(S27) Ultimus Week

[majesiu]

affiliation http://probaseballexperience.jcink.net/i...ntry287943

[JKortesi81]

The biggest topic of the ISFL for the last season was very clearly the first season under our new sim. To say it was a challenge was putting it mildly. Now, I know that most of the responses to the new sim were negative, but that’s because everyone hates change that isn’t perfect. While its easy to say things like “Fuck HO” and ‘Fuck the conversion team”, people have to realize that seeing everything on a grand scale like an actual season is a lot different than a ton of sim tests. I also think that a lot of the work put into the new archetypes really paid off.

People couldn’t have foreseen what exactly would be happening until the independent teams and players did their own things. Now we see what the issues are, and we can adjust accordingly. Yes, I’ll admit, it was very awful to see Top running backs reduced to essentially nothing most of the time. That combo with how important the OLs would be really boned a lot of good teams. Defenses may have been a little rough to adjust too, but I’ll admit it was nice seeing the really big plays happening. Too often in the old sim you wouldn’t see your dots break away for long TDs. It was rare, more rare than big plays happen in the NFL even. Now, yes, they’re a bit *too* frequent, but that’s because we’re adjusting to make things better as we go. We’ll find a really happy medium a lot sooner than people realize.

Also, this made the passing game much more awesome, and you really got to see some Tight Ends get some more action other than the ones that just got thrown into FB or whatever they needed to be shoehorned into in the old sim.

Games were just more fun to watch. They felt more like there was a chance for comebacks and that the game wasn’t really over if you had a lead with 5 minutes left. Maybe that’s just me, but it’s how I felt for sure.

I understand completely how people could be upset. Kickers, for instance, feel like they’re way worse than they used to be. I don’t if they can be considered some sort of “low TPE position” as much anymore. I’ve seen some pretty brutal misses and punts compared to seasons before. Anyone who worked hard for a real life year to get to their peak only to have their top seasons tainted by all of these new sim issues, I feel for them. I do. But this is something that had to be done. The old sim was even worse, don’t forget.

I mean, the presentation is awesome. Our unique fields alone make the games more fun to watch. Actually SEEING the ball move through the air is really cool. Maybe it takes longer to watch the games, sure, but you don’t feel it that much when its your team and you’re invested. It’s cool to see how far an interception or a kick return goes instead of just getting a quick text flash about it. It feels a lot more like watching a football game, well, as much as a bunch of dots can.

The problem with switching a sim like we did is that we’re essentially starting a brand new league when we do that. The SHL, for example, is just getting a full handle on what’s going on with their move to a new sim after 6 seasons. There needed to be changes along the way, just like we had too. It’s so easy to sit around and say “WE SHOULD’VE JUST TESTED MORE” or whatever blame you want to toss at people, but in reality, it isn’t. There will be ebbs and flows. I was one of the first people to joke that this Ultimus will have an asterisk on it because of the nonsense, but by the end of the season it didn’t feel that way anymore. All of the ISFL (and DSFL!) teams had learned where they were deficient and what was wrong with their game plans along the way and now everyone has a plan going forward.

Everyone was an even playing field when the season started. Teams like Austin, that I know firsthand about, that had a chance with the old sim and system guessed wrong for how the new sim was going to work and failed. Others guessed right on where to put their high TPE players and game plans and were rewarded with better seasons. But everyone is now on their own individual paths towards dot football glory.

Overall, the sim move was a success. I know that might be considered a hot take to some, but I think the move as a whole was very, very good. Games are more fun to watch, and more exciting too! It looks better. We have more interest for sure. And the league has a whole is on the right path to correcting the minor issues we’re having that are common with any sim transfer.

I’m extremely excited to see how the ISFL is going to look even as soon as next season! Yay new sim! (867)

[musha6570]

PBE Affiliate link

16) The bank now accepts ISFL currency in exchange for real money – every ISFL dollar counts as $0.50 in the real world. How much money would you exchange, and what would you spend it on?

If the ISFL money had a real-world exchange at fifty cents on the dollar I would only exchange about one million in ISFL money. I would not be greedy and would just exchange enough to buy a nice house. I would also do this because I have to leave some seed money for my player to continue his career. I understand I could always earn more but it is nice to have a banK. The one thing I keep thinking about when answering this though is if the exchange rate goes back the other way? Does fifty cents of real-world money equate to one dollar of ISFL money? If it does that is a real game-changer. That would mean someone could conceivably fund their ISFL career using real-world cash and essentially create a super player. In my world, that would definitely lead to me being the best tight end in league history. That is a goal I have regardless but that ability would make it easier. Regardless I would not ever cash out my whole ISFL bank and that probably makes me a sucker. I just view it like the money is for my player and his career not for me to pilfer via a second rate exchange rate system.

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19) Your player or team made big headlines in the news this week. What did they do, and why did it garner so much attention?

