(S7) - Special PT - Changes

[run_CMC]

Add: (209 words)

Stricter position switch rules. The current "you can only reallocate up to 50% of your TPE and you must meet the minimums (and come down from the maximums) from your new position" doesn't do enough, in my opinion. I understand that position switching allows some people who get bored of their current player to have more fun again, and obviously a player having fun equals an active player who sticks around, which we want... but there's gotta be a balance. Right now, anyone can switch to anything. Cornerback to safety? Yeah, that makes sense. Cornerback to wide receiver? Sure! Linebacker to quarterback? Makes no sense at all. I recommend either limits on what positions can switch to what other positions, or have a set number of seasons a player can play after being drafted during which they can position switch, and after that: no-go. Or, perhaps, a combination of the two? If you've played one season in the DSFL as a runningback and have just yesterday been drafted to the NSFL... ah heck with it, sure, become a defensive end. You've played 5 seasons as a runningback in the NSFL? Now you face some restrictions. You may only be able to position switch to a safety or wide receiver.

Remove: (103 words)

Long off-seasons have to go. Before I was a GM, I didn't realize just how much went on behind the scenes during the off-season. But even now, I think it's just too long. The collegiate tournament was cool in theory, but what it really did was make the off-season longer (from what I can tell). Especially for DSFL players, who most likely won't be starting on the collegiate teams. So, I guess this is kind of an "add", but we need a streamlined off-season that reduces the time new recruits have to wait to be drafted in the DSFL and start playing games.

Like: (156 words)

A lot. I like the lockerroom chemistry I see; people sticking up for their teammates. I like the team rivalries. I like that regardless of the Otters dominance, the league is moving towards greater parity. I like that we have countless people who happily help new members become acquainted with the league (shoutout to guys like PDX who gave me a ton of helpful advice when I first joined). The streams, despite the Outlaws record (SO FAR!) this year, and despite the pretty bad sim game, are consistently enjoyable and have good viewership. I love that we have ultra-committed members like Dermot and Slm that, even if I don't agree with a decision, I am confident are doing only what they believe is the absolute best for the league.

The NSFL has its share of issues (including a very unfortunate acronym), but it has a whole lot of bright spots too. I love y'all <3

[tlk742]

One thing to add:
Ok, I hate the SFL, there’s a lot they do wrong, and I can write an essay on it. It’s super fun. That said, there’s a few things they do right – one of which is promotion and hype. They do a weekly podcast and recap on twitch, it’s kind of boring, because the SFL sucks but it would be a lot of fun to get an official NSFL podcast or something, which would help build up hype and hopefully players in a way that would be good for the league. Now, there’s challenges like who would do it, but it would be a lot of fun to see and hear. They have highlights and whatnot.

One thing to remove:
The GFX head, he sucks. But really, the thing I would honestly say to remove is the engine. I don’t think anyone likes the crap that Wolverine Studio puts out, the play calling is bizarre, the roles and the success (ball weighs more when caught) is just so arbitrary we probably lose more users because the engine sucks than anything else. I don’t want 1 hour games, that’s too much of my time for games I don’t watch (lack of time and stats are there) but man is it hard to root for a dot. So that’d be my remove/change.

One thing I like:
The community is the best, bar none. Seriously, it’s the reason I am still around here and left the SFL. It didn’t feel stiff, it’s relaxed, loose and welcoming as a group. This league has the model that many good and long-lasting groups do, come for the X and stay for the community, and it’s true. I stuck around the SFL for the season because I told them I would, but man, the community both within teams and at large is just so great. I can write a love poem about it, may be a bit NSFW though, so I won’t.

[Loganjj21]

1 thing I like about the league is the games are simmed and you can view them live vs other sim leagues in which they just upload the index and there is no visual on the games or any sort of info of what happened in the game really
Something I don’t like is the fact that their was a tie between Kansas City coyotes and someone else and because the sim ran twice on top of eachother they had to discard it due to the fact it would have messed up the index and personally that just pisses me off because that tie turned loss could be the diffrence in playoff ranking and even if we make the playoffs so I think that has to be fixed somehow
What I really enjoy about this league instead of others is the addition of bot teams ran by actually players so that Locker rooms aren’t dead and only filled with a few people but filled with a lot of ambitious players who want to win! (174 words)

[ExemplaryChad]

Added:
The one thing I would like to see added to the league is a more professional presentation. Everything seems to be running pretty well at the moment, so added stuff would just be gravy. So what do I mean by a more professional presentation? Well, I’d like to see more live commentary of games. I’d like to see post-game analysis. I’d like to see highlight articles for players of the week and storylines to watch for from game to game. I don’t know who would do these things, and I know that they’d be asking a lot. But maybe we could create some jobs for them? I’m not sure how to implement this stuff; I just think it’d be fun.

