Offseason Point Task - 25th Anniversary Special

[Ry_]

The ISFL(or, NSFL, as it was when I joined the league about thirteen months ago), has meant a good bit to me at times, and I've also ignored it for bits of time as well. I've had my ups and downs through this league; there's been plenty of drama, action, success, plenty of defeat(at least for my player), and overall it's been a solid experience. I do feel my journey here, specifically in the ISFL, is winding down, but I still have some fun memories that I think I'll remember for a very, very long time. My favorite sim season I think in any sim league I've been a part of was that DSFL S19 and the run up to the S20 NSFL Draft. I think more teams still should've given me a chance that draft, haha, but Darrel hasn't amounted to much so I can't blame them. I think this league's upgrade to DDSPF 21 or whatever the newly planned sim engine is called will really help the league. The reason I struggle or ignore most of the streams is that the sim is simply not fun to watch, as well as the gameplay the sim provides. The ISFL can provide great moments for when someone can actually break the engine, but the league causes it to be more difficult because so many players are so similar in skill quality across the field, making it difficult to do anything incredibly impressive. I hope not only the quality of the sim will change but also the overall gameplay. If it doesn't, another sim or something else should be considered, but since it seems like everyone is having plenty of fun how the league is, let it stay if they enjoy it. My journey in the league has been very interesting; I think a lot of people misrepresent how active someone can actually be in this league. I feel like the teams I've played for and play for currently think I loved their team just because I earned for them. The team aspect of sim leagues can be really fun, but that is dependent on a few more factors than just earning and watching streams. My connection here came from a passion with another sim league, but after a few moments in January 2020 that pushed me away from truly becoming invested in this league, I can say that casually earning here for a while has been fun and Darrel has been a good player to watch. On to the next seasons.

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[Mavfatha]

The ISFL and I have had quite the run. I joined over 2 years ago at the urging of the infamous kckolbe among others (he's who I listed as my recruiter because he helped a lot with my initial build as a DT when entering the league). I played briefly as a waiver pickup for the Pythons before being drafted by the Coyotes. I would take over as a GM for them not too long after, and enjoyed a fun run with that job and learning about building up a DSFL team. I didn't stay in the role for too long as I would go on to bigger and better things, joining HO in early 2019. I was never the greatest HO member in retrospect and I think I knew that as the time as well, but it was a good experience for most of my tenure working with some great folks like ADwyer and "other mav" aka manicmav. Myself and the league had a falling out in early 2020 (holy heck I thought that was longer ago, what a weird year), at which time I stepped down from HO and stopped updating my first player. Obviously not the happiest memory there but just a warning to anyone that reads this to not let yourself take the league too seriously - if you're not having fun, it's not worth the pain. Anyways, I couldn't actually stay away for long and at the urging of folks like Muford in particular as well as Jay Doctor who at the time was head GM to my co-GM in another league. Conveniently, the two of them were also GM's here, and Jay drafted me to Tijuana for my DSFL days as Icebox Riposte before Muford drafted me to Chicago where I've now had a successful rookie season at the ISFL level. Really it comes down to the people, including many other folks on Chicago like FFS who we discovered was born in the same hospital as me in the same month of the same year. I would also be remiss to not give a shoutout to my fellow members of the "fair rubs" club, including caltroit who is one of my favorite sim league users and I am lucky enough to be teammates with across three leagues currently. I would also like to highlight the enjoyment you can get even from playing lineman positions in this league, as well as the well-implemented Twitter system here that has always felt more natural to me than other leagues.

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[Eldorian]

Alright, so I only just completed my 2nd full season in ISFL (1 season in DSFL and 1 in ISFL) and I have to say it's been a pretty cool experience so far. I came here from PBE after joining that in March of this year and then finally made the move over here to try and max earn in both leagues. Probably the biggest difference between the two sims is people just seem genuinely more active in the ISFL in terms of media and posting in Discord - and all of that is pretty cool.

I'm definitely thankful and appreciative that people took my Goat Tank concept I had for my player and kind of ran with it. The number of times I got DMs in Discord from people telling me they like what I am doing on Goat Tank's twitter account was great and made me feel like I was an accepted member of the community. Even in PBE I just felt like another clog in the wheel until recently when I took over as GM of a team, but maybe it's just because my name was bland? Maybe that's the secret of being noticed in sim leagues, just having a funny name? The other thing that I think has really helped me enjoy the league is the GMs I've had. Thor was pretty awesome in Myrtle Beach and the fact that he didn't even get nominated this year for GM of the year is absolutely atrocious and the DSFL voting committee should be ashamed of themselves.

