EA needs to improve the AI logic for recruiting class size

[FJ47]

I'm in the middle of running a Michigan dynasty (2029 season) and I've been battling Oregon the last few seasons for Big Ten supremacy (lost to them in the national championship last season). I'm currently in week 12, I'm #1 in the country and #2 Oregon just lost to #8 USC for their first loss of the year.

I just lost out on a 5 star RB to Oregon (no biggie because my class is close to finalized and it was more of a luxury if I got the commit. Oregon currently has the #1 class and I'm #2. I notice they have a class of 31 commits (6 five stars, 25 four stars). I figured that they have a large senior class to have that many commits, but it turns out their senior class is 6 PLAYERS!!! And it gets worse... they have 14 juniors, 20 sophomores, and 45 true/redshirt freshmen!!! They're gonna have to cut 25 players or so to bring this class in. That's ridiculous.

I've noticed some teams are dominant for a few years and then fall off a cliff. I'm guessing it's because they have to keep cutting talented upper classmen to fit their bloated recruiting class on to the team.

Looking at their current true freshman class, they brought in 2 QBs, 3 RBs, 4 WRs, 1 TE, 7 OLs, 6 DLs, 5 LBs, 4 CBs, and 3 Ss. I'm wondering how many of these players face the chopping block this offseason.

They need to come up with a way to stop (or slow down) recruiting certain positions when you already have needed recruits at that position.

For example, my recruiting class stands at 20 commits (4 five stars, 14 four stars, 2 three stars). I have 16 seniors and I'm looking at a possible 2-3 juniors leaving early for the draft. I just got my first QB commit for my class. I'm leading on another QB but I had to remove all hours on him, as well as a couple other recruits because I just don't have room in the class for them. The CPU should be doing this as well.

Also of note, Oregon's HC, as well as his OC and DC, are all elite recruiters, almost completely maxed out. I'm sure this is a big reason the class is so large compared to what they actually need.

Anyone else seeing things like this?

[jello1717]

Quote: Originally Posted by FJ47

I'm in the middle of running a Michigan dynasty (2029 season) and I've been battling Oregon the last few seasons for Big Ten supremacy (lost to them in the national championship last season). I'm currently in week 12, I'm #1 in the country and #2 Oregon just lost to #8 USC for their first loss of the year. I just lost out on a 5 star RB to Oregon (no biggie because my class is close to finalized and it was more of a luxury if I got the commit. Oregon currently has the #1 class and I'm #2. I notice they have a class of 31 commits (6 five stars, 25 four stars). I figured that they have a large senior class to have that many commits, but it turns out their senior class is 6 PLAYERS!!! And it gets worse... they have 14 juniors, 20 sophomores, and 45 true/redshirt freshmen!!! They're gonna have to cut 25 players or so to bring this class in. That's ridiculous. I've noticed some teams are dominant for a few years and then fall off a cliff. I'm guessing it's because they have to keep cutting talented upper classmen to fit their bloated recruiting class on to the team. Looking at their current true freshman class, they brought in 2 QBs, 3 RBs, 4 WRs, 1 TE, 7 OLs, 6 DLs, 5 LBs, 4 CBs, and 3 Ss. I'm wondering how many of these players face the chopping block this offseason. They need to come up with a way to stop (or slow down) recruiting certain positions when you already have needed recruits at that position. For example, my recruiting class stands at 20 commits (4 five stars, 14 four stars, 2 three stars). I have 16 seniors and I'm looking at a possible 2-3 juniors leaving early for the draft. I just got my first QB commit for my class. I'm leading on another QB but I had to remove all hours on him, as well as a couple other recruits because I just don't have room in the class for them. The CPU should be doing this as well. Also of note, Oregon's HC, as well as his OC and DC, are all elite recruiters, almost completely maxed out. I'm sure this is a big reason the class is so large compared to what they actually need. Anyone else seeing things like this?

I’m not being a dick, but I honestly can’t believe you made it to 2029 before noticing this. Tons of teams do this and Oregon and Georgia are the biggest culprits. Oregon almost always signs 30+.

As for your “I've noticed some teams are dominant for a few years and then fall off a cliff.” fear, this definitely isn’t the case with most good teams, especially Oregon and Georgia. In my dynasty, Oregon is still dominant in 2035. They made it to the NCG last year, have won 3 titles (including 2 after I got the Michigan job), have the best career record (in dynasty) of any team, the most playoff wins, the most draft picks and 1st round draft picks, etc, etc.

Yes, they need to fix the massive oversigning that so many teams do, but luckily it doesn’t hurt how good dominant teams should be.