Removed:
The thing I’d like to see removed is more of a thing I’d like to see simplified. It is, of course, the new player process. I know there’s been a lot of attention paid to it recently, and the changes have been good ones (the introduction video, updates to the new player guide, etc.). But I’d like to emphasize that there is more work to be done. The process is still quite complicated for someone coming into it cold, especially a person without sim league experience. It seems fairly impossible to figure all of this out without a single person dedicated to helping with every step.

I also hate the limited relocation rule (where a team can’t rebrand within a certain number of seasons after another team did it). Rebranding is part of the fun of the league, especially when its name and organization have become particularly onerous.

Also, position switching needs to be reexamined. Too many teams have avoided rebuilds based on unrealistic standards. It's one thing to make sure players are enjoying themselves; it's quite another to make sure teams never have to rebuild because they can just always keep their highest TPE players at positions of need.

Kept:
The thing I think we do really well is make positive changes. Even the last head office, beleaguered as it was, moved on some of the core issues affecting the league and fixing some of the things that were broken. Now, with less of the drama surrounding multis, mass retirements, and other types of cheating, the head office has been able to focus on preventing problems, and that’s certainly a step in the right direction. Obviously, not everything can be anticipated, but it’s my hope that with so many eyes on every potential problem, head office continues to listen to players and make necessary changes as we go.

[Daybe]

Like - One thing I really like is how we're able to foster the level of activity we have through Discord. I love using discord, and it simplifies a lot of things than just posting on these stupid ole jcink forums. It's safe to say that this league would not have gotten itself off the ground if it wasn't for Discord, and I know many teams have moved past the team locker room days of posting in season discussion threads into the new style, which gives a higher level of discord communication. It's also really coolio cause we can shit talk and no one cares.

Remove - All the fluff in the offseason. I know TC touched on this as well. I find it really boring to have all this stuff going on in between seasons, especially since NCT ate up a lot of time this year and has gotten nowhere. An offseason should be chock-full of rumors, drafts, and signings, and not much else. I get that we should have the pro bowl and award ceremony cause those are definitely huge in our league to reward the best guys in the league, but c'mon, guys. If we have one thing then we should stick with it.

Add - Compensation picks. This one is a bit complicated. It's been a commonly known issue of active players taking dirt cheap, minimum contracts for their current team and it's not helped the glaring parity issue we already had in this league. This idea might be a bit controversial too, but here's what I propose: Compensation picks. Just to give an example, say the Yeti lost Jonathon Saint to free agency (Not gunna happen). Then they would receive a compensation pick, based on his TPE level. For example, since he surpassed 1000 TPE, the Yeti would receive a compensation pick at the end of the first round. The league can determine who qualifies for who's eligible, but I'd start it out with something rather simple, such as a player who was top 10 in total TPE in the league leaving would grant a pick at the first round, 11-25 at the end of the second round, and 26-50 at the end of the third round. This would devalue later round picks, but we could also make those compensation picks tradeable to encourage more league parity. Also, for those complaining about those potential effects, note that generally the top tiered TPE players stick with their team, and this wouldn't be a common occurrence. However, anything that would promote parity here would be good.

[DeathOnReddit]

One thing I would Add -
One Thing I would like added to the league is a stricter contract rule. A lot of the times a team is able to sign their young star and old vets for a low amount of money, and the cap is large enough that they dont have to worry about losing any players. I would like this changed. Even so a few of us have decided to test FA so that players arent stuck on the same team for their entire contract. As a GM I tried to abuse this as much as possible, because you want to win but as a player, it sucks to see guys take 2 million for 3 seasons instead of getting a big contract in FA.

One thing I would Remove -
I would remove all the waiting we have to do in the offseason. Especially these last two or three off seasons seemed to last forever, and while the start is fun with drafts, Free Agency, and everything else that happens. After a week or so it gets boring and you just wish for more football to come. Get rid of things like the redraft, or the NCT. Instead lets just do all the necessary offseason shit, and get right back into the groove. It allows for more seasons in a year, and stop new guys and old guys alike from getting bored and leaving.

