A sample "YEAR" in FOF Multiplayer

[Dutch]

Whatever direction IHOF goes in, here is some things to think about in terms of game simming. This is a starting point in which tweaks or redirection of philosophy can play a big part before the ball starts rolling. (Note: This sample does not include the actual game start as the first year is dramatically different from all other years...)

Dictator Dutch's Vision
Here is a sample "YEAR" in FOF Multiplayer. The standard weekly activity requires a WED and SUN export to the commissioner. Taking a page from the FOFL, there would be times when daily imports (at the owners discretion of their own teams needs of course) would be neccessary. Those are listed as Mon-Fri on the stage listings below. And the two times I would see this happening is the player (and staff) free agency periods. We can rush through it but still have enough time for people to think about what they want to do.

The FOFL, I believe wants to power through the playoffs, but I don't think that's a good idea. Normal stepping through the playoffs gives contender's a chance to enjoy their time in the sun and gives the rest of the league a chance to relax and just watch the show (and take a break).

The standard "break" message in this is just a skipping of a normal WED or SUN stage file. These have been placed strategically so that people will get a chance to take in a little of what's going on. After the main Free Agency period, you can sit back for a week a decide how you want to approach the draft and the late free agency period. Also, after the Exhibition schedule, there is another one week break to gather ourselves, tweak our gameplans and generally prepare for the long push through the regular season and post season.

These breaks are also perfect places for "make-up" days if we hit a snag or we vote to delay a sim day or whatever.

The annual amateur draft will be the tricky part. It can be either really easy and worked like a Yahoo! Fantasy Football League draft or can be really long and stepped through one player at a time. 7rounds could actually be survivable, but I'm not sure how to accomplish that at this time.

With all that said and done, if the draft is held in a one day automated shot, it will take just under 4 months to complete a season. The idea of a 4-month season would be to maximize immersion and timeliness as best as possible.

Basically, Speed vs. Immersion is going to be a huge decision for any league.

By going with LIVE drafts, you gain IMMERSION into the league but at a cost of weeks if not months of drafting.

By going with quick drafts and even multiple weeks of simming, you gain SPEED but lose valuable immersion.

The below is an attempt to appease this dilemna by not skimping on real game week simulations and free agency at the cost of powersimming the draft. And providing BREAKS which I personally would see as important to give people a chance to "stratergize"; to cover problems/delays; and give the guy receiving a lot of e-mails for imports a break now and then. :)

1 Staff Hiring Round 1 (Friday)
2 Staff Hiring Round 2 (Saturday)
3 Staff Hiring Round 3 (Sunday)
4 Begin Free Agency Round 1 (Monday)
5 Begin Free Agency Round 2 (Tuesday)
6 Begin Free Agency Round 3 (Wednesday)
7 Begin Free Agency Round 4 (Thursday)
8 5. Begin Free Agency Round 5 (Friday)
9 Break
10 Break
11 Amateur Draft (Monday)
12 Late Free Agency Round 1 (Wednesday)
13 Late Free Agency Round 2 (Thursday)
14 Training Camp Runs (Wed.)
15 Pre-Season (5 weeks) Prefer (Sat) or else 3 (Sat)
16 Pre-Season (2 on Sun if necessary)
17 Break
18 Break
19 Week #1 (Wed)
20 Week #2 (Sun)
21 Week #3 (Wed)
22 Week #4 (Sun)
23 Week #5 (Wed)
24 Week #6 (Sun)
25 Week #7 (Wed)
26 Week #8 (Sun)
27 Week #9 (Wed)
28 Week #10 (Sun)
29 Week #11 (Wed)
30 Week #12 (Sun)
31 Week #13 (Wed)
32 Week #14 (Sun)
33 Week #15 (Wed)
34 Week #16 (Sun)
35 Week #17 (Wed)
36 Wildcard Round (Sun)
37 Divisional (Wed)
38 Conference (Sun)
39 IHOF Bowl (Wed)
40 End of Year Break

[Vince]

Looks good to me Dutch...I'm thinking that although FA could become long and drawn out, there will be people who can't handle an every day sort of thing. I'm willing to deal with that schedule (a lot like we do for CFBL, an OOTP league that Celeval runs), though, because getting bogged down in a key section like FA can leave some owners who don't have spending money very disinterested in the league.

