What Technical Improvements Would You Like To See?

[MadCow Sez]

I don't think there's a technical improvement that would be more of a times savings than changing the way we edit the top choice for our FAAB bid lists or the way we rearrange the order of our contingency bids.

Having to hit the "edit" tab, scroll down through the player pool, hit the "edit add" tab for the new player we decide should top our bid list, and then scroll back to the top to hit the "add conditional" tab, then scroll back down to hit the "add conditional" tab to re-add the player who used to top our bid list, and then hit the "move up" tab over and over again until he's second on our list is just so time consuming and unbelievably archaic. That's about 40 extra steps than should be necessary for each of these moves we need to make.

Other sites have a relatively new technical phenomenon called "drag and drop". It takes about one second for us to reorder those bids. Oh wait, drag and drop has only been around for a decade.

All ball-busting aside, this would be a major time savings for the NFBC and NFFC's customers. Would changing this really be such a difficult task? It would make FAAB Sundays and especially last minute tweaking unbelievably simpler and quicker.

PS.... Any chance we can get this technical improvement installed prior to FAAB tomorrow?

To add to this...if we want to change out the top of the list, we have to cancel and start the whole list again. Why can't we swap anyone in the FAAB bid queue?

[TParsons]

I don't think there's a technical improvement that would be more of a times savings than changing the way we edit the top choice for our FAAB bid lists or the way we rearrange the order of our contingency bids.

Having to hit the "edit" tab, scroll down through the player pool, hit the "edit add" tab for the new player we decide should top our bid list, and then scroll back to the top to hit the "add conditional" tab, then scroll back down to hit the "add conditional" tab to re-add the player who used to top our bid list, and then hit the "move up" tab over and over again until he's second on our list is just so time consuming and unbelievably archaic. That's about 40 extra steps than should be necessary for each of these moves we need to make.

Other sites have a relatively new technical phenomenon called "drag and drop". It takes about one second for us to reorder those bids. Oh wait, drag and drop has only been around for a decade.

All ball-busting aside, this would be a major time savings for the NFBC and NFFC's customers. Would changing this really be such a difficult task? It would make FAAB Sundays and especially last minute tweaking unbelievably simpler and quicker.

PS.... Any chance we can get this technical improvement installed prior to FAAB tomorrow?

Great post, Glenn. The cosmetic/informational additions such as the DL players, player addition dates, etc are nice, but changes like this that make the site easier to navigate need to be at the top of the list for next season. The current FAAB system limits the number of teams I am willing to play due to the time spent doing the things Glenn mentioned. Hopefully this is addressed in the off-season.

[JohnP]

To add to this...if we want to change out the top of the list, we have to cancel and start the whole list again. Why can't we swap anyone in the FAAB bid queue?[/quote]

Not true. You can edit the top of the list by selecting "edit" and then selecting "edit add" on the player you want at the top of the list. But.....this feature pales in comparison to what Glenn suggests and others have been suggesting for quite some time. Greg, can you give us an update on this technical improvement?

[Greg Ambrosius]

I don't think there's a technical improvement that would be more of a times savings than changing the way we edit the top choice for our FAAB bid lists or the way we rearrange the order of our contingency bids.

Having to hit the "edit" tab, scroll down through the player pool, hit the "edit add" tab for the new player we decide should top our bid list, and then scroll back to the top to hit the "add conditional" tab, then scroll back down to hit the "add conditional" tab to re-add the player who used to top our bid list, and then hit the "move up" tab over and over again until he's second on our list is just so time consuming and unbelievably archaic. That's about 40 extra steps than should be necessary for each of these moves we need to make.

Other sites have a relatively new technical phenomenon called "drag and drop". It takes about one second for us to reorder those bids. Oh wait, drag and drop has only been around for a decade.

All ball-busting aside, this would be a major time savings for the NFBC and NFFC's customers. Would changing this really be such a difficult task? It would make FAAB Sundays and especially last minute tweaking unbelievably simpler and quicker.

