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Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Seattle, WA

Re: Connected Franchise Mode: A Rebuild



Regional Scouts











The first major change to scouting would be the addition of regional scouts rather than one uniform scouting system. So you'd have four regional scouts that were responsible for scouting prospects within their given region (i.e. Washington, Oregon, California players will be scouted by West; Florida, Alabama players by Southeast, etc.). These scouts would be just like a member of your staff and would be able to be hired and fired. Each scout would unique ratings and traits that will dictate different aspects of the information you'll be getting on prospects they scout.



Evaluation Ability



Pretty straightforward. Every scout is going to have an Evaluation Ability rating for each position group that will dictate how accurate the information you receive will be. For this example the ratings range from Poor being the worst to Excellent being the best with Below Average, Average and Good falling in between. More on this and Specialty later in the post.



Reputation



Think of this kind of like an OVR for scouts. It doesn't really mean anything outside of how they're valued. Scouts with a better reputations are going to be coveted more by other teams and will be more likely to want more money as well as receive more offers from other teams. This rating would progress/regress based on how the players they scout and grade pan out. If a scout is grading players high that consistently end up as busts or quickly out of the league, the reputation will fall. The more a scout hits on stars and key starters, the more his reputation will grow.



Bias/Influencers



So this would be what really makes scouts unique and more interesting IMO. Each scout would have the potential to have certain biases and influencers that affect how they scout and grade a player. With just an Eval Ability rating for scouts the potential for scouts with the same ratings to spit out very similar reports would be an issue and with these it would throw more variables and factors into the mix. For this example there's only four but there could obviously be more but here are the four used:



Athleticism



Scouts with this bias will covet and grade players higher who are considered above average athletes at their position. Conversely, players that are considered below average athletes at their position would likely grade out lower.



Intangibles



The other side of the above. Scouts with this bias will sacrifice above average athleticism for players with higher intangible ratings that are unique to their position.



Talent



Will grade players more on immediate perceived ability than long term potential. Scouts with this influencer will covet more "known commodities" rather than project players.



Potential



Again, the other side to the above. Scouts with this bias/influencer will covet players that are viewed to have higher ceilings. Will value players with a unique skill and "the tools" over safe picks with a more limited ceiling.





So the main goal with these is to, like I said, throw some more variables and factors to consider into the mix as well as make scouts feel more unique. What this would also do is allow you to do things like tailor your scouting staff to the way you're building your roster. If you're rebuilding maybe you stack your scouts with Potential guys or if you're in a more win now mode you stack them with Talent scouts. There needs to be layers and levels to this ish.



Evaluation/Scouting Process



The second major change that will revolve mostly around the type and amount of information you receive for incoming rookies



Prospect Board







So this is the prospect board and overall it should look pretty familiar but there are some changes. In the top left, you'll notice that scouting points are no more and that regional scouts will have an alotted number of players available to scout each week. Overall, the process itself would be almost the same. You pick guys to scout, you get information.



Below that you'll see some QoL additions with the Draft Depth, Deepest Position, Weakest Position and Projected #1 Overall. This is information that would be universal across the entire league and is intended to just give you an idea of what to expect before you start scouting.



Then moving to the prospect board, you'll also notice changes to the way projections work. Rather than simply having 32 players slotted into each round of the draft, I've changed it to a more uniform projection system based on a players grade. What this means is that in a strong draft class or top heavy draft class you could have seven Top-5 projections or more than 32 1st round projections. Conversely in a weak draft you could only have 15-20 projected first rounders.



And then to the right of that you'll see that the letter grades are gone and are replaced by the scout that is assigned to a player if you choose to scout them that week as well as a progression bar that tells you how close he is to being fully scouted which brings us too the...



Prospect Scouting Report







So what you see above is the initial scouting report that you'd receive for every player in the draft. I know Fog of War is a big thing and I've seen a lot of people praise NHL for their system of not knowing anything about players you don't scout. While I definitely love the idea of Fog of War, I don't really agree with ever being completely blind to players. I feel like you should at the very least be given minimal information on every player and allowed to build from there if you so choose. But as you can see, rather than letter grades, the scouting report is going to consist of short statements about a player. The more you scout the player, the more information you're going to get until he becomes fully scouted. This also brings me back to specialty and your scouts Eval Ability.



