Transfer Portal

[thedudedominick]

I think the implementation of the portal is not bad for the first year having it in the game, I was just trying to think of ways that it could be improved.

Ideas I had, and I'd love to hear ideas from everyone else too.

1. Make playing time a dealbreaker for every single recruit. Most guys would start out at F for it as true FR with it going up a letter grade or two every year for them. There needs to be many more JR and SR transfers of guys that are backups still.

2. Players without dealbreakers in general should still have a chance of transferring. If I have a field general QB and throw the ball 50 times all year because I convert a team to an option team, he shouldn't want to stick around. If I sign 4 FR QBs, there's no reason they should all stick around their entire careers just because none of them had a playing time dealbreaker.

3. "Encourage Transfer" period before off-season recruiting. Maybe not let someone go into off-season recruiting with more than 85 roster players including incoming recruits.

4. A second transfer period after the final "encourage transfer" that gets most teams down to 85. There should be a recruiting there for the schools that don't have 85 players to try and avoid taking walk ons.

[fcboiler87]

Seven years into my dynasty and no one transfer from my team and no transfer wants to come to my school anymore. The first few years, I had 15+ transfers interested. Now, I'm lucky to have 3, and they aren't top notch. I really don't understand. I will continue to take pages from "College Football Dynasty" sim game, but I should be able to recruit any transfer, unless there is a dealbreaker.

[GoDucks1224]

I mostly like the portal thus far. But I was pretty annoyed the other day. My QB graduated, and my backup situation wasn’t great. So I hit the portal for a one year QB so I could redshirt my new 4* recruit. 2 guys available who have interest in me, and are reasonable to try and recruit as a 3 star program. They’re 81 and 79 overall respectively. The 79 overall ends up committing to UW week 2 of the portal period, okay fine. Week 4, the OTHER guy also commits to UW. I’m like wtf why does UW NEED 2 senior transfers how bad is their QB room? Jump forward to the next season, I sim through week 1. Who did UW decide to start? The 82 overall sophomore they already had on the roster. Simmed the entire season. Neither of the senior transfers (one of which I REALLY needed) played a down. Before that portal period btw, they already signed a 5 star QB that came in as a 77 overall freshman. They had 2 guys at 78 on the roster. So without even recruiting these 2 senior transfers, they would’ve had their 82 overall starter (who played really well), 2 78 overall backups, a 77 overall true freshman, and a 75 overall redshirt junior. Why EA?

[jello1717]

Quote: Originally Posted by GoDucks1224

I mostly like the portal thus far. But I was pretty annoyed the other day. My QB graduated, and my backup situation wasn’t great. So I hit the portal for a one year QB so I could redshirt my new 4* recruit. 2 guys available who have interest in me, and are reasonable to try and recruit as a 3 star program. They’re 81 and 79 overall respectively. The 79 overall ends up committing to UW week 2 of the portal period, okay fine. Week 4, the OTHER guy also commits to UW. I’m like wtf why does UW NEED 2 senior transfers how bad is their QB room? Jump forward to the next season, I sim through week 1. Who did UW decide to start? The 82 overall sophomore they already had on the roster. Simmed the entire season. Neither of the senior transfers (one of which I REALLY needed) played a down. Before that portal period btw, they already signed a 5 star QB that came in as a 77 overall freshman. They had 2 guys at 78 on the roster. So without even recruiting these 2 senior transfers, they would’ve had their 82 overall starter (who played really well), 2 78 overall backups, a 77 overall true freshman, and a 75 overall redshirt junior. Why EA?

Those 2 transfers were the best QBs on UW’s team when they recruited them. But then the other QBs progressed (which transfers don’t do in this game for some reason) and became better. And you’ve seen progression in this game. It’s very possible that 82 future starter was in the 60s when UW recruited the transfers, so they might’ve been the best guys by a large margin when they were signed.

[GoDucks1224]

Quote: Originally Posted by jello1717

Those 2 transfers were the best QBs on UW’s team when they recruited them. But then the other QBs progressed (which transfers don’t do in this game for some reason) and became better. And you’ve seen progression in this game. It’s very possible that 82 future starter was in the 60s when UW recruited the transfers, so they might’ve been the best guys by a large margin when they were signed.

My bigger problem is they went after both, even after one was secured. After they got the first one, they went harder after the second guy and came from being 5th to getting him. In real life how many times does a P4 team bring in two G5 senior starters to backup one another? Some G5 teams have brought in a P4 back up to compete with a G5 starter but then whoever loses leaves in the spring portal. Which isn’t an option here. And the guy who developed, went from a 78 to an 82. So it wasn’t a massive leap. But that also shows that development should happen before the portal, or it should be factored by the AI when making portal decisions, as should roster composition. They ended up having 7 QB’s on roster. This all around seems like flawed logic to me.

[jello1717]

Quote: Originally Posted by GoDucks1224

My bigger problem is they went after both, even after one was secured. After they got the first one, they went harder after the second guy and came from being 5th to getting him. In real life how many times does a P4 team bring in two G5 senior starters to backup one another? Some G5 teams have brought in a P4 back up to compete with a G5 starter but then whoever loses leaves in the spring portal. Which isn’t an option here. And the guy who developed, went from a 78 to an 82. So it wasn’t a massive leap. But that also shows that development should happen before the portal, or it should be factored by the AI when making portal decisions, as should roster composition. They ended up having 7 QB’s on roster. This all around seems like flawed logic to me.

Off-season progression should absolutely happen after the portal and not before since that’s really when the development occurs. And in your specific example I’ve seen plenty of recruits only gain 1 OVR in the off-season, so there’s definitely nothing wrong with them going for a transfer QB since he definitely could’ve been the starter if the returning guy didn’t progress enough.

They shouldn’t have gone for both, but OTOH, even with maxed scouting you don’t know how good each guy would be and either one of them could’ve been the starter. That being said, the CPU definitely signs too many QBs, even after the patch that toned it down. Prepatch is was positively awful. I signed with Louisville and they had 7 returning QBs, 4 of which were true FR who redshirted that season and yet they still signed 3 more QB recruits right before I took over, all of whom sucked, so my 1st year we would’ve had 10 QBs, 7 of whom were some flavor of freshmen.

[Chibi]

There should at least be a playing time meter for everyone to be tallied at the end of the season in addition to the dealbreaker, with people having a random chance to hit the portal if they don't meet a threshold. You could have upperclassmen be more likely to bolt than underclassmen.

Maybe they're just trying to balance it so you don't lose 25 guys every year. But the fun of that is you get to recruit 25 more guys every year.

[DL1287]

Transfer guys need to have training results applied to them too, it's kind of weird how none of them improve. Freshmen and Sophomores basically losing an off-season of progression is big.

I also wish the top guys weren't already at their top 5/8 during the first week.