PS.... Any chance we can get this technical improvement installed prior to FAAB tomorrow?

I would agree Glenn that the top improvement going forward is to make FAAB less time consuming and easier to do. I've forwarded this request and it's one being asked by Jared on the NFFC boards as well. We're looking at this.

As for drag and drop, we just added that to the new Draft Prep tool on the NFFC site and that will be part of new Draft Prep tool here, too. It would be great to make FAAB using the same drag and drop features. We're behind the times, you say, but we'll try to catch up.

If we can save all of you time on Sundays, we know you'll take more teams in future years, so it's a good suggestion. We'll definitely look at all of this.

[Money]

I admit to being addicted to the Live Scoring aspect of the game. With that said I am in a minority of the players that post here, I do not believe I am in the minority of the multitude of players that play the online championship. With that said live scoring needs to be improved to have columns that easily illustrate where your stats are coming from.

Every fantasy site has this except ours and in my opinion needs to be added. We have all gotten used to the current format, but in reality this aspect of our live scoring is second rate. You'll keep more players with state of the art live scoring in my opinion.

[Deadheadz]

This has probably been suggested repeatedly for a long time but I'll add my twist:

I understand why the NFBC would want to resist fundamental changes to the game and I agree, so my suggestion is that IF there were a plan to roll out a new Roto game anyway why not include Vickery FAAB?

It makes sense to leave the original games the same but wouldn't it be a good test of the popularity of Vickery to have one game with that option? I'm sure it can't be that hard to write the code to run Vickery FAAB waivers so I'm assuming it's not used because so many people enjoy seeing their leaguemates waste their budget.

For anyone reading this who doesn't yet know what Vickery FAAB means, it's basically the FAAB we know and love but the winning bid is automatically changed to being just $1 more than the next highest bid. Eg: I've bid 200 on Puig and Tom bid 100 while the rest of the league bid less than 100. I would win Puig with a final price of $101.

Perhaps it's a good idea to run a poll or survey of current NFBC managers to see if they'd spend money to buy an entry to a league using Vickery FAAB.


That's my $0.0206 (two cents Canadian)

Cheers!

[DOUGHBOYS]

It has been brought up before and soundly thrashed. After Shandler was beaten like a drum in the NFBC, he suggested vickery too, since his bids were stupid bad.
Vickery is a safety net for bids. Part of the fun and strategy in the NFBC is gauging what a player is worth to us, as well as our fellow league mates.
There is a certain sense of joy we get when we see a league mate bid over $100 more than the runner up bid.
It's his bad. Our good.
Why should his misjudgment be rewarded by vickery?
For me, vickery is like playing poker with match sticks. It's still poker, but there is no sense of danger in losing match sticks.
Playing with real money or playing without vickery is mano a mano and is a truer test for this level of fantasy baseball.
Installing a safety net at this level will be a tough sell for you, Deadheadz.

[joshguy]

To me, the live scoring is the biggest technical issue the site has. Often it will load with no stats at all or just for like one or two players. Sometimes will load with no pitching stats. Or a pitcher gives up a run but the site(while showing the correct score) wont count the run(s) against the pitchers stats for 10, 15 minutes. Often I have found myself going to other sites just to check a score to see what is correct.

A minor quibble...on Sunday nights the league standings load without Sundays results. Not a big deal in May but now later in the year I would like to see the most updated numbers when setting a lineup. The only way to get the correct standings is to go under live scoring which then you have to deal with all of its issues.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I'm not sure if this has already been discussed in this thread, and I apologize if it has, but it would be a big help if we could move around players within the lineup that have multi-position eligibility after their game has started. IE- Allen Craig can be moved around from 1b, OF, U, or CI after his game has started, but is locked from being benched.

Yep, I was victimized by this last night. I couldn't make U accessible for another player because it was locked with a 7:05 player.
Hopefully this can be fixed.

