(S26) - PT 5 - Fortune Teller

[GuitarMaster116]

With the new year happening, a new sim, and Reddit class just around the corner, I am hoping to see the league expand even more than it already has been and just improve in quality overall. One of the biggest flaws of the league was the sim, and I am hoping upgrading to a sim that isn't 5 years old and is newer can help alleviate some of the major issues like dumb sim logic, better presentation, and making players feel and play more accurate to their TPE. I also know it is something that many people fear, but I want to have another expansion soon and help be a part in having the league grow. This league means so much to me that I want to give back to it and share it to as many people as possible so they can see the things I love about the league and experience them. Plus, there will hopefully be a bunch of more amazing people that join that we can talk to and have new fresh faces and ideas joining in.

Regarding the last question, one of my biggest hopes for the sim is seeing like superstar players becoming a thing. We all know how in the current sim we will have some players just breakout and have some crazy amazing seasons, but then they will go back to being average or just plain bad. There really doesn't seem to be like for sure best players in the league on a consistent basis. So hopefully, the high TPE players will start being elite and play more like what you'd expect someone that high to play.

[Duilio05]

I am very excited for what the new sim brings to the league. My last player is retired, and i am recreating now so my new player will only ever play in the new sim, so i will not have previous sim play to compare myself to you. But in terms of the league as a whole i think there will a lot of massive surprises with the new sim and expectations. I chose slot receiver for my new players archetype because i hope that the sim team that has been testing all this has balanced all the archetypes so that a slot receiver can have a hall of fame career just like a speed receiver, so i hope that the sbeing a slot receiver will give what ever team i land with a nice little boost against our opponents that don’t have slot receivers. As for the rest of the league i suspect it will burn down to the ground and all that will remain is the S28 class because we have some of the best recreates the league has seen in one class - myself, bigred, infinite, bex, laser, and i suspect some more recreates may join us after ultimus is finished. Happy New Year International simulation football league!

[r0tzbua]

SHL Affiliate PT

[Guunar]

New Year, new sim, newly creates, oh my! Lots of new changes coming to the league soon and there’s a lot of uncertainty on everything. First, the new sim will bring about lots of interesting changes that will make certain players and positions more valuable than others. I’m glad that our new builds will be able to impact team performance more. After chatting with some folks in the league, the current sim and builds are really a big dice roll with better probability for those teams with high TPE players. Although TPE will still be a major factor in player success, I think certain builds of archetypes and traits will play a big role in developing the identity of a team. I also see that the new sim will bring about more emphasis on builds and how they match up against other teams. Sounds like we’ll actually get some interesting team building aspects into the sim now rather than everyone picking a speed-based build. That’s probably still going to be the case, but there will be specific players who will purchase traits like Athlete or Role Model early on and I think we’ll see some big success from those guys. I think there’s a lot of look forward to for 2021 and I can’t wait to switch to a new archetype and see if I can replicate my favorite real life player, Derrick Henry.

[TomHanks]

Two teams I think are well built for the future are New Orleans and New York. It’s a new era so obviously the towns named for new locations will be in the forefront. In seriousness, I think the teams are built well for the future. New Orleans’ offense is well built for the future with the best deep threat in the league at WR1, a QB in his prime, and two fantastic young WRs who are developing. As for RB, they have 2 young guys, 1 of whom is a rookie of the year contender and the other is a send down. They also have a young offensive lineman to protect their quarterback. Defensively, that D Line has developed into a force to be reckoned with this offseason and are only getting better. Their young linebacker in Vincent Jones is ready to come up next season to take over for the aging Quenton Bode. The secondary is absolutely filthy and between trades and drafting, several already have replacements lined up. As for New York, their front seven is the scariest part of the team, and with a couple seasons of development under their belt they should be able to compete as one of the best in the league. Their secondary is young and developing, as is their QB and they are already competitive now.

[TheCC]

There's a lot to touch on when talking about the league's future in 2021. One of the biggest changes will also be one of the first, with the ISFL switching to a new sim engine. The new game is made by the same creators as the old one, so there are definitely some similarities, but I think that there will be noticeable differences, some good and some bad. A positive is that the presentation is nicer, because you can see passes going through the air. Another positive is that this has the potential to shake up the meta, and actually will eliminate the meta, temporarily at least. My favorite positive from this change will be the elimination of sim testing. I sim test because if you don't, your team is sacrificing 3% to 10% win rate. I will be so happy when we don't know the win rates. Sure, we can still be upset about losing games we think we should have won, but no longer will we know we just lost a game that we had a 90% chance of winning. Hallelujah. One thing that will be interesting to see is how much this migration changes our standings. It's exciting, but scary. Will the mighty Wraiths and Otters somehow become mediocre, because of poor choices when rebuilding their players, due to lack of sim engine knowledge? Who knows. I'm excited and worried to find out!

