I don’t really see the difference between this and the FFiM model. You’re likely dealing with the same amount of managerial chaos, if not more.
You draft deeper, it scales the points nicely like last year. All teams count for points, in that example only 3 teams are drafted. You don’t get 0 point weeks. You don’t have to edit your lineup at all if you don’t want to.
Or this is legal
And this would be normal
Doing nothing is way more viable in this method, so low time commitment teams aren’t as far behind.
Covering a couple of items from before:
MIA teams get the lowest drafted score, if they are MIA at scoring. I have one further question: This would also apply to COI drafting, or would those still get randoms? Other than that clarification I think we’re go to implement. (OK, so I’m the only current user of the COI draft. I can go either way, just want to get a clarification.) Consider the rule updated pending review (I’ll put out the current set of revisions once there are a few more of them).
Drafting districts first/early is “under consideration”. I think it’s doable, as long as we figure out the ground rules on district waivers first. 
Anecdotally it’ll cut down on waiver teams if we can push a bunch of regionals back past where Waiver #1 was this year.
Speaking of “ground rules on district waivers”…
I see the following options already proposed:
–No change to current rules. This means that players can get guaranteed points by scooping up DCA/DEI teams that have played once. Not ideal.
–Ban waivering district teams that have played already. This kind of screws up anybody that gets an unexpected dud of a team.
–One team per district event. Not a bad solution, per se, but makes life rather “interesting” and subject to the vagaries of the randomizer. Eh… I think we’ll take this as the “democracy” option: Worst until you consider all the others.
–“Slot” drafting–that is, teams are drafted into Slot 1 & 2 in the initial draft (I think we’d consider 3-play teams to only get their first 2), but can be waivered out of both (if they haven’t played their first event) or of Slot 2 (if they have). This might be a bit tough to track and score… But I think some clever sheet work will be able to help with that one.
I’d like to suggest one more option…
–District waivers happen once per district area, at approximately the midpoint of the district’s playing season. Basically one chance to change all the teams you want to change, ideally after 1 play apiece but not guaranteed to be before the 2nd play or after the 1st play. Going by last year, that would be at about Week 2 (Israel) or 3 (most other places).
Also note: Trade rules are up for discussion as well, and may have an impact on waivers too.
**EDIT: New Stuff
**Unless there’s widespread disapproval, I’m making the decision to cut SLFF loose from the CD clock, permanent-like, except if we need to use the timestamps for determining orders.
Also unless there’s widespread disapproval, I think adding a cutoff for posting a draft before it has to be run on a future date is appropriate. 3 PM Eastern is the current notional cutoff (allows the Left Coast folks a chance to look at it on lunch if need be) but up for debate/mitigating circumstances (like a late run).
And I’m looking to add a rule section listing various communication methods including the proposed ones from above and the TBC Discord (assuming they allow us to crash the party some more).
I think it’s more reasonable to let someone waiver out a team that has played one so long as the team to swap in hasn’t.
For me as a scorer it’s not the end of the world to random COI due to the low volume, it’s more the scorer needed to be stopped and started every time it ran into a team that wasn’t attending the specific event. Taking a COI sucks enough score wise, so you may as well random that and maybe you get lucky.
I think my top two in order would be slot drafting, followed by Tindle’s modification suggestion of option #2. I’m not a fan of single team drafting, as one of the main things I like about SLFF that makes it fun (and more skill required) is drafting deep into regions. We just need to spend some serious time making slot drafting as simple as possible, and worded well in the rules (we have the time, and it’s the best competitive option)
The last option not a fan of either, due to the retroactively available points of teams, which I think isn’t really an option for a SLFF that is becoming increasingly competitive.
Firstly we don’t need a governing body to monitor trades. In my time in the KC from what I saw the discussion was instantly “Is it a fair trade?” and there was a lot of discussion on that. Associated teams can’t trade together, and you can’t trade obviously bad trade (trade me 2056 for a hug pls) and that should be fine enough with regulating trades.
We also barely had any successful trades this season, so if we are encouraging trades, we should loosen up the rules. If we aren’t, then why do they exist.
I personally would be fine not having any slot trades. Though after this season I don’t consider it to be the devil I once thought.
How do you regulate if a pick was made on time?
If it’s a list pick, or a designated random, that’s easy. What I’d most likely do would be to put up a post early in the season that says “This post was made at X:XX Internet time” and compare the timestamp, then edit to say “And CD time is 0:XX slow.”
Okay seems fine by me.
Coming back with some thoughts on trading.