Adding on, I would love the ability to change a player out, even on Tues or Wed, if their team has not yet played for the week. Nothing sucks more than having your starter scratched when his team has not yet played a game and you have other starter's whose team has not played, but their lineup is already locked. IE- Chatwood tonight.

While I'm in here bitching, I'd also love to see it where we can make changes all the way up to the scheduled start time, rather than 15 minutes before. I'm not really sure what good that 15 minutes even does.

With the technology that is out there, there's no reason this can't be done.

/bitching for this week. Back for more later...maybe.

Thanks for the continued posts on technical improvements needed on the site...I think. Some of the rules suggestions aren't really site improvements, but I feel your passion nonetheless. Thanks.

As for this suggestion above, note that starting lineups lock 5 minutes before the scheduled start of a game. So if Monday's game starts at 7:00 pm ET, that player locks in at 6:55 pm ET. Right now we lock players 5 minutes before the start of their games on Monday and everyone locks on Monday.

Starting with our basketball contest this fall, we will lock players who play on Mondays and still allow all players who don't play that night to be open and not locked until the first game on Tuesday. We will lock all starting lineups with the first games on Tuesday, but this gives owners extra time to make starting lineup decisions on players who aren't playing on Monday. This is a nice upgrade from what we've had in the past. Oh, and all MLB teams play on Tuesday if they don't play on Monday, so Wednesday isn't a possibility.

This is something we'll obviously look at adding for baseball and I don't see why we wouldn't do that. Hope this helps.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I don't think there's a technical improvement that would be more of a times savings than changing the way we edit the top choice for our FAAB bid lists or the way we rearrange the order of our contingency bids.

Having to hit the "edit" tab, scroll down through the player pool, hit the "edit add" tab for the new player we decide should top our bid list, and then scroll back to the top to hit the "add conditional" tab, then scroll back down to hit the "add conditional" tab to re-add the player who used to top our bid list, and then hit the "move up" tab over and over again until he's second on our list is just so time consuming and unbelievably archaic. That's about 40 extra steps than should be necessary for each of these moves we need to make.

Other sites have a relatively new technical phenomenon called "drag and drop". It takes about one second for us to reorder those bids. Oh wait, drag and drop has only been around for a decade.

All ball-busting aside, this would be a major time savings for the NFBC and NFFC's customers. Would changing this really be such a difficult task? It would make FAAB Sundays and especially last minute tweaking unbelievably simpler and quicker.

PS.... Any chance we can get this technical improvement installed prior to FAAB tomorrow?

To add to this...if we want to change out the top of the list, we have to cancel and start the whole list again. Why can't we swap anyone in the FAAB bid queue?

We are getting similar questions right now on the NFFC boards about the primary bid player. Right now I'd say it's the way the FAAB was originally built, but we'll look into this and see if there is a way to upgrade this in the future. It is on our radar and if it saves time for you owners each Sunday then it has to be a priority. We'll see what we can do with the setup we have in place now. Good point.

[Greg Ambrosius]

This has probably been suggested repeatedly for a long time but I'll add my twist:

I understand why the NFBC would want to resist fundamental changes to the game and I agree, so my suggestion is that IF there were a plan to roll out a new Roto game anyway why not include Vickery FAAB?

It makes sense to leave the original games the same but wouldn't it be a good test of the popularity of Vickery to have one game with that option? I'm sure it can't be that hard to write the code to run Vickery FAAB waivers so I'm assuming it's not used because so many people enjoy seeing their leaguemates waste their budget.

For anyone reading this who doesn't yet know what Vickery FAAB means, it's basically the FAAB we know and love but the winning bid is automatically changed to being just $1 more than the next highest bid. Eg: I've bid 200 on Puig and Tom bid 100 while the rest of the league bid less than 100. I would win Puig with a final price of $101.

Perhaps it's a good idea to run a poll or survey of current NFBC managers to see if they'd spend money to buy an entry to a league using Vickery FAAB.


That's my $0.0206 (two cents Canadian)

Cheers!

