What Is Needed To Save Time On FAAB?

[DOUGHBOYS]

Just spit-balling....

If a player was 'hot', for instance,we'll use Ellsbury.
Ellsbury has been dropped by several fantasy teams earlier in the year because he was diagnosed with a broken arm.
A second diagnosis says that he could play. This info is released on Sunday night after bidding.

To combat a lucky guy with being first with the information on Ellsbury, lets say that we all make our $1 bids, but are not awarded these players till two, three, four hours before game time.
For those with more than one $1 bid....like Ellsbury, a note shows us this-
'There was more than one bid for this player. You may enter a higher amount to win this player. And one hour before the first game we would be told whether it was a winning bid or not.

[Gekko]

Getting too time intensive IMO. One Faab Sunday night. I don't want anymore Faab time investment

[KJ Duke]

Getting too time intensive IMO. One Faab Sunday night. I don't want anymore Faab time investment

Yeah, I think a vote on that would be a landslide.

[deadmoney]

How about a "hide" or "omit" player function?
It would be the antonym to "track" players.
It could clear out 30%-50% of the FA pool - especially mid to late season when scrolling the list(s) feels like homework.

[KJ Duke]

I remember one other request was a Bid On Player link from the free agent list. Is that still needed?

It's really only helpful if you can somehow insert the player into one your bid strings - if it just starts a new string it won't do much good. Would work well with drag and drop.

Smartphone? Ehhhh ... let's get the desktop system to kickass before programming time is used on that.

[Glenneration X]

There is nothing I'd like to see the NFBC/NFFC do this off-season more than improve their FAAB platform. Every off-season when I think of reducing teams with the NFBC, it is due to its FAAB and how long the process takes. Every in-season when I regret having not reduced my number of teams , it is also due to its FAAB.

Greg, I've had these discussions with you in the past, I've had these discussions with Tom. Let's be totally frank here. Your system is archaic. Don't look for tweaks, you need to blow it up and start from scratch. It becomes all the more apparant to me during football season, when I'm forced to perform FAAB for both the NFFC and its competition and get to see the differences between the two systems. The NFFC should look to mimic RT Sports. It literally takes me twice as long to perform NFFC FAAB when compared to FFPC.

There are five basic differences, all which would be huge improvements on what the NFFC currently offers. KJ hit on a few of these already, but I'll expand upon his thoughts with mine, and add a couple others.

Layout - The NFFC layout places the players chosen to be bid on at the top of the screen, with the player pool below. RT Sports instead has the free agent pool right alongside the players chosen to be bid on. This simple layout change reduces scrolling. For the NFFC, once you've chosen a player from the pool after scrolling to find him, you have to scroll back to the top, hit the conditional bid tab, then scroll back down to the player pool to add conditional bids to that bid group, then scroll back up to hit the cancel tab to start a new bid group, then back down to start over. For RT Sports, none of this scrolling is necessary. The player pool and the bid group is all right in front of you at all times. It eliminates several steps and infinite time.

Links vs Drop Down Boxes - Everytime you want to change a position, a page, a view, etc., the drop down box technology adds one step when compared to link technology. It may not seem like a lot for one action. However multiply that by several actions per free agent group, by several groups per team, by several teams for those who have multiple entries, by 26 weeks per year and you have a tremendous amount of wasted time built into your format.

All Free Agents per Position on a Single Page - This affects football more than baseball, but does start to affect the more populated positions in baseball like pitching as the season wears on. I'll use a specific example in football I dealt with just this week. I was looking to bid on Mario Manningham, who's yet to play this season, so he was buried under the M's alphabetically in the free agent pool. Where do I find him? There's 10 pages of WR's. I try page 5. Nope, there's the J's. I try page 7, nope the N's. OK, page 6. Yup, found him and it only took me 3 more steps than should be necessary.

