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EaglesPeteC

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Going to say this from the other side, but last time we had sign ups for FFMD we had almost a third of the teams unaccounted for.  And I believe that includes posters who I wouldn't call reliable.  That's entirely way too many even if we start sending out PMs pretty much begging posters to sign up for it.  It'd be one thing if we were talking about 2-3 teams that didn't have one of their posters sign up for them.  There simply was a lack of interest in FFMD this year, and that's the main reason why it never got off the ground.  And that goes back to team forums needing to go up in activity.  This is something that will likely be reaccessed closer to FFMD.

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I'm hoping FFMD will return this season.  There are a lot of new features which will help in running it and it's always been very popular with members.   

That said we need your help to revive some of the inactive team forums.  We need members to start posting in the team forums again.  Too many just stick to the large active forums and ignore their team forum.   Start new topics in your teams forum.  Reply to topics in your team forum.  If your team forum is really slow, follow the forum and get a notification anytime a new post is made.  You'll be able to reply quickly and get a conversation started.  All it takes is a few active members to revive a team forum.  

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I think with the new forum it's at least worth giving FFMD a shot. This is a new and fresh start, and many may be willing to participate again. If all else fails we could even have a default set of conditions so if a team or several teams have no ownership... there would be default provisions to simulate some simple transactions. I think a bare bones formula is all we need, fancy bells or whistles.

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3 minutes ago, Phire said:

I think with the new forum it's at least worth giving FFMD a shot. This is a new and fresh start, and many may be willing to participate again. If all else fails we could even have a default set of conditions so if a team or several teams have no ownership... there would be default provisions to simulate some simple transactions. I think a bare bones formula is all we need, fancy bells or whistles.

What about the moderators of their team forum manage the team, this could potentially bring more discussion to the forum rather than having a simulation.

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14 hours ago, ny92jefferis said:

What about the moderators of their team forum manage the team, this could potentially bring more discussion to the forum rather than having a simulation.

Having the team forum mods be the GMs to "restart" FFMD wouldn't be the worst idea.

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58 minutes ago, Hockey5djh said:

Having the team forum mods be the GMs to "restart" FFMD wouldn't be the worst idea.

This would be for teams that are lacking in team forum participation, but this mock is a moderator driven mock draft so for me it only makes sense to hold them to the same level of commitment that's asked of us.  

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I do think that we need to continue discussions on ways to improve the overall structure of FFMD.  I understand that while forum activity is down across the board I believe that a big reason why FFMD has declined over the years is due to a number of reasons.  First, the number of moderators involved with this mock have declined.  Therefore, the time that they do spend on preparing for it is limited, so real changes are never made.  

btw mods I mean no disrespect but just like in football, at the end of the day it falls on the head coach.   As the owner of a mock draft you have to appreciate constructive criticism.

http://www.footballsfuture.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=585114&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

I remember reading the first post in this thread and thought little to nothing is going to change.  In part because it was stated, "the rules thread will not change, unless rules need to be tweaked to protect the integrity of the mock".  Also, because the post was created a couple weeks out from its scheduled start date.  Any real changes obviously take longer than that to work out any issues ahead of time.

You've got some of your most loyal members to FFMD stating the issues they have with the structure of FFMD in that thread, myself included.

Personally, I think a merger of Total Control and FFMD could be a great base to build a forum wide mock draft.

Again, no disrespect to anyone, I'd expect nothing less if the shoe was on the other foot.

Thanks

Mike

 

 

 

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http://www.footballsfuture.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=585114&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

The biggest debate within the discussion thread above stem from the guidelines for the free agency both the talent agency and shark tank.  The argument being that teams should be able to bid on who they want when they want.  Unfortunately, the current structure of FFMD and its need for "agents" to determine the likelihood of the player's landing spot simply prohibits the system from expanding the talent agencies list of available players to bid from.  The more players added to the list the greater the need for additional agents and when you have a mock draft that is limited on members as is, getting creative with the guidelines is almost impossible under the current base structure.

Why are agents needed?  We all know any decision made that doesn't favor the highest contract amount being offered is going to create bickering, complaining and disgruntled members which is something that none of us enjoy dealing with.    By removing the need for the agent, and simply using the highest offer wins approach, they can't call you out for being bias but only can be upset with themselves for not offering more money.  Trust me, its much easier to deal with.