It’s been obvious that the trade setup needs to be overhauled a bit for much of the season. So…
“Overall” trade rules should be very broad. Essentially, no trading with an “associated” player (TBC/TLC being the only banned trade at this point), no trading real-world items/actions for teams/slots, trade only to the same tiers*, and if there’s something that’s really really blatantly unbalanced then the Commissioner will “review”**.
[Note: a couple of years back there were some trades that were seen as possibly unbalanced, which is why the review was put in. I agree that it’s been a bit on the aggressive side. So I’m reserving the right of review, but don’t intend to use it unless something is really obviously out of balance.]
“Slot” trades are restricted to regional and district drafts–no trading slots at DCMP or CMP–and must be posted at least 24 hours prior to the first affected draft.
[Note: This is a courtesy to all the draft runners. If you’re close on the time, get it up with what you can agree on and add “plus a couple of others TBNegotiated” and I think we can give you another 24 hours to finish up.]
“Team” trades (QD/Falcon decide to swap about 12 different teams in various events, for example) can happen at any time except after the waiver draft before the first affected event starts.
[Note: Basically… you can trade teams with other players right up until waivers start for the week of the first event you’re planning to trade in. After that, you run your waivers. After that, so sorry… but you can work trades for future weeks.]
“Pool” trades lock when Week 1 events load in–after that point, the waiver system must be used.
[Note: This is trading to/from the “available teams” list.]
Additionally, “slot” and “team” trades may be mixed together in the same trade.
Subject to determination on “what do we do with the tiers”. All single-tier drafts are “same tier”.
PM both folks and go, "you guys realize that was way out of balance, right? 1114 and 4114 are not on the same level, and you didn’t trade anybody else." If I’m picky enough to not be lazy that evening. And maybe I make a note, and after three notes about unbalance going the same way the next trade that fits the bill gets an “association” question. Something like that.
***Nothing against Top Hat Techs, just they aren’t on 1114’s level yet except maybe at parody videos.
This is still kind of rough, not yet in full “rule” form, but that would be the direction I’m thinking of going.
Why not allow slot trading across same-CMP divisions or same-week DCMPs? The way I see it, if a player has earned a spot, how come they haven’t earned the right to trade it?
Primarily because the ordering for regionals/district blocks is “random”, and the CMP/DCMP draft orders are “best score” sorted.
I’ll have to think about it–let’s see what the general consensus is in a day or two.
If we are looking to keep trading in SLFF, then significant things need to be done to promote successful trades. In general the fall throughs for TBC trades came down to:
-
Lack of communication with the other team/them not responding
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Undefined trade rules. (inter tier trading, hard timelines)
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Unknown draft orders. (Can we just random all the cycle orders at the start of the season and re-random as needed if a team gets kicked?) That gives teams time to think about possible trades, and gives way more options for trading.
Also what happens if a team gets kicked mid cycle?
I think we can do something about the unknown draft orders. Maybe 2 draft cycles ahead, or something like that. (That is, the first two draft cycles are generated immediately; as soon as the first one starts another one is generated.) Possibly a big bunch once the 6-draft mark is passed and we figure out how many no-shows are likely to happen. My opinion is that too many draft orders out at once can get confusing, so more than 2 (plus whichever order is drafting) is probably out.
If a player gets das boot, or runs away, their spot is gone. Everybody moves up 1 spot. Future randomizations don’t include them; current randomizations drop them. Their teams are in the next waiver draft (on the offchance they’re any good).
Addressing another couple of items: If we call the deadline 24 hours before the first affected draft to post “known items”, with 24 hours after that posting to finalize anything that isn’t finalized yet, then I think we’re OK. (Example: Falcon and TBC are working on a trade involving Magnolia, Joshua Tree, Tundra, and Eucalyptus Regionals, which are drafted in that order over 4 days. There’s still some debate on Tundra and Eucalyptus, so 24 hours before Magnolia both players post that they’re trading in Magnolia and Joshua Tree, with more trades to be negotiated. They’ll have until Magnolia Regional starts drafting to resolve the debate and update the trade notice, or accept that the rest of the stuff isn’t happening–or maybe add a team from Teak Regional that drafted two days before.)
Can’t help ya on other players failing to respond. I think the main thing would be–as a courtesy to all players–to request that if a player doesn’t want to participate in some element of the league (trading, waivers, DCMPs…), they inform “appropriate parties”. I think we’d be, er, not happy but happy, if you know what I mean, to take a shorter waiver draft with players that want to be there, for example.
I’ve been working on some of the “easy” stuff, and figured I’d put out the current rulebook–see attachment. Obviously it’s still a work in progress. Sections with highlighting are new/changed; there are lots of comments regarding what/why.