Instantaneous Uploads/Page Changes/Actions, etc. - In this day and age of instant technology, I cannot understand why the NFFC format hangs up so often. There's a delay in everything. Live scoring loads, page changes, etc. We're always waiting. However, the worst is in regards to FAAB, because it's there we have the least amount of time to lose. I'm sure there's not a player who plays with the NFBC/NFFC who when rushing to make multiple last minute tweaks to their FAAB bids or orders or conditionals hasn't consistently run into the infamous and evil red "Working" box for several seconds per move (sometimes longer) before completing the action. We know the system is working, but why is it working so slow!! All I did was add a single conditional bid! It's because the system is hanging up. This should never happen. These moves should be instantaneous because we have more moves to follow and don't have the time to waste.

Drag & Drop Technology - I saved the most important issue in my mind for last. For those who take FAAB seriously, with multiple bids per week and multiple conditional bids per group, there is nothing more important than implementing this technology. To me, this is where the current NFBC/NFFC FAAB system is a complete fail. Most I've seen comment on where this technology would help focus on the top choice of any bid group. If anything should tell the NFBC that this needs to be fixed is how often posts have been made by players (even some by long-time veterans, even national champions) who thought you had to delete an entire group to change that top choice. That's because the "edit" format that the NFBC currently uses is so archaic, it's beyond current thought processes that would be what you'd have to do. However, as bad as the top choice issue is, the NFBC FAAB format affects conditional bids just as badly.
I'll use the following as an example to make my point. If at the last minute, some news comes out on a player that causes me to want to make him my 1st conditional bid in a bid group where I already have 10 conditional bids, this is what I'd have to do:
- Hit the "add conditional" tab for that bid group.
- Scroll down to find that player.
- Hit conditional bid for that player.
- Scroll back up to that bid group where that player will be at the bottom of that 10-player bid group.
- Press move up.
- Press move up.
- Press move up.
- Press move up.
- Repeat.
- Repeat.
- Repeat.
- Repeat.
- Repeat.
- Repeat.
- Hit the cancel conditional bid tab.
What? 14 steps. Do you see what I mean?
Drag and drop technology would turn all that into one simple move.
It is critical that we go there.

I love the NFBC. However, I'd love even more to see some major improvements to this part of their game.

[low talkers]

Great post Glenn. You did a great job explaining the need for drag & drop.
I am kind of embarrassed that I didn't even know you could change the top bid without deleting the whole list (I'd love to get those 52 hours of my life back), but it would be so much better if it was so simple that even a guy like me couldn't possibly make that mistake.
Reminds me of a bit by Mitch Hedberg;
“I rent a lot of cars, and when I drive a rental car, I don’t know what’s going on with it, right? So a lot of times I drive for like ten miles with the emergency brake on. That doesn’t say a lot for me, but it also doesn’t say a lot for the “emergency brake.” It’s really not an “emergency brake”, it’s an “emergency make-the-car-smell-funny lever.”"

[KJ Duke]

Good post Glenn. There are a couple things I like better about STATS free agents. One, the way they do conditional bidding give you a little more control - that is the best. Two, it is nice to able to see more and different stats.

But for all other bidding functionality, RT would be a great model to work from. It's fast and efficient and a lot easier platform from which to manage a lot of teams. The set lineup page for STATS could use the same sort of facelift, although that is a distant second to the need for FAAB.

[poopytooth]

Great post Glenn. You did a great job explaining the need for drag & drop.
I am kind of embarrassed that I didn't even know you could change the top bid without deleting the whole list (I'd love to get those 52 hours of my life back), but it would be so much better if it was so simple that even a guy like me couldn't possibly make that mistake.
Reminds me of a bit by Mitch Hedberg;
“I rent a lot of cars, and when I drive a rental car, I don’t know what’s going on with it, right? So a lot of times I drive for like ten miles with the emergency brake on. That doesn’t say a lot for me, but it also doesn’t say a lot for the “emergency brake.” It’s really not an “emergency brake”, it’s an “emergency make-the-car-smell-funny lever.”"

I liked Mitch Hedberg. Very funny guy.

