NCAA '14 First Year Recruiting & Skill Tree Guide

[JLoco11]

I did quite a bit of testing this weekend with recruiting and the skill tree to get an idea of how things will work when I do my normal dynasty (after the rosters are completed). I simmed multiple first seasons of dynasty with different level teams, progression rates and recruiting methods and gained a decent amount of knowledge in doing so.


Here’s a very early guide for those interested in some recruiting tips for your FIRST year of recruiting… The following years of recruiting will be altered based on the skill tree which I will discuss in another post.


Basics:


Know the value of your team. Unlike other NCAA’s, ’14 puts an emphasis on school strengths AND coach strengths in terms of recruiting. A Sun Belt school isn’t going to land the top 15 recruits in year 1. Big name schools (USC, Texas, Bama, Ohio State) are going to have easier times in year 1 recruiting. If you take a mid-tier/3* star school, you will have to work harder to land coveted recruits.


Plan your depth chart. I can’t stress this enough, you need to balance out the amount of Seniors, Juniors, Redshirts, etc on your roster. If you go into a recruiting season with 23 seniors, you will have a hard time filling all those spots. Use redshirting wisely to balance out how many players will graduate (or potentially leave school early). 15-18 positions to fill is reasonable. 20+ will be much more difficult in your early years.


Target what you need. Getting all 25 scholarships in year 1 will be a challenge (except for the top schools). 12-15 targets is ideal to capture what you need. Replace outgoing Seniors, and plan ahead for star underclassmen that could leave for the draft.



Plan your coaching skill tree ahead. I will go into more detail on this later, but planning ahead on what recruiting boosts you will need is the ideal way to get an advantage over other schools.

Advanced


Location Location Location. It seems a large percentage of recruits value Proximity to Home in ’14… it’s quite a popular dealbreaker in the game. While you may have a pipeline across the country (Cali, Texas, Florida), you might see that a recruits priority is Proximity to Home, and you will not land that recruit. Ideally in your first year, go for recruits close to home, or those that do not have Proximity to Home as a requirement.


Higher Need = Higher Points. Goes without saying, but throw everything you can into your top recruits. The CPU does this every time. They max out points into the recruits they want, and schedule visits before you do (more on this later). Don’t be cheap on points with the absolute needed players.


Offer scholarships immediately. Only 1 school (Bama) has the insta commit skill available from the default settings. Unless you alter the skill trees, no school will get insta commits until you rank up your skill tree. That being said, offer scholarships immediately since there is no reason to wait. You want to jack up your point totals early, so if you want a recruit, give them a scholarship offer right away.


Use the filters!!! One of the additions to the point system is a filter that shows you the largest lead & deficit you have when recruiting. You can sort your recruits by these and it will show you how much ground you are ahead or behind, which can determine how many points you want to invest in a recruit. Late in the season, when visits are occurring and battles begin, this is imperative to use… no joke, you will thank me later.


The lonely recruit. If you get lucky, you will target someone that nobody wants. You will notice that after a few weeks, you gain a significant point advantage over other schools, and may notice no scholarships are offered to that student. If that is the case, REMOVE all points from him! You will be wasting valuable points on someone who will be heading to your school as long as you offered him a scholarship. Use the points somewhere else.


Bonus Points will help. You will notice each recruit receives automatic bonus point total each week, and this is NOT a random number. The bonus points are affected by how you play each week, from beating rivals to your play style. For example, Pocket Passing QB’s will get more bonus points the more yards you pass for. Scrambler QB’s will get more points for QB rushing yards. Balanced will benefit from both. This goes for all positions, and each tendency requires something different from your team. Pay attention to the bonuses.


CPU’s logic. Out of curiosity, I decided to make some coordinators mid-season to see how certain schools were recruiting. EVERY school goes after 10 players or so with max points. They don’t bother with partial points, they put the max into the positions they want. If they can put 550 points, they put 550 points into a recruit. If they can put 700, they put 700, there is no middle ground with the CPU. So if you find yourself in a battle with a school, remember that they put the max points every single week.

Know when to give up & pick your battles. Although you can unlock a closed out recruiting battle, miss an on campus visit, fall behind by 10,000 points, you can still manage to land that recruit in the off season... but your chances are slim and the resources you will use to land them will probably cause you to miss out on other recruits. If you notice you're falling behind badly on a recruit to bigger schools, just let him go. The points you spend per week trying to play catch-up, will be wiser spent on another recruit in a much closer battle. Unless you absolutely NEED this recruit, not chasing after recruits when you're too far behind is a better strategy.

