Offseason Point Task - 25th Anniversary Special

[RenoJacksonHS]

455 Words

I’ve been in this league for quite some time now and it’s been an absolute blast. Even ranging from my days of being a no-name prospect in the DSFL for Kansas City to becoming an actual player and elite threat for Chicago, it’s been a joy the entire way. I’ll open with a story from when I first joined, back in the Season 21 draft class. I had been interested by the idea of the sim football but was struggling massively in terms of desire to commit to working on the players. The forums were confusing and I kept getting lost, I had no idea what a PT Task was and was scared by them, Ultimus week gave me anxiety just reading the tasks, it was a mess. Couple with the fact I was going through some insane health issues at the time and spent a solid two weeks in the hospital after I was drafted by Kansas City I felt like I was just going to be disregarded and told “alright dude we really don’t care” by my teammates and I’d just be forgotten. That’s the opposite of what happened. I told my GM at the time, Starboy aka Starclown, that I was struggling and missing time with health issues and he just told me that he didn’t care if I was max earning or not, he was happy to have me around, and that stuck with me. These people didn’t care that I wasn’t dropping intense media articles every offseason, didn’t care that I was some forum noob who was hopelessly lost trying to find my way around the old website, they cared about my personal health and wanted to keep me involved and I appreciate that so much. I have a lot of people to thank, Starclown, Butters, Matty, Moosey, Kortesi (sorry the whole Tree to Austin thing didn’t work out), Bayley, Muford and countless more. While I never think that I’ll become a general manager in this league, as I simply do not have the wherewithal to learn all the faces out there, I’ve been inspired to help out in smaller ways around the league, whether that’s in the clubhouse trying to help new rookies feel more comfortable with the league, or in the league by becoming a graphics grader and doing my best to give the denizens of this little community some extra money, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Originally I wasn’t sure if I was going to make a new player once Tree finally retires, but now I can tell you for a fact it will 100% happen and I’m looking forward to hopefully being in this league for a long time to come. Frost sux lmap.

[sve7en]

Season 50 is going to be a crazy one for the league I'm sure. The popularity of American football means I expect more rapid growth that will surpass PBE and SHL in that time. Such popularity probably then comes with expansion a few times over. I personally can't wait to see the new brandings and new GMs testing their mettle, and I love seeing the passion that these leaders of teams have for the league. The energy around the league is a lot like the SHL that I know so well, but the sites are definitely distinct and I love seeing the unique members and what they bring to the table in a sim league.

25 more seasons will put us close to starting 2025 too, so I'd expect an updated sim engine is on the horizon again, which is always a fun change. I'd also be near or into a third player here which is a wild concept to me since the SHL regression is scheduled so differently. I plan on going 12 or more seasons there on my player that's going into his 5th season, so to think that I'll be on a third player here, if I earn well enough to have full careers, is crazy. That does let the site appeal to more people though, since you don't take as long to be competitive at the high levels of play, again leading to more people getting involved. I expect the ISFL to be the most populated sim league at that point, and honestly well before then, despite some quality of life features that don't yet exist like a banking system that exists outside the forum.

With so many people on the site 25 seasons from now, I'm excited to see what media looks like. The SHL has seen highlight videos
here and there, as well as an ESPN style media network in the past few seasons that does a lot of different things like analytics, players of the week, draft recaps, and trade discussions. I expect the later to explode in popularity with the number of people from different industries and hobbies showing up and leveraging some of that to make the league feel more alive. It's been a big part of making the J league in the SHL more fun, and the threads drive a lot of interaction between teams which is great for rivalries.

Code:

400 words

[deadlunatic]

The best answer I can give is the people and the community as a whole. I saw the reddit post a couple months ago and thought that could be interesting. Made my over to the forum and started browsing the create a player thread and boy was I confused. I got the idea of how it worked, but the technicalities of it, not so much. But, I was committed to making a wide receiver as my favorite player ever was Jerry Rice. So I forged on, made some mistakes, actually quite a few. But I also joined the week of the DSFL draft with no idea of how it actually worked. I was thinking of a live action style draft, not really thinking how unrealistic that would be. I joined discord, and was slowly invited to a bunch of good locker rooms pre draft. Again, not really understanding how it worked, I wasn't overly active or vocal in most. I assumed, incorrectly, that TPE was king for getting drafted, and I missed some stuff because it was all new and too much that first week or two.

