What Technical Improvements Would You Like To See?

[Money]

Live scoring is being discussed on the football board. I was wondering if you can share any changes into the live scoring for Baseball 2013?

Thanks.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Live scoring is being discussed on the football board. I was wondering if you can share any changes into the live scoring for Baseball 2013?

Thanks.

Actually it's Live Overall Standings that is being discussed on the NFFC boards, Joe. As I stated on the football boards and what I stated at the end of last year here, we have to totally reprogram Live Overall Standings to make that work for this season AND IT WILL GET DONE. The setup we had last year had (in layman's terms because I'm computer illiterate) all stats flowing into this Live Overall Standings area. What we need to do is program this so that only the needed stats are flowing there and updating as quickly as possible. The Live Scoring area needs the same new program written so that we can load only the data we need for our game to this area as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

I met with the IT guys on Wednesday and the plan to have both ready for this baseball season is on pace. I know that what we unveiled in Live Scoring late last year was just part of what we hope to have from a data standpoint this year. I think there are a few more game stats involving the count and who is up at-bat and things like that coming so that you know what the situation is for all of your players. We want the Live Scoring to be as good as possible and we know that the Live Overall Standings for all of our contests will be addicting, especially late in the year.

That's the plan and nobody has told me we can't get this done for 2013 in both sports.

[Floyd]

There are some flaws in the "Player Ratings" data that I'd like to see improved.

It looks like in 2012 NFBC put some new assumption in the "Player Ratings" data -- for example, players with too few at bats don't get a batting average score. The threshhold has been set way too low. For example, Carlos Ruiz (high avg) had the same effect on BA at Brian McCann (low avg). Pablo Sandoval (high avg) had the same effect on BA as Trevor Plouffe (low avg).

[Lobbyist999]

Would it be possible to have two viewing options for the Draft Board tab in our DC Slow Drafts?

One would be live, as it is now.

The other would be fixed, without screen refresh.

It is frustrating to try and view draft results in a detailed manner, on a board that keeps refreshing. Even draft boards for completed drafts continue to refresh, which has no purpose.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[hot and cold]

Would it be possible to have two viewing options for the Draft Board tab in our DC Slow Drafts?

One would be live, as it is now.

The other would be fixed, without screen refresh.

It is frustrastring to look at draft results in a detailed manner, on a board that keeps refreshing. Even draft boards for completed drafts continue to refresh, which has no purpose.

i would like this to . it is frustrating for it to keep jumping back to the top every 45 sec.

[Lobbyist999]

If the fixed screen draft board is ever implemented, may I suggest that it be added under a different tab than where the current drop-down menu is showing the 45-sec. refreshed board, just so that if anyone wants to view it in the fixed mode, they are not likely to be mistaken.

[rockitsauce]

It is frustrating to try and view draft results in a detailed manner, on a board that keeps refreshing. Even draft boards for completed drafts continue to refresh, which has no purpose.

Yes, Yes, 1000X Yes. Please.

I like to look at the Draft Boards from previous years. Sure it may not help much this yr, but it's still fun to go back and see things like - Damn I got Josh Reddick in the 25th rd & Fernando Rodney in the 38th Or I can see that I passed on Trout so that I could take the legendary combo of Tabata & Mayberry

Anyways, I noticed that for some reason it changes the player's team. For ex. I drafted Mike Adams last yr, who was a Texas Ranger. Now it looks like I drafted Mike Adams, a Phillie. He wasn't on the Phils last yr, what reason would they have for correcting what team he's on when he wasn't even on said team at the time of that draft.

I'd think that once the draft is over, it's over Yogi.

[Captain Hook]

Greg another thing to have the IT dept look at - the mechanism that sends out the email notice of picks for the slow leagues - sometimes the delays are much longer than they should be (currently 15 minutes for picks that I can see have already been posted - in itself not a problem but it can magnify delays ... if the guy now up hasn't seen the email he thinks he is not on the clock and goes off an errand then the delay is multiplied ....

[Glenneration X]

I know this is a minor concern compared to some of the improvements we've requested earlier in this thread. However, is there any way we can have newly registered teams default to the top of our My Teams page instead of the bottom? It's a bit of a hassle to have to renumber all my teams from this and previous years each time I sign up for a new team. I think this would also be a benefit for football as it would help those who are unaware that a 2nd team lineup is required for any who qualify for an Overall and prevent them from not noticing the new team lineup page and making a potentially fatal error.

[Captain Hook]

to amplify on my last post Greg - if there are no picks for the full 8 hours it took over 40 minutes for the email notification of the first (system) pick - the next three - one live and two pre-picked arrived at virtually the same time as that one after the delay

[Lobbyist999]

There are a lot of solid suggestions on this thread. Give us everything you have this week and we'll prioritize everything. Thanks.