Think of it like chasing a girlfriend who wants to break up, as opposed to talking to other potential girlfriends who are interested in you.

On Campus Visits


Visits now require strategy. In prior games your only worry was when to schedule visits. Now the on campus visit takes MUCH more priority and knowledge and essentially is the heart of recruiting. The first part of recruiting is getting enough points to earn a recruit visit. Since recruits will only make 5 visits, the importance is escalated even higher.


Get into the 5! I can’t stress this enough, you MUST get into a recruits top 5 choices to at least get an on campus visit. Visits can be worth over 1,000 points (some can go up to 1,500 points). If you miss out on being in a recruits top 5 for a campus visit, you might as well give up on him, since your chance of landing him becomes extremely minimal.


Complimentary & Competitive. In years past, you could schedule 3 QBs to visit in a week and there was no penalty. Now, the game tracks which recruits are visiting each week AND adds a compliment or competitive point total. Complimentary points measure players who mesh well, like QB WR, OL etc or DE, DT, MLB etc. You receive bonuses for complimentary visits. On the other hand, you receive Competitive deductions for schedule rival players, such as 2 Kickers or 4 WR’s. Avoid competitive visits by scheduling any competitive player during a different game. However, if you followed my original advice on managing the depth chart, you should do your best to avoid recruiting too many players at 1 position.


When to visit. This is the biggest gamble you will take. Scheduling a recruit later in the year means more points on the visit. BUT, if the CPU schedules just before you, they could actually steal away your recruit with a good visit. Scheduling early could give you an early lead that you can build off of, but if another team manages a solid late in the year visit, they could steal that recruit back. Unquestionably, this is the part of the game that will determine where a recruit will sign. You only get 1 visit, and will need to make it count.


CPU schedules first. 1 thing to note, if you and the CPU unlock enough interest for a visit at the same time, the CPU will schedule their visit before you do. They might take a week you want, and there is nothing you can do about that. This is why you need to get a lead quickly to get first dibs on your visit week. If you’re fighting with 5 teams, and all 6 of you unlock the visit interest… guess what, the 5 CPU schools will schedule their visits before you do. This puts an even bigger stress on how hard you recruit your players.


Pay attention to visit bonuses. When recruits visit, they will also pay attention to how your team plays when they arrive. If you have a TE visiting, you can get a 200 point bonus if you have a TE with 100 yards receiving. If you have a CB visiting, you will get a bonus for having 2 interceptions or 4 passes deflected. Each time recruits come to a game, make sure you hit their bonuses for more points on a visit.

The Yo-Yo Effect. When the CPU starts their visits, it's perfectly normal to fall behind by huge numbers. You will see 1,500 - 2,000 point swings in their favor. Depending on the time of year, this could be a small nuisance, or a huge roadblock. If this happens in earlier weeks, then you have a chance of passing them with your visit. If their visit happens later in the year, and if they have a successful visit, you could LOSE the recruit entirely, watching them commit to that school. Don't be alarmed if you see yourself fall behind after a CPU campus visit... but be wary of the schools that have late seasons visits.


Off Season


1 week to sign. EA shortened the final signing period to 1 day, where you have no limits on how many points you can put into 1 player. You can assign 1 recruit max level points (the highest is 15,000) or spread out your point total among your final players. This is your last chance to land the recruits you want and need, so make sure you land that recruit.


Expect heartbreak. If you made it this far, and have 8+ recruits that you’re battling for, expect to lose quite a few of them. The CPU logic is to throw all their points at some recruits, so if you’re fighting with XYZ school, expect XYZ school to throw all their points at that candidate. If you’re trying to space out your points among multiple recruits, chances are you won’t land many. Ideally, if you have only 2-3 recruits you want or need, that’s where to spend all your points. Whatever recruits you didn’t sign during the season, you will have a slimmer chance in the offseason to get all of them.


Transfer/Draft promises. It seems that promises for recruits are no longer available (unless I missed the screen they were located on, which I don’t think I did). The only promises you can make now, are for players who are leaving, who you can try to convince to stay. You can promise them getting a degree, or better draft position if they were to hold out another year before entering. If you promise someone they will be a first round draft pick, that becomes something they will hold you to. So be honest in your assessments of their talent.