So, I got drafted and joined the Tijuana Luchadores and their locker room. Getting to be a part of that locker room, with the other prospects and of course all the veterans that were on the team, or just hang out in that locker room, easily the highlight of my first season in the league. I still hang out in that locker room on a regular basis. While I did not actually win the Ultimini with them, I was there in spirit and could not have been happier for them. In the short time I have been a part of the league, I feel like I already know some of these guys pretty well. I know random facts about people I have never met in life. After the ISFL draft, I was drafted by the Yellowknife Wraiths, and got to be a part of another awesome locker room. I am sure not all of the locker rooms are as good as these two, but I do think they are all the same in making new people welcome and part of the whole. And to me, that is what makes this community, it is more than just a game, so great. And I think the longer I am a part of this, the better it will get.

And of course, I asked a lot of dumb questions right off the bat, and so many of the long time players reached out to help. I know I gave my original updater fits with my terrible job at updating. But he was super kind and helped make it look better and easier for the person to have that job. So, being that it is the people, I want to thank all of the people who have been playing this and are willing to reach out to help us newbies and for making us feel welcome in our locker rooms. That really does make a big difference in retention of new players. So, hats off to all the people wanting this to keep going and grow bigger and better!

[excelsior]

The year is S50. Coronavirus is still around. Obama was re-elected. Asia has been nuked. Mars disappeared halfway through S39. The only thing that hasn't changed is the ISFL. It's gotten much bigger in recent seasons. We've seen the draft classes go from 70 on average to over 200 every class. But with that, we have had to expand of course. The league is finally in a 32 team format. It's like a real draft now, with only 7 rounds. If you don't get drafted, tough luck. Be better I guess. Minimum contracts have been raised. A huge problem with expand to 32 teams is that your player base must be so large that there's going to be a large concentration of higher TPE players at the top. If one team can manage to convince a large percentage of those folks to sign with them, then it can become extremely unbalanced. In order to counter this, HO implemented a complete contract restructure. Minimum value is volatile and no longer is based on a rigid system off of TPE. It's now based on player/team ratios and the concentration of elite players at the top. The less elite players, the cheaper contracts are. The more elite players, the more expensive the contracts are. All forms of media are now capped with earning. You can only get $20 mil a season from making media now. The sim has moved sim engines once again, to DDSPF24. The new sim engine has much more advanced formulas. TPE actually matters, and OL matters much more now. Bot OL used to be viable, but unfortunately not anymore. They are almost unusable and active, human OL are extremely valuable. They are now the 3rd most valuable position, behind QB and DL. It's a battle of trenches. The league forums now work differently. Updating is no longer done manually. There's a hub with an easy to use UI that does all the calculations and updating for you. You just press a button to decide what you want to improve. You no longer have to do silly PTs on the forums. They can all be done through this all in one TPE hub which allows you to do everything TPE related. GMs can also post free agency messages and such on that there, luring FAs like an official announcement. Awards have also been simplified, with there just being MVP, OPOY, DPOY, OROY, DROY. There is an AP all pro first team and second team each season. And a public pro bowl that everyone can vote for.

[xTri]

I started my sim league experience with PBE. After a couple seasons there, I enjoyed the experience and I've heard good words of the ISFL league and decided to join up. I wasn't into football at all when I joined so I didn't know much on how the game worked. The thing that I really liked compared to PBE was, in my opinion, the higher production. There were monthly head office newsletters, a wiki to detail everything about the league, and more. When I saw the draft stream to see where I landed, I was surprised at the high quality graphics throughout the stream and I landed on the Birddogs. The team was fantastic and in my first year landed in a playoff spot but didn't get a good run out of it. I got drafted to the Outlaws in the majors draft and the people there were also sweet. I recognize some of the people from PBE as well. In my first year in the majors the team also made to the playoffs but lost to the eventual Ultimus winners, SJS. What I can say I guess from my experience here is that I've learnt more about the game now and maybe I'll root for an NFL team soon.

Code:

210 words

[ztarwarz]

Suffice to say that this entire league has given me Hope. I only joined a few months ago, as part of the massive S25 class, but 2020 took a massive dump on my life, as it did with a lot of other people, and the ISFL provided an escape. I could put the troubles of this world behind me, watch dots on screen do things that would hopefully make my team and player do well. I’ve been able to make some great friends in my locker room, and when I go up to the ISFL I hope those things will continue, hopefully with less of the world burning down around me both figuratively and literally.