The big headline this week was my player Chevvy Bronko. He appeared once again in a pro wrestling ring for the largest company in the world. This appearance alone would have been news but he got involved in a match and body-slammed the world champion. This garnered mostly positive attention and praise for furthering the link between entertainment and sports. On the opposite spectrum, however, it did also spark a discussion amongst football purest as to whether or not a contracted player should be allowed to appear in a physical capacity outside of the sport. The chief concern being injury. The thought process is that players already risk massive injury playing the sport and do not need added risk. Bronko himself has shrugged off the criticism and explained that he has the approval of the players union and league office. He is currently not on a team and will be selected in the upcoming DSFL draft. It has been reported previously that Bronko has signed a huge deal with the wrestling company to make appearances throughout the off-season and the deal reportedly guarantees him at least two years once his playing days are done. This is a groundbreaking deal that could lead to other players following this path in the future.

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29) Awards season is upon us. If you could create an award for anything in the league that doesn’t already exist, what would it be? Who do you think should get it?

I would create a fun award that had nothing to do with football. I would create the chili dog challenge award. This award would have a three-prong structure with a player needing to take two out of three prongs to win the award. The first prong would be a chili cook-off contest. The inner being the player who makes the best chili per a panel of judges. The second prong would a hotdog eating contest. The winner is the player that eats the most hotdogs in ten minutes. The final prong would be the bench press. The player who can bench press the most weight for the most reps after cooking chili and eating hotdogs wins this prong. The winner would be my player Chevvy Bronko. Why do I feel my player would be the winner you ask? well considering this is a totally fake award, that I made up, that consists of things I would imagine Chevvy Bronko to be great at, and lastly because I will not be winning any other awards this just makes sense. I would just go ahead and actually name this award now the Chevvy Bronko chili dog challenge award. I mean there is no one in the league that can combine these three skills as Bronko can.

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[Tomasnz]

Affiliate PT5 from SHL https://simulationhockey.com/showthread....pid3001531

Task 8: 400words on Recruitment ideas
So my hypothesis is that there is a much broader group of people that we could be targeting to join the league, mostly around the idea that most of us are geeks of some kind, and most of us (but not all to be fair) like football. As part of this hypothesis is my suspicion that r/nfl reddit is going to net slightly fewer returns on average, and I think we started seeing this on the SHL as well with r/hockey drafts becoming less insanely big, merely decent. Likewise I think you can see with the success of affiliate league recruiting (PBE and SHL) being interested in the actual sport being simulated isnt really necessary to enjoying these kinds of leagues.

My thinking therefore is that other sub-reddits or other similar online communities that promote one games or activities tied to the outlets that sim leagues can provide would allow us to both expand our recruiting base, but also potentially diversify the league a bit. 

first step really would to do some league wide data collection to better understand what kind of digital demographics we have visiting our site. obviously we are going to be influenced by were people have historic come to us from like reddit. but a simple set of surveys and or word clouds could quickly highlight the themes that our user base is into it.  from this survey results my proposal would be to mine some common themes that could be used to target future recruitment effort. 

at the moment we are getting two or three reditt recruitments per year. and the results seem to be tailing off. 

should we carry out the survery here at some point then i have some hypothetise around what directions they might push us. 

pen and paper roleplaying game communities. the aspect of writing a character devloping their stats and background and then seeing how that plays out in the sim is very aligned to the pressures of a good RP game. 

new up. DYI graphics communities. the visual empathise that the site has presents a clear opportunity to practice their craft and get routine feedback on it. 

sports journalism communities, especially the open ones that might have more developing members

and lastly (at least from my hypothetical answers)
is parent networks. dads are the best. im one. i know a lot of people are. but a parent of either sex is likely to have some level of time of their hands (when they are not using that for sleeping) and couldprove a rich vien of semi active contributors.

[overdoo]

15) Write about another sim league you are in and which parts of it you enjoy. If you are only in the ISFL, write about your ideas for a sim league with another sport. (5TPE, 400+ words)

As probably quite a few people know by now, I was in the SHL first, and came over to the ISFL after a little bit, in hopes to keep it a little more casual, which I think I've been doing fine with. I'd have to definitely say that the locker room, and community is a huge reason I stayed in the SHL in the first place, let alone continued to work as hard as I have on it, and eventually join the ISFL as well. If I am not mistaken too, I actually mentioned that as being a big thing for me while being scouted for the SMJHL. I ended up joining the Carolina Kraken while it was under Fuzz, and Trella. I think the core then was huge for me staying, with guys like sve7en, Ace, Dwight and other users drafted alongside me, like Smatt/Mazatt. We also had a ton of alumni hanging around, like z0rem, Bromanov, ACC, TDZ, Stav, Fitted, and even Sloth (although he isn't really an alumni..). I loved that group, obviously a lot of us are still around in addition to every player we have drafted since, and it makes for an incredible locker room that has earned a reputation to be one of the best in the J, for new players. After a bit, Fuzz moved on to GM the Los Angeles Panthers, but not before Trella left with Dwight to take over the Tampa Bay Barracuda. With that, sve7en ended up applying for and receiving the job as the Carolina Kraken GM, hiring me as a Co-GM. Our war room now is.. something. Lots of good guys, and more young ones like Gumba getting into the coaching side of the league, funnily enough, a guy I had ended up bringing onto the team. As a Co now, I've started to realize how much more fun it is to have a great LR, and can't wait to see what we can do next season, when we start coming into good form. 

