FAAB

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DOUGHBOYS
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FAAB

Post by DOUGHBOYS » Mon Aug 06, 2018 9:48 am

As players in the NFBC, we go through cycles. Big picture, there are the six months of drafting season and the six months of baseball season.
Within the six months of baseball season, there is a weekly commitment, every Sunday, to FAAB. Also, a bi-weekly requirement of lineups.
Lineups can be done at our leisure. The main players remain the same. We tweak our pitching staff, look at injuries and our bench before games and we are off and running.
FAAB is a different animal.
We can put interesting players in threads during the week, but by Sunday, injuries, promotions/demotions, match-ups, and late Sunday reports tend to render most players of early interest null,void, or looking better or worse to us by Sunday. This is why the bulk of our work is mostly done on Sunday.
For those of us with families, the family knows that our Sunday evenings have to be spent in front of the computer.
We hate putting them in that position. Absolutely hate it.
But, we love the game and know it is a necessary evil to play the game.

Every year, we are promised that FAAB will be easier the following year.
And by and large, the NFBC has assisted to make the FAAB process better. The FAAB page and process is the best among any competitors.
It is not without its problems though.
The FAAB page, itself, takes a very long time to load. This is maddening when wanting to make last minute changes. Especially when going from team to team and having to wait for it to load each time.
There is also (and this is hard to explain) a slowness in reaction time on this site that I don't have with other sites.
For instance, I'll click on an arrow in FAAB to move a player up or down.
On any other site (fantasy or not), this is an instant move.
For us, we have to wait a few seconds before hitting another arrow or make another move.
I hope I described that correctly. It's a pain.

Then, there are the mishaps of the last few weeks.
This is a total stoppage of our work.
It is frustration in losing our trains of thought, knowing only minutes remain to tend to several leagues.
It is frustration in explaining to our loved ones that we will be away longer.
Downplaying the error to 'slowness' or 'hiccups' does not help a soul.
I have never had a hiccup come at the same time week after week. Never.
It is a time consuming problem that provides and provokes frustration.
Once is chance, twice is a trend, three times is a pattern.
This problem and pattern HAS to be fixed before next Sunday.

There is a certain sense of relief when the season is over. The season long game is a grind.
In a different way, we too feel the dog days of August.
We cuss under our breaths at those that have switched to the daily fantasy game.
Life is easier for them.
Untethered and free every Sunday. Damn them.
We are in it for the long haul. It requires much more time. Much more sacrifice.
We signed up for it. We knew it going in.
FAAB and Sundays are the largest of those sacrifices.
We have seven FAAB Sundays to go.
Let's hope that they are as pain (in the ass) free as can be.
On my tombstone-
Wait! I never had the perfect draft!

Philippe27
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Re: FAAB

Post by Philippe27 » Tue Aug 07, 2018 6:34 am

100% agree with the above post. I signed up for 4 teams this year thinking everything would be easier and I'd be able to manage 4 teams but it's not. The FAAB process in general is easier but things are slow, especially on Sunday nights so in the end I still spend way too much time on this.

There's also a bunch of little features that were suggested on these boards which shouldn't be hard to implement but never get done.
-Why can't I see where my players are hitting directly on the Set Lineup page? On Monday and Friday when I set my lineup it would save time to have everything on the same page rather than go back and forth on my phone with the Live Scoring page
-Why is the player search bar not there anymore? Everyone loved it. New prospect is about to get called up and I have to search on the FA page of every league to see if he's available. Vlad Jr for example was drafted on just one of my leagues so in the 3 other leagues he won't show up anywhere. Once I find him in one place then I can see if he's available in the other ones but it's stupid and time consuming to have to do it that way.
-Stats for the last 2 weeks or month aren't there. Again it shouldn't be hard to implement but it would be nice to see if I have any players that have done particularly well over the past few weeks or past month.

The IT department was very quick and fixing things and adding new features in the first month of the season and I was very impressed. Since May, it's been, we'll try and get that done or we'll look into it next year we have to get football going now...

Well I spent a lot of money on these 4 Main Event teams and was hopeful it would take a lot less time to manage them than it's taking right now because of everything we were told. Bottom line is I have no interest in signing up for any NFFC leagues because I fear it'll be the same problems and I know for sure I won't be able to sign up for 4 teams next year because it takes way too much time.

Those little features above which should have been there from the beginning or at least early in the year would save a ton of time.