One thing I like -
One thing I really like about the NSFL is the community. We've had a really awesome group here since season 1, and its been really awesome to see new guys come and stick around for a while. While it does suck to see some of the old guys you remember hanging out with and talking to leaving and just go disappear, the new guys really are awesome. The discord always seems to be active and some joking is always going on, and the LRs from what I've heard from other teams and my own teams I've been on have been awesome as well. Really happy with how the league is

[iseedoug]

Things to Add:

1. The one thing I would really like to see added to the league is "In Game Experience." In real pro football, game experience has proven to be valuable in player development. It would be nice if we could emulate that some how. For example, we could make in game experience TPE that can only be applied to certain traits (ones that would actually improve with in game experience like intelligence, tackling, etc. but not speed, strength, etc). These would obviously need to be partial TPE or something to ensure we do not have inflation. We could also have this in-game experience TPE only count if the player is watching the game.

2. Maybe this one is because I am new, but I feel like there is so little control in the sims. I am not sure what can be done to change this, but I would like to have a little more playbook control as a team. I am not talking like playing madden or something, just better control of packages and schemes. (This also could be that I haven’t had time to play with the simulator myself. I think the better understanding of it can help both player development and team strategy.)

3. I agree with some of the others who have mentioned a different pay structure. I think it would be fun to make contracts a little more detailed like NFL contracts. Conditions, trade clauses, negotiations, etc. I realize this would probably take significantly more effort, but it would be fun from the individual player perspective.

4. I also am concerned as other are about getting more players for the leagues long term sustainability. So, maybe some bigger incentives for recruitment? I also assume (obviously haven’t been here long) that there are many people who do not stay active. I am not sure how this can be fixed, but higher recruitment should be able to outweigh it. This would also make the drafts more fun and teams could actually have real depth chart competition. Right now, if you are an active you start. But we could easily have cool rotations and competition if we had more guys.

5. I would also love to see the front office’s get expanded past the GMs. Maybe have more specific jobs for each team (analytics, coaching (focus more on strategy), team media person who is responsible for producing team specific content, etc.)

Things to Remove:

1. I agree with the idea of making DLs bots (although I love a good DL). This would help with filling the rosters. And since we do OL bots, DL bots could just make the line competition balanced (basically let the stochastic behavior in the sim work on the line.) This would push actives out to positions where a lot more types can be made. On Lucha, we have almost no active DBs, but DBs could have many interesting individual traits (press guys, zone guys, ball hawks, etc.). This could also help us restrict where bot players are allowed to be played. This could make a huge difference in competition and potentially depth (as I discussed in the adding section).

Ready to be Graded

[dub]

1 thing that you would like added to the league Having just started, I think we need a better concise and centralized tutorial list of things a new player needs to do, with URL's, including the frequency with which things need to happen. This is a good start, but needs to be more concise and less wordy: http://nsfl.jcink.net/index.php?showtopic=6528
For example, I was just asking my friend ExemplaryChad how often I should do a publish my player updates and claim TPE that I've earned. The rest of the things were just kindof explained to me "do this/that"? Perhaps some sort of calendar or weekly/seasonly/daily checklist. This could also be a good way to drive activity to certain things that aren't currently being utilized enough, and a good way to announce new activities or cycles.

1 thing that you would like removed First off, I'm brand new, feel kinda like a dick even suggesting something like this. I guess my suggestion is about images. First off, the block of clickable smilies is fun and all but a lot of them seem... of extremely narrow appeal. Can we reduce the noise of the board by thinning the herd a bit? Also on the topic of images... Also, I regularly get popups from Malwarebytes that u.cubeupload.com is being blocked when browsing jcink.net. Apparently this site is being used to upload viruses via image files, read more about it here: https://blog.cubeupload.com/2017/10/malw...-blocking/ Can we instead safely re-host images on our own storage, or allow upload via the bulletin board? That seems safer.

1 thing that you currently like The fact that this site doesn't keep itself too seriously is fun. Everyone has been really helpful and supportive to a new player on the totem, and my two nerdy buds ExemplaryChad and 7hawk77 recommended the community and the game. The fact that so many people replied with praise and laughter to my media post was kind of amazing. Especially when half the folks who replied on the first page of the thread turned out to be fellow Dungeons and Dragons nerds. How cool is that to find the nexus of football simulation fandom and D&D? You guys are all the rarest of unicorns.

