Welcome To Our New NFBC Online Draft Room

[Greg Ambrosius]

Okay, we have 15 NFBC veterans drafting in the first NFBC $150 Draft Champions league of the season and they've breezed through the first round. Considering that we have new online draft software, I like to see that everyone has figured out the basics of finding the player and drafting him.

Let's remind folks of some nice features in the online draft room. Here's a few:

** All four boxes to the right of the Player Default list can be expanded. So right above History you see two lines in the middle. Put your cursor there and you can move up the History box to make that bigger or down to make the Que box bigger. Same with the two lines above the Chat box. You can pull that up to make the Chat box bigger or pull it down to see more of your Roster.

** In Roster, this is a very nice feature. Once you draft a player you will see that his position can be moved if needed. If you draft Marwin Gonzalez and the computer puts him at 2B, but you want to move him later to OF or 3B, you can manually do that for a position he qualifies at. That's nice for the DCs, especially.

** In the Chat, the middle icon looks like a wheel. Click on that and you can eliminate all of the picks showing up in Chat. You can just have the picks or you can just have the Chat if you'd like. Right now it defaults to both showing in the Chat. The icon to the right in Chat allows you to pop open a separate window if you like to chat a lot and the icon to the left (the eyeball) shows you who is Online. Very nicely done guys.

** Under Roster, the icon to the right allows you to pop out a Roster Grid for the whole league. The Draft Board is located on the same line as History and also pops out to a separate window. Let us know what you think of those colors.

** Under History, you can also pull down the Current arrow to see any round of the draft.

** Under the Player Default list, you can sort by position and then sort by any stat category. If you sort Pitchers, you can then sort quickly by Saves or by Strikeouts or any other category. With all players listed, there is an up/down arrow that allows you to sort by any stat category. There is also a Search button. You can also set up your own Player Rank lists and import them into the draft room. Some owners may take the time to set up separate Cutline player default lists, along with separate Online Championship default lists and 15-team default lists. You can then easily import any of those into an upcoming draft. For those owners who may want to do multiple Cutline leagues, you can import that special rank list and be ready to go.

** There is an Auto Draft button under the clock if you want to go on Auto. We do not have a 1 Round Auto button at this point.

** There is a Contact Admin button now if you need any help. That will alert us of the need for help.

** Next to the Auto Pick button, there is a sound icon. Click on that to choose what type of sound you want to hear when you are on the clock. I believe there's everything from a bell to a rooster crowing!! You are in control of the sound and the volume of that sound.

I think that does it. Let me know if I missed anything. We're looking for feedback on all of this and we'll tweak it where needed. Let us know how making the picks on a phone works, too. We want to hear from you and make this the best draft room in the industry. Thanks all.

[mdecav]

Something to think about for the future... most of my drafting is done on the phone. A text message that it’s my pick instead of an email works better because I get tons of emails (esp. those that are other teams picks) but much fewer texts.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Something to think about for the future... most of my drafting is done on the phone. A text message that it’s my pick instead of an email works better because I get tons of emails (esp. those that are other teams picks) but much fewer texts.

Correct. We will be looking into it, but there are more issues to sending a text than an email. One involves the phone carriers. We will need permission from you and the carrier to receive them. So there's a step we have to take to get these going. We will look into this and we agree with you, but it takes a few steps to get this rolling.

[mdecav]

First problem. On an iPhone 6.

The position filter will not allow me to filter on pitchers because the drop-down goes lower than the bottom of the screen. I cannot scroll through the drop down unlike the stats filter to the right of the position filter. Moving up-down in that drop down box moves the entire screen, not the filter itself.

#2 - typo. The mobile webpage label shows as “Draft Room - NFC” instead of NFBC.

#3 - the times showing on chat are five hours slower than the timezone I’m in.

[mdecav]

#4 - pitcher stats are not appearing

#5 - labeling typo: BAVG shows on the highlighted player but it’s AVG everywhere else.

#6 - what is the purpose of the PTS number?

#7 - aesthetic issue, but why do 2017 player stats need to wrap around on a second line?

[DOUGHBOYS]

1. I like that it states, "You are on the clock in _ picks"

2. I like the choices of popping items out

3. I like that the chat room is time stamped

4. I like the ease of the queue

5. If popping out 'Chat', it would be wonderful if our roster could drop down taking its place for easier viewing

[DOUGHBOYS]

No pitching stats is darned annoying...

[Greg Ambrosius]

No pitching stats is darned annoying...

They will return. A call has been made.

[MadCow Sez]

First problem. On an iPhone 6.

The position filter will not allow me to filter on pitchers because the drop-down goes lower than the bottom of the screen. I cannot scroll through the drop down unlike the stats filter to the right of the position filter. Moving up-down in that drop down box moves the entire screen, not the filter itself.

#2 - typo. The mobile webpage label shows as “Draft Room - NFC” instead of NFBC.

#3 - the times showing on chat are five hours slower than the timezone I’m in.

Hopefully these will be fixed before my DC...I'm an iPhone 6 drafter as well

[DOUGHBOYS]

The clock says 12:00.
We really only need an 8 hour stoppage at night. 10 hours, tops....

[Tom Kessenich]

Pitching stats are now showing. Refresh the room if necessary.

[DOUGHBOYS]

Pitching stats are now showing. Refresh the room if necessary.

Thank you

[EA Sports]

In DC 2 the clock changed over to a 12 hour clock at 11:34 pm est. FYI

[DOUGHBOYS]

Simply, the overnight clock is too long.
I know that the NFBC wants to error on the side of caution and give everybody a chance not to miss a pick.
But 12 hours?
Add four hours onto a fella's clock and we're talking 16 hours for somebody to pick.
Twice as long as our old system.