No on Vickroy. It's called "Make the game easier for me" FAAB bidding. It's not happening here.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I admit to being addicted to the Live Scoring aspect of the game. With that said I am in a minority of the players that post here, I do not believe I am in the minority of the multitude of players that play the online championship. With that said live scoring needs to be improved to have columns that easily illustrate where your stats are coming from.

Every fantasy site has this except ours and in my opinion needs to be added. We have all gotten used to the current format, but in reality this aspect of our live scoring is second rate. You'll keep more players with state of the art live scoring in my opinion.

Joe, if NFBC owners only want the 5 offensive and 5 pitching stat categories on Live Scoring, we could provide it that way. I thought we heard that owners wanted more information there and we're providing it. But sure, at season's end we can look at that page again and get a feeling on what is good there and what could be better aesthetically. We always want to improve Live Scoring and Live Standings and Live Overall Standings. We are far ahead of where we were last year at this time, but let's keep improving it and making it better online and on your smart phones. It's our goal too.

[Money]

I admit to being addicted to the Live Scoring aspect of the game. With that said I am in a minority of the players that post here, I do not believe I am in the minority of the multitude of players that play the online championship. With that said live scoring needs to be improved to have columns that easily illustrate where your stats are coming from.

Every fantasy site has this except ours and in my opinion needs to be added. We have all gotten used to the current format, but in reality this aspect of our live scoring is second rate. You'll keep more players with state of the art live scoring in my opinion.

Joe, if NFBC owners only want the 5 offensive and 5 pitching stat categories on Live Scoring, we could provide it that way. I thought we heard that owners wanted more information there and we're providing it. But sure, at season's end we can look at that page again and get a feeling on what is good there and what could be better aesthetically. We always want to improve Live Scoring and Live Standings and Live Overall Standings. We are far ahead of where we were last year at this time, but let's keep improving it and making it better online and on your smart phones. It's our goal too.

That's great Greg. I believe a majority would forgo the additional non scoring category's. I too think that our live scoring is very very good, I also think it could be the absolute best with this addition.

Thanks.

[Deadheadz]

No on Vickroy. It's called "Make the game easier for me" FAAB bidding. It's not happening here.

What makes the game unfair to some is when a pro gets into a league with a bunch of newbies who blow all their FAAB dollars by mid season and the pro gets to grab all the upcoming talent for the rest of the year, thus building a powerhouse which can climb the overall standings while other leagues are filled with more balanced ownership or sometimes jam packed with veteran roto players who don't get such opportunities.

I might have a great team in my league but how am I supposed to compete in the overall standings with a guy who's got 12-14 stiffs in his league?
Or is that the point, enter every league you can afford and hope one is full of green managers?

[DOUGHBOYS]

I might have a great team in my league but how am I supposed to compete in the overall standings with a guy who's got 12-14 stiffs in his league?

If there are 12-14 stiffs in a league, you're not playing in the NFBC.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Wow deadheadz, which NFBC league has 12 or 14 stiffs in it? And if that's the case, how the hell is Vickrey going to even out that league?? With top bidders continuously getting money back in FAAB, the strong just dominates more and more in FAAB.

Thanks for your take on the NFBC, but I don't think it's accurate.

[Deadheadz]

There's a lot of stiffs in the league with the leader of the 2013 Online Championship as one example.

I haven't taken the time to search through all leagues because it isn't worth the effort.

You've made your stance clear on Vickery, so I won't bother you about it again.

[Greg Ambrosius]

There's a lot of stiffs in the league with the leader of the 2013 Online Championship as one example.

I haven't taken the time to search through all leagues because it isn't worth the effort.

You've made your stance clear on Vickery, so I won't bother you about it again.