[DonkeyJote]

To a degree, I think they're caught between eras, in that they implemented the 85 Scholarship Limit (but with no room for Walk Ons, so smaller rosters still), but without any data as to how teams will recruit.

But 31 isn't really a crazy number. Georgia had 29 recruits last year, and another 27 this year. And from I can tell, they've got 18 Seniors, so still a lot more players coming in than going out.

Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk

[FJ47]

Quote: Originally Posted by jello1717

I’m not being a dick, but I honestly can’t believe you made it to 2029 before noticing this. Tons of teams do this and Oregon and Georgia are the biggest culprits. Oregon almost always signs 30+.

I should have clarified that this is more of a test dynasty. I had auto-recruit on for the early seasons as I was testing in-game sliders. The last couple of seasons I've been doing hands on recruiting, so I've started seeing some things, but really didn't look at anything in depth. It wasn't so much the number of recruits that caught my attention (30+ is fine if you're replacing 20+), it was the small number they were replacing.

And yes, they are very OP. Last year's playoffs I steamrolled through Miami, a Georgia team with a Heisman trophy winning QB, and a USC team I lost to during the season. My dominant defense gave up 20 points total in those 3 games. I faced Oregon in the Natty and it was over at halftime. They won by 28 points and put up nearly 50 on me. Chunk play after chunk play. I had no answers to their offense. And it was hella fun.

[jello1717]

Quote: Originally Posted by FJ47

It wasn't so much the number of recruits that caught my attention (30+ is fine if you're replacing 20+), it was the small number they were replacing.

They replaced so few because they sign so many, and since they always sign so many, they usually replace so few.

In case you didn’t know, you can’t cut any incoming players (as should be the case) so when they sign 35, there’s only 50 roster spots left so they have to cut a bunch of upper classmen or sophomores. Then next year, when they sign 30+ again, they once again have to cut a bunch of non-freshmen. Many years of this equates to few guys surviving til their senior years.

[canes21]

This was something we had looked at in the recruiting thread soon after launch. I think there are multiple issues at play here.

1. CPU teams do not seem to take their graduating class size into consideration when recruiting, which I think should be at least a factor of some degree.

2. The transfer portal is not as active in the game as it is in real life.

3. Despite 2, the logic seems designed to have CPU teams going for class sizes similar to real life.

And these issues lead to classes being too large which leads to CPU teams having rosters that are skewing too much towards the underclassmen side of things which is leading to their rosters not being as developed as they should be which is leading to teams not being as as consistently good as they could be.

I think the simplest way to help with this issue is to simply increase portal activity globally in the game to get it matching real life numbers.

Ideally, EA could give us various sliders that allow us to control various things surrounding recruiting and the portal. One of those being the ability to alter the frequency in which players are entering the portal. The more settings we could get, the better it would be for all. A true sandbox control where we'd have 10s to potentially hundreds of things we could alter would be perfect for those that would want that level of control in their game.

I want to be able to setup how often each archetype is generated for each position, the positional and archetype quality for all players, the odds that certain deal breakers are generated, the frequency in which players hit the portal, etc.

[moTIGS]

Quote: Originally Posted by DonkeyJote

To a degree, I think they're caught between eras, in that they implemented the 85 Scholarship Limit (but with no room for Walk Ons, so smaller rosters still), but without any data as to how teams will recruit. But 31 isn't really a crazy number. Georgia had 29 recruits last year, and another 27 this year. And from I can tell, they've got 18 Seniors, so still a lot more players coming in than going out. Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk

I might be misunderstanding your point, but the NCAA has had a scholarship limit of 85 for the past 30 years. We have a literal generation or two worth of data on how teams will handle that.

In general, for the entirety of that time, most teams would sign as many players as they had room for, plus a few extra to account for attrition. It's virtually unheard of for a team to sign 15-20 more than they can fit on the roster and have to force out that many existing players. That's why so many people have been rooting against Sanders at Colorado. He's basically the first (and only) coach who's openly taken that approach. Others use the portal extensively, too, but in the vast majority of cases, teams sign new players only AFTER their existing players have announced they're transferring.

Which brings me to a simple suggestion that would help: Put an "encourage transfers" period before we get to off-season recruiting, and require all teams to get down to 85 players (returning players + signees). That would mean someone like Oregon in OP's example, we'd have 25 Oregon players in the portal, theoretically available for any other team to recruit. Do that for every team that signs 10+ more players than they have space for, and suddenly we have a portal pool that looks a lot more like real life.

[Ghost Of The Year]

If they will just quadruple the pool of high school players to choose from, I would be thankful just for that. And, yeah, I know that means a ton of players won't even get to sign a LOI, but that's the way it should be.