Greg, the drag and drop would be a huge help as would the "players I highlight to track in one league be automatically tracked in other leagues I am in...I agree with whoever posted...this will quickly identify who is available in multiple leagues.

[DOUGHBOYS]

Great stuff, Glenn!
For sure the biggest problem every Sunday.
Nailed it. A big thumbs up!

[poopytooth]

One other thing...somehow get me to draft better players to begin with.

[Glenneration X]

One other thing...somehow get me to draft better players to begin with.

We're working on solvable problems here Mike.

[Money]

Damn Lowey, you're so articulate. If that post doesn't get em moving nothing will. We'll stated.

[TParsons]

Glenn nailed it. The drag/drop is key. Waiting on the system to "load" your up and down movement under the current format is a huge waste of time, especially when you get the inevitable freeze at "loading" and have to refresh and click through to start that process over. If Glenn's list isn't possible for this yr, then I think some sort of demo is in order if you're going to keep the current system. It's pretty clear in reading these comments and past comments that the current FAAB setup is not very user friendly. I just figured out how to edit a primary bid mid-season this yr, along w/ a few others due to a post made in these forums and there are others in this thread just figuring that out along with other things that should be straight forward. This is an obvious sign that the current navigation is not user friendly.

[jim.s]

to make FA quicker:
ability to download the entire FA pool to a spreadsheet. I do that now with copy and paste, but it takes some time.

to make lineup setting quicker:
ability to see stats for last 7, 14, 21, 28 days (as we can on FA)

[Cocktails and Dreams]

Great post by Glenn. That lack of being able to move players around in deep bid groups makes me hate doing faab with a passion. And my hatred for faab and the insane amount of time it takes is the main reason I haven't enjoyed fantasy baseball and thus backing off almost entirely. Improved functionality would improve my enjoyment and possibly my number of teams.

In addition all players at a position need to be able to show up on one page. No reason we should have to scroll to a 2nd page of pitchers. It is a way bigger deal for football than baseball but it needs to be fixed and since it is same program for both it may as well be done for baseball. EDIT(missed this in Glenn's post somehow) It is important.

But there is nothing more frustrating than putting guys in the bid group and having it take so damn long to reorder them and even worse having to do an edit add at the top. Words cannot describe the importance of this getting fixed from my perspective.

[Cocktails and Dreams]

Great post Glenn. You did a great job explaining the need for drag & drop.
I am kind of embarrassed that I didn't even know you could change the top bid without deleting the whole list (I'd love to get those 52 hours of my life back), but it would be so much better if it was so simple that even a guy like me couldn't possibly make that mistake.
Reminds me of a bit by Mitch Hedberg;
“I rent a lot of cars, and when I drive a rental car, I don’t know what’s going on with it, right? So a lot of times I drive for like ten miles with the emergency brake on. That doesn’t say a lot for me, but it also doesn’t say a lot for the “emergency brake.” It’s really not an “emergency brake”, it’s an “emergency make-the-car-smell-funny lever.”"

That is funny. I used to get so pissed off before I knew about the edit add. It still is bad but wow doing it all over again was brutal. More than one f bomb dropped over the years as a result.

[Greg Ambrosius]

We asked for the suggestions for a reason: To find ways to save all of you folks time via FAAB every Sunday. As we said, if it helps to move back the FAAB deadline to 10 pm ET on Sundays and the majority wants that, we'll do it. If we can make the fixes that Glenn so clearly stated are needed we'll do it. Simple things like not having a second page of free agents for Pitchers and Outfielders can be fixed; as Chad said it was much worse in football but that was fixed this week. Baseball will be an easy fix since only two positions go two pages. We wanted all of this feedback so that we can make Sundays easier for everyone.

Certainly fixing the top bid of a bid thread seems to be key along with an easier form of drag and drop. We'll discuss all and do what we can to save you time on all of this. We know all too well that time saved here leads to more enjoyment during the baseball season and eventually leads to more teams. It doesn't help to spend so much time trying to recruit new players if we can't give our current players all the tools they need to play as many games as possible. Until we do that, we won't be maximizing our great customers, who seem to want to play more and more with us if we just help.

