Looking For Feedback On NFBC Cutline Rules

[TRAIN]

Really like EA Sports suggestion about having some way to be able to make all bids the same amount with just one click of the mouse. With all of the contingency bids needed (especially in the 2nd FAAB event) this would definitely save a lot of time.

Also like JohnP's suggestion about improving the FAAB software in general to address the time needed to do FAAB. Although I am able to drag and drop players now, focusing on improving the FAAB software to save time should be a priority.

One thing to add would be to have a column for Cutline points accumulated to date for each Free Agent (just like we have HR, RBI, SB, etc.for each Free Agent). Then we could also adjust the time frame for the points using the pull down box located on the upper left side of the page. As it stands right now, there is no quick way to see how many Cutline points a Free Agent has accumulated.

[jvetter]

I decided to give Cutline a go for the first time this year and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I love the optimal lineup feature that makes it stand out from everything else. I think the roster size and FAAB periods are fine. I would be sad to see roster expansion/FAAB disappear in this contest. It really gave me something to look forward to during the season and was exhilarating experience to analyze the player pool and set bids knowing this is your team for the rest of the season. I am only running one team so I understand how doing this for even a handful of teams would become a chore.

I would love to see how many hitting and pitching points (instead of just total) your team has on the standings pages (both overall and league).

Whatever is ultimately decided, I am looking forward to continuing to play the Cutline format in subsequent years.

[Catch]

Really liked the format this year. My only suggestion to save time would be to have an drop down box to make an entire group of bids the same amount. Seems like that should be a quick fix. Please keep the 2 FAAB periods.

This is a must for the new IT team. Having 20+ contingency bids and they are all defaulted at $1, we currently have to go to every bid and adjust the dollar amount. If IT gives us one click of a button to match the initial bid that would alleviate most of the FAAB issues.

[marknym]

So is FAAB -- even at just twice per year -- so intrusive that it curtails participation in the NFBC Cutline Championship? That's the question.

Speaking as someone who has yet to participate in this contest, it's mostly the FAAB that's keeping me away. I already have enough teams on my plate to manage in-season; trying out a new contest would be a lot more appealing if I knew it was a draft and done kind of deal. The other part holding me back is getting acquainted with an entirely new scoring system from 5x5 roto. I do understand it's not light-years different in the results, and I feel that if I knew my work would be done after the draft, I'd be more likely to do the extra research and enter a handful of these leagues. I'd probably make those entries later in the draft season--that's when I was considering entering this year. That being said, might be fun to do a very early one of these too, so I wouldn't rule it out.

Just another viewpoint FWIW to you Greg.

[Quahogs]

I think that as a national contest at that price point you need to eliminate the faab. This coming from a person who enjoys the faab process! Obviously a necessity for the ME and high stakes but for a $150 league where you want people to buy 15 teams...too much decision making for a smaller mass quantity product.

If you want to be equitable to early drafters(if you do away with faab) I think you separate the drafted teams up to Mar1 and the ones drafted AFTER Mar1. Not two separate contests necessarily but run a side by side with only the prior to Mar 1 participants with an extra payout to that winner. This can incentivize early drafting too.

[Deadheadz]

1. It would be easy to do Cutline slow drafts as well. With 10 good owners you could get through 400 players rather quickly in comparison to 750 players in the Draft Champions format. Just a thought and something I'm sure we could design rather quickly with the SportsHub developers. New ideas will be much easier to implement going forward.

2. Would having no FAAB hurt early signups even more? It's a rhetorical question because we have discussed this format without knowing the answer. Something to consider for sure, but maybe more than 40 rounds is then needed.

Thanks for the feedback.

Are you concerned at all that having FAAB-less Cutline slow drafts would tend to decrease the numbers of people signing up for the $150 DC contest? Especially at a lower price, I can see $125 Cutline drafts increasing and the DC drafts decreasing.

Hopefully I'm wrong about that.

[mbendar16]

A lot of good points, so I will try to add 2 more.

