FOOL-X Signups closed (taking names for waiting list)

[Alan T]

Since there were 8-9 owners interested in being in an OOTP 10 version of FOOL, I am going to start working on getting that setup now. It will be a sister-league to FOOL using the same idea/format, and not a replacement for it. There will be some minor rule changes due to the new version and features, but the basic idea will be the same.

Schedule will be 5 sims a week, Monday - Friday, exports due by 5am ET each morning, with no live sims.

Please sign up in this thread if you want to join. First rights to join both currently (and down the road for others if they decide to buy OOTP10 later) will go to current or past members of FOOL. Non-members of FOOL are welcome to sign up as well however. We'll go with 12-16 teams in FOOL-X just like we did with FOOL.

1) gstelmack
2) cgould43
3) Montreal_GM
4) allpro10050
5) hyde4us11
6) bz
7) TheMeat
8) ekcut
9) Tasan
10) Clebrownsfan
11) Spleen1015
12) Passacaglia

Rule changes from FOOL to FOOL-X and other information to know:

- No restrictions on when Minor league contracts are allowed.
- Free agent compensations will be enabled
- Individual GM email notification will be enabled. (Each manager can choose to not use it by simply not entering their email address).
- FOOL-X will start in 1961 with completely alternate reality (different players)

Weekly schedule:

All exports are due by 5am ET. Sims will be run at some point between 5am and 7am ET unless otherwise noted.
Monday: Amateur Draft
Tuesday: Free Agency Day 1
Wednesday: Free Agency Day 2 / Spring Training
Thursday: Regular Season
Friday: Playoff Thread
Saturday/Sunday: No sim / Make up day for any cancelled sim.

[gstelmack]

I am interested. Note that if I get in I may drop FOOL itself.

[Young Drachma]

I'm interested in old FOOL, incidentally.

[cgould43]

I'm in the same boat as gstelmack. I'd like to do a FOOLX, but would probably drop FOOL also.

[buckinbranco]

Glad to see you again DC.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

I'm interested in old FOOL, incidentally.

Which one of us? That wasn't an insult was it?

[Montreal_GM]

I'll join and participate in both.

[TeachEnEspanol]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Which one of us? That wasn't an insult was it?

LOL, that actually made me laugh..which I appreciate nowadays.

[allpro10050]

im in, and will also stay in fool.

[hyde4us11]

Ill stay in FOOL and want in the new X league as well.

[bz]

Count me in with both leagues.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by buckinbranco

Glad to see you again DC.

Thanks Buck.

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Which one of us? That wasn't an insult was it?

No, of course not. I'm just not planning to buy OOTPX for a while and I didn't beta this year...so I won't be getting it probably until the end of the summer a few patches in, so I can't join FOOL-X until then.

[Chief Rum]

So what happens if this league starts up, and the other league ends up wanting to go up to FOOL X down the line? Isn't that a little redundant?

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

No, of course not. I'm just not planning to buy OOTPX for a while and I didn't beta this year...so I won't be getting it probably until the end of the summer a few patches in, so I can't join FOOL-X until then.

Sorry, I forgot about the HA bit. No, I was focusing on the you wanting an "old FOOL" and I was trying to figure out which of the GMs you thought was an "Old Fool"

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

So what happens if this league starts up, and the other league ends up wanting to go up to FOOL X down the line? Isn't that a little redundant?

The distinct impression that I got from several GMs (not just one or two) was that they had no intentions of purchasing OOTP 10. Some suggested they might reconsider for OOTP 11 however. My main provision in this league is any member of FOOL down the road that wants to join gets priority in doing so.

I guess consider this my compromise in trying to keep everyone happy (the 5-6 who really wanted to upgrade and the 5-6 who really didn't.) As they say though if you try to please everyone all of the time, you end up pleasing no one any of the time. I feel strong enough about the GMs in the league though that we'll make it work. I really enjoy the group that we have.

[TheMeat]

I'm in, I've already pre-ordered OOTPX

[TeachEnEspanol]

Originally Posted by Alan T

The distinct impression that I got from several GMs (not just one or two) was that they had no intentions of purchasing OOTP 10. Some suggested they might reconsider for OOTP 11 however. My main provision in this league is any member of FOOL down the road that wants to join gets priority in doing so.

I guess consider this my compromise in trying to keep everyone happy (the 5-6 who really wanted to upgrade and the 5-6 who really didn't.) As they say though if you try to please everyone all of the time, you end up pleasing no one any of the time. I feel strong enough about the GMs in the league though that we'll make it work. I really enjoy the group that we have.

I'm just going to say that you're fantastic to make accommodations for everyone and I look forward to hearing how the new league works out. I really appreciate your committment to the "old FOOL" and how much it took to rebuild and get people back into it (which I partially attribute to your willingness to go back to live SIMs). Thanks Alan!