[Anthony]

i like this schedule. i think over the course of the first few seasons we can always tweak the rules/procedures/schedule. nothing is set in stone.

what is that schedule real time? like 3 weeks? a month? i think a month real time for a season is great.

[Dutch]

It's about 4 months real-time for that schedule. There are ways to tweak it one way or the other but I'll let you guys decide what's more important.

I have tried to explain the pro's and con's of speeding up or slowing down variations of this schedule above.

OFF-SEASON (Approximately one month and 14 import/export stages including a 1 stage auto-draft.) (4 weeks real time)

1 Staff Hiring Round 1 (Friday)
2Staff Hiring Round 2 (Saturday)
3 Staff Hiring Round 3 (Sunday)
4 Begin Free Agency Round 1 (Monday)
5 Begin Free Agency Round 2 (Tuesday)
6 Begin Free Agency Round 3 (Wednesday)
7 Begin Free Agency Round 4 (Thursday)
8 5. Begin Free Agency Round 5 (Friday)
9 Break
10 Break
11 Amateur Draft (Monday)
12 Late Free Agency Round 1 (Wednesday)
13 Late Free Agency Round 2 (Thursday)
14 Training Camp Runs (Wed.)
15 Pre-Season (5 weeks) Prefer (Sat) or else 3 (Sat)
16 Pre-Season (2 on Sun if necessary)

SUMMER GAMES ending with the Trading Deadline Week (4 weeks real time)
17 Break
18 Break
19 Week #1 (Wed)
20 Week #2 (Sun)
21 Week #3 (Wed)
22 Week #4 (Sun)
23 Week #5 (Wed)
24 Week #6 (Sun)

WINTER GAMES (4 weeks real time)
25 Week #7 (Wed)
26 Week #8 (Sun)
27 Week #9 (Wed)
28 Week #10 (Sun)
29 Week #11 (Wed)
30 Week #12 (Sun)
31 Week #13 (Wed)
32 Week #14 (Sun)

FINAL STRETCH/POST-SEASON/END OF SEASON (3 weeks real time)
33 Week #15 (Wed)
34 Week #16 (Sun)
35 Week #17 (Wed)
36 Wildcard Round (Sun)
37 Divisional (Wed)
38 Conference (Sun)
39 IHOF Bowl (Wed)
40 End of Year Break

[Anthony]

hmmm...in my opinion that is very slow. immersion doesn't come only from doing things slowly - but by making it so that we have that "instant gratification" aspect and make it so that we concentrate more on the areas that we have control over (offseason duties like ticket pricing, FA signings, ammy draft process) rather than the regular season where the only thing we do is decide who starts and sits.

personally i think we should get to do like 4 or 5 seasons per real time year. that's immersion, not moving along at what could be considered a "snail's pace". there's pros and cons to everything in a way, i guess it's all about finding that happy medium. thanks for having something conrete in place so that we can expand on it.

the only way i could see your schedule being optimal is if we have a healthy amount of sportswriters providing coverage throughout the season to provide additional entertainment. otherwise i'm more for the line of thinking that a constant source of new information and results from our decision making provides the most immersion. i'm not saying we breeze through a season, but something a bit quicker than 4 months real time. i'll hold my opinion until more chime in. maybe i'm missing the big picutre.

[Dutch]

Getting a good sim schedule down is going to be TRICKY, I'll give you that.

The 4 months could be considered long. But look at what's already being skimmed off.

Each Free Agent day at the beginning of the year consists of 4 rounds per day.

The Amateur Draft is done automatically in one day.

The late Free Agency days actually consist of 4 rounds of Free Agency.

Exhibition Games will be run either 5, 3 or 2 games per day.

That's already 440+ e-mails of imports (that need to be properly imported) and trying to get the off-season done in a month!

I honestly don't see myself keeping that kind of tempo for the regular season and post season as well. I think FOF2004 is designed to take some time to play itself out.

But keeping to the idea of 2 sims a week with "powerweeks" is a rough outline of what I would like to provide. How we arrange everything within those paramaters, I am open to any and all suggestions. Of course, I'm not even the commissioner right now, so what the hell am I talking about? :)

[Celeval]

The Amateur Draft is done automatically in one day.