[Cocktails and Dreams]

Wow, moving in the right direction. Something was already done for football regarding the number of pages. What used to be 10 pages of wide outs is now down to 2 pages which is acceptable as you at least know what page your guy is one you are looking for. Also it clears everyone that has scored at least on first page. Wish we had requested this sooner if it was that easy to do.

[Greg Ambrosius]

There is nothing I'd like to see the NFBC/NFFC do this off-season more than improve their FAAB platform. Every off-season when I think of reducing teams with the NFBC, it is due to its FAAB and how long the process takes. Every in-season when I regret having not reduced my number of teams , it is also due to its FAAB.

Greg, I've had these discussions with you in the past, I've had these discussions with Tom. Let's be totally frank here. Your system is archaic. Don't look for tweaks, you need to blow it up and start from scratch. It becomes all the more apparant to me during football season, when I'm forced to perform FAAB for both the NFFC and its competition and get to see the differences between the two systems. The NFFC should look to mimic RT Sports. It literally takes me twice as long to perform NFFC FAAB when compared to FFPC.

There are five basic differences, all which would be huge improvements on what the NFFC currently offers. KJ hit on a few of these already, but I'll expand upon his thoughts with mine, and add a couple others.

Layout - The NFFC layout places the players chosen to be bid on at the top of the screen, with the player pool below. RT Sports instead has the free agent pool right alongside the players chosen to be bid on. This simple layout change reduces scrolling. For the NFFC, once you've chosen a player from the pool after scrolling to find him, you have to scroll back to the top, hit the conditional bid tab, then scroll back down to the player pool to add conditional bids to that bid group, then scroll back up to hit the cancel tab to start a new bid group, then back down to start over. For RT Sports, none of this scrolling is necessary. The player pool and the bid group is all right in front of you at all times. It eliminates several steps and infinite time.

Links vs Drop Down Boxes - Everytime you want to change a position, a page, a view, etc., the drop down box technology adds one step when compared to link technology. It may not seem like a lot for one action. However multiply that by several actions per free agent group, by several groups per team, by several teams for those who have multiple entries, by 26 weeks per year and you have a tremendous amount of wasted time built into your format.

All Free Agents per Position on a Single Page - This affects football more than baseball, but does start to affect the more populated positions in baseball like pitching as the season wears on. I'll use a specific example in football I dealt with just this week. I was looking to bid on Mario Manningham, who's yet to play this season, so he was buried under the M's alphabetically in the free agent pool. Where do I find him? There's 10 pages of WR's. I try page 5. Nope, there's the J's. I try page 7, nope the N's. OK, page 6. Yup, found him and it only took me 3 more steps than should be necessary.

Instantaneous Uploads/Page Changes/Actions, etc. - In this day and age of instant technology, I cannot understand why the NFFC format hangs up so often. There's a delay in everything. Live scoring loads, page changes, etc. We're always waiting. However, the worst is in regards to FAAB, because it's there we have the least amount of time to lose. I'm sure there's not a player who plays with the NFBC/NFFC who when rushing to make multiple last minute tweaks to their FAAB bids or orders or conditionals hasn't consistently run into the infamous and evil red "Working" box for several seconds per move (sometimes longer) before completing the action. We know the system is working, but why is it working so slow!! All I did was add a single conditional bid! It's because the system is hanging up. This should never happen. These moves should be instantaneous because we have more moves to follow and don't have the time to waste.

