Draft Discussion, Chatter, etc Thread (Files updated thru 7.21)

[Kobeck]

it seems to me that such a system would create a lot more picks that need to be made by the mods. 10 minutes, 5 minutes.. are you serious? your list runs out or you intend to make your pick and something comes up for a few minutes and you miss your pick. this draft took 5 days, is saving 1 day really something that would matter?

You didn't get the jist of the post.

Your draft picks would have an "appointment". You would know a week, a month possibly, before the draft started that your 1.15 for instance would be on the clock at 11:30 day 1 of the draft. If you checked in an hour before hand you would only need to make a small list.

Same for the later rounds. Your picks would have an appointment and you would know well before when they were due. Check in just a little prior and make a short list.

The short windows for the later rounds are just a suggestion, but with foreknowledge of when picks were due then short lists could be made without too much trouble.

[Suicane]

Didn't happen in my case. Louie Bono (whatever his name was) was on my list when the FB was picked for me. I would have much rather had Bono picked there and take someone else I wanted with the later pick.

I may not have noticed your list. At that point i was just blazing thru picks. If I missed it that falls on me and I appologize.

[George W Bush]

You didn't get the jist of the post.

Your draft picks would have an "appointment". You would know a week, a month possibly, before the draft started that your 1.15 for instance would be on the clock at 11:30 day 1 of the draft. If you checked in an hour before hand you would only need to make a small list.

Same for the later rounds. Your picks would have an appointment and you would know well before when they were due. Check in just a little prior and make a short list.

The short windows for the later rounds are just a suggestion, but with foreknowledge of when picks were due then short lists could be made without too much trouble.

I got the jist of the post. I'm just saying.. shit happens with such small windows.

[BOSS]

Appointment times are the best way of doing a draft. Everyone knows what time they pick. Do one round a day and you pick at the same time everyday.

[tarcone]

You wouldnt draft at the same time everyday because the picks move from round to round. Just sayin'.

[dberner30]

on a serious note i want to thank everyone for actually discussing the issue...

i think if our draft took 7 days it wouldnt be too long...we play one game in 7 days now...we run free agency for 2 weeks...im in favor of any proposal that expands the time and avoids these whipsaw runs...im cool with the picks being made quickly...im just not cool with a team ending up holding the bag at the end...on two occasions i held the bag...im sure others did as well...next draft it will be others.....

my only request is that we treat our draft like the rest of our league events...slow and steady to maximize participation....

[Warhammer]

I may not have noticed your list. At that point i was just blazing thru picks. If I missed it that falls on me and I appologize.

No worries. I still got Bono. Had someone else gotten him I would have been ticked.

[JesterBlaze]

the problem is that the utility is the best way for us to draft and it's pretty much set in concrete the way it works. Nobody here has the know how to fiddle with it outside of the easiest of fixes.

This might not be true. I was able to pick up what was happening on the snippet that I was given from Jeff and have no doubts I could make changes to the code.

I've even thought of rewriting it and adding features but know that that's a bigger job than I'm looking to get into at this time. However in small doses it's nice to "get your hands dirty" in someone else's code.


Now regarding the draft discussion: This league is entertainment. If "something comes up" and you miss anything in this league then guess what? You've missed some entertainment in your life.

The movies don't holdup the picture for any of us. The stores don't stay open later for any of us. None of the entertainment outlets in your life wait up for you yet you think that 31 other humans in this league should.

If "something comes up" for me like getting a nice BJ and I miss my pick well I'm happy about the BJ (or whatever else I got) that was good enough for me to CHOOSE to miss my pick. If I have to work or do some other non-fun responsibility and I miss my pick then I have to wonder if I'm cut out for the IFL, which has a schedule to keep. It's ridiculous to me that the mentality is "31 others can wait so that my entertainment is bettered". We're not talking about rationing out food here. It's ok for some to get left behind of their own doing in a game.

[dberner30]

too funny...i figured the serious discussion wouldnt last...

how bout this one...we have a schedule for every other event in an FOF season but the draft...why not it too...instead we have a moving and shifting deadline that you can never guess...

and last time i checked we were trying to make this league work for all of us...not just those who cant wait for the next event to come along and dont care to enjoy the one on the table today...

i didnt suggest the whole league should wait indefinitely for any one owner...but when you choose to blast through the event as fast as you damn can then sometimes those who want to participate have a much lower chance because of the rapid fire...

i said it as clear as possible..its the part where the draft whipsaws through a string of list picks that is problematic...but if all we can get in our code is a time stamp next to each pick then lets start there...then we can truly analyze how picks are made and how the utility really works.

[JesterBlaze]

how bout this one...we have a schedule for every other event in an FOF season but the draft...why not it too...instead we have a moving and shifting deadline that you can never guess...

While the schedule was "shifty" this season the draft comes as no surprise to any GM here. The idea of a list is not new to any off-season.

How do you explain the time(s) that people wait until right before their pick to start their hour+ absence? Do those picks sneak up on them?

and last time i checked we were trying to make this league work for all of us...not just those who cant wait for the next event to come along and dont care to enjoy the one on the table today...

I have no urge to speed up the draft as a whole - I just don't want to wait in long stints for the same owners who show me over and over that they don't care about the rest of the league. Are you "enjoying" the draft when you're making the rest of us wait? I know I have an uncomfortable lack of knowledge when I'm away from the draft. I "enjoy" it when I'm caught up and ready to make a move.

