I've been thinking a lot about this, and here's an idea I'd like to float:

1) Mask player ratings. Each player will be assigned an independent 'error' range that determines the size of the scouting error. It would be from 25% of the bar to 60% of the bar. On the player card, you would see this bar for each attribute, and each attribute's max value would be somewhere inside that range, but there would be absolutely no indication as to where within that range it might be.
2) Scout points - I've been leery to implement something like this because of the potential for encouraging multis, but what if when you scouted a player it unlocked it for everyone? So, basically, each team has, say, 5 players that they can scout. If every team scouts their 5 player allotment, 165 players would get scouted. (That might be too much, maybe it should just be 2 scout points per team) Scouting a player would reduce the scouting error by half - so if the player's unscouted range was 30%, it would reduce it to 15%; if their range was 50%, it would reduce it to 25%.
3) As soon as you draft the player and he appears on your team, the scouting rating is removed and replaced with the regular ratings.

This would make high draft picks even more risky - do you take that player that could be rated anywhere from 50 to 100, or do you take the one who is between 70 and 85? - and would hopefully make later round draft picks more interesting - ideally this would improve the quality of picks in the later rounds by increasing the likelihood of less quality picks in the early rounds. Of course, once the draft is over, all remaining rookies would have their scouting masks removed (which would also possibly make late free agency more interesting as there would be more likelihood of good players having gone undrafted).

Thoughts?

I don't like 2. But I like some of the idea of 1.

We need Scouts. Investing in Good Scouts gets you the best Information. But even the Best Scouts have a Margin of Error. This goes with Masking the Skills.

Would be even better to have a Team of Scouts, not just a Single Scout. Each could have a Speciality or grouping of Positions, like in real life. You don't want your QB Scout telling you about Corner Backs.

But yes, masking these Scores and making us do some work to find Players would make the Draft 100% different, and I think more engaging and enjoyable.

I've been thinking a lot about this, and here's an idea I'd like to float:

1) Mask player ratings. Each player will be assigned an independent 'error' range that determines the size of the scouting error. It would be from 25% of the bar to 60% of the bar. On the player card, you would see this bar for each attribute, and each attribute's max value would be somewhere inside that range, but there would be absolutely no indication as to where within that range it might be.
2) Scout points - I've been leery to implement something like this because of the potential for encouraging multis, but what if when you scouted a player it unlocked it for everyone? So, basically, each team has, say, 5 players that they can scout. If every team scouts their 5 player allotment, 165 players would get scouted. (That might be too much, maybe it should just be 2 scout points per team) Scouting a player would reduce the scouting error by half - so if the player's unscouted range was 30%, it would reduce it to 15%; if their range was 50%, it would reduce it to 25%.
3) As soon as you draft the player and he appears on your team, the scouting rating is removed and replaced with the regular ratings.

This would make high draft picks even more risky - do you take that player that could be rated anywhere from 50 to 100, or do you take the one who is between 70 and 85? - and would hopefully make later round draft picks more interesting - ideally this would improve the quality of picks in the later rounds by increasing the likelihood of less quality picks in the early rounds. Of course, once the draft is over, all remaining rookies would have their scouting masks removed (which would also possibly make late free agency more interesting as there would be more likelihood of good players having gone undrafted).

Thoughts?