I know the FAAB issues must be frustrating for Greg and Tom as well and they're the ones who are taking the heat for this. However, when you promise time and time again that FAAB will be easier and smoother, people trust you and sign up for more leagues than they did in the past. If you don't deliver on those promises, find a way to fix it and that hasn't been done.

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Greg Ambrosius
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Re: FAAB

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Tue Aug 07, 2018 7:56 am

Dan, I totally and completely agree with your post. We understand the time and commitment every NFBC owner puts into Sunday nights and the fact that we lengthened two of those Sundays and caused more pain in a third Sunday in the last month is more frustrating to all of us here than you know. It's not what we expected on Sundays in July and August, either, and it's not acceptable.

One of our major goals heading into this season with the new company was to make the FAAB process quicker and easier for all of you. It was far too cumbersome to do FAAB on the STATS site and if you ran multiple teams it was basically a pain in the ass. I knew that we were losing customers completely over FAAB and wanted our new IT team to do everything possible to make FAAB easier.

In some ways we've added features that have done that. But if the site locks or overloads anytime on a Sunday that is beyond frustrating and I'd throw my hands up in disgust as well. One time was B.S. Two times was unacceptable. Three times? In baseball, that means we struck out.

Hopefully we still have life at the plate with our NFBC owners. I came to Minneapolis yesterday to meet with everyone and by the time I got here the IT staff had met, looked at the issues and put solutions in place that should prevent this from happening again. I have been assured that not only won't this happen again on Sundays but that the speed of Sundays should be improved as well. There is a reason why FAAB on Sundays is getting bogged down and we are changing certain queries and changing directions of content to the data base that will free up free agency moves each Sunday. And then we obviously have to check every bit of code to see if something else is bogging down this area of our game.

From our meetings yesterday, I'm convinced this won't happen again. But I'm not a programmer. I say that because the top people here have already made these changes to free up the needed space on Sundays and will be watching the activity closely each week. I trust them to make this right.

The one thing we have gotten right is the speed of running all of the FAAB moves. Sunday's FAAB was done in 8 minutes and the number of FAAB moves is almost half of what it was earlier in the year when FAAB would take about 13 minutes to run. That's obviously much improved from last year, but it doesn't help when it's an hour later than the regular FAAB time. We know that.

Also, we had a nice feature that saved you time in the Search box that got covered up by the new company-wide navigation bar. The Search remained on the Free Agent page, but we are working to get that box viewable again where you had it. We're on that.

I'll be back on the road today, and as many of you know Tom is out this week, but if you have any questions feel free to email or text me. I'll answer any questions when I get back home, but I just wanted to post to let you know this hasn't gone unattended. We thought we had a fix in place two weeks ago when FAAB ran without any issues, but obviously that Band-Aid wasn't enough. These steps that are being done now should more than get the job done. Sorry again all. The one area we directly targeted to save you time added time to your Sundays three-fold so far. We won't let it happen again.
Greg Ambrosius
Founder, National Fantasy Baseball Championship
General Manager, Consumer Fantasy Games at SportsHub Technologies
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Re: FAAB

Post by rkulaski » Tue Aug 07, 2018 8:01 pm

Good post and so true, Doughy.

Greg, thanks for the response and the update.

If you (IT guys) can get faab running smoothly, there is no doubt that it is way better than the way we used to do faab at STATS. Here's hoping to a strong finish to the faab baseball season.
Richard Kulaski
Fairview, TN

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Greg Ambrosius
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Re: FAAB

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Wed Aug 08, 2018 8:46 am

Sorry to post this here, but it's at the top of the list, so it's the best spot to post this.

You might not be seeing points behind in the standings this morning. That's because we added an enhancement on the back-end and points behind will show up again as soon as today's games start. Sorry for that, but we have early afternoon games today so it should return shortly. Thanks.
Greg Ambrosius
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DOUGHBOYS
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Re: FAAB

Post by DOUGHBOYS » Sun Aug 12, 2018 8:09 pm

Smooth Sailing! :D
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Re: FAAB

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Sun Aug 12, 2018 8:30 pm

DOUGHBOYS wrote:
Sun Aug 12, 2018 8:09 pm
Smooth Sailing! :D
Good to hear. I think the changes we made are good to go. Good luck all.
Greg Ambrosius
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Cocktails and Dreams
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Re: FAAB

Post by Cocktails and Dreams » Thu Aug 16, 2018 7:58 am

You cannot sort by stats for different time frames any longer? That is critical in baseball. When deciding to jump back in again or not, things like this make a difference. I am now scared shitless for football. I was assured the faab would be much much better. If there are loading issues in baseball, I cannot imagine a Wednesday in football. This absolutely cannot happen. Very disappointing to hear about these faab issues. They were already the main reason I have taken a break. I have never experienced a love/hate relationship like fantasy baseball.