On the ISFL side, being able to get drafted by the Orange County Otters (and finding out they desperately tried trading up for me) has been pretty awesome. Laser and Jeffie have been a couple of really great GMs and it's pretty awesome to see that they continue on with the dominance of the Otters in the league and I am more than happy to be playing for an organization like this.

Probably the biggest thing for me though is the fact that there are so many people who crossover and play in both PBE and ISFL that I have gotten to know some of the PBE folks better as well. This has been a lot of fun to talk about both leagues to people and discuss the insane and stupid drama that happens between the two. I think most of all for me, is this league and PBE have both been a god send for me during this pandemic and feeling like I'm part of a pretty fun community has really helped me cope with having to basically be inside the house for the last 9 months now.

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[thevoicelesscreator]

Time does go by quickly – less so now that the league is bigger and seasons are longer, but quickly all the same. I joined the league during the S20 Playoffs as part of the biggest draft class to ever do so (S22), back in February of 2020. I saw an opportunity to join a community of real people, who enjoyed sports and sports management at a level that not a ton of people understand, but here they were. Creating my player was such a magical experience, from crafting their name, their backstory, their wiki, and their render. I don’t really think I’ll ever be able to experience it again (the first character), but I’m okay with that. It wouldn’t be so special if I could. 

Along the way, I have met some truly special individuals. I was selected 24th overall by the reigning champion, the Minnesota Grey Ducks. I am eternally grateful to @Dewalt27 and @CLG Rampage for bringing me into that wonderful organization. Minnesota very quickly became home, and has stayed that way since. It was through those two that I met @woelkers, who I am very blessed to be able to say mentored me in all aspects of the league, before drafting me, alongside with @Frick_Nasty, to the Colorado Yeti in S22.

I have loved my time with the Yeti (more on that later), and during my rookie season, we were finally able to capture the elusive Ultimus, giving @Bwestfield one last gift for all his hard work. With 2 seasons of tutelage under my belt, I decided to take the jump, and accepted an opportunity to Co-GM the Minnesota Grey Ducks alongside CLG. A season later, as CLG departed to make room for some of our up and coming talent, I had the pleasure of hiring and working with @BenDover! Eventually, it was time for me to move up as well, and it was an easy decision to hand the team keys over to @TheCC, someone who I rate as one of the smartest players’ GM in the league.

I would end up moving up to the Colorado Yeti, as Woelkers moved to New York to follow him and Bwestifeld’s dream of creating the Colorado of the East. Frick stepped back to allow for myself and my current partner @Sylphreni to step into the spotlight. That is where we currently are, and I’m so grateful to have met and been impacted by so many folks along the way. And I’m not even done.

There are so many special thanks here, I am bound to miss someone, so please forgive me.

@bex: Thank you so much for being an amazing friend, commissioner, and confidant. There’s so much more I could and should say here, but I’m trying to be less overbearing.

@infinitempg: Dude… I have lost track of how many things you do for not only myself and the Yeti, but for the league as a whole. All without laying claim to any of it. You are the one cog that the entire league relies on to function, yet so little know. Wolfie will be forever my favourite QB, and you, one of my favourite users.

@IsaStarcrossed: Thank you for choosing Colorado to be your home. There’s not a day that goes by that I’m not happy to see you in our locker room, chatting up a storm. In just two seasons, you’ve become the foundation that our locker room is built on.

@SchwarzNarr: My god, I don’t know where to start with this one. From being our moral compass, to designing all of our future branding, and all the damn moose emojis, you are quite easily one of the greatest people to have played for the Yeti. I can’t wait to see Melvin murder some more quarterbacks! If we’re lucky, we might get a sick graphic to spam in our locker room!

@SDCore: Thank you for bringing me to Newfoundland – I know it’s another league, but NL has been my safe space when the ISFL gets a little too crowded. I’m so happy to have been able to draft you to Colorado, and return that favour and faith you trusted in me so many seasons ago. I’m so happy to see you in Head Office affecting change, and I can’t wait to see what your big brain can do.