I'm not opposed to this schedule, but if we don't do our own draft picks, that would kill immersion. IMHO.

Kevin

[Anthony]

that has to be voted on. 7 rounds is a lot for a OTTP (for example, even though i hate to continually compare a football league to a baseball league). perhaps 2 or 3 live rounds, the rest auto-picked. maybe split up the draft in 2 days, with the fist three rounds on the first day and the rest on the 2nd day (which is what the NFL does). whoever is available for the 2nd day gets to make their pick, if not they get passed and their pick is autosimmed.

i too would hate to have my picks auto-picked for me, since Jim has a nice boom/bust for players in the later rounds (unlike in OOTP where anything after a certain round is just minor-league filler). the hard part of any online league is toeing that fine line between being overly involvment-intensive and being practical/mindful of people's schedules. the very act of being in an online league means you give up some freedom as to how and when you do certain things. i try to keep that in mind.

[cuervo72]

I'm not opposed to this schedule, but if we don't do our own draft picks, that would kill immersion. IMHO.

Kevin

Not making our own selections is crazy talk. You either have live drafting sessions (YIM, AIM), a draft thread, or a combo of both. Those who can't make it give preference lists to the BoG. This has been working pretty smoothly in the FOFL IMO.

I wouldn't underestimate the importance of the offseason, for some this is where some of the action is going to be, especially those of us who are "team builders" rather than game-planners. If Exports are only a matter of sending an e-mail, I might suggest that we could even stage 3 games per week, or maybe even in some of the weeks (2/3/2/3/2/3/2) type schedule. Of course, this is an easy thing to suggest w/o commish responsibilities :)

[FBPro]

Overall the sked looks good with the one change of having the draft over a two day period where we have the "option" of making our picks if desired or available. I think the pace will be enough to allow us to move through a season but not get bogged down or fly through them blindly.

I atleast think we should look at this as a place to start and possibly adjust or change things are we complete one season.

[Subby]

Amatuer draft done in one day?

HAHAHAHAHAHAA.

[albionmoonlight]

I wouldn't underestimate the importance of the offseason, for some this is where some of the action is going to be, especially those of us who are "team builders" rather than game-planners.


One of the balances we will need to strike is to meet everyone's preference. I like game planning. I, however, do not like the preseaon. If it were up to me, we would set injury to zero during preseaon and have the commish run the games without our input. Others, obviously, disagree.

Some people would be happy if we took three weeks to do the draft and powered through everything else. Some people love free agency. Some people want to make game plans. Heck, there may even be someone who want a week to "think about training camp settings."

I think that the best move going forward will be to put some of these proposals up for a vote. (i.e how to do the draft; how to do FA; how to do the season).

Much, much thanks to Dutch for laying it all out for us and giving us a good macro sense of how long the whole thing may take.

[Vince]

I missed the draft part in my initial look at your post as well Dutch. We're going to have to do our own picks (in my opinion, that is), and we should probably do it over a pair of nights. From experience in the CFBL OOTP league, the draft gets long, and people lose interest, even for just 5 rounds. Splitting it up into two days would be the best option, I think.

[Daimyo]

You really need to get the length of one season down to 3 months or less IMO. I would highly reccomend speeding up the playoffs. It sounds good in theory to do it slow, but in practice I think just about everyone will want to get through them as fast as possible once they've experiences a slow postseason. Two weeks of dead time (which is what it will be for a vast majority of teams) is a recipe for disaster IMO.

[Daimyo]

For the draft: Since we can see the draft pool once FA begins we should start with a slow draft on the forum during FA. That will give us a week and a half or so to get through as much as possible. After that run one live session in IM/YIM/MIRC/etc to get us through round 3. Then do lists for rounds 4-5 and another round of lists for rounds 6-7.

[Vince]

Good idea with the slow draft during FA, Daimyo.

[cuervo72]

Good idea regarding the draft Daimyo, I'd forgotten the list is available that early. As long as the draft order is revealed by then (which I think it is), starting the draft early is the way to go.

[Alf]

Agreed on a combo of Thread Draft (2-3 rounds) + Lists for following rounds (or maybe let the scout pick ?, is that an option ?)