Ryan Mountcastle, et. al.

[Baseball Furies]

First of all, Dough, I give a big +1 on everything you stated here. There are so many things that we as NFBC clientele have learned to cope with and settle for over the years, especially recently with the technology "upgrades" and draft room improvements. And whenever we demand a higher quality product or service, you can sure as hell bet that the "defend, deflect, and justify" company line will be towed. There are MONTHS to get this shit right, but it isn't, and we all have to pay the price with our time, attention, and money to help you guys make it better seemingly every season, and we shouldn't have to. Other platforms and software have it and do it right (and I've heard these be attacked and degraded at times as well in defense of ours, which is just weak). So your competitors could be researched and simply imitated, (which is the sincerest form of flattery by the way ) and you could make all of these ongoing issues a thing of the past.

And while I have your attention, after having done multiple drafts now this year, I can honestly say that both the mobile draft room and the non-mobile version still leave a lot to be desired far beyond the annoying but important issue of getting the player position eligibility correct. Now have these been addressed despite the numerous times all of them have been shared by myself and others on a thread on these boards for this very purpose? No, they haven't. Some have, but many have not, and we just all have to suck it up and deal with it. Not okay, but there's still four more months of draft season to try work on these with IT on the fly, right? I have no illusions, and I'll await the usual slamming in return...

[Greg Ambrosius]

These have not been updated for draft boards....

If you are in a league that started before Monday, no, those won't be updated immediately. It's like trying to change your team name after the draft has started; the board doesn't update.

However, if you are in a league that starts today or later, these positions will be reflected.

These positions are not being reflected. Our league started yesterday.
Mountcastle listed as 3B on the Draft Board among others.

Dan, I will ask IT on Monday to sync the changes we made with these minor-leaguers and make sure they are reflected on the draft boards. I made the changes that are now reflected in the draft room, but I didn't realize they didn't automatically update on the draft board. We'll figure out what is needed for that and get it done. Seems simple enough.

The good news is that we've basically eliminated Placeholders in early drafts as we now have almost 1,600 players in the draft room. Yes, some of the positions for minor-leaguers need to be updated, but when you have a great owner like Michael cross checking for us it's easy to get them changed. Now we need to sync them on the draft boards and obviously we will. Thanks for pointing out that they weren't updated on draft boards.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Instead of defending mediocrity as is the case of these Draft Boards. The NFBC should be striving to make things the BEST.
Greg bragged that IT programmers were fantasy players themselves. That they thought like us. Do they?
I know this is relatively a minor issue. I know that.
But, it still represents the site as a whole.
It's something EVERY drafter looks at.

I was going to ask early in the season if multi-positional players could have different colors on the Draft Board.
Instead of their dominant position.
For instance, Gleyber Torres would be half 2B/half SS.
Jeff McNeil, three colors.
David Fletcher, four colors.
But, what is the use?

This seems like a pissed off post, but what the hell, let's answer it!!

As I stated, yes, we ALL want the draft board stickers to accurately reflect the player's main eligibility. I mean, of course we do. Obviously the changes I made for the draft room didn't sync up with the draft board and we'll find out why and get all of these updated. Easy enough and certainly not worth a debate. We agree with you here.

As for your next request (what is the use?), I've never seen an industry draft board with multiple position eligibility. I'm not sure it can be done or if I'd want it done. Would it be too confusing? Do people really look at the draft board for multi-position eligibility? Is this a user preference or a preference that 90 percent of users would want? Can it be programmed to reflect more than one position? I don't know. No reason to be upset with the request or with the fact that we don't already have it as I'm not even sure if it can be done or should be done, but thanks for the suggestion.

We'll discuss. Always good to think outside the box, so thanks.

[Greg Ambrosius]

MTM, Dan or anyone else: If you have specific suggestions to make the draft room any better feel free to post here, email me or text me or do whatever else you do normally with me. I mean, c'mon, you know we've listened to all suggestions in the past and fixed problems when there have been problems and improved things when suggestions make sense. And that goes with any aspect of our game site. Post your suggestions for improvements and we'll see if they make sense. If they do, we'll get it done.

The NFBC draft room has been improved through the years MAINLY because of customer suggestions. That's a fact. The draft room is light years better than it was for our first 14 years with STATS and there's little debate about that. But can we make it better? Sure. If you have specific suggestions, send my way and we'll look into it. Thanks.