In my opinion, general managers want the ability to game plan and strategize beyond just showing up to the shark tank to outbid any team with a weaker cap space.  I'll be the first to tell you that the system I use in my mock drafts isn't perfect.  However, it does create an excitement among the gm's, I'm told.  It allows teams regardless of their available cap space to sign free agents from start to finish.  The results of each bidding round are automatic so the turnaround is quick and easy allowing the gm to game plan for the next round of bidding.  The shark tank results could take days to figure out if you've landed the player(s) you bid on.  It also doesn't require the gm to glue themselves to the monitor to track if a player was outbid by another team.  

My personal opinion is that the current system is asking too much of the casual poster, there are only a few team sub forums that get enough members involved that they are able to spread out the workload required of them.  When you see gm's posting their war room a large number of their staff are signing up to scout the draft, or to be a cheerleader.  Most simply don't have the time to commit.  Reducing the amount of time required of them would go a long way in getting more people signed up.

Going full circle and back to talking about the free agency, I was never a fan of its guidelines.  Thought the system only favored team's with money and left the other teams or sub forums without a decent sized staff limited and not really having much fun.  

To bring FFMD back I believe you've got to make the system fair and enjoyable for everyone.  

 

My proposal for a revised FFMD

Free Agency

  •  Resigning Free Agents
    • Moderators would still control which free agents resigned using "pitches" & "agents".
      • They would either accept the offer from the team or be moved to the UFA, where the previous team would still have the ability to bid on them.
        • This drastically reduces the amount of time & number required for "agents" as well as decreases the need for sub forums with limited staff to have to write pitches for every talented player they are bidding on. 
  • Unrestricted Free Agents
    • Those that have participated in TCM know how it works but we use this platform to manage the UFA.
      • A single free agency
      • Offer contract to any player you wish
      • All players have a set min contract length, contract amount to include bonuses.
      • You get three bids per round.
      • Highest offer wins
      • After each round of bidding their min values decrease 10%
      • Each bidding round last roughly two days with the results being announced that evening and the next round opening up shortly after.
      • Additional items could be discussed.
        • You would know if your offer was within the top 3 offers being made, prior to the announcement.
          • This would give you a sense that you wasn't wasting a bid for a lesser amount when the target player was receiving far greater offers.
        • Could include which team's were making the offers, without disclosing the amounts.
        • Personally, I'm not a fan of the second option but I do like the first addition.

This system is similar to what I use minus the reserve bidding for resigning players.  

  • Capologist for each team subforum isn't required, FFMD will manage everyone's salary cap.  So the GM can spend more time game planning with their staff rather than chasing other gm's around to make sure that they are cap compliant.    

 

Edited by ny92jefferis
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I was a pretty active participant in FFMD for a few years, even GM'd a year or two. I admit that my interest kind of fizzled...I think it either needs to be completely stripped down and just be the mock draft, or the "offseason" needs to be tweaked considerably, and my vote would be more in favor of a blind bidding that is similar to Mike's Total Control. While the blind bidding is not perfect (the formula is constantly being tweaked so that we can experiment with different things), I will admit that some of the best times of that Mock are the blind bidding results. Everyone has fun with it. In the 49er forum, we always preferred FFMD2 because it was just the draft - nobody in our forum cared for the free agency system or participating in that. Nobody wanted to do the work involved with it, and people found it more of a hassle than anything else. This led to a large chunk of FFMD simply being disregarded by our forum.  

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12 hours ago, ny92jefferis said:

Where are the mods at in this discussion?  Come on guys

I can't speak for others, but I can certainly speak for myself but I have other responsibilities both inside of FF and outside of FF.  Right now, we're transitioning over to a new forum so you're going to have to excuse me if my interest in discussing a mock draft that is still 6-7 months away is minimal at best.  If you want to revisit this discussion in a few months, I'd absolutely love to have a serious sit down and see if we can figure out exactly where FFMD went wrong but right now creating forum activity in the team forums is a much more pressing matter for me and many of the other mods.  As Webby has said multiple times, he wants to see forum activity go up in team forums which is something I (and other mods) have cited as one of many reasons why FFMD has had decreasing interest in previous years.  We had over a third of the teams unrepresented in the sign ups this past FFMD despite stripping it down to significantly from previous years.  I appreciate your interest in returning FFMD to it's former glory, but let's focus on creating forum-wide activity and revisit this at the appropriate time.

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