(S16) - PT4 - New Day

[speculadora]

if I could change a few things about the league I think I would want to change brandings of some teams. not necessarily relocate or rebrand completely, but update and improve. I think that the Arizona Outlaws logo, which I believe is basically only a minor edit of a logo from a team in the XFL or some other defunct league, could use a major update. An original logo would be a major improvement, particularly given some of the... less than ideal history attached to the original logo. In an even more perfect world I would have changed the logo in an effort to move on from the troubled past, but there's no time like the present. I also think the San Jose Sabercats logo could use an update. As of now I believe it, too, is a ripoff of sorts of a real logo. Also it's way too reminiscent of the Thundercats show logo. There was an attempt to update the logo, but it really didn't land and it also was mostly just a change of the colors. Finally, the Palm Beach Solar Bears. Which neither edited a logo nor is original nor does it make any sense. It's a direct rip of a minor league hockey team and for a bot DSFL team there's no reason it shouldn't be updated. It needs to go.

[Jiggly_333]

I don't really have any suggestions on this level. This is one of those times where I'm doing this PT rather than an affiliate because the affiliates are all out of season. But I can still answer I guess.

And my answer will continue to be a non-answer. I don't think too hard about the sim or stuff that may be wrong with the league. I take things as they come along when it comes to that sort of thing. You can blame the sim all you want, but when you place your fate into the cold robotic hands of a random number generator, you're going to get results you don't like. The final result is what it rolls up and anything that happens in between is just there to give you a fun visual. In my own line of work watching Chicago soccer, my main motto for a prediction in a game is "Something Stupid Will Happen." It honestly feels realistic to me when someone does something unrealistic.

I guess the only things that I think about are stuff that involve community. I've talked before about the people who only comment in memes and that. I just feel that it's not that conducive to any real progress and can leave some people more frustrated than how they started. Really, people should be kinder to one another, especially when someone is upset about something. It may be easier to fuel them and watch what happens, but it's better for everyone in the long run to just talk it through with them.

[shadyshoelace]

PT Pass #3

[SwagSloth]

The biggest thing I would like to see implemented is update automation. And, by that, I mean players would have the ability to log into a database that would allow them to claim TPE and update their player through an automated system rather than a handwritten update. I am seeing similar leagues implement this successfully and would love to see it here. I have been told we would have to move from jcink, which presents its own challenges, but I think it would be worth it in the long run.

As things stand now, this is one of the biggest barriers of entry for the league. In theory, updating is pretty straight forward, but it can be tough to wrap your head around for newer players and may even be putting some people off. We always have a few people join every season only to never update despite logging into the site. Going to an easy to understand, automated platform would be a major step forward for us in terms of accessibility for new users. It would take a lot of work and personally I wish I knew the skills needed to put a system like this in place as I would happily volunteer if I could. If we do ever make this change, the people that can do the work need to be compensated well.

225 Words

[Raven]

Written Option: If you could change one thing about this league, change one rule, relocate a team, adjust the conferences, change how the bank works, fix the sim engine, etc, what would it be and why? How would it improve the league as is, and how easy would it be to implement? This is not a time to bash the current set up, but to hear constructive ideas for improvement. Shout out to Swagsloth for putting the idea in the PT ideas thread long ago and to JK for talking about it in his podcast.

I have a few things I would change in this here ol sim league. First lets take the Chicago Butchers and move them straight the fuck to Honolulu. The city which should have been given a team during the expansion decision last season. We're talking about the Honolulu Islanders or the incorrectly stereotypically Honolulu Voodoo. Which despite not having voodoo on the island I still love the theming and can only imagine it too be the highlight of the league. The logo would be like a island mask with some tropical decorative. It will look bloody good I tell you.

Now to the sim engine, we will start by fixing the absolute shit this engine is. High tpe players playing like dumb seascucumbers. Especially kickers, you could be 2000 TPE and still kick the worst percentages of their life. While 50 TPE kickers are banging home 100/100 seasons like it's nothing. Also we need to fix the sim to actually allow the Hawks to play like they should. So I can finally stop making memes about the shitty sim.

Last but not least we are going to take ADwyer off the throne and get a commish who is not ADwyer, because he is one smelly dude who clearly can not be trusted with the role of importance he has.

[pazuzu]

I really enjoy the NSFL but there are things that can be polished or worked on in general to make it even better.

