Slow Drafts

[Greg Ambrosius]

Before everyone jumps on this thread and goes "Yeah, but Greg....."

We certainly understand the frustration that can occur in these Draft Champions Leagues when one owner isn't communicating with the group, isn't saying if he will pick soon or not, is using hours to make his selection even if he's in the draft room. We also understand this personal clock everyone wants, or the draft room shut off during YOUR sleep hours are ideas that could solve the "problem". The multiple round auto pick could also help things and hopefully we can add that at some point. These are all great suggestions.

But this is no different than a regular online draft where one owner seems to hold up the group, or one guy seems to time out and need assistance. Or no different than at the live draft where one guy takes his full allotment of time to make his pick, preventing the rest of us from going to The Strip 15 minutes earlier than we could have. I mean, here's the problem: WE'RE ALL DIFFERENT HUMAN BEINGS!!! With all that's going on in the world today, why don't we all just realize this and BE PATIENT AND TOLERANT OF OTHERS!!

No, the answer is to boycott a format that had 164 leagues last year and is working well right now. Could STATS do more with the software? I'm sure we could, but honestly with a little more patience we can get through these just fine just like we do at the live drafts or in other online drafts. Trust me, I'm hearing and reading every post and we can do private leagues, 4-hour leagues, even 1-night leagues, but at the end of the day even in each of those a little tolerance of others goes a long way.

Now back to CNN and watching the crazies doing intolerable things to other innocent humans for no conceivable reason whatsoever. Sorry for preaching on a Saturday morning.

[Deadheadz]

We also understand this personal clock everyone wants, or the draft room shut off during YOUR sleep hours are ideas that could solve the "problem".

This statement conveys to me that you're not understanding the request.

Let me give the example of one of your competitors, CBSSports draft room:
During the hours of 00:00am & 06:00am ET the clock (not the draft, just the clock of the manager who is up) pauses. Picks can still be made but there is no countdown during those hours.

The draft room isn't shut off. No one panics because picks are being made or not made. If the manager was on the clock for 5 hours already at midnight, he still has another 3 hours from 6 til 9 am. Everyone knows the timeframe and no one is frustrated. Amazingly, a lot of picks actually go through with the clock paused.

Assuming you thought we were asking you to "shut off" the draft room, I can see your reluctance. Perhaps now you'll see it's not such a drastic step.

[Gekko]

I'm amazed that you guys think STATS can even program such a clock when they can't even solve the position eligibility issue on the draft board

[Greg Ambrosius]

We also understand this personal clock everyone wants, or the draft room shut off during YOUR sleep hours are ideas that could solve the "problem".

This statement conveys to me that you're not understanding the request.

Let me give the example of one of your competitors, CBSSports draft room:
During the hours of 00:00am & 06:00am ET the clock (not the draft, just the clock of the manager who is up) pauses. Picks can still be made but there is no countdown during those hours.

The draft room isn't shut off. No one panics because picks are being made or not made. If the manager was on the clock for 5 hours already at midnight, he still has another 3 hours from 6 til 9 am. Everyone knows the timeframe and no one is frustrated. Amazingly, a lot of picks actually go through with the clock paused.

Assuming you thought we were asking you to "shut off" the draft room, I can see your reluctance. Perhaps now you'll see it's not such a drastic step.

So you want the clock turned off from 9 pm PT to 3 am PT? And that will speed things up?

Sure, it's one of many suggestions that could help. But honestly, I've gotten more emails this weekend about people pushing too fast in these than about people drafting too slow. Not all of the complaints are from people who want these drafts faster. And for those who want these even faster, we can create separate leagues for you.

We could program this (honestly we could Mark!!), but we have other needs on the site now that we're concentrating on and I think multiple round Ques will help more than this pause at night. Once we have the new online draft room we can make additions from there as our current draft room is being phased out. Good luck all going forward.