[mdecav]

MTM, Dan or anyone else: If you have specific suggestions to make the draft room any better feel free to post here, email me or text me or do whatever else you do normally with me. I mean, c'mon, you know we've listened to all suggestions in the past and fixed problems when there have been problems and improved things when suggestions make sense. And that goes with any aspect of our game site. Post your suggestions for improvements and we'll see if they make sense. If they do, we'll get it done.

The NFBC draft room has been improved through the years MAINLY because of customer suggestions. That's a fact. The draft room is light years better than it was for our first 14 years with STATS and there's little debate about that. But can we make it better? Sure. If you have specific suggestions, send my way and we'll look into it. Thanks.

Here is a general suggestion: eliminate or minimize the white space. It’s everywhere whether in the draft room or the transactions pages. Use a thinner font.

[DOUGHBOYS]

Instead of defending mediocrity as is the case of these Draft Boards. The NFBC should be striving to make things the BEST.
Greg bragged that IT programmers were fantasy players themselves. That they thought like us. Do they?
I know this is relatively a minor issue. I know that.
But, it still represents the site as a whole.
It's something EVERY drafter looks at.

I was going to ask early in the season if multi-positional players could have different colors on the Draft Board.
Instead of their dominant position.
For instance, Gleyber Torres would be half 2B/half SS.
Jeff McNeil, three colors.
David Fletcher, four colors.
But, what is the use?

This seems like a pissed off post, but what the hell, let's answer it!!

As I stated, yes, we ALL want the draft board stickers to accurately reflect the player's main eligibility. I mean, of course we do. Obviously the changes I made for the draft room didn't sync up with the draft board and we'll find out why and get all of these updated. Easy enough and certainly not worth a debate. We agree with you here.

As for your next request (what is the use?), I've never seen an industry draft board with multiple position eligibility. I'm not sure it can be done or if I'd want it done. Would it be too confusing? Do people really look at the draft board for multi-position eligibility? Is this a user preference or a preference that 90 percent of users would want? Can it be programmed to reflect more than one position? I don't know. No reason to be upset with the request or with the fact that we don't already have it as I'm not even sure if it can be done or should be done, but thanks for the suggestion.

We'll discuss. Always good to think outside the box, so thanks.

It was a little pissy!

We're all on the same team here. We want the NFBC to be the best.
Hearing a line like, "I'll talk to IT" about something that has happened for years and should be correct from the get-go is hard to stomach.
For some reason, positions on the Draft Board have never synched up with the draft room in the NFBC.
It is the only site I know that has this problem. So, it is a tad aggravating.

As for my suggestion about different colors for multi-positional players, it doesn't have to be my suggestion literally.
Multi-position players get no love on a Draft Board. They look like every other player.
What I'm looking for is a way to get across to drafters as a reminder that these players have multi-positionality.
This would make it easier for strategic reasons.
If drafter 14 is debating a pick, he can take a quick look at the Draft Board, look at team 15 to see his needs, and make his decision accordingly.
It is out of the box reckoning but the colors would jump at that drafter more than the names.
It would just be a nice addition and I realize that other sites also do not have this feature either.
So, why not be first?

Anyways, thanks for the listen.
(Darik, hope you really did have a nice rest of your weekend )

[Baseball Furies]

Okay Greg, here's one that has come up multiple times and is still an issue: The draft queue on mobile devices is barely functional to be able to scroll up and down to see all the players in your queue depending upon which device you're on. It is apparently worse for iPhone/iPad users. The right scroll bar only functions occasionally if at all, so if you have more than a certain number of players in your queue, you can't see them all, just the top several. And on the computer, the drag and drop feature needs a lot of work. It is not user friendly at all in moving players around, and it would be nice to have a simple click and move option as well and/or just a simple arrow feature to move players up and down that there used to be at one time.

[Greg Ambrosius]

MTM, Dan or anyone else: If you have specific suggestions to make the draft room any better feel free to post here, email me or text me or do whatever else you do normally with me. I mean, c'mon, you know we've listened to all suggestions in the past and fixed problems when there have been problems and improved things when suggestions make sense. And that goes with any aspect of our game site. Post your suggestions for improvements and we'll see if they make sense. If they do, we'll get it done.

The NFBC draft room has been improved through the years MAINLY because of customer suggestions. That's a fact. The draft room is light years better than it was for our first 14 years with STATS and there's little debate about that. But can we make it better? Sure. If you have specific suggestions, send my way and we'll look into it. Thanks.

Here is a general suggestion: eliminate or minimize the white space. It’s everywhere whether in the draft room or the transactions pages. Use a thinner font.