Drag & Drop Technology - I saved the most important issue in my mind for last. For those who take FAAB seriously, with multiple bids per week and multiple conditional bids per group, there is nothing more important than implementing this technology. To me, this is where the current NFBC/NFFC FAAB system is a complete fail. Most I've seen comment on where this technology would help focus on the top choice of any bid group. If anything should tell the NFBC that this needs to be fixed is how often posts have been made by players (even some by long-time veterans, even national champions) who thought you had to delete an entire group to change that top choice. That's because the "edit" format that the NFBC currently uses is so archaic, it's beyond current thought processes that would be what you'd have to do. However, as bad as the top choice issue is, the NFBC FAAB format affects conditional bids just as badly.
I'll use the following as an example to make my point. If at the last minute, some news comes out on a player that causes me to want to make him my 1st conditional bid in a bid group where I already have 10 conditional bids, this is what I'd have to do:
- Hit the "add conditional" tab for that bid group.
- Scroll down to find that player.
- Hit conditional bid for that player.
- Scroll back up to that bid group where that player will be at the bottom of that 10-player bid group.
- Press move up.
- Press move up.
- Press move up.
- Press move up.
- Repeat.
- Repeat.
- Repeat.
- Repeat.
- Repeat.
- Repeat.
- Hit the cancel conditional bid tab.
What? 14 steps. Do you see what I mean?
Drag and drop technology would turn all that into one simple move.
It is critical that we go there.

I love the NFBC. However, I'd love even more to see some major improvements to this part of their game.

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for their input on FAAB. I knew this was an important subject to the future growth of our events and to the future pleasure you all take in playing here. We knew that if we could improve this very important part of our game that it would make the playing experience better for all of you. We needed your input and advice on this subject and we got it. Thanks to Glenn Lowy for so succinctly pointing out the areas of concern and detailing what needed to be done. Thanks to KJ Duke also for pinpointing the areas needed for improvement.

That being said, I'm very excited to say that we all agree here that the only way to solve this problem is to totally redesign our FAAB setup for all sports and get this the way we all need it now in 2013 and beyond. The layouts we have now are the same that we've had since 2004 and instead of making small fixes we need to start from scratch and redesign FAAB completely. We are up for that, but it's a major project. Still, it makes sense and the new design will be used for all of our sports to make sure we have the best FAAB in the industry. It's very important to us going forward and you helped us realize that.

Changing your top bid can only be done with a total redesign of how bids are processed and we know that has to be done. Also, right now we currently have full free agent lists with sortable listings on every single category. However, the request for limiting the data on free agents and having that list on one side of a page and your roster next to it for quick, easy moves is the way we are going to go. Avoiding the scrolling down is our first order of business.

This is definitely a top priority on our To-Do List for 2014 NFBC and I just wanted everyone to know that we aren't just sitting on these requests after asking for your input. We understand how important these changes are to you and saving you time on FAAB is like saving money. We're on it.

Thanks again for your feedback.

[CASS]

Reiterating some by priority: 1) Creating bid groups without the 1st player being the key. Let us create groups drop and drag etc and only validate on the done or save. 2) Push back faab deadline time. The current cutoff time is not good for anyone on the east coast. 3) Ability to copy groups across teams - and auto remove any players in the copied bid group that is not available in that specific league. Having to reinvent the wheel for each team in each league is a huge time waster.

[Deadheadz]

Also, during the design process please keep in mind not everyone will have drag and drop ability (touch screen computers) and please continue to support FAAB in the mobile apps.

Example: drag and drop KDS rankings are impossible AFAIK on a tablet.

[Bronx Yankees]

Also, during the design process please keep in mind not everyone will have drag and drop ability (touch screen computers) and please continue to support FAAB in the mobile apps.

Example: drag and drop KDS rankings are impossible AFAIK on a tablet.

This is a very good point. While I often am in front of a PC at work, at night and on the weekends I only use an iPad (or iPhone if I am out and about). Click-and-drag would be a huge improvement for FAAB and I fully support it, but the fix also should allow folks to do FAAB from a tablet and, if, possible, a Smart Phone. Thanks.

Mike

[Baseball Furies]

All these ideas for tech improvements sound great as usual...except for one problem:


Meanwhile, back at the NFBC tech team board meeting...

[Cocktails and Dreams]

So was the free agency improved?