[JLoco11]

Coaching Skill Tree

There is no true right or wrong way to fill out your coaching skills. Some of you will want game management if you have a high ranked coach. Some will start at the bottom of the skill tree and work your way up. This is a mini-guide on the Recruiting Tree only from level 1. This is not a Game Management guide.

Basics

Know the skills. Each skill is self-explanatory, but it’s good to know which skills help you at the beginning of the year, middle, and off season. That will help you determine which skills to acquire and which ones should take a priority in earning.

Understand the Tiers. There are 4 tiers in the Recruiting Tree. Tier 1 is unlocked at level 1. Tier 2 is unlocked at level 3 (but you need to be a level 4 to put a point in it). Tier 3 unlocks at level 10 (but level 11 is when you can put a point in) and Tier 4 at level 20 (again, you need to be level 21 to put a point in).
Tier 1 consists of Locksmith and Scouting.
Tier 2 consists of Royal Treatment, The Opener and The Closer
Tier 3 consists of Pipelines, Letter of Intent and Kitchen Sink
Tier 4 consist of Insta-Commit

Opinion on ranking up

Please note this is my personal assessment of how I will personally recruit. You may find more suitable uses for your style of recruiting.

Tier 1 – To unlock the next Tier, you need to spend 3 points in 1 of the bottom 2 options. Personally, I throw all my points in Scouting. Matter of fact, if you recruit the right way, Locksmith should never really be used (and if it is used… chances are you’re not going to land that recruit anyways).

With 3 points in Scouting, you get 100% scouting reports and a recruits final rating. You get to unlock the Gem or Bust status of the recruit and most importantly, you ONLY spend 50 points per recruit. Without putting points into scouting, you would spend 200 points to unlock their full potential and Gem/Bust status.

With Locksmith, you can unlock a recruiting battle candidate, however, if you’re already locked out, chances are that you’re so far behind in recruiting that you won’t catch up anyways. I honestly see no use to this item in landing a recruit. You will have far more important features to spend your points on.

Tier 2 – When you hit level 4, you can place a point in any of the 3 choices available. All 3 are quality options, and you can’t go wrong with either one. Although, I would recommend The Opener as the first point.

The Opener gives you more recruiting points for the first half of recruiting. The closer gives you more points for the second half of the year of recruiting. Pending on when you unlock this, you should (hopefully) unlock this early in the year to take advantage of The Opener.

Royal Treatment is excellent to get a boost on recruit visits. Since you will have more visits towards the end of the year, you won’t have to worry about a major investment in points early in the skill tree. However, when you notice that recruit visits are coming up, then you will want to get some points in here because the bonuses are significantly higher the more this is ranked up.

Tier 3 – When you hit level 11, you will be able to place a point in 1 of these 3 options. Kitchen Sink is probably the best option depending on when you hit this tier. You will have the ability to give more points per recruit which will help add value to your prospects.

The other 2 options are beneficial only during certain times of the year. Letter of Intent is entirely focused on off season recruiting. There is no need to invest a point in this until very late in the year, right before you end the season. If you unlock this early in the year, spend your points elsewhere… but at the end of the year, this is a CRUCIAL upgrade to get as many recruits you can for signing day.

Pipelines reduces the amount of recruits you need in a state to be a pipeline. The default is 6, and pending on when you unlock this feature, it might be a moot point. You gain 50 points for pipeline states, which is not an incredible amount of points during the recruiting process mid year. This upgrade makes it’s best use in Pre-Season recruiting where pipeline state recruits will look at your school more. If you’re already in mid-season, you won’t need to invest too much into this, but before heading into the off season and pre-season, you will definitely want this fully upgraded. Needing only 3 recruits per state is a HUGE boost when you first target recruits.

Tier 4 has 1 upgrade that unlocks at level 20, but you need to be level 21 to enter a point. Insta Commit gives you the ability to have a chance at landing an immediate commitment if you’re the recruits top school.

This skill is ONLY helpful at the beginning of year essentially. When you’re mid-season or late season, chances of finding someone without a scholarship offer that has you as the top school will be rare. So there is almost no use for this item after week 2 or week 3.

BUT, when you have this unlocked during pre-season recruiting and week 1, this is a lifesaver! And a major point saver. Any instant commit recruit means less points you will need to spend week to week on them, and more to spend on the other 24 scholarships. If you max out this perk, you get a 20% chance of insta commits.