EDIT Joe informed me privately that you can sort by some different time frames. I was going by what Phillippe posted, saying you could not. Sounds like this critical feature is available after all. After testing some football faab the load times are indeed poor. Wednesdays will be a nightmare if bogged down.

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Re: FAAB

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Thu Aug 16, 2018 8:35 am

Cocktails and Dreams wrote:
Thu Aug 16, 2018 7:58 am
You cannot sort by stats for different time frames any longer? That is critical in baseball. When deciding to jump back in again or not, things like this make a difference. I am now scared shitless for football. I was assured the faab would be much much better. If there are loading issues in baseball, I cannot imagine a Wednesday in football. This absolutely cannot happen. Very disappointing to hear about these faab issues. They were already the main reason I have taken a break. I have never experienced a love/hate relationship like fantasy baseball.

EDIT Joe informed me privately that you can sort by some different time frames. I was going by what Phillippe posted, saying you could not. Sounds like this critical feature is available after all. After testing some football faab the load times are indeed poor. Wednesdays will be a nightmare if bogged down.
Chad, yeah on the FAAB page there is a tab called Season that lists everyone by their Year To Date stats. There is a pulldown there for last 7 days, 14 days and 30 days. That's similar to what we had in the past.

If people feel we need more time periods let us know. I'm sure we can add them for next year. Sure seems doable, but at least these periods break down the last week, last two weeks and last month. Hope that helps.

With the changes we made last week, FAAB shouldn't be slow for football. We'll definitely keep an eye on that as FAAB begins. FAAB definitely runs faster than in the past (results should be posted in 15 minutes or less) and we sure as hell expect the server issues to be done. But yes, we've had our FAAB hiccups here in baseball and sure hope we've finally resolved the issue that caused some pain and extra time in FAAB for baseball. Easter was no fun and three Sundays in July and August were no fun. But we believe we have corrected that problem. Good luck in football.
Greg Ambrosius
Founder, National Fantasy Baseball Championship
General Manager, Consumer Fantasy Games at SportsHub Technologies
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DOUGHBOYS
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Re: FAAB

Post by DOUGHBOYS » Thu Aug 16, 2018 8:42 am

Hey Greg, is there anyway the loading time on the FAAB page be diminished?
It is very painful when going from league to league and having to wait on loading.
On my tombstone-
Wait! I never had the perfect draft!

Cocktails and Dreams
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Re: FAAB

Post by Cocktails and Dreams » Thu Aug 16, 2018 12:32 pm

Greg Ambrosius wrote:
Thu Aug 16, 2018 8:35 am
Cocktails and Dreams wrote:
Thu Aug 16, 2018 7:58 am
You cannot sort by stats for different time frames any longer? That is critical in baseball. When deciding to jump back in again or not, things like this make a difference. I am now scared shitless for football. I was assured the faab would be much much better. If there are loading issues in baseball, I cannot imagine a Wednesday in football. This absolutely cannot happen. Very disappointing to hear about these faab issues. They were already the main reason I have taken a break. I have never experienced a love/hate relationship like fantasy baseball.

EDIT Joe informed me privately that you can sort by some different time frames. I was going by what Phillippe posted, saying you could not. Sounds like this critical feature is available after all. After testing some football faab the load times are indeed poor. Wednesdays will be a nightmare if bogged down.
Chad, yeah on the FAAB page there is a tab called Season that lists everyone by their Year To Date stats. There is a pulldown there for last 7 days, 14 days and 30 days. That's similar to what we had in the past.

If people feel we need more time periods let us know. I'm sure we can add them for next year. Sure seems doable, but at least these periods break down the last week, last two weeks and last month. Hope that helps.