Specialty



So specialty is exactly as it sounds. This is going to be the group that a scout specializes in. And this specialty could range from simply one position like Quarterback to entire position groups like Offensive Line or Defensive Backs or maybe even entire sides of the ball in Offense or Defense. And what the specialty is going to do is allow you to scout those players faster. So with that initial report above, normally you'll either get one or two statements but under the specialty, you'll always get at least two and have the chance at three. Keep in mind though, the accuracy of those statements is still going to be heavily based on the scouts Eval Ability which might not always coincide perfectly with his specialty.



Eval Ability



Eval Ability is going to dictate how accurate the statements you're getting on a players scouting report have the potential to be. To show you a simple version of how this would work, here's an example of 15 statements that all relate to the Deep Accuracy attribute:







These statements cover every level that the attribute could be from Elite to Good to Average to Below Average to Bad. Based on whatever the actual attribute is for the prospect, one of those statements would be chosen as the "perfect evaluation" which for the sake of the example you can see here:







So based on that and your scouts Eval Ability is going dictate exactly what kind of statement you have the potential of receiving on his scouting report. If your scout is Excellent, you're going to have a much better chance of getting that perfect evaluation and the range of statements you can get will be much smaller and more accurate. As your scout Eval Ability goes down, you'll still have a chance at getting the perfect evaluation but the range of statements you could receive will be a lot larger thus also increasing the chances of a poor evaluation.











So back to the actual scouting report, as you continue to scout players their scouting report is going to continue to grow until you either decide to stop scouting a player or he becomes fully scouted. By the time a player is fully scouted, you should have a statement on just about every intangible rating for his position so a fully scouted player is going to feel fully scouted and that would look like this:











And then the last thing I'll touch on here is some more QoL type additions that can also be used as user aids and scouting hints which you'll see under the player profile on the right. Starting at the top you have the Player Grade and Projection which both are using a universal scale to give you an idea of where the player grades out. This information would come from your scout and would be based on the scouting report. If there are a lot of plusses the player will likely grade out higher. Lot of cons and the player will grade out lower.



Below that you have a player comparison where the prospects perceived skill set will be compared to a former or current NFL player to give you a slight hint at the type of player he is or might become.



Underneath that there's a slight hint towards a players immediate and long term ability with short and long term projection as well as current roster fit. These could both be used as hints towards a players DEV trait and would also be subject to your scouts Eval Ability so nothing is going to be 100% certain.



And then lastly at the bottom you'll see another type of aid or scouting tool that gives you a rough estimate of where the player is expected to be taken in the draft with his projected ceiling and floor.



SPARQ score, Combine & Pro Days







One of my bigger frustrations with the current scouting system is that you have zero clue or insight into a players athletic ability until the combine. If I only want to scout speed WR's or want to avoid scouting slow corners, there's really no way to avoid or be aware of that. So the main addition here is in the with the SPARQ score. I've talked about it before but if you don't know what it is, it's basically an attempt to quantify athleticism into a singular rating. The better athlete you are, the higher the rating. The worse athlete you are, the lower the rating. So when you first started scouting, you'd get a projected SPARQ score with some hints at his athletic ability and makeup rather than being completely blind.







The combine would basically work exactly the same and you'd be given that information at the same point of the offseason. The one thing that would change here though is that the SPARQ score would go from a projected rating to an absolute one based on his combine data. I also threw in players not participating in certain drills just to throw some more variables and wrinkles into the mix.







And then lastly I also threw in Pro Days to not only be more authentic but to again throw in some more variables. Everybody doesn't get invited to the combine. With 450 prospects in the draft, there's going to be around 200 of them that aren't invited and that's something I'd like to see represented not only for authenticity's sake but also because it makes the process of gauging that data more interesting. If you have two sets of data in can confirm what a player is or raise more questions due to discreprancies in the data. And then if there's only one set of data, you have to wonder if it might be the high end or low end or right on the mark for his physical ability.



Stories Tab







This is mainly just a QoL addition. The news feed is buried and the draft stories and tweets will disappear over time so if you're not paying close attention or keeping track it's easy to forget or not be aware of those stories. So within a players scouting card would also be a tab that would store all of the related stories and tweets for the given year so if you miss one, no worries!