This league has also helped push me back into writing again. I have lots of thoughts that I think are important, but it’s always been a struggle for me to put them down on the page, whether by typing or by physically putting pen to paper. In this league I created a bit of a series talking about all the prospects in the league as they join, albeit one that might end because I’m getting back from vacation in a few days and I’m not sure I’ll have time to write up on the new prospects, but I also was able to talk about my player’s journey to the pros and about some fun things that happened with the sim. (Unfortunately, the vacation prevented me from making a timely media post that was just me laughing at the Yeti for getting upset by the Sabercats 2 years in a row) Finally, what I see in 25 seasons is something that’s been a long time coming: a changing of the sim. I’m actually expecting it to happen before season 30. Either a new game will come out, or people are going to change the archetypes, or someone’s going to figure out how to code their strategy so that they can actually kick from inside their kicker’s range in situations other than the end of the half. All I can say is, it'll be long past time that a change is made, considering the sim has gotten on my nerves within a couple months, so I can't imagine how it feels to people who have had to deal with it for a couple years. Or even for the Yeti who just lost back to back to a supposedly far inferior team.

(404 words)

[rapideagle]

I would like to begin with a Heck HO for replacing a 250 word task with a 400 word task without a graphics option for the same amount of TPE. Now that that's out of the way, getting to the point of what the league means to me is kinda hard, mostly because I hate writing, so I guess I'll start with when I first joined the ISFL. I was invited to the league by the benevolent @jeffie43 in the offseason before the season 20 DSFL draft. At first I was very confused by the forums but I had plenty of help getting started. I did as many tasks that were open to me but because we were so close to the draft the only teams who had reached out to me before the draft was the Myrtle Beach (know Bondi Beach) Buccaneers and the Minnesota Grey Ducks. Long story short I ended up getting drafted by the Bucs with the 28th pick of the draft. That single season in the DSFL definitely got me to fall in love with the whole league. The locker room in MBB was just amazing and helped me really get my sea legs. Leaders in the locker room like @Frostbite, @scorycory, and @RainDelay were all extremely friendly and helpful, even though Frost sux lmap. The players in the locker room were really special as well and really made it fun to comeback to it everyday. @Briedaqueduc, @Vorshayla, @RotticusScott, @mrmouseman and @Drizzy all made the environment a great place to start my career. After my year with the Bucs the draft process got me interviews with all 12 (at the time) ISFL team GMs and got me even more into the whole league, the anticipation of where I would end was as awesome until I ended up on the same team as Jeffie again...jk. Being drafted by the powerhouse that was the Otters was pretty cool, coming fresh off a threepeat I knew I could do well there. @Laser, @speculadora and @Revolution5 and so many others helped me get accommodated into the big leagues. The league as a whole has been a great community and I've enjoyed every second I've spent here, all 58,936,079 seconds or so. So many great people helped keep my mind at ease during some troubling times I had in real life, and especially during quarantine it's been a great source of entertainment and fun. Now some people would say I just pinged a bunch of people who helped me to get my word count up, and those people would be right.

[Kyamprac]

I joined the league six months ago at the behest of my husband, Amidships. Initially, I thought the ISFL looked kind of lame and not overly unique from other forum-based games we had played in the past. I teased Amid about being glued to the dots on his screen and discord, and he just responded by telling me to join and see for myself what it was all about. Being somewhat skeptical, I did not fully commit to the cause and decided to create a player that did not require a lot of activity to maintain or effort to figure out in terms of stats and so on - a kicker. Hoping to keep things interesting, we also talked some friends - Tonzy, Southpaw, and Atto - into joining the same draft class. None of us expected to get sucked into the community quite this much, let alone to gain the friendships that we have.

Not long after I joined, the Dallas Birddogs picked me up off of waivers. Immediately they welcomed me into the fold and treated me like absolute gold despite Zoe Watts doing a terrible job at getting them the points they needed to move forward into playoffs that season. Steg and Kyle (and Amid obviously) taught me the ropes, and I had a lot of fun getting to know everyone else in the locker room at the time. Going into the DSFL draft, I had my heart set on going back to them since they treated me so well... and to my delight the Birddogs got me and I became a full fledged member of the team.