[OBESE]

Add a new forum skin
This is pretty much self explanatory and easy to do, but as a new member I saw that there are only 2 forum skins available - original and the Alpha which is a light skin. All I would like to have is an alternative option - dark skin. Some people enjoy the light, chill and easy to look at skins, but for some it gives major headaches when all that brightness is shining in their eyes. So it is nice to have a mid-dark like gery-ish or dark forum skin as well, to give your eyes a rest. And to be honest in general a lot of people think that dark-skin forums are cooler and nicer etc. Of course it is all a preference, but when it comes to preferences, there should be an option to chose between, which unfortunately is not the case at the moment.

Remove some of the positions
I am brand new but even I can tell that league that is about to finish its seventh season should have bigger population that this and when you have such a wide amount of positions the lack of players do not help. To fight with this I think that some of the positions should be removed. I mean I know you cannot specifically remove a position as it is needed in the game, but some could be just bots. Basically what I am saying is that there should be less positions available for the person to create. If the situation changes and we receive a baby-boom and a lot of people join and all the existing positions are packed, then again we can open up the ones that were closed. For now, just leave the ones that are the most important ones and the ones that people mainly tend to create.

Like the community
The one thing I am currently liking is the community as I have received only good vibes from the people I have spoken to and met so far. I guess I have been here for only one day and it is too early to finalise my opinion of the community as a whole in here as I most likely do not even know all the dark sides and dark paths that some people are in here and I know I will find out about it with time, but for now I can not say nothing bad. Its not like this is the most active community as only few people have messaged me to welcome to the league or inform me about something but at least there are some and that is nice. After writing this I am about to open up a presser for my player, so I will be able to check up more on that activity and will to help and involve themselves into other users.

[SwagSloth]

Add: More TPE Opportunities for Rookies
I think it would be nice to see rookies get more opportunities to earn TPE or at least ways to catch up. When players first join the league, it can be a bit overwhelming because they’re still learning so much about it. Tasks like media (which can buy training) and PTs can be completed by anyone, but when I first joined, I felt a bit of pressure to learn more about the league before writing about it. I also avoided predictions because I was nervous about looking bad if I picked a bad team. Of course, I now know that most of the members of the league are super helpful and encourage new member to dive in, whether they’re informed or not. But that initial hesitation to dive in can cost players precious TPE that they may regret missing out on later if they become super active. Maybe allowing DSFL rookies to buy training at ½ price could be helpful. Another thing I like in other leagues is a character bio task, which lets them write about their player for TPE. Perhaps we could offer DSFL players the chance to write a recap of their first year in exchange for a nice chunk of TPE if they’re under a certain amount. Maybe players of 150 TPE or less. This also helps players who create at less optimal times, but just want to dive in and start playing even if it’s the middle of the season when they create. (248)

Remove / Change: Make Money Matter
This is probably more of an “add”, but pardon if I bend the rules on this one. For the most part, I like everything about the league. There are a lot of things that we can tweak and, as a GM, I often have conversations with people about those kinds of things. But I don’t know if there’s anything that I would out-right remove. However, I do wish money mattered more. It’s so easy to make money from media, graphics, etc. And we’ve developed a cultural that loyal, dedicated players will take minimums while players that aren’t loyal demand big contracts. It leads to teams rewarding the players that are least loyal to them. Now, as a GM on a very tight budget (due to a pretty stacked team), I do have to pay many of my guys minimum just to get by. It’s become a necessary evil. However, I do try to find room in the budget to offer my guys above minimum when I can, especially guys in the 200-599 range that don’t carry a massive minimum already. Raising minimums alone won’t fix anything; it would just inflate the league’s economy. However, I think there are ways to make contracts matter and a lot of discussions have taken place on this already. Personally, I’m always happy to take part in those conversations and help brainstorm ideas. It’s not an easy fix, but I think there’s a solution out there if we keep searching for it. (I am fine with league jobs paying a high wage. We demand on people who function in these roles and they deserve to be compensated well for that. This would refer to the rest of us.) (283)

Like: Watching the games!
I really do enjoying watching the games play out. It’s just a few dots on a screen, but when you care about a team and you know the users and players that those dots represent, the games mean a lot. And being able to watch them “live” (or at the same time as everyone else) is really cool. The sim itself can be hit or miss at times, but the presentation is solid and I appreciate the lengths our streamers go to in order to provide that feeling for the league. The other leagues I’m in just do play by play or box scores and it just doesn’t have the same excitement attached to it. As a co-GM, I’ve watched countless simulations of the same program, but the live games still end up being a blast to watch, especially when the commenters are active. Shout-out to you guys who tune in for every game and participate as well. (158)

Side Note: Great idea to bring this back. This should be an ongoing PT every season. Even if we fix all the common issues, new ones will come. Player feedback is always good.