Like I said, I probably missed a million. So thank you to all! Except the sim – the sim can go…

[treant]

It is a very interesting question to think about where the ISFL will be as a league in 25 seasons! I am in an interesting position as someone who is a new member to the league but I have known about the ISFL for a very long time. I am a long time member of the SHL and I remember seeing that the ISFL had been created a few years ago! I didn’t make the decision to join then but when you think about how long the league has existed for it has grown a lot during the short time that it has existed! The reason that I am talking about this isit makes me think that the league is going to be in a great place in 25 years. It has grown very quickly to having a very strong community with a lot of members who work very hard and spend a lot of time making things even better in the league! I have been so impressed by how happy and friendly the people are in this league and how quick they are to offer help to new members. In 25 seasons there is no telling how many members the league will be able to have based on what we have seen so far!

I think that by the time 25 more seasons has come, the ISFL could be around 1000 active members. I know that is a lot but I really would not be surprised if it were possible! If the league was going to be able to support having this many members in it there would need to be quite a few more teams added to it which would be a fun process for it to go through. The growth of the league would be exciting and adding new teams would give new chances for people to play in the league and create new rivalries!

It is hard for me to say beyond what I have what I think will change for the league in 25 seasons. From what I have been able to tell so far the league is in safe hands and is flourishing so I hope that this continues and that the league is still in a great place in the future. It has been a pleasure to be involved in the league for the short time that I have and I plan on being here in 25 seasons to see if the prediction that I have made about the league having over 1,000 active members turns out to be true!

[StevenOSullivan]

This has been a cool league to be a part of. I have not been the most active in this league, I must admit and I have gone inactive with both of my players before but I am on my third player now and I guess that counts for something too. I want to try better this time and actually help a team out. This league has some really cool people in it and everyone has been super helpful and inviting here, especially the DSFL guys and GMs who have been super nice while they have scouted me. I really didn't expect them to like me or think I would do well for them, but I think having some conversations with them really helped them see that I could be a player they would want on their team. I am curious to see where I will go in that draft and where I will start to catch some balls in the future as a wide receiver. Maybe I can become a bigger part of this league and start to contribute as a member of the league. This should be something really exciting and cool. Happy anniversary to the league and let's see if we can do 25 more!

[Laser]

For me, the ISFL is a place where I can escape real life and not have to worry about whatever's happening at home for a while. There are, of course, times when the sim makes me rage out and need to leave GM channels for a while out of frustration and being disappointed in myself at not being able to succeed for my team. There are times when people in the league are being deliberately dense and hateful in order to work someone up to get a reaction out of them. There are times when my player is nothing more than a pile of shit hanging out on the field pretending to be a football player. But when COVID shut everything down and I was still considered an essential worker, and was getting severely underpaid for the amount of stress and work I was having to put in on a daily basis because apparently when there's a pandemic 50% more people want KFC, I had the league here to come hang out in and distract myself from the utter bullshit that was going on in real life or in other leagues. That's a huge part of why I have so many league jobs, because on the one hand it's a distraction, but on the other hand I like being a part of what the league is all about, having a stable foundation for other users to be able to use the casual side of the league as a distraction.

As for users, oh god. First of all, @TropicaliaCC and @mcgriddleluver for being my first GMs in KCC and helping me a get a better feel for the league as a whole, and exposing me to the first bit of strategy. @Revolution5 for being a fantastic co-GM to me for several seasons and always making sure I didn't go off the rails with crazy ideas. @jeffie43 for pushing the limits of what I had considered as a GM and finding ways to make things work that I wouldn't have thought of and for dealing with my cranky ass. @ADwyer87 and @bex for turning into people I can trust. @manicmav36 for giving me that first updater job that led to my current jobs addiction. And last but certainly not least, @speculadora for drafting me to the Otters and then not only hiring me, a complete rookie, as the co-GM of one of the most successful franchises in the league, but feeling confident enough in my ability only two seasons later to step down and leave the team to me and Rev. Also putting up with all my hare-brained ideas and constant questions for seasons afterwards.

[woelkers]

I am, quite simply, tired.

I want to be exceedingly clear: I have so, so much love for this league. I believe this league has, at the end of the day, been a net positive part of my life. I have met some people, many people, who I would call dear friends here. (No, I do not feel any inclination to give a more detailed account of who these people are; I cannot stop those who choose to go that route, but my people know exactly who they are and how I feel.) And, truly, I have grown as a result of being a member of this league. So, I will say it again: I have a ton of love for this league, and, at the end of the day, the league means a great deal to me as a positive element of my life.