Thanks very much for offering to prioritize the suggestions in this thread.

Just wanted to add that the draft board screen refresh issue had already been brought up last year.

Would be greatly appreciated if you could indicate whether there is any chance of implementation and if so, when.

Thanks.

[jwillh9181]

It would be great if we could drop/cut guys that are out for the season for the 50 round slow drafts. The line up page is very long with 50 different players.

[Fourslot40]

I can't get on the basketball board, so I'll leave it here. NFBKC League standings... It would be much easier to follow if the league standings mirrored the format of the NFBC where you can see the changes day-by-day in each category and have the categories all on one page visible with the standings per category.

Under the current format, it's far less convenient to toggle each category individually and there is no indication of which categories were affected.

[meanguy]

Option for automatic text message when your up in slow drafts. I believe we had this a couple of years back.

[Surrender Dorothy]

The quick auto refresh on the chat in the HTML version HAS GOT TO GO!

I can't stress enough how frustrating it is to try to use the chat on a tablet or smart phone. I don't know about everybody else, but I do about 90% of my drafting from either a tablet or a phone, and the quick refresh on the chat is beyond frustrating!

[Greg Ambrosius]

I can't get on the basketball board, so I'll leave it here. NFBKC League standings... It would be much easier to follow if the league standings mirrored the format of the NFBC where you can see the changes day-by-day in each category and have the categories all on one page visible with the standings per category.

Under the current format, it's far less convenient to toggle each category individually and there is no indication of which categories were affected.

Agreed John. I have suggested that we mirror the NFBC League Standings page for 2013-14 NFBKC.

[Lobbyist999]

The quick auto refresh on the chat in the HTML version HAS GOT TO GO!

I can't stress enough how frustrating it is to try to use the chat on a tablet or smart phone. I don't know about everybody else, but I do about 90% of my drafting from either a tablet or a phone, and the quick refresh on the chat is beyond frustrating!

Live chat needs to be enabled for drafting from a phone. I have had no issues making selections using an iPhone browser, however, imagine if an issue arises and you can't access the live chat. It could be a minefield.

[Hells Satans]

The single most important thing to me by far.....having a date added column next to each player on the FAAB pages. This was available two years ago. Last year it was not. At some point during the year there was a separate "recent activations" pulldown, but this was clunky and useless. I want to be able to sort ON THE FAAB PAGE by the most recently added players.

This is really, really important if you have multiple leagues and you are trying to keep up with FAAB. Please make this happen.

[DOUGHBOYS]

We are always open for suggestions that help us make the NFBC better and that includes rules suggestions and site suggestions. We believe that we have a very solid game and a very solid site, but everything needs tweaking from time to time. Let's use this thread to handle the technical suggestions and constructively improve the game software that we already have.

As I posted yesterday, we already have three major items we are working on and the goal is to have all of them ready early in the 2013 season. They include:

Live Scoring Enhancements (including doubleheaders issue)
Live Overall Standings
An NFBC Mobile App

We are also going to work on the NFBC Online draft room and enhance that since online is the biggest growth engine of this business. Everything online needs to be improved and made easier for the users. That's a major focus for us.

Getting Lifetime Standings and your past history back on your pages is very important with our 10th NFBC season approaching. The data that was sent back to us from Fanball needs to be available again.

Greg, Do you have an update on the

Live Scoring Enhancements (including doubleheaders issue)
Live Overall Standings
An NFBC Mobile App

And are there any other updates from IT?

[Lobbyist999]

Greg, Do you have an update on the items brought up by big money players?

Corrected, so as to ensure you get Greg's attention.

[DOUGHBOYS]

Greg, Do you have an update on the items brought up by big money players?

Corrected, so as to ensure you get Greg's attention.

I don't know what that means. My suggestion is in the middle of the first page. It's a small one.
These were the suggestions that Greg led off with in his first post of the thread.
I like your suggestion too.
This thread started in October.
Just thought it may be time for answers more than questions.

[Lobbyist999]

Greg, Do you have an update on the items brought up by big money players?

Corrected, so as to ensure you get Greg's attention.

I don't know what that means.

Not meant as a slight, by any means. It was a failed attempt at humor.

[DOUGHBOYS]

We are always open for suggestions that help us make the NFBC better and that includes rules suggestions and site suggestions. We believe that we have a very solid game and a very solid site, but everything needs tweaking from time to time. Let's use this thread to handle the technical suggestions and constructively improve the game software that we already have.

As I posted yesterday, we already have three major items we are working on and the goal is to have all of them ready early in the 2013 season. They include:

Live Scoring Enhancements (including doubleheaders issue)
Live Overall Standings
An NFBC Mobile App

We are also going to work on the NFBC Online draft room and enhance that since online is the biggest growth engine of this business. Everything online needs to be improved and made easier for the users. That's a major focus for us.