Things still needing discussion include:
–District drafts as slot vs team, and dealing with free points. I’ll review those postings later this weekend if I have time and see what seems to stick the best.
–Tiers vs other methods of handling smaller events. Surprisingly enough, this one has probably the biggest effect on the rest of the rulebook.
–Still considering whether to allow DCMP/CMP slot trades. Point, nobody tried one this year. Counterpoint, nobody really had a chance to.
–Role of the Key Committee, and making decisions when the Commissioner isn’t available.
I’m crossposting this to the SLFF Discord.
Season Long Fantasy FIRST Rules TO UPDATE.docx (122 KB)
I have three options for district drafts. At this point, I’d like to cut out any other options/additions/subtractions temporarily and pick a direction. After a week, one of the directions will be the “we are going this way, now let’s clean it up and simplify it” direction.
Read options below, post which one you’d like and if there’s any obvious issues.
Team drafting: Each space in a draft is held by 1 team. Teams may be waivered or traded out, provided: the team coming OUT has at most 1 play, AND the team coming IN has no plays, within in their district.
Fantasy drafting:
Players draft some number of teams at the beginning of the season and play some subset of those teams each week. Teams have to be “in” when they play to get points for that week’s events.
[Personally, I’m not particularly a fan of this one. I can see it working but I’m not sure how to really get it going.]
Slot drafting:
*
Let’s keep this one simple: Each draft position has two “slots” associated with it. At drafting time, they are both filled with the same team. Each “slot” is 1 play for that team, and no team can play more than twice*. During waivers or team trades, ONLY unplayed slots are traded, and if a team is traded ALL of their unplayed slots go with them**. (And… number of slots needs to match up.)
It might need a slight adjustment to the scoring sheet for districts, but that shouldn’t be hard…
Example*: In the Eucalyptus District draft, Falcon selects teams 254, 148, 2056, and 67. The scoring grid looks like:
254 | | 148 | |2056| 67 |
254 | | 148 | |2056| 67 |
In Week 1, 254 and 2056 play. Falcon decides to make some changes, and waivers 67 for 330, and 2056 for 1114. The grid now looks like:
254 | YYY | 148 | |2056| XXX | 330 |
254 | | 148 | |1114| | 330 |
In Week 2, 254 plays again, 148 takes the field, 330 plays. Falcon makes more changes, pulling 67 (who hasn’t played yet) back in and trading a 148 slot to TBC for 2767’s second play. The grid now looks like:
254 | YYY | 148 | AAA |2056| XXX | 330 |BBB
254 | ZZZ |2767| | 67| | 67 |
Note that Falcon now has 67 twice but not in the same column. A little rearrangement, er, intra-player trading later…
254 | YYY | 148 | AAA |2056| XXX | 67 |
254 | ZZZ | 330 | BBB |2767| | 67 |
Personally, I often find it easier to visualize the process than to see a wall of text, hence the examples.
*This part up for future discussions, but with third-play in-district being so rare I think it’s better to not include.
*I can think of some cases where it might be desirable to only send 1/2 of the slots. Also up for future discussions.
I still believe that fantasy drafting is the best available solution, and would have no problem working to help setup the sheet and make it happen.
I’m still more of a slot fan. It’s similar concept to every other draft, and it doesn’t have lame “oh we don’t need to know the region all that well because I only need to pick a few of the top teams”
So, it’s been longer than a week… However, I did recall something tonight that has me leaning very hard in one direction.
Scalability.
Whatever method we use has to work for both IN (which is small enough that it’s perennially at risk for a second tier) and MI (which could draft a full FF season by itself and be almost as tough as SLFF).
Now, a quick note: I haven’t heard anybody speak up in favor of team drafting (the current baseline). That leaves Fantasy and Slot as the options.
If we play Fantasy style, IN would have needed to be two tiers last year instead of 1. That’s not an ideal situation. If I recall correctly, the Forgotten District (NC) is in a similar situation; Israel is slightly better off at about 60 teams. (Admittedly, we might have to two-tier IN this next season anyways. Oh well.) That’s just to allow everybody to draft 4 teams; otherwise there’s no point in having the Fantasy style (you draft 3, play those 3 all season–really? What’s the difference between that and team drafting again?). OTOH, MI you draft 15 teams and only play 3 at a time. That’s some serious points being left on the table and gone into thin air.
I’m going to hold off on a final decision until Sunday, but I’m leaning really strongly towards slot.
Let’s see… Nobody really speaking up… must be offseason CD.