Now, returning to my original point: I am tired. That, of course, is not all the fault of this league; I am kept quite busy with law school, I am desperately behind in my research work, I am slowly and nervously working towards submitting an application for a political science PhD program, and I am newly married, so my life is excessively hectic as a general matter. That said, I cannot and will not pretend that this league, at times, is draining. Perhaps this is a result of my approach; I have been a general manager for eight of my now ten seasons here and spent nine as a member of our update team. Some weeks I think I spend more time looking at league-related spreadsheets than I do looking at my wife’s face. Discord eats at my time and my phone battery more than any other thing has since I joined this league.

What I am trying to say is that this league, while good at its core, is at times exhausting, and I wanted to use this space to reflect on that, and remind people how important it is to find healthy ways to enjoy this league. I will not pretend that I have not had fun here, but I also cannot in good faith pretend that my league involvement has always been healthy. I think many of us have been in this same boat, and posting this is a means of reminding all of our users, old and new, that it is important to be constantly examining how you feel about this league, and how the league affects you, to make sure you are having a healthy and happy experience here. Please be kind to yourself.

[H0PPY75]

Only been here about three weeks so it's kind of hard for me to really talk about league history and stuff when it comes to the 25th Anniversary Special task do here so I guess I'll just go on what I've seen in these three weeks.  I guess the biggest thing that this league is allowing me to do is kind of go on with a football career that I haven't had in 6 years I played semi-pro football from 2009 up until 2014 and then decided to retire because my body was falling apart at the age of  25 and this will allow me to continue to be a football player with a lot less pain and strain on my body.  what this league is also going to allow me to do is join another Sim League  what the difference between this one in the pro baseball experience and I'm also in is that I will have absolutely no responsibility in this league outside of just building my player in trying to win in PVE right now I'm the GM of the team so instead of just sitting there and  doing my pts and building my player I  I now have the responsibility to have to put lineup cards together and make sure that it's all the other people on my team are updating their players and helping them build their players  so they can be the best that they can be and this league is just giving me kind of  an outlet to do all the stuff that got me into PBE that was fun in the first place and is now kind of a chore just because I have so much other stuff on my plate.  another great thing about this league is the fact that everyone has been so welcoming to me I'm in about seven different team discords and it's been great getting to know all the people in  this league that are part of the PBE so I've been able to meet new people and have them help me build my players since I really don't know exactly what I'm doing yet and I'm sure it'll take me a few seasons before I start seeing how everything will fit together and make my player a great player.  now that being said it's also great to see a ton of guys that I do know from the PBE  in this league as well so there are quite a few people that I already know so it's been a much easier transition to building a new player here than it was for me back in February when I first joined and then quit a week later.

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[Lime]

The ISFL has been a very interesting experience since I got here. I first joined the Simulation Hockey League, and that was my first taste of sim leagues. I was looking for something else to do so I decided to pick up another league. I first tried PBE, but it was a very stale experience and I didn't even last a season. Perhaps I will return some day. But a few of my teammates in the SHL decided to join ISFL and I went along with them. My experience here has been much better. I've been able to interact with people from the SHL I would never have normally talked to which is interesting. Its fun being teammates in one league and rivals in another. Or in the case of Fish, we are teammates in SHL, joined ISFL at the same time, got drafted to Myrtle Beach together, and then drafted to Orange County together. Though I'm not as good an earner as in SHL, the Myrtle Beach and Orange County locker rooms have been a lot of fun. Playing phasmophobia with the boys, sharing our dotts pulls, and everything inbetween. Speaking of dotts, that has been a really fun experience. Mith probably hates me for not finishing my cards but its still fun to be a part of, and one of the things this league does great is the effort put into making things feel important like making trading cards for all the players, and making the draft a big experience. Like any sim league its always great to have somewhere to practice your writing and graphics skills. Some of my favorite graphics I have made were for players here and its always fun to see your work in the wild on their signatures. It's especially fun how this league seems more relaxed with player names. In SHL most people have very normal sounding names but here in Orange County we have a full on anime squad. Blackford Oakes was just mentioned in the locker room and that guy has bidoof for a render which is rare to see something like that in SHL. Overall I don't take ISFL too seriously but that's nice sometimes to just enjoy the ride and hang out. Hopefully I earn enough to not have been a waste of a first rounder. The good people of Orange County deserve that much. Actually both jeff and gabe are on orange county maybe we should just burn it down and start over.