[Tasan]

In on both. Don't worry about me dropping anything at this point, I've gotten over my FOOL2 blues!

[Chief Rum]

My concern is current FOOL owners dropping the current league for the new league. This would seem to devalue both leagues, in my mind.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

My concern is current FOOL owners dropping the current league for the new league. This would seem to devalue both leagues, in my mind.

I hope that won't end up being the case. I've already mentioned my focus will continue to be on running FOOL and writing articles/reports for it, as well as the live sims.

FOOL-X will likely be several months of trying to tweak league rules to work well with ootp 10, as well as dealing with the new changes to it.

[ekcut]

I'd be interested in new FOOL. Sign me up

[Tasan]

I'm interested in FOOLx only as a testbed for FOOL eventually moving over to OOTP X, several months down the road if at all.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by Tasan

I'm interested in FOOLx only as a testbed for FOOL eventually moving over to OOTP X, several months down the road if at all.

Agreed.

If the current OOTP9 owner base is set on moving the current FOOL to OOTP X eventually, and not sticking with OOTP9, then I would support this league as that test, and would go ahead and get OOTP X, for the simple reason that, well, I'll need to anyway if FOOL moves to OOTP X down the line.

The question to me is, is that certain? Will FOOL eventually go to OOTP X? And is it worth a $35 bet or whatever Markus is charging now on getting OOTP X? Becuase if FOOL doesn't go to X, then that's a now worthless $35 out of pocket.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

The question to me is, is that certain? Will FOOL eventually go to OOTP X?

Well, I can't predict the future, but all I can do is work off of what I know. I am committed to keeping FOOL my primary league/sim on whatever version it is on regardless of what other leagues I run or participate in. Likewise, talking to many people the last two weeks, it seems very unlikely that serveral of them will upgrade to OOTPX, or if they do, it is no time soon. I really like this community and have no desire to tell people that have been in this league for over a year "Thanks, but so long." So I really don't know what will happen down the line, but my full intention is to keep this fun and entertaining league with great owners going

[Montreal_GM]

Personally I hope we won't be looking at the X league as a testing ground. It would be unfair to invite new managers in only to tell them the league is shutting down because original FOOL is now converting. Although both leagues will be tied together by a common bond, I think they should remain separate in determining the fate of the other.

[cgould43]

well i don't know how possible it is, but if FOOL ever converted to OOTPX what about making a larger, say 24 team, FOOL. Don't know if it's possible to convert teams as constituted into a new league or not.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by Montreal_GM

Personally I hope we won't be looking at the X league as a testing ground. It would be unfair to invite new managers in only to tell them the league is shutting down because original FOOL is now converting. Although both leagues will be tied together by a common bond, I think they should remain separate in determining the fate of the other.

I don't think Tasan intends, nor do I intend, to suggest this league would shut down in any form, regardless of what happens with FOOL. When we say testing ground, we're noting that, by necessity, this league will have to negotiate whichever foibles and programming oddities Markus will have forgotten about, and have to go through some hurdles before things settled down. So if FOOL makes the jump a few months down the line, the experience Alan and other owners in both leagues will have gained from FOOL X will help make that transition for FOOL much smoother. So that's the context of referring to FOOL X as a testing ground. Nowhere in there is the intent to shut FOOL X down if FOOL makes the jump down the line.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by cgould43

well i don't know how possible it is, but if FOOL ever converted to OOTPX what about making a larger, say 24 team, FOOL. Don't know if it's possible to convert teams as constituted into a new league or not.

This is actually a road we have gone down before. I think a number of us old owners would be up for it IF there was enough interest. Fact is, though, this format has proven to be an owner killer. It seems that few players actually have the fortitude to stick it out in a more intense league like this, so we have a lot of turnover. We had to drop from 16 teams to the current 12 because of this, and that was after a bunch of us actually sought to increase the number of teams in FOOL because of the interest we had at the time.

I think two separate co-existing leagues is best for now, and down the line we can explore those options. Fact is, the owners of FOOL X are fairly likely to be composed mostly of FOOL owners, so combining the leagues wouldn't make much sense anyway.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by cgould43

well i don't know how possible it is, but if FOOL ever converted to OOTPX what about making a larger, say 24 team, FOOL. Don't know if it's possible to convert teams as constituted into a new league or not.

This is just my opinion, so take it for whatever it is worth, but the way OOTP handles retracted teams in its database completely makes some third party tools entirely unusable or unreliable. It ends up making a mess of things that does enough for me to be discouraged against ever retracting teams. Adding new expansion teams however works pretty well, with fairly minimal issues that you have to deal with.