Slot drafting it is, then. goes off to adjust draft rules again
A couple of other items of discussion have cropped up that I think are worth looking at, and there’s one really major rewrite item that I’d like to clean out before IRI hits.
…TIERS. As it happens, we do occasionally run into the case where an event doesn’t have enough teams for everybody to have three. This means that we need to somehow ensure that everybody has three teams. Here’s a few options:
–Tiers. We split up the players into roughly even groups. There’s a few subcategories though…
====Divide then draft: Take the player list, as sorted, cut at the midpoint. This method isn’t used at this time because it gives an “extra” 1st pick to some lucky player.
====1,2,1,2…: Player 1 on the list goes to Tier 1, Player 2 goes to Tier 2, if necessary Tier 3/4/N, then back to 1, 2, 3, 4. “Extra” players (when there isn’t an even split) land in tier 1. *Note that this actually gives the #2 on the draft list a slight advantage, theoretically.
*
====1,2,1,2,…2,2: Same as above except that the “extra” players land in Tier 2 (or the lowest available tier, usually 2). #1 retains theoretical #1 advantage.
–Multi-draft. Each team can be picked twice but not by the same player. Single-tier. (SAY WHAT???) The advantage is that we don’t have to split up the player list; the disadvantage is that this will require a pretty major rewrite of the drafting program (not that that’s necessarily a disadvantage…:rolleyes:)
On the tiers topic, I’d be interested to see the data from last season from before and after we shifted from theoretical #2 advantage to theoretical #1 advantage, and see how theory does against reality.
Second topic: draft timing. Officially SLFF runs 3 minutes for the first round, and 2 minutes for the later rounds. (Used to be 5-3-1…) There’s some discussion over whether to change that, so if that can continue that’d be great.
The main advantage I think is more the 3/4 slots as they get 2nd best robot at the event (event winner robot award hypothetically) compared to finalist/semfinalist/maybe robot award.
That being said the other option is like a non-tier system with when we run out of teams you just get an averaged 3rd slot points similar to how we ran it this year when teams dropped.
I don’t see a significant value increase by doing a multi draft, would rather just tier under the current system, I don’t see a great way to improve it.
I can get data on tiering soon.
I think it’s still interesting to investigate a “premier” FF league and and “entry” league to keep things competitive. Several teams stopped competing after they knew they had no chance at winning the title. People can still feel competitive, and then maybe we don’t even need tiers. (obviously double the drafts is the largest factor here)
There are some side advantages as well, when we do have a team go afk and not pick, teams get a huge advantage for having slots before/after.
On the tiers topic, I’d be interested to see the data from last season from before and after we shifted from theoretical #2 advantage to theoretical #1 advantage, and see how theory does against reality.
For context originally brought it up because OFF is currently piloting a 2-2-2 system to make drafting faster. Draft length was one of the things that was identified as an issue for new player retention, long nights of repeated drafting.
It was also discussed to possibly do more list only drafts to speed up time commitments. At the same time making a list is more time consuming than live drafting “by the seat of your pants”
Understood on the draft timing, wanted to see if there was interest in a change.
I’m not particularly sure I like the “dropped 3rd” option, mainly because (and this is important) we don’t know how much of an issue it’ll be. I could see that for one or two teams not being there, but if for some reason we’re doing an event with 33 teams and we have 15 players, it’s not going to be pretty…
Running a hypothetical numbering, 15 players, we need 45 teams at the event to cover everybody. If we have 44, 43, 42, maybe even 41 or 40, then sure, I could see doing a dropped third pick (and personally, in that case, I’d probably drop it for the MIA folks–is that just me?). But if you get down towards 36, 35, or thereabouts, the score for the third round is less and less important.
Something I might do… increase the safety factor by a team or two. In the auto-split, there’s a safety factor of 1 team as I recall (it’s been a while since I looked at that code). Basically, if there aren’t 46 teams (or is it 45?), the tiers will be split. I could probably add in a couple of teams just to make sure that we don’t run into what we had this year. More tiered drafts, so more shorter drafts (sorry, draft runners…).
At this point I think it’s best to assume some sort of tiers for the forseeable future, unless someone really really wants multidraft. (That would require rather extensive re-coding of the Excel sheet–can be done, just needs time–while the other option [general-casing the hack to flip which tier the remnant lands on] should be relatively simple.)
On the “premier” vs “scrub” leagues, that’s an interesting concept, and while I think it can be done I’m not sure that’s something best handled by a single league. That said, I’m never opposed to more leagues–just don’t make me run 'em all. 