Getting Lifetime Standings and your past history back on your pages is very important with our 10th NFBC season approaching. The data that was sent back to us from Fanball needs to be available again.

Greg, Do you have an update on the

Live Scoring Enhancements (including doubleheaders issue)
Live Overall Standings
An NFBC Mobile App

And are there any other updates from IT?

bump...

[Greg Ambrosius]

The single most important thing to me by far.....having a date added column next to each player on the FAAB pages. This was available two years ago. Last year it was not. At some point during the year there was a separate "recent activations" pulldown, but this was clunky and useless. I want to be able to sort ON THE FAAB PAGE by the most recently added players.

This is really, really important if you have multiple leagues and you are trying to keep up with FAAB. Please make this happen.

I thought this was something we had in 2009 before leaving for Fanball. I'm pretty sure that this was added in the past because I remember exactly who suggested this. I've added this suggestion to our To-Do list and we'll definitely look at doing this. I totally get how this one feature can save you hours and hours of FAAB research in your leagues, thus allowing you to buy more teams!! We're on it.

[Greg Ambrosius]

We are always open for suggestions that help us make the NFBC better and that includes rules suggestions and site suggestions. We believe that we have a very solid game and a very solid site, but everything needs tweaking from time to time. Let's use this thread to handle the technical suggestions and constructively improve the game software that we already have.

As I posted yesterday, we already have three major items we are working on and the goal is to have all of them ready early in the 2013 season. They include:

Live Scoring Enhancements (including doubleheaders issue)
Live Overall Standings
An NFBC Mobile App

We are also going to work on the NFBC Online draft room and enhance that since online is the biggest growth engine of this business. Everything online needs to be improved and made easier for the users. That's a major focus for us.

Getting Lifetime Standings and your past history back on your pages is very important with our 10th NFBC season approaching. The data that was sent back to us from Fanball needs to be available again.

Greg, Do you have an update on the

Live Scoring Enhancements (including doubleheaders issue)
Live Overall Standings
An NFBC Mobile App

And are there any other updates from IT?

Dan, I haven't posted any IT updates because it's not like we are just checking them off as done in December or January or February. All of these are being worked on with the goal of having them live for the start of the NFBC season. We have weekly meetings with the head of the IT department and we are all on the same page as far as NEEDING to have these enhancements for 2013. I'll explain:

The Live Scoring improvements really were done last September, but we weren't able to roll all of them out right away. I think you'll like the new Live Scoring data that we'll have this year and if the format needs adjusting like some have suggested then we can do that. If we have some stats categories that aren't needed there, then we can look at that, too. I think we can all work together to make that as good as there is in the industry because we now have a technical format that lets all of this information flow in better than we ever had before.

As for the doubleheader issue, it's a bug we think we have fixed, but we won't know for sure until the first doubleheader is played. Our goals are similar, the first game's stats have to remain there during the second game and within Live Scoring and Standings. It's a simple concept and one we'll either fix right away or hopefully have already fixed. Again, we thought we had this fixed last year and then the problem reappeared late in September. We know this has to be done and again we think it is already, but we'll find out on that first doubleheader. All hands will be on deck that day.

Live Overall Standings are a MUST in all of our contests. That means baseball, football and basketball. We are changing our format to allow this to happen much easier than what we had in the past. This is THE TOP PRIORITY for 2013 FOR ALL OF OUR CONTESTS. It's an even bigger need in football, but we know how important this also is for baseball. In fact, we have some ideas on how we can make these Live Standings look like the stock market each day, with your teams constantly having up and down arrows. The key is to get this live right from the start and then improve it to where it's your drug every night as you watch ballgames and watch your teams moving up and down in real-time in those national contests. We're on it and it HAS to get done for the start of this season. Again, PRIORITY 1.

Yes, this is being worked on as well and almost was done last season. I don't have a list of all of the features here, but this is a product that we know is important for us as smart phones become a bigger part of your transactions, live scoring, etc.

I have a list of 19 items on our To-Do list and that doesn't even include all of the items you folks recommended in your suggestions thread. Our goal is to get as many done as possible before the start of the season. I think one of the items involves the draft room since Flash software is really becoming outdated. Folks talk about our HTML chat in the slow drafts now, but I think the entire goal is to have new draft software in place that allows us to leave this HTML and Flash format. I'll have more details on that shortly, but I think you'll see new draft rooms by mid to late February.

We know that TECHNOLOGY is the key to growing the NFBC now that we're bringing more and more people to the party and STATS needs to be the leader in the game site technology. This has to be the best in-game experience in the industry and we have to prove that to you right away. It's a competitive market and if we don't step up others will. We're not about to let that happen.