FAAB - if it were to be kept, is there any thought to just having the one in June? I know this option would discourage early drafting, but suggestions have been made to address by KJ/others. I think that 1st FAAB is worse than the 2nd for players with a lot of teams and there is months to plan for the June one if you choose to.

Faab-less - I think the scoring/rules would need to change for this to be successful. With no chance to retool with FAAB, I think more weight should be given to the 1st half of the season, with Steve's point on early drafting to be taken into consideration as well.

[JohnP]

I think that as a national contest at that price point you need to eliminate the faab. This coming from a person who enjoys the faab process! Obviously a necessity for the ME and high stakes but for a $150 league where you want people to buy 15 teams...too much decision making for a smaller mass quantity product.

If you want to be equitable to early drafters(if you do away with faab) I think you separate the drafted teams up to Mar1 and the ones drafted AFTER Mar1. Not two separate contests necessarily but run a side by side with only the prior to Mar 1 participants with an extra payout to that winner. This can incentivize early drafting too.

Real good points and suggestions. I get caught up in what I like best but how to grow this is the question. Perhaps FF (Faab Free) is the best way to do that.

[lrr]

I played the cutline the first year but not this year. I enjoyed it very much but the FAAB was too much for me. Yet it's hard not to replace injured players. While I haven't thought this through in depth, why can't FAAB perhaps be easier but different if the technology could be there. Now I realize my suggestion changes the FAAB process but all of the contingencies and multiple chains was very time consuming.

So my suggestion is setting up two chains in FAAB and no more. The first chain is the players you want to bid on and the amounts. The second chain is the players you are willing to drop in the order you are willing to drop them. So if you can have a possible expansion of two players and you have three injured players the second list would have five players. It's a puzzle but a different puzzle. If you have $500 left do you bid $500 on certain players. Then you will probably only get one player and not five. Do you bid $100 on many players. Then you may get five players but miss out on the top players. No contingencies so no multiple bids on the same players. I'm not sure how it would play out but it would take a lot less time I think and you would get replacement players. So maybe the answer is a modified version of FAAB.

[BEF]

Greg, when you say the goal is to "grow" the contest, is your main interest in increasing the number of owners, or the number of teams held by each owner? If the former, then keep FAAB. An owner who has, for example, three or fewer teams should be absolutely able to handle the FAAB requirements twice a year, and IMHO the rules for 2017 have been excellent. If the latter, then you need to eliminate FAAB since trying to manage the process for a dozen or more teams would prove close to impossible to anyone other than those who play this contest for a living.

And if you really want to grow it based on the number of teams per owner, then lower the entry fee. Make it $99 per team. Or a nice bulk discount of 12 teams for $900. With no FAAB and a low entry fee, watch the Teams Per Owner ratio explode. And at that price point, even the casual owner might sign up for three teams instead of one.

[Daren E]

I think IRR has an excellent idea for an alternate faab method. It would eliminate some of the flexibility we now have with contingency buds, but overall it would make Cutline faab so much quicker and easier for managing multiple teams.

[KJ Duke]

I think IRR has an excellent idea for an alternate faab method. It would eliminate some of the flexibility we now have with contingency buds, but overall it would make Cutline faab so much quicker and easier for managing multiple teams.

Agreed. Would simplify the bid process and make it a lot faster in exchange for a little less flexibility in bid structure, a good trade-off for this contest.

[Rainiers]

There are some terrific ideas on how to improve Cutline in this thread. In Cutline I like the idea of a shorter draft and being able to replace injured players, so I'm kind of at a loss on how you do both without keeping FAAB. Having said that, I play multiple teams and would even if it was FAABuless.

The FAAB process was still tedious this year despite fewer drops, and if kept, my favorite suggestions have to do with how to make the FAAB process more user-friendly.

Eric's suggestion to enable us to copy a price down an entire bid stack with a single keystroke is a definite winner. Like he said it should be an easy fix and and I think it could save us 5-10% of our time in preparing bid stacks.