Michael, the site is designed to conform to any device now, so while there appears to be too much white space on a 27" desktop monitor that same page fits nicely on a smart phone or iPad. Hope that helps.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Okay Greg, here's one that has come up multiple times and is still an issue: The draft queue on mobile devices is barely functional to be able to scroll up and down to see all the players in your queue depending upon which device you're on. It is apparently worse for iPhone/iPad users. The right scroll bar only functions occasionally if at all, so if you have more than a certain number of players in your queue, you can't see them all, just the top several. And on the computer, the drag and drop feature needs a lot of work. It is not user friendly at all in moving players around, and it would be nice to have a simple click and move option as well and/or just a simple arrow feature to move players up and down that there used to be at one time.

What device are you using? Up and down arrows are in the mobile application I'm looking at on iPhone. Looks right. I'm using the drag 'n drop on desktop and it seems pretty easy to move. Click on the three lines and move a player up or down as far as you'd like. Let me know what you're seeing there.

I'm on an iPhone that shows the scroll bar, which seems easy enough to pull down. IT says to check your operating system and to make sure you have the latest updates. That could be the problem. Send the device you're using and the operating system and we'll check to make sure we're seeing the same thing.

[DOUGHBOYS]

Okay Greg, here's one that has come up multiple times and is still an issue: The draft queue on mobile devices is barely functional to be able to scroll up and down to see all the players in your queue depending upon which device you're on. It is apparently worse for iPhone/iPad users. The right scroll bar only functions occasionally if at all, so if you have more than a certain number of players in your queue, you can't see them all, just the top several. And on the computer, the drag and drop feature needs a lot of work. It is not user friendly at all in moving players around, and it would be nice to have a simple click and move option as well and/or just a simple arrow feature to move players up and down that there used to be at one time.

What device are you using? Up and down arrows are in the mobile application I'm looking at on iPhone. Looks right. I'm using the drag 'n drop on desktop and it seems pretty easy to move. Click on the three lines and move a player up or down as far as you'd like. Let me know what you're seeing there.

I'm on an iPhone that shows the scroll bar, which seems easy enough to pull down. IT says to check your operating system and to make sure you have the latest updates. That could be the problem. Send the device you're using and the operating system and we'll check to make sure we're seeing the same thing.

I'm usually a computer guy, but had a meeting during the fast draft and took my phone (droid) and IPad (Fire) to use to make a pick in the draft.
Both did well except when it came to the players in my queue. There was no up and down arrows and no scrolling for players in my queue. I could only pick from the names at the top of my list.
The History, chat, etc were fine. My Queue did not scroll or have arrows on either device.

[Baseball Furies]

Okay Greg, here's one that has come up multiple times and is still an issue: The draft queue on mobile devices is barely functional to be able to scroll up and down to see all the players in your queue depending upon which device you're on. It is apparently worse for iPhone/iPad users. The right scroll bar only functions occasionally if at all, so if you have more than a certain number of players in your queue, you can't see them all, just the top several. And on the computer, the drag and drop feature needs a lot of work. It is not user friendly at all in moving players around, and it would be nice to have a simple click and move option as well and/or just a simple arrow feature to move players up and down that there used to be at one time.

What device are you using? Up and down arrows are in the mobile application I'm looking at on iPhone. Looks right. I'm using the drag 'n drop on desktop and it seems pretty easy to move. Click on the three lines and move a player up or down as far as you'd like. Let me know what you're seeing there.

I'm on an iPhone that shows the scroll bar, which seems easy enough to pull down. IT says to check your operating system and to make sure you have the latest updates. That could be the problem. Send the device you're using and the operating system and we'll check to make sure we're seeing the same thing.

I'm usually a computer guy, but had a meeting during the fast draft and took my phone (droid) and IPad (Fire) to use to make a pick in the draft.
Both did well except when it came to the players in my queue. There was no up and down arrows and no scrolling for players in my queue. I could only pick from the names at the top of my list.
The History, chat, etc were fine. My Queue did not scroll or have arrows on either device.

Exactly. Thanks for taking the time to respond to save me the time, Dough. Not sure what arrows you're speaking about either, and I have an S9+ Samsung. The scrolling of the queue is hit or miss and I think it has something to do with how the draft room loads and reloads which you have to do dozens of times throughout a draft since it doesn't refresh on its own after a certain point. So if you're not tracking the draft, you get stuck on an old screen or draft board which is another issue. So sometimes I can scroll and sometimes I can't and no arrows. The drag and drop is not precise on the computer, and it sometimes takes multiple tries to get a player where you want him to be. Check out the Fantrax draft room and line-up setting pages for how they have it set up and how it functions. There is more than just a drag and drop option. Arrows and a click and move option would be helpful and much more user friendly. Plus there's still the issue with having to move a player multiple times since the system doesn't always recognize all of a player's position eligibility so you have to fudge around until you get it to eventually, unless this has already been remedied since last year during all the off-season work IT has been doing on the baseball site to improve it.