So since I'd rather use as few AI controlled teams as possible, I'd prefer to start at a reasonable size and then if we end up with a waiting list containing reliable owners we can expand.

[Alan T]

I added the following "rule changes" and schedule to the original post:

Rule changes from FOOL to FOOL-X and other information to know:

- No restrictions on when Minor league contracts are allowed.
- Free agent compensations will be enabled
- Individual GM email notification will be enabled. (Each manager can choose to not use it by simply not entering their email address).
- FOOL-X will start in 1961 with completely alternate reality (different players)

Weekly schedule:

All exports are due by 5am ET. Sims will be run at some point between 5am and 7am ET unless otherwise noted.
Monday: Amateur Draft
Tuesday: Free Agency Day 1
Wednesday: Free Agency Day 2 / Spring Training
Thursday: Regular Season
Friday: Playoff Thread
Saturday/Sunday: No sim / Make up day for any cancelled sim.

Markus has stated the game will be pre-released to people who pre-ordered it hopefully middle of this week, once that happens I believe my NDA is lifted and I can go into more details. Until then let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. The schedule is obviously designed in a way that I hopefully encourage people to remain in FOOL. As I have stated a few times, that is still the flagship and primary league and I want to encourage participation in it. So the season schedule is offset with FOOL-X so you don't have to prepare for a regular season sim in both leagues on the same days.

Also at least one house rule (regarding no minor league contracts on FA day 1) has been lifted. I really don't like house rules and prefer to keep things as simple as possible. So we'll go into FOOL-X with as little of them as possible and then see how we need to tweak things or modify things. If we find the same case as before where OOTP has free agents signing for Minor league contracts over $20 million dollar deals, we can obviously re-instate that house rule (or any other ones that we feel is absolutely necessary).

We played through nearly 20-25 seasons of FOOL before everything was ironed out, so I am sure we'll likely encounter similar growing pains here as well.

[gstelmack]

I'll give it a whirl being in both leagues. The big thing that will have me drop the 9 version is if it makes entering a draft list a nightmare ever again...

[Montreal_GM]

Since we brought this up I've noticed some people changing their stance on whether they're getting the game or not. Maybe not changing their stance entirely, but there seems to be a grey area about whether people are still definitely not getting it. How many are still absolutely not buying the game? If the vast majority of the league is buying X perhaps having 2 leagues isn't needed after all. Perhaps we should consider putting off certain decisions until the game comes out and Alan and others can fill us in on how great/poor the game is. Not saying I wouldn't play both, but it would be silly to have 2 leagues with the same model with 90% of the same people in both.

[Tasan]

Silly or not, if moving to OOTP X for FOOL means we leave guys like Chief Rum out of the league, I'm not for it.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Montreal_GM

Since we brought this up I've noticed some people changing their stance on whether they're getting the game or not. Maybe not changing their stance entirely, but there seems to be a grey area about whether people are still definitely not getting it. How many are still absolutely not buying the game? If the vast majority of the league is buying X perhaps having 2 leagues isn't needed after all. Perhaps we should consider putting off certain decisions until the game comes out and Alan and others can fill us in on how great/poor the game is. Not saying I wouldn't play both, but it would be silly to have 2 leagues with the same model with 90% of the same people in both.

There are at least 3 people who said they are not able to buy ootpx for quite some time if ever. That does not include people who said they don't want to buy it but would if FOOL was leaving ootp9.

[TeachEnEspanol]

Originally Posted by Montreal_GM

Since we brought this up I've noticed some people changing their stance on whether they're getting the game or not. Maybe not changing their stance entirely, but there seems to be a grey area about whether people are still definitely not getting it. How many are still absolutely not buying the game? If the vast majority of the league is buying X perhaps having 2 leagues isn't needed after all. Perhaps we should consider putting off certain decisions until the game comes out and Alan and others can fill us in on how great/poor the game is. Not saying I wouldn't play both, but it would be silly to have 2 leagues with the same model with 90% of the same people in both.

I actually really like that idea.

[buckinbranco]

I will not be buying ootp x. Possibly at the end of summer, but not before then.

In other news I will be taking a hiatus from FOOL all together in July. I will be working at a residential summer camp and will not have enough time or a proper internet connection to participate for that month. I will be back as soon as I return to civilization though

[TeachEnEspanol]

I obviously need a job before I can buy anything new and exciting.

Like Buck, I'll be leaving for a while as well. I'll be gone from June 18 - July 9 in Spain (yeah, definitely planned and payed for before the job thing happened). Alan has already promised to take care of the Winemakers for me and will likely put me to shame while I'm gone.

[Montreal_GM]

Originally Posted by Tasan

Silly or not, if moving to OOTP X for FOOL means we leave guys like Chief Rum out of the league, I'm not for it.