Those who attend the chat room will probably remember me saying "calm down. he's on the forums" for quite a few picks as I don't mind waiting the whole alloted time for someone present and possibly "wheeling and dealing". I don't like waiting for someone who's not there and hasn't made a list. It's not a "fuck off" feeling towards that person but merely a "your pick is as valuable as you show me it is" mentality and with no attendance and no list you're telling me that you don't care much about the pick and thus shouldn't mind being passed.

i said it as clear as possible..its the part where the draft whipsaws through a string of list picks that is problematic...but if all we can get in our code is a time stamp next to each pick then lets start there...then we can truly analyze how picks are made and how the utility really works.

Not being a smart-ass here as it was evident some GMs didn't know this but the "yellow and green lights" on the draft order page show if a list is turned on for one pick (yellow) or just plain turned on (green).

If you see 5-7 greens in a row (after having this knowledge) then you can't use the quick pace as an excuse. Most of my "draft day" past the 1st round seems to be me logging in over and over again at 13-9 picks away because I know the reality is that I'm going to go from 10+ picks away to my pick in a short amount of time... and that's when the "I don't want to leave everyone else hanging" thought creeps up.

[Matt]

I was super busy this year during the draft, however I missed a total of 0 picks.

It's called using the utility.

[dberner30]

i understand the green and yellow lights...and i used lists...i still missed 2 pick out of about 10 or so...and i was around with about 4 to 5 hrs being the largest gap between checking into the boards...i missed 4-10 and 7-24...both times i was out for the 4 or 5 hours and had a list of about 10 guys plugged into the utility...in both cases i was about 25 picks away and there were not long lines of green lights...or yellow lights...im not suggesting i like waiting for guys who dont show up either...and if you think im that guy then just say so and we can have a discussion on a different level...im talking about overall big picture stuff and you seem to be calling me out...so lets either talk big picture or lets bicker over how often i check in and how many picks get missed and by how much...

my point is simple..we are a slow paced league and that isnt changing...we run that slow pace all season and offseason...the only time we race along is the draft...i would prefer a slower paced draft to match our season...or at least some utility provisions that deal with the run of picks in short periods of time...

[JesterBlaze]

my point is simple..we are a slow paced league and that isnt changing...we run that slow pace all season and offseason...the only time we race along is the draft...

I'll have to go with whatever the league sets as a pace but I've always felt we match the NFL with 1 game per week, then the draft comes along and we take 6-7 days to make decisions in a video game that the NFL, who has infinitely more data to sort through, makes in 2 days total. So in that regards I feel the exact opposite as you do: I feel we have a nice pace during the season and then the draft comes and we take a sprint (something that requires intense focused energy) and stretch it into a marathon and the result is predictable: those running the entire "sprint/marathon" are burned out about 30% into it.

I have no problems discussing new strategies for the draft. I do however think that all missed picks are the fault of the team's GM with the system that we currently have in place.

In your situation 10 players on the list with 25 to go in the 3rd-4th round is not a great amount of players especially if the players are possibly a combination of the following:

1) highest rated left on the board
2) fastest players left on the board
3) "all blue" for combine bars
4) etc...

There are no "sleepers" in FOF regardless of the talk during draft time. Only players who aren't ranked highly by the games calculations of "ovr", which no one pays attention to anyway. I assume every player on my list has a great chance to be taken next (either by that team or a savvy GM trading up) and usually this proves true. The players in the utility usually aren't even the top on my list. I just don't want to waste the time putting those players on the utility that are going to be taken anyway.

BTW - I'm not singling you out. In my mind you're probably speaking for silent others as well. I also just toked my morning blunt so this last post I delved off into random draft talk at some point - something I'm hard pressed to ever pull away from as a whole-hearted draftnik.

[dberner30]

i can understand the comparison to the NFL draft. I didnt realize we had a schedule set to mimic the NFL in terms of the weeks. My take is that we have the schedule for games the way we do for max participation. Our draft makes that a little harder. And its those runs in the utility that are the issue for me. I dont mind finishing in 4 days. I dont mind mod picks if i am just not able to be here because of a conflict and my list isnt long enough or full at all. I just get frustrated when I am here and do have a list but get caught at the end of a long run that wasnt obvious before i stepped away for a few hours. Im not the only one to have this happen. It surely happened to a few others. It will always be an issue no matter how many guys are in a list. Because runs like that happen and eventually someone is holding that bag and when they show up are stunned that 25 picks just went by and they got a mod pick. that combined with our deliberate and slow pace otherwise is what is a little maddening.....

[Hell Atlantic]

you can always select "best WR available" or "best [insert position here] available". i got Chuck Morris doing it that way. for the later rounds, let's be serious - these guys won't be on your team in about 4 years. if you keep seeing these supposed 25 pick runs it's because everyone but you is using the utility like we should. and it's not like the mods are making the pick for you first chance they get. you actually have to be away from the board for a bit for that to happen.

you have to keep a certain brisk pace for the draft. if it doesn't move at a decent pace then it becomes less necessary for people to log in. if the draft moves at a pace of 6 picks per day then obviously there isn't a lot going on and that delays things. at least with the way we do it i know during the draft there'll always be someone online and something to talk about cuz something is always happening.

if you want to take things at the slowest pace possible for every single stage then maybe you should just stick with a solo career. i understand this is a slow paced league but you have to keep people's interest levels up. as it is i can not log in for a couple days at a time and know i haven't missed much. at least during the draft there's some content to read cuz it's an exciting time.