Delay Draft Program Builder Perks

I can confirm that using Clemson and Dabo Sweeney in Season 4, along with adding the 100 preorder points to him and leveling him up to level 100, Delay Sunday, does not seem to work as intended. I am recruiting players and redshirting them. In their freshman (redshirt) year, they typically start as backups and become starters in their sophomore (redshirt) year before entering the draft. However, they have a "None" for persuasion chance, which prevents me from persuading them to stay. 

In Season 4, I focused on maximizing all of my persuasion perks and utilized all available delay Sunday perks, yet I have not seen a "None" player choose to stay. Since there are only options to adjust player count for portal transfers this season and not the draft, my team is going to be in a poor position to start season 5.

On a side not most, if not all of these players are at least a 90 overall.  It is understandable that they may want to leave, but why have the skill and please make it refundable if things are not working as intended.

Ah thank you. I appreciate the input.

I agree in particular with your comment about how it may be understandable if they want to leave, but completely negates the usefulness of the three perks.

If a guy isn't good enough to leave for the draft, then why would I care if he goes somewhere else? The only reason to have these perks is to convince your top players to stick around longer. Quite frankly, the lower tier perks are mostly just to get to that last one to keep your elite players for one more year.

I come with more data.  Season 4 with Clemson.  I have won 3 Natys in a row.  I have 18 total players leaving for the draft.  4 are seniors and 14 are underclassmen with at least 3 years of eligibility.  Out of the 14, 10 have "none" for persuasion chance to stay, while 4 have an option to persuade.   With all of the perks in persuasion, I am able to keep the 4 with a chance.  With the exception of one player out of the 14 all of them have at least a 90 over or higher with the highest being a SO(RS) 99 OVR QB who started 1 season.  The anomaly is my backup running back who is overall 88 and set for the 6th round and has "None" persuasive options.

Let's put this in perspective:

If I did not have persuasion abilities this is what I could lose in one season:

Offense: Starting QB, Best 2 HB, Best 2 WR, Best TE, Best Center all are underclassmen

Defence: Starting Edge, All 3 starting Line backers, 1 CB, Both starting Safeties, all are underclassmen.

If you throw in the transfer portal, which I have capped at 12, the total players leaving in the offseason without persuasion attempts would be 30 players total.  

If I had the transfer portal set to default 20, I could be losing as many as 38 players in one season, which is more than the 35 I can recoup from recruiting in one year.

Although not completely unthinkable, it is definitely challenging. Hopefully, this will not continue every couple of seasons.

There IS a "kinda" workaround that you can employ that seems to work.

I'd only suggest it for singleplayer dynasties because it is really pretty "cheaty". You can temporarily **bleep** your players right before they make the decision on if they are going to declare or not by editing their stats.

Temporarily set a Wide Receiver's speed to 1 for example and then set it back to what it was before afterward. As you noticed, the magic number really does seem to be 90 overall player rating. Once a player is below that, they seem to be much more amenable to either not leaving at all, or at least you having the option to try and persuade them to stay.

Personally, I just think that EA needs to ease the throttle back on players leaving with no chance at all to persuade them. This seems like something that should be patched in some way. Either make the Program Builder Perks a lot stronger, or make the players much less likely to leave until after their JUNIOR year and not the SOPHMORE year. 

Had the same issue and it’s incredibly annoying and takes away from the Dynasty playing experience.

I‘ve tried multiple runs with different coaches with the Roster Retention Tiers in the Program Builder section locked or unlocked and there is absolutely no difference.

What I have observed is that you can influence Transfer Portal behavior and the chance to successfully persuade a player either via the „User Player Transfer Chance“ slider or the overall skill level. If you adjust the latter to „Freshman“ once you’ve hit the week when players leave, the chance to successfully persuade a player rises significantly. That however has zero impact on those who declare for the Pro Draft.

For those declaring, and the likelihood of a successful persuasion I see two metrics, one is the overall rating of the player, the other are individual trophies/accolades that player has won. If for example you have a 90/91 rated player that would be drafted in rounds 5-7, and that player has been named to an All-American team, the persuasion chance is „None“.

In my opinion it’s just super frustrating. I crawled different forums and while I understand the „just let them leave & recruit new players, it adds realism“-fraction, I tend to play dynasty mode differently.

There is only a limited number of NIL-licensed players, and given that recruiting classes are (understandably) randomized, naturally you have less „real“ players each year. Normally I play a dynasty for 2-3 seasons and then start over again, sometimes with different teams, challenges etc.

For that reason it’s incredibly annoying when in addition to the outgoing seniors, a large amount of underclassmen declares for the draft early without a real chance of persuasion. And I’m not talking about a Junior player who has started for multiple seasons and is expected to be drafted in the first round. But more about the Sophomores (RS), the players with max. 1 year of starting experience, particularly when they would be drafted somewhere between round 4 and 7, who could still gain from staying for another season, continuing their development and increasing their draft stock to be a 1-2 rounder.

For example, I had a dynasty with Texas, winning the title in year one. After the season Arch Manning declared for the pro draft, he was a 2nd or 3rd team All-American, was projected to go in round 6 and the persuasion chance was „none“. I went back to an earlier save point, simulated without Arch winning All-American honors, he still declared for the draft as an expected 6th round pick, only the persuasion chance was „Extremely Low“ or „Very Low“. Either way that’s just an incredibly unrealistic outcome, having a RS Sophomore declare early to be drafted in +/- round 6.

In the same dynasty I used the 100 preorder bonus points to unlock the three tiers in „Roster Retention“ for Steve Sarkisian … after the third year (partly simulated), I am still waiting for my first successful persuasion of a player intending to leave for the NFL.

All in all a very frustrating experience that takes away far too many NIL-players early. At least make it manageable … those who want that element of realism can use it, but provide a slider or make the difficulty settings apply for those declaring for the Pro Draft, … for those who’d like to keep a couple of licensed players along.

I wish EA would do something about it, but given the issue I’m not getting my hopes up. Frustrating. 

I feel you.

I just finished my most recent season. I have transfers turned way, waaay down and I STILL have, between the players going pro with "none" to the chance to persuade them to stay and the transfers themselves, a total of THIRTY-FIVE players leaving the program. 

14 guys going Pro with "None" as the chance to Persuade them to stay. Including guys going as late as the 5th round with "None" for Persuade chance.

This *bleep* needs to be turned way, way, WAAAAAY down.

Basically if your guys put up good stats and they have a rating of 90 or better, they're gone.