Irr's suggestion to have group bids is the really, really, huge game-changer and is a great idea. This could reduce FAAB time by 80% IMO. It would have tremendous positive impact on the fun-factor of Cutline.

Last year I did 12 Cutline teams. I wanted to do a lot more this year but couldn't stomach the idea of more FAAB. So this year I did 10. If you were able to implement the two ideas above I'd easily do 20+ teams next year.

[Rainiers]

Is it possible to have a separate, stand-alone FAABuless Cutline contest? 46 rounds, slow or fast, held up from say mid-December until the start of Spring Training?

[Greg Ambrosius]

Really liked the format this year. My only suggestion to save time would be to have an drop down box to make an entire group of bids the same amount. Seems like that should be a quick fix. Please keep the 2 FAAB periods.

This is for conditional bids, correct? So you want the option of having all conditional bids be $3, let's say, or $11, correct? Just trying to make sure I fully understand this request. Thanks much.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I played the cutline the first year but not this year. I enjoyed it very much but the FAAB was too much for me. Yet it's hard not to replace injured players. While I haven't thought this through in depth, why can't FAAB perhaps be easier but different if the technology could be there. Now I realize my suggestion changes the FAAB process but all of the contingencies and multiple chains was very time consuming.

So my suggestion is setting up two chains in FAAB and no more. The first chain is the players you want to bid on and the amounts. The second chain is the players you are willing to drop in the order you are willing to drop them. So if you can have a possible expansion of two players and you have three injured players the second list would have five players. It's a puzzle but a different puzzle. If you have $500 left do you bid $500 on certain players. Then you will probably only get one player and not five. Do you bid $100 on many players. Then you may get five players but miss out on the top players. No contingencies so no multiple bids on the same players. I'm not sure how it would play out but it would take a lot less time I think and you would get replacement players. So maybe the answer is a modified version of FAAB.

Leonard, is this something you want for all FAAB or just the Cutline? Just trying to understand because whatever FAAB changes we make would be for all contests. I want to make sure we do this puzzle right if we can do it. Thanks.

[Greg Ambrosius]

So one of the reasons that I asked for input on Cutline FAAB was that I knew Tom and I would be going to meet with the SportsHub programmers last week and I wanted to lead this discussion. I'll just say that we had two great days of discussion and the whole goal of 2018 baseball is to have everything we currently have now with the STATS back-end and more. We won't lose the Conditional Bids feature or Live Standings or anything else that we currently have, but we have several goals when it comes to adding new features to our new software.

The one area that I said we really needed to look at was FAAB. I've challenged the programmers with making FAAB less time consuming as one of their priorities with all of our products. We know that if we can save you time with FAAB -- especially in baseball -- that the season-long format will be more enjoyable for you and will allow you to play more games. So we are definitely focused on that.

The guys who are working on this are fantasy players themselves and they totally get it. They also see this as a challenge that is attainable. We threw out some suggestions and at no time did they object to them. It may take time to program some of these new features, but we all agree that these changes are needed for all of our games, not just the Cutline.

Tom and I both came away from these meetings very impressed and excited. There are just subtle changes that will allow us to launch our games sooner each year and have more responsive programmers than ever before. We are writing new code from the old code to keep consistentcy, but we now have the staff to add some of the new features to our in-season management while making the draft room more modern and more responsive. We are definitely looking at the Cutline features, but the idea is to improve everything so that you don't have to spend so much time managing and upgrading your teams.

It won't all get done immediately, but I GUARANTEE there will be full attention to everything going forward. We now have the right staff and team to get this done going forward. Stay tuned and we'll give you updates very soon.

[Greg Ambrosius]

One new feature that I can state now is that everything will be more mobile friendly starting with 2018 baseball. The developers are building the draft room so that it is compatible to your desktop computer, your laptop, your iPad or your phone. So anything you can do on your desktop you will be able to do on your phone. That includes drafting or FAAB bidding. Draft Champions drafts should go faster now if you are able to easily make a pick from your phone, while FAAB could also be done while swimming with the kids if FAAB on your phone is as responsive as FAAB at your home computer.