I think this is one of the dumbest posts ever made on our boards. To call out the other owners in a league where someone is winning an overall title is demeaning and wrong. That league has a 10-year NFBC vet in it who is among our best players in our contest history and another owner who won our Draft Champions national championship a couple of years ago, along with several other good owners. Earlier you posted that 10-11 owners were bad in this league and then you edited your post. Not only that, but Eric hasn't led this contest the entire season, so I assume the other owners were bad in the leagues that someone else was leading previously this season, huh?

It's foolish to make a post like this and demeaning to every other owner. I honestly thought other owners would post earlier about this so that I didn't have to say it was the dumbest post ever, but it didn't happen. Sorry deadheadz, but your post is a low blow that offends me and I assume the other owners in this league. Not in good taste.

[Glenneration X]

I honestly thought other owners would post earlier about this so that I didn't have to say it was the dumbest post ever, but it didn't happen.

I considered responding to Deadheadz' post, but wanted to make sure Massotto wasn't in the league he was referring to first.

All kidding aside, I passed on responding for the same reason I'd best most did. It was an ignorant post not worthy of a response. I think responding actually gives it more weight than it deserves.

[CASS]

Not sure if this has been mentioned prior - but when i drilldown to a player page in the game log I need a column with the projected starter facing my hitter. This is beyond time consuming going to another site to get the match ups when making lineup decisions.

[DOUGHBOYS]

There's a lot of stiffs in the league with the leader of the 2013 Online Championship as one example.

I haven't taken the time to search through all leagues because it isn't worth the effort.

You've made your stance clear on Vickery, so I won't bother you about it again.

I think this is one of the dumbest posts ever made on our boards. To call out the other owners in a league where someone is winning an overall title is demeaning and wrong. That league has a 10-year NFBC vet in it who is among our best players in our contest history and another owner who won our Draft Champions national championship a couple of years ago, along with several other good owners. Earlier you posted that 10-11 owners were bad in this league and then you edited your post. Not only that, but Eric hasn't led this contest the entire season, so I assume the other owners were bad in the leagues that someone else was leading previously this season, huh?

It's foolish to make a post like this and demeaning to every other owner. I honestly thought other owners would post earlier about this so that I didn't have to say it was the dumbest post ever, but it didn't happen. Sorry deadheadz, but your post is a low blow that offends me and I assume the other owners in this league. Not in good taste.

Traffic on the baseball Boards is low during the dog days, otherwise I think Deadheadz comments would have been highly criticized by many.

[Deadheadz]

I think this is one of the dumbest posts ever made on our boards. To call out the other owners in a league where someone is winning an overall title is demeaning and wrong. That league has a 10-year NFBC vet in it who is among our best players in our contest history and another owner who won our Draft Champions national championship a couple of years ago, along with several other good owners. Earlier you posted that 10-11 owners were bad in this league and then you edited your post. Not only that, but Eric hasn't led this contest the entire season, so I assume the other owners were bad in the leagues that someone else was leading previously this season, huh?

It's foolish to make a post like this and demeaning to every other owner. I honestly thought other owners would post earlier about this so that I didn't have to say it was the dumbest post ever, but it didn't happen. Sorry deadheadz, but your post is a low blow that offends me and I assume the other owners in this league. Not in good taste.

I respect your opinion Greg but I'd like to point out that I asked a rhetorical question "how am I supposed to compete..." - I'm not in the league with The Krukster but I do believe there are owners in that league who must be rookies, homers or just asleep at the wheel when it came to the draft.

Weeks ago I looked at the players on the team The Krukster and was amazed at how 11 other managers would let very good players fall 10-20 spots from their ADP on draft day. I had assumed someone made a bad drop or two and Krukster was able to pick them up. But when I reviewed you weekly posts on FAAB bids and Drops for the Online Championship I saw that there were no such pickups.

He drafted all those players.

You'll notice I never suggested collusion but said there were "a lot of stiffs" in his league. It was an assumption from the evidence available to me. Thank you for pointing out that I quickly made a correction to a statement I found I was unable to back up; not 10-11 stiffs.

