One Round Que: Is It Working As Planned?

[Greg Ambrosius]

I actually was going to start this thread this morning to get feedback from all of you who participated in the Slow Draft Leagues. The key here is to get feedback that can help this contest grow. Again, we'll likely end up with close to 70 leagues overall in this format or over 1,000 teams participating. Multiply that by 750 players per league and we have......oh damn, where's Zola or a calculator when you need one!! You get the idea, it's a lot of players being selected.

To move things along a little better in these Slow Drafts, STATS developed a One Round Que button that allows you to put players in your Que in the order you want them. When it's your turn on the clock and you have this feature selected it will automatically take your top player. This works beautifully when you are 3-4 picks away and you have to head to a meeting or going to bed at night or even in the First Round and you'll take the top guy you can get. It works nicely....IF USED!!!

I can see every draft pick and I must admit that I'm not seeing the Que used as often as I had hoped. Now I get it, it's a new feature and the last thing you want is the Auto-Pick feature taking your wrong guy. And if it happens, Tom or I will be there to roll the pick back. But give it a try and I bet it works. And it moves the draft along for EVERYONE.

We all know that you have 8 hours to make a pick and that's really so that everyone can sleep comfortably at night, not to make a decision from 8 am to 4 pm. We all have to be respectful and eventually make the decision of drafting SOMEONE. And One Round Que can do that.

Okay, technically I'm more interested in the feedback than the intricacies of how people can better move things along. Please answer me this:

Is the One Round Que a feature that has already helped the Slow Drafts? Is it something that works from a technical standpoint and we just need to educate folks more on using this feature? Is there something more we could do with this Auto-Pick feature? Are there any tweaks to the player default list, Import Rankings feature, or anything else technically that you'd like to suggest?

I'm interested in that feedback because if we can improve this even slightly we'll do it before football and make these even better than they've been in baseball. And once we fine-tune it there, we'll have an even better product next year. I knew we could become the Slow Draft leader if we did a few things with the software and now I'm convinced that we are onto something BIG that can be even BIGGER and BETTER.

But I'm just looking for technical tweaks. Please provide feedback and I'll share that with the IT group. Again, I couldn't be more pleased with this Slow Draft season, but we're always looking to make the experiences better. This is the start to what could be a historic 2013 Slow Draft season. Thanks for any and all input.

[Happenstance]

I love this feature/addition. I've used it several times already and it's worked each time.

[Glenneration X]

Greg, the one problem I see with it is that it's not really usable at the turn. Is there any way to get a 2-round que where you can list different players for each?

[mattjb]

I have a question greg...

if i'm say 6 picks away with one round auto on but only have 4 players in my que and the 4 players get drafted before my pick...does the software not make a pick or does it default to your overall rankings?

[ToddZ]

Greg, the one problem I see with it is that it's not really usable at the turn. Is there any way to get a 2-round que where you can list different players for each?

Greg, talk with old buddy Geoff Stein (off the record off course and don't tell him you plan on doing this for football) because his company, myfantasyleague.com has this feature for ALL THE ROUNDS, even allowing you to carry over your choices from the previous round and reordering them.

You are probably going to need this feature in football if anyone partners with mfl on a similar venture.

[Money]

Greg, the one problem I see with it is that it's not really usable at the turn. Is there any way to get a 2-round que where you can list different players for each?

This is exactly right. At the turn you have to use Auto, not Auto One-Round. The problem is you want 2 different positions. How do you line it up so that you don't end up with the same position twice? You can't because players are coming off the board and you cannot predict which ones or which positions. A 2- Round q makes a lot of sense.

As a whole though the Auto - One Round is a huge addition that has enhanced the game and experience from last years model.

[Outlaw]

Greg, the one problem I see with it is that it's not really usable at the turn. Is there any way to get a 2-round que where you can list different players for each?

