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This might seem like a silly question, but is scouting really worth it? If you chose the minimum, you’re spending $120,000 over the 12 weeks of the season or $480,000 if you take the maximum amount of points. All this considered, if you are in a competitive division and everyone is active, you’ll be lucky to get a MVP potential player or HOF and they’ll be 95% 19 years old. You can buy this potential and age in the market right now for as low as $10k... so in this case, the scouting doesn’t seem worth it at all.

However, in a division full of bots, you are more likely to get the players of your choice as the bots don’t scout of course. In this case I would argue that scouting might be worth it, only if you happen to get a 18 year old HALL OF FAMER or All time great. Even an 18 year old MVP likely won’t sell for $480,00 you spent on scouting.

I know I’m ignoring the long term potential of training and 3-5 years later selling the player for a million+, but even then you will have to be paying for exceptional trainers, etc.
Any thoughts? To say scouting is worth it, seems like a naive statement to me!

Canada's and England's draftees go at a premium in the market, but even then in general you are right that it does not make sense from a business perspective.

We'd be better off if they let us create a player picking the potential (up to HoF) and 4 or 5 skills by paying in scouting points. Let's say 70 points = HoF; 65 = MVP and 10 points for selecting 1 maxed out skill up to a maximum of 4. So you can have a 6'6'' HoF with 7 OD/ID/IS/RB for 110 scouting points.

Assuming 2 points a week are bought, that will take over 4 seasons to accumulate, it will cost 550k and it still does not guarantee you will get a great draftee as the rest of the skills may be complete garbage. It's still better than the lottery we're subjected to and would incentivise the non tanking teams to invest in scouting points too.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 4/18/2018 4:11:57 AM

It is a risk, but you have to definitely go all in when you decide to get your draftees. I had about $600k in the draft and points used for this season, made sure I had the top pick, and the first two picks I got netted me $5.5m so I came out significantly ahead. You obviously can't do that every season, but it is economically sound to do so every few when the points are there if you're in a position that relegating for a season will help your team long term.

How much different is it in a micro your draftees been good over time. I have only had one long term USA player and since we been entering deflation and them flooding the market with better USA players the USA market has been trash and they can never at least compete with global entities. USA market has been trash for a long time this is why you never see us hoarding the USA players and China always pick pocketing them for national team prospects.

Yep definitely worth it if you do it smart.

You need a lot of luck actually. I have seen way too many drafts without any decent high potential players and some where the best players where Perennial All Stars.

Also with all due respect training mid and lower potential players won't cut it at the top and I know since all my trainees started as 18yo or 19yo HoF and I train 3 of them. In D1. While making the finals twice in the last 3 seasons.

I think going for draft picks is only really viable in bot leagues where you don't get penalised for tanking and you pick ahead of the bots. Then, if you ALWAYS have the first pick and you scout every other season with a lot of points, sure you will find that 5/5 A+ prospect 7'0'' PG or 6'5'' PF every now and then. In competitive leagues it won't work.

Even 5/5 prospects may turn out to be not that great, like a 45 TSP MVP. Trainees' grading is made by salary and not TSP. Which means a 5 ball A+ player may have a lower TSP than a worse graded player, because he just needs the skills that add salary. It wouldn't be bad if they changed the skill level to reflect TSP instead of salary.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 4/21/2018 1:40:09 PM