Subject: Questions & Answers

why do you want to scout all players? that is essential not to be able scout all players. if all would manage to scout all how bottom 10 will have any chance to draft any A quality player?

You're right, I was being a little myopic in this regard.

I guess I was just seeing it from the point of view of regularly not being able to follow the draft as it happens and adjust accordingly. Thus needing [wanting] info on more players to make a better draft list.

Earlier today it said new players will come tomorrow, now they will come on Tuesday? And after that there is a regular players pick on Thursday?
More and more confusing...

I don't get those who think draft takes too much time and gives nothing. As a pro owner all you have to do is spend 5 minutes to select which ones you want to scout and a week later spend another 5 minutes to put them in to order. Is it really too much?

The draft as an idea is a great but I really think PPM should think about letting non-pros to select their orders in advance, especially if every second pull will be a draft. What I see many non-pros doing now is letting that random generator to select them a 5/6 with C rating. I think that can easily lead to:
1. Non-pros getting disadvantaged
2. Non-pros loosing interest
3. Non-pros quitting because they're not interested anymore
4. Pro-owners loosing interest because of reduced competition
5. Pro-owners stop paying for pro
6. Less and less money for PPM

Monday morning.

I'm going to ramble on a bit here and give out a few of my personal thoughts about the whole draft process.

1) A+ players. They are and should continue to be truly rare finds. I've a managed a few different National Teams in PPM and can assure you that those teams were not filled up with such players. The odds of seeing 90+ Q's in four catagories is 1 in 10,000. If a draft pool has 50 players then it only reasonable to expect such a player to show up in every 200 drafts.

2) 1st overall duds. They happen in real life, they should happen in the game. Getting a Yakupov when a McKinnon is the next one sucks, as does passing on a Pronger to select a Daigle. Finding a superstar in a pool of 50-100 players shouldn't be the norm.

2) Scouting. There has been a lot of backlash in the accuracy of the scouting. Just keep in mind that (in handball) nobody has the staff and facilities to reasonably expect their scouting to be accurate. I'm going to applaud PPM for a) making manager's with high scouting attributes relevant and b) making it 'real-life like' with it's imperfection.

3) The Sports Academy. Contrary to popular belief, the influence of the Sports Academy has changed very little with the introduction of the draft. The Sports Academy has never influenced the quality of the players it generates. A higher level Sports Academy still gets you more players with a higher OR, whether be in terms of picks or players recommended. With the 'hidden gem' feature, PPM has countered the arguement that late round picks in a draft are worthless (another 'real-life like' feature of drafting). The Sports Academy also has the often underappretiated benfit of player improvement through training camps.

4) The Draft Order. Half the drafts are random, 25% give the top picks to the worst teams, and 25% go to the teams with the best facilities. I haven't read many complaints about this, it's fair, it's equitable to me.

Generally, I try to keep my opinions to myself. I enjoy this game and appreciate it's layers and complexity. I compliment the PPM team on it's efforts to continually try to improve it. Drafting is something that many people have asked for and PPM delivered with a well thought out launch. Are there too many drafts? Is it too unfair for the NonPro user? Questions remain, concerns will surely be addressed. As I stated off the top, these are my personal opinions. Agree or disagree, that's up to you. I just felt that a little more support for the effort was needed.

Yesterday it took us 45 minutes to draft in Slovenian I.1 league. Yes it is too much. Especially every two weeks.

IMO, draft should be held ONCE a season, determined by (last) season standings. Maybe last week of season, when we also negotiate contracts? Players enters team at the start of the new season as 15yrs old?

One would have time to scout all season long, SA picks (good or bad) would determine what position manager is looking for, a greater pool of players would increase options for low seeded teams to get a hidden gem(s) (if we keep limited number of scouting spaces, max now is 42), perhaps making draft players "different" than regular pull would increase excitement (maybe draft player get a bit higher OR, some xp's,..).

I'd still like to hear someone from PPM team to define "fun", we get via draft?

I missed the first draft but because of the time change I participated in this one. Even though there are teams who are pro in my league, none of them participated. I'm happy because I got the player I wanted but I'm not sure if anyone else in my league understands what the draft is. Sometimes great ideas are just ideas and should stay that way.

I feel the draft was set up to appease the long term players. For the new players, this game has a lot to digest and that's why I like it. Maybe a draft once or twice a season would be better. It's a little anticlimactic to be in a draft when your the only one who knows or cares there is one. I applaud the developers for continuing to try to improve the product but just be careful not to confuse your new customers.

Good point, Yzerman. These live drafts are getting boring because they are so often and you have to spend so much time on it. I cannot even imagine how frustrating this is for non-pro managers.

I actually don't see the benefits either way. If you are in a league full of pro packs then you set it and go have a whiskey. My draft had one A player drafted. The gem player is a crap shoot. So if everyone knew who the A player was and you aren't drafting in the top 5 then it doesn't really matter anyway. Other than the fact that no one else cared there was a draft I would have had absolutely no chance of getting that A player.

The fact that not one other player even bothered including pro packs leads me to think it is way over the heads of the majority of people participating. Pro pack or not. Don't get me wrong, I'll continue to poach the best player but when a few others wake up and smell the coffee in my league I'll probably just leave it on auto and hope I luck out and get the gem player.

Maybe give non-pros some ordering options in the random drafts... so 50% of them.

Yes, that would be better than not at all.

Last draft I got an A+ player, Espen Skaret , with first pick.

This time I had to pick as number 17 and this is what I got: bildr.no/view/bnc5Q2ZE

I would say that is better than average YP any other week, and that was with last pick (3 "dead" teams in my league).
The team with pick number 14 was the luckiest one, he got an A+ players, and before that about 6 A players went to the people picking from 1 to 13 (4 of the teams don't have PRO).

I can only speak from my own experience, but so far the draft has givene me more good players than I usually would get in 2 seasons.

So is the draft producing worse players than a normal YP, even for people picking later then number 5? Maybe, maybe not. It is probably to early to tell.

With regards to people without PRO pack. Give your suggestions on how to make this as fair as possible for both people with and without PRO. The developers have shown that they are willing to listen to suggestions and change things. Complaining gets you nowhere.

wow. in german I.1 again there was a single A player and so far nobody got a good player out of the drafts

I have no changes , how bad player I pulled out from YA so bad players I got from draft pull