The first major change to scouting would be the addition of regional scouts rather than one uniform scouting system. So you'd have four regional scouts that were responsible for scouting prospects within their given region (i.e. Washington, Oregon, California players will be scouted by West; Florida, Alabama players by Southeast, etc.). These scouts would be just like a member of your staff and would be able to be hired and fired. Each scout would unique ratings and traits that will dictate different aspects of the information you'll be getting on prospects they scout.Pretty straightforward. Every scout is going to have an Evaluation Ability rating for each position group that will dictate how accurate the information you receive will be. For this example the ratings range from Poor being the worst to Excellent being the best with Below Average, Average and Good falling in between. More on this and Specialty later in the post.Think of this kind of like an OVR for scouts. It doesn't really mean anything outside of how they're valued. Scouts with a better reputations are going to be coveted more by other teams and will be more likely to want more money as well as receive more offers from other teams. This rating would progress/regress based on how the players they scout and grade pan out. If a scout is grading players high that consistently end up as busts or quickly out of the league, the reputation will fall. The more a scout hits on stars and key starters, the more his reputation will grow.So this would be what really makes scouts unique and more interesting IMO. Each scout would have the potential to have certain biases and influencers that affect how they scout and grade a player. With just an Eval Ability rating for scouts the potential for scouts with the same ratings to spit out very similar reports would be an issue and with these it would throw more variables and factors into the mix. For this example there's only four but there could obviously be more but here are the four used:Scouts with this bias will covet and grade players higher who are considered above average athletes at their position. Conversely, players that are considered below average athletes at their position would likely grade out lower.The other side of the above. Scouts with this bias will sacrifice above average athleticism for players with higher intangible ratings that are unique to their position.Will grade players more on immediate perceived ability than long term potential. Scouts with this influencer will covet more "known commodities" rather than project players.Again, the other side to the above. Scouts with this bias/influencer will covet players that are viewed to have higher ceilings. Will value players with a unique skill and "the tools" over safe picks with a more limited ceiling.So the main goal with these is to, like I said, throw some more variables and factors to consider into the mix as well as make scouts feel more unique. What this would also do is allow you to do things like tailor your scouting staff to the way you're building your roster. If you're rebuilding maybe you stack your scouts with Potential guys or if you're in a more win now mode you stack them with Talent scouts. There needs to be layers and levels to this ish.The second major change that will revolve mostly around the type and amount of information you receive for incoming rookiesSo this is the prospect board and overall it should look pretty familiar but there are some changes. In the top left, you'll notice that scouting points are no more and that regional scouts will have an alotted number of players available to scout each week. Overall, the process itself would be almost the same. You pick guys to scout, you get information.Below that you'll see some QoL additions with the Draft Depth, Deepest Position, Weakest Position and Projected #1 Overall. This is information that would be universal across the entire league and is intended to just give you an idea of what to expect before you start scouting.Then moving to the prospect board, you'll also notice changes to the way projections work. Rather than simply having 32 players slotted into each round of the draft, I've changed it to a more uniform projection system based on a players grade. What this means is that in a strong draft class or top heavy draft class you could have seven Top-5 projections or more than 32 1st round projections. Conversely in a weak draft you could only have 15-20 projected first rounders.And then to the right of that you'll see that the letter grades are gone and are replaced by the scout that is assigned to a player if you choose to scout them that week as well as a progression bar that tells you how close he is to being fully scouted which brings us too the...So what you see above is the initial scouting report that you'd receive for every player in the draft. I know Fog of War is a big thing and I've seen a lot of people praise NHL for their system of not knowing anything about players you don't scout. While I definitely love the idea of Fog of War, I don't really agree with ever being completely blind to players. I feel like you should at the very least be given minimal information on every player and allowed to build from there if you so choose. But as you can see, rather than letter grades, the scouting report is going to consist of short statements about a player. The more you scout the player, the more information you're going to get until he becomes fully scouted. This also brings me back to specialty and your scouts Eval Ability.So specialty is exactly as it sounds. This is going to be the group that a scout specializes in. And this specialty could range from simply one position like Quarterback to entire position groups like Offensive Line or Defensive Backs or maybe even entire sides of the ball in Offense or Defense. And what the specialty is going to do is allow you to scout those players faster. So with that initial report above, normally you'll either get one or two statements but under the specialty, you'll always get at least two and have the chance at three. Keep in mind though, the accuracy of those statements is still going to be heavily based on the scouts Eval Ability which might not always