I don't have access to draft results from a league I'm not in but the evidence led me to the following assumptions:

Krukster - Online Championship League

(suspected draft results)

Round 01 - McCutcheon ADP 6 6
Round 02 - Kershaw ADP 15 19
Round 03 - Ellsbury ADP 35 30
Round 04 - Darvish ADP 51 43
Round 05 - Scherzer ADP 63 54
Round 06 - Hanley ADP 65 67
Round 07 - Yadier ADP 68 78
Round 08 - Chapman ADP 72 91
Round 09 - Moore ADP 91 102
Round 10 - Granderson ADP 94 115
Round 11 - Trumbo ADP 96 126
Round 12 - Ricky Weeks ADP 105 139
Round 13 - Raph Soriano ADP 115 150
Round 14 - Crawford ADP 130 163
Round 15 - Howie ADP 140 174
Round 16 - Frazier ADP 160 187
Round 17 - Minor ADP 165 198
Round 18 - Morneau ADP 174 211
Round 19 - Alvarez ADP 187 222
Round 20 - Cishek ADP 194 235
Round 21 - Alfonso ADP 215 246
Round 22 - Segura ADP 228 259
Round 23 - Salty ADP 243 270
Round 24 - Infante ADP 245 283
Round 25 - Quentin ADP 263 294
Round 26 - Rasmus ADP 277 307
Round 27 - Wandy ADP 282 318
Round 28 - Taveras ADP 294 331
Round 29 - Liriano ADP 420 undrafted FAAB
Round 30 - Cingrani ADP 688 undrafted FAAB

My apologies to the five leaguemates of The Krukster who have fewer than 45 roto points for pointing out how bad they are at drafting and the rest who allowed Eric John to do what most of us would do and pick up great players who got missed in the draft.

[CASS]

Deadheadz how many main event division titles have you won?

[joshguy]

Eric John had a phenomenal draft. One of the biggest factors is injury, he really didnt have any and the couple he had, Granderson and Hanley he took late. Most of his players performed to expectation or exceeded. Sure some of the guys he took he got lower than what their ADP is. That means nothing. If you checked everyones draft anywhere, a lot of guys are going to get "steals". If you just drafted straight off ADP, youre probably not winning anything.

Instead of taking the time to look up his ADP, you could have just looked and realized that he is obviously one of the better players this year. Two teams in the top 3 of NFBC XII, leading the Online and a top 10 team in the Draft Champions.

The only thing that does kind of stink about that league is that it does appear 2 teams never even really checked on their teams since God only knows when. But even had they really done much of anything, their teams stats dont come close to John's stats at all so it wouldnt affect his score.

[Deadheadz]

Eric John had a phenomenal draft.

Phenomenal indeed. I'm not saying in the least that Mr. John did anything wrong or didn't prove he's a skilled roto drafter.

My point is that a lot of other skilled drafters would likely have done as well faced with the situation provided by the other managers on draft day.

Using the NFBC's own ADP: Eric got four 6th round players and three 8th round players, all by the 11th round. Then (I'm assuming) still had a 9th rounder available when he picked his 12th player, 10th round player when he picked his 13th player and so on.

You could say he "reached" for Ellsbury Darvish and Scherzer in the 3rd, 4th and 5th rounds but after that it's easy to see why a skilled roto player would do well when he's getting an extra two rounds of value with every pick. I don't think you need to be a former champion to do well when you get these kind of "steals" during a draft.

This is my first year playing at NFBC so I haven't won anything, yet. I'm leading my Online Championship league but I feel that all my fellow managers seem pretty savvy except the one who hasn't changed his lineup since early May (did he pass away?).

If you're all telling me that it's not uncommon for a league to let players fall like this in the draft (at the premiere Roto site) then I look forward to taking part in more of these contests. In my experience you don't see one manager get so much value from the other managers letting good players fall 2-4 rounds past their ADP.

As far as Greg's "dumbest post" comment...

you guys are all thinking it, so I'll just say it myself:
I'm just gonna shut up now.


Cheers!