I realize that picks can be made while the overnight clock is on. Some drafters, especially as we move on to the 'news worthy' portion of our off-season will not make picks in waiting for news.
The overnight clock also seemed to start at an odd time last night. I don't know the exact time.

12 AM, EST to 10 AM, EST seems like a good start to cut down the overnight clock.
Maybe later, it can be shortened further.
Drafters have four hours on each side of that to make a pick. More than enough time for early bed-goers in the East and late risers in the West.
Also, posting the exact time would be helpful for drafters.

[meanguy]

Will you be adding back the '1 RD auto option' at some point this year?

[Greg Ambrosius]

In DC 2 the clock changed over to a 12 hour clock at 11:34 pm est. FYI

The Pause is supposed to be from 1 am ET to 9 am ET, which is 8 hours. Again, anyone can pick during that time if they'd like. If that's not happening let me know via email.

I hope it went to 12:00 as part of the Pause. Again, if it didn't work correctly last night just let me know via email and I'll alert IT. The plan is to always allow draft picks to be made overnight, but to Pause the draft for 8 hours. That is 10 pm PT to 6 am PT. Could we shorten that? Sure. But let's make sure we have it set up correctly and go from there.

Thanks all. It's really cool to see three online drafts already in the second, third and fourth rounds less than 24 hours after we launched the product. It seems that things are working well, but we'll gladly tweak anything that we see. Thanks all.

[DOUGHBOYS]

In DC 2 the clock changed over to a 12 hour clock at 11:34 pm est. FYI

The Pause is supposed to be from 1 am ET to 9 am ET, which is 8 hours. Again, anyone can pick during that time if they'd like. If that's not happening let me know via email.

I hope it went to 12:00 as part of the Pause. Again, if it didn't work correctly last night just let me know via email and I'll alert IT. The plan is to always allow draft picks to be made overnight, but to Pause the draft for 8 hours. That is 10 pm PT to 6 am PT. Could we shorten that? Sure. But let's make sure we have it set up correctly and go from there.

Thanks all. It's really cool to see three online drafts already in the second, third and fourth rounds less than 24 hours after we launched the product. It seems that things are working well, but we'll gladly tweak anything that we see. Thanks all.

The overnight clock started well before 1 AM, est

[DOUGHBOYS]

Going to '12;00' is confusing.
Why not just count down till the overnight clock ends?

[Greg Ambrosius]

Will you be adding back the '1 RD auto option' at some point this year?

I'll get more info on this from IT. Obviously we'd love to have two rounds of Ques so that you could load a list of your outfielders in order in one round and then a list of Catchers in order of preference in the next round. You could hit 2 Round Auto, go to bed and know you got the two players you wanted without holding up the draft. That's what we want.

But to get that programming done, we would have had to have held up the draft room and we chose not to do that. Plus we have so many other items to get done right away. Let me convene with IT and see what the plan is. Thanks.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Going to '12;00' is confusing.
Why not just count down till the overnight clock ends?

I don't know. I will ask IT.

[DOUGHBOYS]

According to comments in chat, the overnight clock started between 9 and 10 pm, est last night.

[mdecav]

So if the 8 hour clock starts at 1am EST, then any owner whose pick starts at 9:01pm to 1am EST technically has 12 hours to pick, correct?

Some more observations/opinions from my phone...

#8 - If you're going to have the ability to filter on certain data, the "Players" data should be in table/spreadsheet format similar to how it was done in previous years. Having the stats split out as-is is not intuitive or user-friendly. I'd prefer to see 11 columns of player name, position(s), team, rank, ADP, then the six stats (AB + 5 categories, or IP + 5 categories) which can be toggled between hitter and pitcher stats.

#9 - Roster tab. A nice feature but I won't be using it much if at all in 50 round draft.

#10 - History tab. Each row can be one line each - no need for two lines. This frees up unused space and you can see more historical picks without scrolling

#11 - History tab - The filter should be 1 to 50. It looks very weird to have the Round 50 choice as your second choice.

#12 - History tab - You should give the user the choice to sort ascending or descending the order of picks.

#13 - Draft Board - Similar to years past, the Draft Board should have fixed length and width of their cells. They shouldn't change size based on owner names or player names. The font size should change, not the cell size.

#14 - Draft Board - make the color-coded legend one row, not two rows.

#15 - When you choose the player page and choose Stats for hitters, stolen bases are not shown.

#16 - Player page for pitchers, the cells and the data run over each other, mostly near IP.

#17 - Fix format of stats in stats pages for players. If a pitcher had a 3.00 ERA it shouldn't be shown as "3".

#18 - "You are not connected" appears a lot. Not sure why especially when I'm on wi-fi.

[DOUGHBOYS]

A lot of folks have mentioned the...

YOU ARE NOT CONNECTED on screens

[mdecav]

#19 - when some other team moves a player from one position to another on the Roster tab, I could care less. That should not automatically appear on the chat board, or at least give me the option to click that that type of move doesn't appear on the chat board. Having the option to choose "Chat Log" and "Draft Log" is a good addition.

[Greg Ambrosius]

#19 - when some other team moves a player from one position to another on the Roster tab, I could care less. That should not automatically appear on the chat board, or at least give me the option to click that that type of move doesn't appear on the chat board. Having the option to choose "Chat Log" and "Draft Log" is a good addition.

Now we're nitpicking!!