One of my primary concerns would be the sim in general, not really much that HO could do about that besides switching to a different game. It feels like many people including myself have mentioned how bad the AI is in this game, the choices it makes are horrendous and can greatly affect a teams chance to win/lose any game.

Second would be an "issue" I have brought up before on the site about the weekly prediction thread. I'm not always able to go on the NSFL site and make predictions before the sim starts, and wish they were put up in a more timely manner for people who have other commitments as well. A couple suggestions could be, to have the predictions up at the start of week, or another options is to have the first one up on the start of the new week on Monday. And once each week of sims ends, the new thread would be up by midnight that for the following week of games.

But whatever changes they do end up making I trust HO to make sure everything is done the right way.

[khabib]

http://simulationhockey.com/showthread.php...7961#pid2677961

[moonlight]

I’d like to start off by saying I love this league. Most of the ire surrounding this league revolves around the mediocre sim engine and that is probably the biggest factor in player retention. The penalties don’t make sense, the clock management is awful and visually it is completely unimpressive. There are about zero people in the sim league who’ve been drawn into this league by the streams or the sim engine. I’d say this differs from leagues like the Pro Baseball Experience where they are blessed with a great sim engine like Out of the Park Baseball.

I’ve heard that Front Office Football and Out of the Park Baseball are joining forces to create a football game. There has to be serious consideration on part of NSFL HO to plan a transition to that service if it ends up being worth the league’s while. I would hope that it would also come up with a better index. Having to go to separate index’s for every season is simply not ideal or efficient. Not being able to see a player’s career stats is also not efficient. For an example of a good index, again, Pro Baseball Experiences is the gold standard for what an index should look like.

Another suggestion is organizing the forums to maximize player retention. There’s just too many dead forums, dead links and general clutter that can overwhelm new players. (234 words)

[Daybe]

If I could change one thing about this league it would be the simulation. Some simulation football leagues have 3D simulations which is probably unrealistic for us, but even an improved 2D sim would be a great step in the right direction. The sim logic is terrible, there's no getting around it.

1. Improve play/player logic

If you have not noticed this already, I will be the first to tell you that Nickel (the most common formation used in our sim league) is broken in the way that the Nickel defensive back does not flip sides of the field depending on where more wide receivers are. This is very dumb in itself and can lead to situations where 1 cornerback is covering a side of the field with 2 or even 3 wide receivers. Another unrealistic aspect about the players is that a 60+ yard touchdown in this simulation is almost physically impossible. These plays happen in real life at a much higher clip. If you watch a big play in DDSPF, almost certainly the DB will eventually run the WR down, as the WR slows down at a higher pace than the DB.

2. Clock management

Another big pet peeve. In the two minute offense before halftime, if you are leading with the ball, your strategy will default to the fourth quarter two minutes ahead offense, which is designed to run the ball out, so you will likely miss a scoring opportunity every now and then. Also, the play times are completely unrealistic, with plays taking up to a minute, without changing depending on the game situation. Another quirk that bothers me is the CPU will decide to spike the ball with around 3 minutes left before using their timeouts.

3. Home field advantage

In the simulation, home field advantage can be around a 20-30% swing in win percentage to the home team. In this study by FiveThirtyEight, the home field swing for an NFL game was about 15%. That is significantly lower than what it is in the simulation, and would make for more realistic outcomes, and the better team winning the game more often than not. Also, there is no way for neutral site games, which is especially bothering in the Ultimus game.

[MaxGnarland]

After working a little bit for the wiki group making pages for championship rosters I realized that the NSFL and DSFL indices weren't as informational as they could be. Currently players first names are only represented with a single letter making it difficult to pin down exactly which player it is. This is especially true when multiple players have the same last name. Adding the players first name to the index in the future could possibly help those who need to find player's names fairly quickly. The only ways I currently know how to get a player's first name is by either searching for them on the forums or having access to the sim (or so I've been told). Another thing that the index might be better off with is more clearly differentiating which players are currently active/inactive/bots. I believe the bot identification issue is better in the more recent seasons but offensive line bots are still not explicitly marked. The lack of identification of active versus inactive players is less important but it is still something that could benefit people who want to keep track of past NSFL and DSFL seasons. All in all the index is a great way of keeping track of previous seasons but I think it could be even better with these additions.