Think about this for a second, if you fill your board with 35 recruits who have you as the top school, the odds say you will land 7 of them. 7 scholarships filled in week 1 is an INCREDIBLE boost, which will turn you into a recruiting juggernaut.

EDIT: Play First Game or Recruit First?

Another fascinating element is whether to recruit first, or play the opening game. If you start at level 1 in recruiting, I suggest playing the opening game, before starting to recruit to see if you can unlock a few points or upgrades for your coach in game. That way you can setup Scouting to level 3 before starting your recruiting adventures.

The subsequent weeks will not have too much of an affect since your point totals per recruit carryover... and by time you unlock The Opener, The Closer and Kitchen Sink, you won't need to worry about whether to play or recruit or not. But ideally, you will want to play your week 1 game before entering the recruiting section at level 1.

Skill Tree Progression

Fastest or Slowest. Again, this is personal preference as to how you want to rank up. Before starting a dynasty, you can select the pace at which you rank up. Keep in mind, this pace will last your entire dynasty and can never be changed.

There are 5 speed levels, Normal, Fast, Fastest, Slow, Slowest. I don’t have any statistical data on the actual XP amounts needed per level, but as a general rule of thumb from level 1:

Normal = 15-20 levels in a regular season, depending on how much you point whore during games. You can certainly make more than this, but if you were to play with “normal” every day stats (you know, no 150-0 games with 1,000 yards of offense each game), you will hit 15-20 levels.

Fastest = 25+ levels. Again, depending on how much you point whore, but you could hit some 30 levels in year #1.

Slowest = less than 10 levels. Again, people can certainly go over those 10 with abnormal statistical games… but in an average environment, you will get about 10 levels on slowest.

Now just to reiterate, there is no right or wrong way of building your skill tree or your progression rate. You control your own path and should determine your own methods. But these general guidelines might help you make the choices that work best for your dynasty.

[ZekeRoberts]

Quote: Originally Posted by JLoco11

CPU schedules first. 1 thing to note, if you and the CPU unlock enough interest for a visit at the same time, the CPU will schedule their visit before you do. They might take a week you want, and there is nothing you can do about that. This is why you need to get a lead quickly to get first dibs on your visit week. If you’re fighting with 5 teams, and all 6 of you unlock the visit interest… guess what, the 5 CPU schools will schedule their visits before you do. This puts an even bigger stress on how hard you recruit your players.

Good read. I wish that somehow this (above) was done differently... puts you behind the 8-ball.

In general, sounds like the CPU is much more aggressive in recruiting... wonder if that means there will be more "lonely recruits"

[JLoco11]

Quote: Originally Posted by ZekeRoberts

Good read. I wish that somehow this (above) was done differently... puts you behind the 8-ball. In general, sounds like the CPU is much more aggressive in recruiting... wonder if that means there will be more "lonely recruits"

I found about 3-4 "lonely" recruits per season, mostly mid year when I lost out on recruits I needed. In scouting them, you usually find they're BUST players though. It's possible the CPU picked them, scouted and dropped them.

The 5 visits messed me up. I had a good 300 point lead, then 7 teams unlocked their visit with me the same week. Even though I was in the lead, I didn't get a chance to schedule a visit on the top QB recruit. THAT was frustrating, and something people need to be aware of

[buickbeast]

This is one of the best guides I've ever read on this website. Great job and thanks! It definitely opened my eyes to a few skills that I guess I overlooked.
Do you think you will add a game management guide in the future?

[JoeFlop]

Great post. Thanks for taking the time to put this together. Very helpful.

[Zac]

Great post.

To add to your skill tree info, fast cuts the needed xp to level up per level in half. Fastest then cuts it in half again. And going the other way, doubles it. The XP gain per challenge stays the same (i.e. 25xp for a td). It is just the required xp per level to level up that changes.

I spent some time messing with this last night.

[thelasthurtknee]

Quote: Originally Posted by ZekeRoberts

Good read. I wish that somehow this (above) was done differently... puts you behind the 8-ball. In general, sounds like the CPU is much more aggressive in recruiting... wonder if that means there will be more "lonely recruits"

U do get a 100 point bonus the later on the schedule list u are. So if u schedule ur visit 1st u get 100 bonus to start. 2Nd 200 and so on. Not as good as getting to pick ur weekend first but something