[Swanty]

I'm super excited about the S27 season and the new sim that will come with it. In terms of how it might affect the balance of players, I'm hoping that there'll be something for everyone in there. I think players will see their performance gradually get better over time, whether or not they are max earning, versus the situation now where rookies can have the greatest season of their career in year one, and never come close again. We're also in a situation now where the top earners in the league aren't seeing much reward for their hard work as you can get to effectively 95% of your player's potential perhaps only a few seasons into their career. Hopefully now it will always feel like you're improving your player.

In terms of the actual team balance, I have no idea how it will all come out. I believe the strongest teams over the last couple of seasons have been the ones who took advantage of the most unintuitive quirks and made sure they had the best archetypes (usually always the fastest). As someone who helped design the new archetypes, I can honestly say that I don't think there are any 'best' or 'worst' archetypes in a vacuum any more.

TPE and experience will no doubt be important, so the older players with high TPE are likely to do well in this first season. That's probably the best indicator we have as to which teams will start off well. But the playbooks and gameplan settings will be a lot more impactful. I think the first dynasty of the new sim era will be a team who has a war room that:

1. understands the characteristics of each playbook and what they're good for
   
2. studies the patterns of their opponents and applies the game theory the best
   
3. has assembled a team whose archetypes and gameplan all work in harmony together
   

[Pib]

While I can't really comment on how the league has operated in the past, I can say from pervious experience that the difference between the old sim and the new one is night and day. The results and stats that it will kick out should be a massive improvement on what was offered in the past and will inevitably see a huge shift in whatever metas had developed around how the old sim worked. This is going to lead to a shake up in the value of a few positions on both sides of the ball, so there will likely be a lot more position changes this season than in the past. That is, of course, unless people decide to just see out their career in their initial position through fear of damaging their end of career stats.

The larger draft class is going to be all I really know, with it being my first season but it's good to know that there's a lot of activity and people playing around me. From a personal point of view, it's going to be interesting to benchmark myself against some of the recreates and see how well I can do in terms of keeping pace with them.

Whatever happens, it's gonna be a lot of fun!

[KingSean]

MM - It seems a very difficult point task to a person like me, who gets deeply immersed in the games, but has limited knowledge about even the current sim structure and recreates. I don't know exactly how flashy the new sim will be, and the exact improvement of the new sim compared to the old one. I have been expecting some 3D simulations of the games for a while because 3D players look much more similar to the real NFL games. But my friends told me that the new sim does not have the 3D players - they are still colorful circles, although they are much better incorporated into the stat and record system. As to the best team or individuals in the league, I think individual players' achievements are largely determined by their own efforts and building stats, and partially by the coordination within the team. The teams' ranking is mainly determined by the team's solidarity, management, and leadership. These factors won't change in the new sim. In fact, a new sim should make these factors more salient in determining the game's results. The great teams will remain great, and others will remain on track of either rebuilding or contending to the championship. I am currently in the DSFL, and in the upcoming season, I will move to Baltimore Hawks for the ISFL. Regardless of the old or new sim platforms, I feel very excited!!!
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[AdamS]

2021 will be a chaotic one for the league. That's the thing to be ready for. The new sim is going to change quite a few dynamics and in ways we can't necessarily predict right now. There will be teams who rise and fall immediately based entirely on changing the engine. No team will have a huge advantage in terms of information and hard facts either. It's going to create a lot of positive and negative response as people find out that things they hated and loved are gone and have been replaced by what we hope is better. 

Beyond that, the E word is not far away. That's right. Expansion. The dreaded inevitability of being able to say "oh god these 60 person classes are so small". The league is overflowing with talent already and the move to 16 teams has been long worked towards by a great many people in the league. One of the most important aspects that will come from this is a wild change form our entire history. That's right....divisions. And with divisions, realignment. And with that...arguments, chaos, and 16 billion articles. Moving to 4 divisions of 4 teams each will have a profound effect on basically everything in the league's structure and will finally give us real 8 team playoffs!!!!I have no earthly idea how all that is going to shake out and what crazy ideas people are going to pull out, let alone which ideas will gain support or be hated. So much could happen. The world (of ISFL) will never be the same.