Greg, talk with old buddy Geoff Stein (off the record off course and don't tell him you plan on doing this for football) because his company, myfantasyleague.com has this feature for ALL THE ROUNDS, even allowing you to carry over your choices from the previous round and reordering them.

You are probably going to need this feature in football if anyone partners with mfl on a similar venture.

I was going to to say the same thing. I would have used 2 round que quite a bit had it been there. The 1 round que worked great in the 3 drafts i was in. I used it plenty of times and had no issues.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I have a question greg...

if i'm say 6 picks away with one round auto on but only have 4 players in my que and the 4 players get drafted before my pick...does the software not make a pick or does it default to your overall rankings?

It would then pick from the player default list. Now, this is a great point because maybe we should change this part of it going forward. Do we default back to the 8 hour clock if there are no players in the que? It's an area I want to fine-tune better going forward so that everyone feels safer using One Round Que.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Greg, the one problem I see with it is that it's not really usable at the turn. Is there any way to get a 2-round que where you can list different players for each?

Greg, talk with old buddy Geoff Stein (off the record off course and don't tell him you plan on doing this for football) because his company, myfantasyleague.com has this feature for ALL THE ROUNDS, even allowing you to carry over your choices from the previous round and reordering them.

You are probably going to need this feature in football if anyone partners with mfl on a similar venture.

Yes, it's a very good point and we realize that we're definitely not the first company to create this feature. There are ways we can make this better and that's why I started this thread. What you are saying with MFL.com sounds like the ultimate way to go. I believe RT Sports has something similar. Ultimately, this is the way to go if we are to really take the Slow Drafts to the next level. Thanks Todd.

It looks like we have the first item on the 2013 To-Do List!!

[Surrender Dorothy]

There is one bug i have stumbled across with the auto one round feature. A couple of times in another draft, I queued up my players, clicked auto-one round, and then shut everything down.

Later, I popped in on the draft to check the status, using either my iphone or my ipad. I saw that the pick still hadn't made it to me, and then hopped off, figuring my auto one round would take care of my selection.

But when you access via another device, the auto one round inadvertently clicks off. This happened to me twice, and I accidentally held up my draft. I know auto pick itself is persistent, and does not click off inadvertently, but it seems like the auto one round does.

[Money]

This switch to another device is not the trigger to shut it off, although this is when it occurs on most occasions. It's the switch from Flash to HTML. Even within the same device if you switch, it will click off. For those that use the flash at home and check in from the road using HTML prior to the auto being executed, doesn't recognize the previous auto. What you need to do is anytime you check in on a device you need to make sure the auto is on when you leave.

I hope that makes sense.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I'll send both items to IT. Thanks guys. That's the type of input I need.

[CaptainCrunch]

Yup, a two-round queue for at or near the turns would be great.

[Captain Hook]

I found it worked perfectly and used it several times.

But to answer a previous question, you should always have enough names in the queue to get you to your pick......so if you are six picks ways, put seven names in the queue then you can be sure it takes one of those players and doesn't revert to the bigger player list.

I don't really see the need for it to do two round or worry about a turn - even if you do use your first pick from the queue, should you come up again, your clock would just run until you are there and can see who you got previously as well as who else was taken. Why would you need another pick? And often you put in your queue and the next time you check in it is not even your turn yet.

[Glenneration X]

I found it worked perfectly and used it several times.
I don't really see the need for it to do two round or worry about a turn - even if you do use your first pick from the queue, should you come up again, your clock would just run until you are there and can see who you got previously as well as who else was taken. Why would you need another pick? And often you put in your queue and the next time you check in it is not even your turn yet.

You would need the two round que at the turn to keep the draft moving if you were unavailable for a few hours.

[Captain Hook]

A few hours is not the problem Glenn - it's the guys who are not there all day who slow the drafts down

Plus when I used it near the turn I told the league in chat that I would predraft the next pick but if the turn happened quickly would not be available for the second (would have worked fine but I was not even on the clock for my first pick when I got back from my meeting)