[DOUGHBOYS]

I'm in another DC.
Trying to use my phone.
Still cannot scroll my queue of players.
History, Roster, and chat is good.
But I can't scroll my queue. Frustrating.

[Deadheadz]

Here is a general suggestion: eliminate or minimize the white space. It’s everywhere whether in the draft room or the transactions pages. Use a thinner font.

Isn’t the proportion of white space variable dependent on the size of the users screen?
What you suggest isn’t as easy as it sounds without punishing those people using smaller screens.

[mdecav]

Draft Room - NFC 2.png (101.56 KiB) Viewed 5135 times

[mdecav]

I'm having major posting issues so going to try to comment on my image in a separate post. I've added a number of red rectangles to note where there is useless information or space from top (#1) to bottom (#6). This was an image from my phone.

#1. This is duplicated data. You are already showing the Round and Pick number directly to your right. Remove this and move the timer up vertically.

#2. This is only used for Auto picks. To free up the space move "Auto" to the top left hand corner of the box.

#3. This space is not used. Move up the Draft button and Queue option.

#4. This space is not used. If you move up the Draft button and Queue option, you can remove this unused space.

#5 & #6. Why is the player name and ADP not in one line? You would then be able to see twice the number of players than you do now. Right now this looks ridiculous. If someone wants to either query the data or click on a player Stats, then you open it up to use two rows. Otherwise there should only be one row as the default view.

[mdecav]

#2. This is only used for Auto picks. To free up the space move "Auto" to the top left hand corner of the box.

To add to this... inside each box, each pick number doesn’t need to show the “th” or “rd” or “nd” or “st” suffix next to the number. “417” has the same meaning as “417th”.

[JohnP]

#2. This is only used for Auto picks. To free up the space move "Auto" to the top left hand corner of the box.

To add to this... inside each box, each pick number doesn’t need to show the “th” or “rd” or “nd” or “st” suffix next to the number. “417” has the same meaning as “417th”.

Hire this guy!

[mdecav]

#4. This space is not used. If you move up the Draft button and Queue option, you can remove this unused space.

...or as a better alternative instead of removing the unused space in this area, have a six column, two row table of the player's stats that looks like this:

AB AVG R HR RBI SB
40 .150 3 0 1 0

This way your table is fixed and you don't have the "wrap-around" data you get when you choose a player with more numbers. For example if you choose Acuna the stolen bases are "carriage returned" to the next row.

[Gekko]

Michael - thank you for catching all of the position eligibility SNAFUs. It definitely helps out, esp for someone like me just waking up from my hibernation and starting to look at baseball

[Darik B]

We'll look at these at a tech meeting....one thing, though, is that "Auto" has to stay away from the Contact Admin button or it's chaos...that's why they are on opposite sides right now. Thanks for the input.

I'm having major posting issues so going to try to comment on my image in a separate post. I've added a number of red rectangles to note where there is useless information or space from top (#1) to bottom (#6). This was an image from my phone.

#1. This is duplicated data. You are already showing the Round and Pick number directly to your right. Remove this and move the timer up vertically.

#2. This is only used for Auto picks. To free up the space move "Auto" to the top left hand corner of the box.

#3. This space is not used. Move up the Draft button and Queue option.

#4. This space is not used. If you move up the Draft button and Queue option, you can remove this unused space.

#5 & #6. Why is the player name and ADP not in one line? You would then be able to see twice the number of players than you do now. Right now this looks ridiculous. If someone wants to either query the data or click on a player Stats, then you open it up to use two rows. Otherwise there should only be one row as the default view.

[mdecav]

We'll look at these at a tech meeting....one thing, though, is that "Auto" has to stay away from the Contact Admin button or it's chaos...that's why they are on opposite sides right now. Thanks for the input.

The on/off Auto capability should only be on the top blue button, not in the owner box. This way there’s no chaos.

Inside the owner box “Auto” should only be a label signaling to the league the owner is on Auto.

[mdecav]

Bump.

Any updates as well with the other issues I brought up in the other posts?

[mdecav]

Bump again.

Any updates on this front?