With the changes we made last week, FAAB shouldn't be slow for football. We'll definitely keep an eye on that as FAAB begins. FAAB definitely runs faster than in the past (results should be posted in 15 minutes or less) and we sure as hell expect the server issues to be done. But yes, we've had our FAAB hiccups here in baseball and sure hope we've finally resolved the issue that caused some pain and extra time in FAAB for baseball. Easter was no fun and three Sundays in July and August were no fun. But we believe we have corrected that problem. Good luck in football.
I must say the draft room is really really good. The only change I would make is to do something on the draft board where it is a bit obnoxious to have the huge name pop up in the middle for 5 seconds every time a pick is made. When trying to catch up your cross off list, or anyalyze what teams have what positions etc that is extremely annoying. You can see who they took by just looking at the draft board. You don't need that huge thing in the middle every pick.

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Re: FAAB

Post by Money » Thu Aug 16, 2018 12:33 pm

DOUGHBOYS wrote:
Thu Aug 16, 2018 8:42 am
Hey Greg, is there anyway the loading time on the FAAB page be diminished?
It is very painful when going from league to league and having to wait on loading.
On that note it takes from 15 to 25 seconds to load the live scoring page. When jumping between teams this is very painful as well.
Joe

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Greg Ambrosius
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Re: FAAB

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Sun Aug 19, 2018 12:13 pm

Good suggestion Chad and I have forwarded this to IT. We will look at some options for the big sticker that covers up the top part of the board. We have a couple of ideas.
Greg Ambrosius
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simonscrew
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Re: FAAB

Post by simonscrew » Sun Aug 19, 2018 8:00 pm

as usual not able to make a bid because in the last 10 minutes the site is not working

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Greg Ambrosius
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Re: FAAB

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Mon Aug 20, 2018 2:43 pm

DOUGHBOYS wrote:
Thu Aug 16, 2018 8:42 am
Hey Greg, is there anyway the loading time on the FAAB page be diminished?
It is very painful when going from league to league and having to wait on loading.
Dan, yes there is something we can do and we will roll out this change starting in football and have this in place for baseball 2019. We have some features right now that are nicely set up, but they are slowing down other aspects of the page. We think this change we're going to make starting in football will speed up the load time on that page. We will discuss once we have fully tested and implemented it, but we do think it will make a difference.
Greg Ambrosius
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Re: FAAB

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Mon Aug 20, 2018 2:49 pm

simonscrew wrote:
Sun Aug 19, 2018 8:00 pm
as usual not able to make a bid because in the last 10 minutes the site is not working
Email me at [email protected] so that I can get more information on your browser, computer, and more. We certainly want to help and didn't see any stoppage of bids last night. In fact, it was another busy night of FAAB with over 24,000 claim lists, including 10,000 claim lists created in the last 3 1/2 hours. There were over 300 claim lists created in the last 15 minutes and over 1,000 claim list items, so things were moving. The server capacity didn't top 10 percent for much of the night, so the speed shouldn't have changed at all during the day. And FAAB ran completely in 7 minutes.

But send me an email and we'll talk through the issues. We'd love to learn more about your setup.
Greg Ambrosius
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Wolfpac
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Re: FAAB

Post by Wolfpac » Tue Aug 21, 2018 6:43 am

Hi Greg,

The owned % has not updated this week, it normally updates sometime monday morning, it is still showing guys in FAAB pool 100% owned, and not updating current roster players

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Re: FAAB

Post by jvetter » Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:32 am

Wolfpac wrote:
Tue Aug 21, 2018 6:43 am
Hi Greg,

The owned % has not updated this week, it normally updates sometime monday morning, it is still showing guys in FAAB pool 100% owned, and not updating current roster players
Bump... owned % and start % still hasn't been updated this week.

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Re: FAAB

Post by justiceberry » Fri Aug 24, 2018 10:02 am

i am still only able to do faab for NFBC with internet explorer. for the last 2 weeks faab freezes up when i use chrome. ive been working around it, but it is something i am wondering if I am the only one this is happening to or not, i tried clearing cookies and whatnot

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Re: FAAB

Post by DOUGHBOYS » Sat Aug 25, 2018 1:41 pm

Man, after all these years, I still can't get enough of fantasy baseball.
You would think a relatively simple game would get boring as I reach my balding (ok, just plain bald) and gray haired years.
Never gets old.
I still love tooling around sites trying to find tidbits about this player or that player.
Love it.