I will spare everyone the sappy details of the last few months by summarizing my experience with one key statement: the Dallas Birddogs are the reason I love this league. I have talked with other players and teams aplenty through GMing and my work on Dotts/PPT, but there is no place for me like the Dallas locker room. I'm sure most people feel the same way about their teams, but my love for the Birddogs is really what has kept me consistently active and contributing to the league. Over the last couple of seasons, we have built a tight knit group that love and stand up for one another, but also aren't afraid to rib each other a bit and have some fun. When we are not watching/commenting on games together, we are playing on the team's minecraft server, talking about the SHL, or joking about reactions to Zayn's latest tweet. Win or lose, this team (and its alumni) sticks together and does what it can to make the league experience great for all who come through the locker room.

I am also incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to play on the same ISFL team as most of the friends that joined the league with me. The future of the Austin Copperheads looks bright, and I expect it'll give me another reason to love the league.

[MN_Moosey]

It is coming up on my 1-year anniversary with this league. I have finished 6 total seasons across the DSFL and ISFL. Over that time, I have made many friends and have played hundreds of games and wrote thousands of words. It has been a ride. I was recruited by a mutual who started campaigning for people to join this sim league at the very beginning of the calendar year. I joined and had zero expectations since this was my first sim league. I created as a tight end because it is my favorite position. Lots of versatility and being a big ol’ beefcake does not hurt either. I would play out my 6 current seasons for three teams; Myrtle Beach, San Jose, and now New York. I have been on the side of heartbreak and loss throughout but also have been able to experience the joys of taking home a championship in the most improbable way possible. I thank every general manager that has coached me throughout my sim league career. I feel as though it has made me a stronger individual and opened my horizons to new things. Since joining this league I have joined the events team and have since become the head of operations and have had a place in each of my teams’ war rooms. I have put so much time into this league, but I am sure that I am far from the most invested. I have been given so many opportunities to succeed and have never taken them for granted. I have met so many great users during my time and have grown to call many of them friends. This league has grown my social network to a capacity that I could only have dreamed of. I look forward to many more months, and dare I say it, years with this league. With many changes coming and more and more people joining the league, I look forward to seeing the growth of the community. The craziest thing about all of this is how fast the seasons have gone by. The year is almost over. The league has become an escape from all the happenings in the world. I may have joined before the pandemic, but I am thankful to have had such a league to keep me socially active during the tough 9 months so far. It has certainly been a strange time for us all, but let it be known that this sim league has bound us together and we will get through anything. Thank you.

[Jimi64]

I joined the league early in quarantine, it became much more meaningful to me than I could’ve expected I had seen posts about it before, but I figured it was a tiny community, and I wasn’t willing to put in the effort. However, being at home so much meant that I felt like I had the time to actually do it now. I had always craved the notion of a sports RPG. I loved playing the Heisman modes in the NCAA football games. It turns out that this league scratched that itch perfectly. Even so, joining the forums was confusing and concerning. I still didn’t really have a clear picture of how many people would be involved. I don’t think I even wanted to join the general servers, and I’m still barely ever involved with them. However, when I was reached out through the forums due to scouting, that’s when I started to get excited. That’s when things felt “real,” and I joined team locker rooms. Suddenly, I got a grand scope of the league as what it actually was. A collection of various chat rooms, each with their own cultures and old friends. It was fascinating and enthralling. I found the league as an excuse to hang out with strangers, with football as just a backdrop. That being said, I still never felt super comfortable jumping into conversations on the servers. That is, until I found my way to Norfolk’s server. I very quickly found that the vibe and norms there were a bit different than the likes of London and Dallas, which were enjoyable but just not perfect for me. I very quickly felt at home with the people and Norfolk, and that I could be myself. I ended up talking every day in there, even going quiet in the other servers. It definitely feels corny talking about how meaningful this was, but I was feeling pretty alone at that time, so it gave me an opportunity so socialize and build my self-esteem at a time when I couldn’t see other loved ones due to the virus. I was extremely nervous for the DSFL draft, and when Norfolk picked me, I smiled the rest of the day. That’s how much I liked spending my time there. From there, I started to grow closer to my teammates, especially from my draft class, and my GMs. It turns out guys like Connor, LancedJack, and TMosura all had come to appreciate Norfolk in a similar way that I had during the scouting process, and we naturally got along really well. I guess I sort of thought of it like the theme song from Cheers. Norfolk’s locker room was “the place where everyone knows your name.” I really looked up to Blasoon and J0EB, since they really were examples of the culture they wanted to see. Fast forward to now, and I’m Blasoon’s successor. It really hasn’t been that long, but the thought is still crazy for me. It’s now up to me to provide the others that which was so important and impactful to me.