You will see an example of this during the football season. The NFFC is also staying on the STATS site for 2017, but there will be a product that is testing the draft software during the football season. We will show you that when it becomes available.

Again, if this move saves you time in making picks or setting up FAAB then that's a good thing. It's the first step in doing that and I think we have a few more coming by the start of the baseball drafting season. Stay tuned.

[lrr]

Greg, My suggestion was solely for the cutline. I enjoy the FAAB aspect of the main event and similar leagues and wasn't suggesting any changes for those contests. Thanks.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Greg, My suggestion was solely for the cutline. I enjoy the FAAB aspect of the main event and similar leagues and wasn't suggesting any changes for those contests. Thanks.

Thanks. I do think it will be tough to create different FAAB setups for the various games, so I actually didn't propose this one to them yet. But now that I have a better understanding I'll see what we can do on this and all of the suggestions. Thanks.

[KJ Duke]

One new feature that I can state now is that everything will be more mobile friendly starting with 2018 baseball. The developers are building the draft room so that it is compatible to your desktop computer, your laptop, your iPad or your phone. So anything you can do on your desktop you will be able to do on your phone. That includes drafting or FAAB bidding. Draft Champions drafts should go faster now if you are able to easily make a pick from your phone, while FAAB could also be done while swimming with the kids if FAAB on your phone is as responsive as FAAB at your home computer.

You will see an example of this during the football season. The NFFC is also staying on the STATS site for 2017, but there will be a product that is testing the draft software during the football season. We will show you that when it becomes available.

Again, if this move saves you time in making picks or setting up FAAB then that's a good thing. It's the first step in doing that and I think we have a few more coming by the start of the baseball drafting season. Stay tuned.

Programmers get giddy with mobile friendly at times and I see some companies make sites mobile-friendly and in turn less desktop-friendly ... a clear mistake for sites that are reached mainly via desktop. I hope they don't over-emphasize this ... ... I'd much rather see development go towards a more desktop friendly site with a well thought-out app for mobile access.

[DOUGHBOYS]

Sorry if I'm veering from the subject matter here, but as long as we are talking about future improvements...

Is there any way that we can get a text, instead of email, when we are 'up' in Draft Championships?
I've found that these darn younger people check their texts long before emails most days
Or maybe, give each drafter the option of text or email?
Any chance that could happen, Greg?....

[Greg Ambrosius]

Sorry if I'm veering from the subject matter here, but as long as we are talking about future improvements...

Is there any way that we can get a text, instead of email, when we are 'up' in Draft Championships?
I've found that these darn younger people check their texts long before emails most days
Any chance that could happen, Greg?....

We did discuss this, along with giving owners the option to turn off email and/or text alerts. The text part is certainly doable and we are planning for it. You need to make sure you are doing this right and not upsetting the cell phone carriers, but all of that can be done. So the answer I received was yes on text alerts being possible.

[Cocktails and Dreams]

All it takes is a worthy scoring system like all other points style fantasy baseball games use, and I woukd play this. Will never play if the points are quirky and replication of roto is attempted. It is impossible to replicate and predictably needed change after one year. New potential customers that are used to normal daily scoring are going to be turned off by radical scoring as well.

[KJ Duke]

All it takes is a worthy scoring system like all other points style fantasy baseball games use, and I woukd play this. Will never play if the points are quirky and replication of roto is attempted. It is impossible to replicate and predictably needed change after one year. New potential customers that are used to normal daily scoring are going to be turned off by radical scoring as well.

DFS-style scoring systems are based on 1980's box scores, we can and have done better here for players that have an attention span of more than six hours. DFS scoring is the microwaved Walmart hot dog of fantasy baseball, it solves a basic hunger with no thought required whatsoever. That doesn't make it great, just easy.