No one is getting left behind, especially Chief Rum considering he said he was buying the game. This is exactly why I'm asking what our situation looks like. If the people that said "I'm not buying" are actually buying it then I'm not sure we need 2 leagues. If 11 people are buying it and 1 isn't than I think that 1 person should reconsider. Not trying to be harsh, just throwing out ideas.

[Montreal_GM]

Originally Posted by TeachEnEspanol

I obviously need a job before I can buy anything new and exciting.

Like Buck, I'll be leaving for a while as well. I'll be gone from June 18 - July 9 in Spain (yeah, definitely planned and payed for before the job thing happened). Alan has already promised to take care of the Winemakers for me and will likely put me to shame while I'm gone.

Okay, so if buck, Teach, muns i think said he wasn't getting it, that's 3, maybe more, I guess it's a non-issue. I'd just hate to see the whole league own the damn game 3 weeks down the road and we have 2 leagues for no reason.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Montreal_GM

Okay, so if buck, Teach, muns i think said he wasn't getting it, that's 3, maybe more, I guess it's a non-issue. I'd just hate to see the whole league own the damn 3 weeks down the road and we have 2 leagues for no reason.

I have some other thoughts as well that I really can't get into for another few days until my NDA is lifted. I'll be more than happy to give my thoughts and impressions once we get to that point. So I'm not trying to stifle conversation or anything. I don't want to give the wrong opinion.

[Montreal_GM]

Okay, perhaps we can talk about league setup ideas. Do we want to eliminate the DH altogether? Do we want interleague? Do we want only 1 team in the playoffs from each league? Keep everything the same?

edit:

Just saw Alan's message. I guess it would be wise to wait a few days until you can chime in clearly and we can get things going full speed.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Montreal_GM

Okay, perhaps we can talk about league setup ideas. Do we want to eliminate the DH altogether? Do we want interleague? Do we want only 1 team in the playoffs from each league? Keep everything the same?

edit:

Just saw Alan's message. I guess it would be wise to wait a few days until you can chime in clearly and we can get things going full speed.

We can talk about rule changes and such like that if people want. I don't think whether or not we have a DH is going to cross any boundry of my NDA really. Just can't get into new features, new functions or changes within ootpx as well as various other areas. Talking about things like interleague/DH/etc are probably fine.

My thought was to just run most of those the same as FOOL since we went through most of those debates in the past, and I'm sure we'll have a period of getting used to the new game once we start up to try to figure things out anyways. I know in both of those examples though, it was usually fairly evenly split that people liked or disliked both. In the case of the DH, the happy compromise was always if you liked the DH you went to a DH league for instance.

[Alan T]

I am by no means as good with logos as DC or several others around here... but let me know what you think...

[buckinbranco]

classy Alan.

[gstelmack]

If you're going to make the X big, it ought to be behind the FOOL as a background. Otherwise it needs to be smaller.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

If you're going to make the X big, it ought to be behind the FOOL as a background. Otherwise it needs to be smaller.

Does this one look better?

[muns]

Originally Posted by Montreal_GM

Okay, so if buck, Teach, muns i think said he wasn't getting it, that's 3, maybe more, I guess it's a non-issue. I'd just hate to see the whole league own the damn game 3 weeks down the road and we have 2 leagues for no reason.

While I think your intentions are good, I wanted to throw my thoughts out here since I was mentioned.

Im pretty critical of text sims. I cant for the life of me figure out why beta doesnt catch half the stuff it doesnt catch. OOTP for me has gone down hill until this last version, and even playing 9 there are issues that just drive me up a wall. I get pissed when bugs get posted, and im not talking minor bugs here, dont get fixed, but the response is ohhh well, that will get fixed in the next version.

Now I know that we have a few people here that are on the beta, and thats a few more peoples opinions that i trust, however markus has given me and everybody else reasons in the past that he clearly doesnt listen to them in critical areas, and just does what he wants to do.

I have not preordered, and until I can see exactly what the boards are saying here about the game, Im not going to be getting the game. Im not going to encourage the practices that are very much in place for the ootp machine. My 1 sale isnt going to make any difference, but im not going to ever do what I did when I got ootp 8 thinking SI will make it good again and then i got a whopping 30 mins of game time in.

So im not saying I wont ever buy it, but I am waiting to see what Alan says about a lot of things, and then what the main board here at FOFC says before I do anything...

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Does this one look better?

Make the X lighter (more of a gray probably) so the Os stand out. But yeah, that's the general idea.

[Alan T]

DC sent me a few, including this one that I really like. What do you all think about this?

[hyde4us11]

Originally Posted by Alan T

DC sent me a few, including this one that I really like. What do you all think about this?

i like this one.