7....otherwise you'd be taking a shot in the dark on draft day.

I hope you guys spend a lot of time on the off-season tasks such as the draft. What makes the NFL so fun in real life is that every year teams go from the bottom to the playoffs and vice versa.

[mpejkrm]

Originally Posted by Staples11

You could do a point based scouting system. For example, every team gets a 1,000 points a season to scout college prospects. It would be impossible to scout everyone, you would just have to focus on certain positions that you need. You could also have the CPU run a simultaed mock draft. Similar to Mel Kiper, some of the players slotted to go high will turn into all-pros and some will turn into duds. But that gives everyone an idea of where players are projected to go so that you dont spend all of your scouting allotment on first round guys. You need to scout other guys in rounds 2 through 7....otherwise you'd be taking a shot in the dark on draft day.

I hope you guys spend a lot of time on the off-season tasks such as the draft. What makes the NFL so fun in real life is that every year teams go from the bottom to the playoffs and vice versa.

A point system is too gimmicky though. It takes away from the realism of the game. I do agree with a game-generated mock draft, though.

[millhousebc]

FOF, had a 60 player limit you could interview. You could set a number and the more you interview a prospect, the more "true' information you could find out about the player.

[mrstezza]

I would love to see a system like the old one in the football manager series (I've not played in a while so not sure how it's done in recent versions). Players attributes are hidden (higher profile players could have more available than lower profiles when unscouted), and by sending scouts to particular games - more attributes become visible (or the smaller margin for error).
You could assign a scout to follow a particular team or to a college conference.
The better the scout - the more accurate data becomes with each game viewed.

[One Post Wonder]

Originally Posted by conception

I just hope scouting is implemented in a way that makes more sense than in Front Office Football...

I actually really liked the abstract scouting method used in Front Office Football. Like another poster said, you had your interviews to help narrow down how good a prospect was, yet it was still quite possible to sign a bust or a sleeper. In all the other GM games I've played you pretty much know exactly what you are getting unless you handicap yourself somehow.

I think OOTP could benefit from having more abstract draftee ratings personally. It would especially help the stats-only players, though I'm going off topic now.

Where FoF failed is that it tied player development too closely to playing time. Once I'd established myself as a decent team, drafting anyone below the 3rd round was a waste of time. They weren't good players right out of college and didn't have enormous ceilings, so I wouldn't play them regularly. And if you didn't play a guy regularly he wouldn't improve a lick. Hopefully this game chooses a different path when it comes to development.

[nbryant]

Originally Posted by millhousebc

FOF, had a 60 player limit you could interview. You could set a number and the more you interview a prospect, the more "true' information you could find out about the player.

Its down to 12 interviews now causing you to be very selective with your choices.

[PSUColonel]

think FM 2015

[dumbrabbit]

If there's one thing that could kill scouting in this game for me, it's the limit. I agree there should be a limit on the number of players you scout, but I could bet you that real-life GMs have 65%-75% of the entire draft class scouted.

If there's one thing I hate about madden's scouting model is the limited number of players you can scout. Sure the point system works well, you click on an attribute to scout the grade and then another click to scout the real attribute. But with this method, you can only scout seven or eight players total in the entire draft 100%. In real life teams should have at the very LEAST half of the entire draft class scouted. This just kills the immersion for me in madden.

I agree you should not have the entire draft class scouted in the game, but we should be able to scout the majority of the class. With the limitedness in madden, we can't really prepare for the draft without a lot of questions. My suggestion, is do not limit, or have a high limit, on the number of players we can scout, so we can truly plan out who we want in each draft class.

[baseballonly]

Originally Posted by dumbrabbit

If there's one thing that could kill scouting in this game for me, it's the limit. I agree there should be a limit on the number of players you scout, but I could bet you that real-life GMs have 65%-75% of the entire draft class scouted.

If there's one thing I hate about madden's scouting model is the limited number of players you can scout. Sure the point system works well, you click on an attribute to scout the grade and then another click to scout the real attribute. But with this method, you can only scout seven or eight players total in the entire draft 100%. In real life teams should have at the very LEAST half of the entire draft class scouted. This just kills the immersion for me in madden.

I agree you should not have the entire draft class scouted in the game, but we should be able to scout the majority of the class. With the limitedness in madden, we can't really prepare for the draft without a lot of questions. My suggestion, is do not limit, or have a high limit, on the number of players we can scout, so we can truly plan out who we want in each draft class.

I agree. These teams have millions of dollars, why wouldn't you pay enough to scout almost everyone?

And as for FOF using interviews to scout players, what does a interview tell you other than the personality and maybe a bit about a player's football Iq?

[dave1927p]

would be great as well if the players attributes were still inflated (if not scouted properly) after you select him. So in other words, you still think you have a winner going into the preseason when he's a bust...but you don't know this until he plays some games and your pro scout figures it out.

[derekjeter92]

Originally Posted by One Post Wonder

I actually really liked the abstract scouting method used in Front Office Football. Like another poster said, you had your interviews to help narrow down how good a prospect was, yet it was still quite possible to sign a bust or a sleeper. In all the other GM games I've played you pretty much know exactly what you are getting unless you handicap yourself somehow.

I think OOTP could benefit from having more abstract draftee ratings personally. It would especially help the stats-only players, though I'm going off topic now.

Where FoF failed is that it tied player development too closely to playing time. Once I'd established myself as a decent team, drafting anyone below the 3rd round was a waste of time. They weren't good players right out of college and didn't have enormous ceilings, so I wouldn't play them regularly. And if you didn't play a guy regularly he wouldn't improve a lick. Hopefully this game chooses a different path when it comes to development.

very true. In the NFL you see plenty of players hardly get any play time, so you'd assume they aren't good, but then when they get a chance they perform way better than those originally started over them right away.Theres also replacements who come in and suck, but I'd like the possibility of some nobody coming in and doing well enough to be a starter w/o their "stats" showing it yet.

[Al Davis]

Originally Posted by Koprnkc

Just wondering what scouting will be like. Will we just get combine numbers and player stats, along with current / future bars. Or will scouting be much more in depth.

It would be nice to have the ability to have a scouting staff, no just 1 head scout. Then be able to delegate what region of the country I want my scouts to focuse on, or if I want them to scout just BIG10 schools.

It would also be nice to get an email from a scout saying they got a line on a player from a Division II or III school and inquire if I want him to scout and prepare a report on the player. Naturally, this would take away from his ability to scout, say the BIG10 like I wanted.

Will scouting reports just be numbers? Or will it be more along the lines of written assesments, such as WR Joe Mills has great straight line speed, but lacks burst when coming out of a cut.

Maybe having draft slot suggestions from my head scout. "The report on Joe Mills has me feeling strongly that we should select Mills in the 4th to 6th round. "

Naturally, I doubt much of this is in the current build, but, hoping it can be considered in future builds.

Thanks, and Im really looking forward to BTS, as my current football sim has grown stale.

You will still draft bums in Kansas City

[Francis Cole]

The system you describe where you don't really know the "true" attributes of a player until you play him is basically the system we are using. So I hope that is good news for you.

[jslmsca]

That sounds good. There needs to be some "fog of war", to use a FM term.

I really hate the interview system in FOF. And too much was directly correlated to combine numbers. Like one poster mentioned, the guys at FOFC spend all their time trying to break the engine, which just seems pointless.