I realized something though.
I hardly ever go to the NFBC site any longer.
Sure, I make the required lineup changes and do FAAB every Sunday.
But, that's about it.
I used to try to peek at Standings constantly and enjoy Liver Scoring too.
But, it just seems like everything takes so long.
I gave up on Live Scoring because I can click on it, go into the kitchen to make a Dagwood Sandwhich, come back and realize that it's still not done loading.
The same goes for FAAB on Sunday. If I want to start FAAB two or three hours before, I allot an extra half hour for loading time between teams.

The site, itself, has improved immensely.
The draft room gets few complaints. FAAB, itself is much easier to manage.
All around, there have been many wonderful improvements.
But, the plus-es of what is seen on site are almost offset by the minus-es of constant long waits.

These Message Boards were a joy to go to in the past.
Now, they are less manageable with less options than the Message Boards we had 15 years ago.
I entered a couple of NFFC fantasy football leagues.
I went to the contest place on the site and there several folks who had troubles with different things.
The responses were quick and fast. The NFFC having customer service that is incomparable.
Greg, Tom, and Darik are tops.
The responses themselves were alarming though.
"Did you clear your cache?"
"Did you clear your cookies?"
What browser are you using?"
I never have to answer these sorta questions when playing on any other site.
Shouldn't it, you know, just work?
Greg, Tom, and Darik probably wish they didn't have to have users adjust things on their side as well.
Probably, maddening for them.
Putting the burden on the customer to change things on his end cannot be good for any website business all the way around.

This isn't a post to run down the NFBC or SportsHub.
I'm hoping it'll help.
Before the baseball drafts, my cookies or browser should not be in question.
I should love visiting the NFBC site and its Message Board.
We are only asking for SportsHub to have the same sorta 'strength' as other sites.
When that happens, I will putter around the NFBC like I used to.
I look forward to that.
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Greg Ambrosius
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Re: FAAB

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Tue Aug 28, 2018 10:39 am

Wolfpac wrote:
Tue Aug 21, 2018 6:43 am
Hi Greg,

The owned % has not updated this week, it normally updates sometime monday morning, it is still showing guys in FAAB pool 100% owned, and not updating current roster players
I apologize for this last week. The % Owned and % Started did not update during the week and the figures weren't 100% accurate on Sunday. It has been fixed and display totals are correct for this week. We are looking into why that had a blip last week. Sorry.
Greg Ambrosius
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Re: FAAB

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Tue Aug 28, 2018 10:59 am

As for the Message Boards, when we first installed them they were rather slow when it came to making posts or even calling up posts. I mean, like sometimes they took 8-12 seconds to load. It was awful. We've since solved that problem and they appear to be much better.

These are third-party Message Boards that are the latest version of this software. Not displaying some items where it did before was something that some folks really liked such as "Unread Posts" or Last Post. But you can find those same features now under Quick Links (above under the NFBC logo). If you pull down the three horizontal lines you will find several categories to sort the boards by, namely New Posts and Unread Posts. Also the front page doesn't list the last post under each Forum and we'll see if there's something in the software that will allow that again. Hope that helps.
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Re: FAAB

Post by Greg Ambrosius » Tue Aug 28, 2018 11:03 am

Yeah, nobody wants to be told to clear out their cookies or do extra work to get on a web site that they just want to use. I get it and I've had to clear my cache as well. Our old site that was designed in 2002 and never upgraded with the newest software probably worked perfectly on Internet Explorer 7 using Flash draft software, but our new programming doesn't and Flash is now dead. Internet Explorer hasn't been upgraded by Microsoft since 2013 and in fact they now service Microsoft Edge as their browser. So we have had to walk some folks through changes to their browser or cache in football and it's a pain for both sides. But hopefully both sides worked through the issue and now have modern software on modern browsers.

Football is a good sign of things to come. The online auction software works so well that we just ran a $500 online auction league on Friday. We haven't had any hiccups during online drafts or with the servers, despite servicing close to 100,000 teams between all of our products this year. Hopefully the live software holds up the next two weeks as well. FAAB starts next Wednesday and hopefully will go well. We really believe we have solved the FAAB snafu that happened in the NFBC, but time will tell. I believe Live Scoring is better and faster than before, but maybe I'm wrong.

Good luck all the rest of the way and thanks for all the feedback.
Greg Ambrosius
Founder, National Fantasy Baseball Championship
General Manager, Consumer Fantasy Games at SportsHub Technologies
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