coincide perfectly with his specialty.Eval Ability is going to dictate how accurate the statements you're getting on a players scouting report have the potential to be. To show you a simple version of how this would work, here's an example of 15 statements that all relate to the Deep Accuracy attribute:These statements cover every level that the attribute could be from Elite to Good to Average to Below Average to Bad. Based on whatever the actual attribute is for the prospect, one of those statements would be chosen as the "perfect evaluation" which for the sake of the example you can see here:So based on that and your scouts Eval Ability is going dictate exactly what kind of statement you have the potential of receiving on his scouting report. If your scout is Excellent, you're going to have a much better chance of getting that perfect evaluation and the range of statements you can get will be much smaller and more accurate. As your scout Eval Ability goes down, you'll still have a chance at getting the perfect evaluation but the range of statements you could receive will be a lot larger thus also increasing the chances of a poor evaluation.So back to the actual scouting report, as you continue to scout players their scouting report is going to continue to grow until you either decide to stop scouting a player or he becomes fully scouted. By the time a player is fully scouted, you should have a statement on just about every intangible rating for his position so a fully scouted player is going to feel fully scouted and that would look like this:And then the last thing I'll touch on here is some more QoL type additions that can also be used as user aids and scouting hints which you'll see under the player profile on the right. Starting at the top you have the Player Grade and Projection which both are using a universal scale to give you an idea of where the player grades out. This information would come from your scout and would be based on the scouting report. If there are a lot of plusses the player will likely grade out higher. Lot of cons and the player will grade out lower.Below that you have a player comparison where the prospects perceived skill set will be compared to a former or current NFL player to give you a slight hint at the type of player he is or might become.Underneath that there's a slight hint towards a players immediate and long term ability with short and long term projection as well as current roster fit. These could both be used as hints towards a players DEV trait and would also be subject to your scouts Eval Ability so nothing is going to be 100% certain.And then lastly at the bottom you'll see another type of aid or scouting tool that gives you a rough estimate of where the player is expected to be taken in the draft with his projected ceiling and floor.One of my bigger frustrations with the current scouting system is that you have zero clue or insight into a players athletic ability until the combine. If I only want to scout speed WR's or want to avoid scouting slow corners, there's really no way to avoid or be aware of that. So the main addition here is in the with the SPARQ score. I've talked about it before but if you don't know what it is, it's basically an attempt to quantify athleticism into a singular rating. The better athlete you are, the higher the rating. The worse athlete you are, the lower the rating. So when you first started scouting, you'd get a projected SPARQ score with some hints at his athletic ability and makeup rather than being completely blind.The combine would basically work exactly the same and you'd be given that information at the same point of the offseason. The one thing that would change here though is that the SPARQ score would go from a projected rating to an absolute one based on his combine data. I also threw in players not participating in certain drills just to throw some more variables and wrinkles into the mix.And then lastly I also threw in Pro Days to not only be more authentic but to again throw in some more variables. Everybody doesn't get invited to the combine. With 450 prospects in the draft, there's going to be around 200 of them that aren't invited and that's something I'd like to see represented not only for authenticity's sake but also because it makes the process of gauging that data more interesting. If you have two sets of data in can confirm what a player is or raise more questions due to discreprancies in the data. And then if there's only one set of data, you have to wonder if it might be the high end or low end or right on the mark for his physical ability.This is mainly just a QoL addition. The news feed is buried and the draft stories and tweets will disappear over time so if you're not paying close attention or keeping track it's easy to forget or not be aware of those stories. So within a players scouting card would also be a tab that would store all of the related stories and tweets for the given year so if you miss one, no worries!











And that's it. Hope it was worth your time and let me know your thoughts, what you like, don't like and what you'd overall like to see out of scouting when it comes to Madden.



Hey guys, I know it's only October but I've been looking forward towards Madden 20 recently and started working on some things, the first of which being some ideas for an improved scouting system. As always I've created several mockups to help convey and better explain the ideas I'll be talking about. My overall goal was to kind of outline a potential scouting system that is a deeper, more authentic experience that is also both more interesting and engaging than what the current scouting process offers. Admittedly this isn't as deep as it could possibly be and the reasoning behind that is that whenever I try to do things like this I try to tow the line of balancing things between the casual and experienced player while leaning more towards something that has more depth rather than being shallow. But with that, let's get into it:And that's it. Hope it was worth your time and let me know your thoughts, what you like, don't like and what you'd overall like to see out of scouting when it comes to Madden.

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