I've been running simulations, finding bugs in the GM module (tons), reworking specs (all thrown out, rewritten), and trying to actually be-a-gm this thing.

An area that I glossed over when it was just a game simulation was figuring out how good players were.  I could look at the raw data and see - which is fine for confirming the numbers work the right way.  But that wasn't going to be fun in a GM simulation if every player just knew concretely how good a player was.

So I've been trying several things - draft grades, league-relative ratings, pro-only relative ratings, and just confusing myself in the process.

There's questions throughout the lifecycle of a player:

1. How will this player develop?  This has a lot of "fog" as you go out further in time.  But there is some idea and some projection.  
2. How good is this player now?  That is relative to the entire population; what league do they belong in.  When players are young, that even has some "fog" in it.    
3. Have they reached potential?  Are they declining?  
4. What role do they belong in?  Are they a top line player or a fringe tweener?

I created this graph that will (I think) show all of this in something you can glance at.  The yellow bar/dot is the current state of the player.  Younger players have more uncertainty until they play more games so it will show that.  The blue bar is the potential ceiling for that player.  The unfilled dots are historical of where they were in previous seasons.  And the dotted blue line bar was the historical range for where that player was scouted (so you can see what has changed).

The intention long term is you can narrow these bars by scouting - spending either time or money to get better information. 

The chips on the right will give some descriptive element to the player's form.  Boom/Bust just means yeah, they could be awesome, but they also could suck.

Implementing this now to see how I like it.  As always, I might throw it out if it confuses me more.

GM Module - "How do I figure out if someone is good?" edition