I also love the draft for this reason, a new chance to get some real cool people onto the team, and a chance to scout, to at least get to know a few of the new guys coming in, whether we draft them or not. It's just fun, gets me excited all the time, and I love drafting in the SHL with how it is set up right now. For those who don't know, we do a live draft, not just the pre-draft stuff that goes on over here. It's 10-15 minutes from the pick being initially made, to being posted, to being on the stream. It is pretty exciting, stressful, but exciting, especially so with sve7en taking over the events crew. We got some great production quality last season while being live, albeit with some technical difficulties of running it for the first time. I think it is in a really nice spot right now, and it is getting better as time goes on, so I can't help but love it. 

There are a ton of other options I could have chosen from, but those stand out to me.

(528 words)

20) Pretend injuries are a thing in the ISFL and your team has had a lot of them lately – so many that your GM has asked you to play out of position. What position are they asking you to play and what about your player build will help you succeed in this role? (2.5TPE, 200+ words)

Well Lawrence Miller has two things as a corner, strength, and speed. Now, as fun as it would be to take over something like the quarterback position, that would just go horrible, and we all know it. Aside from a boring answer like taking over safety for a hot second, I'll say that the GMs have asked Miller to play running back. He isn't a big bodied guy, at least compared to some of those who are successful power running backs, but he comes in at 6'1", 210lbs., which is nothing to scoff at. He's got enough weight to throw around, and can definitely see the play ahead of him, but it'll be the speed that helps him out on offense. He's got pretty good hands as well, and is used to running down the field a few times a drive, so transferring over to wide receiver for a game or two could definitely be fun as well. The problem there would be more so getting him to stick to some routes, rather than sprinting all over the field to find an opening. His speed, plus acceleration, would help him get past the CB across from him, plus he always knows the tips and tricks of a corner, and maybe even how to exploit them. Could turn a problem of WR injuries into something that makes the big guys in Baltimore consider keeping him on offense.

(236 words)

21) What team do you think has the best branding in the league? What team do you think could use a refresh? Why? (2.5TPE, 200+ words)

I know I have talked about it before, but there are really just two teams that stick out to me. First, it has got to be the New York Silverbacks. As one of the most recent expansion teams alongside Berlin, you would expect either to have good, if not great logos compared to the rest of the league. To me, New York nailed their team. New York, Silverback, and a beautiful mint and grey branding alongside the black of the silverback. The logo itself is incredible, with a stunning, old-fashioned, theatre look to it, representing Broadway. The font used also seems to mesh well with it, but still has a tacky look that could be associated with the Silverback and the theme of it's habitat. Then, who here would argue against the Silverback being a badass mascot? All together, it is definitely a 10/10 branding in the league. 

The second team to me is the Austin Copperheads. Now, their prior branding was.. something. But the recent refresh they had gotten from @r0tzbua looks incredible. It looks like I'm also a little bit of a fan of the creative colours from both teams, as Austin dawns two beautiful teal shades, along with some browns. The Copperhead in all logos looks well done, and ties the colours in great. The star in the main logo represents Texas amazingly, and overall just another very well done set of branding. 

As for a refresh, I'll have to go with San Jose. I feel like this might be an unpopular opinion, especially since I remember they had won the Ultimus the season prior to me joining, however, it just does not do it for me. The colours don't work,  the logo is very meh, but due to it being in the league for such a large amount of time, I don't know if it'll go away any time soon.

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[Air Crou]

PBE Affiliate

PH

[frazzle14]

SHL PT

Task 17)

With Austin being in Texas a lot of the most popular food items on the menu are BBQ related like steak, pork etc. Now although there is many different styles of food available throughout the stadium there is one unique piece of food that stands out above the rest, and that is the BBQ tea.

What is BBQ tea I can hear you ask? Well it is famously loved by Austin’s Safety Tony Yeboah and it was added to the menu in his honour when he was brought over from Baltimore. The BBQ tea consists of a honey BBQ sauce and little chunks of chicken and pork which has marinaded in the honey bbq sauce for 24 hours. Once it has finished marinading for 24 hours the mixture is then poured into a beautiful tea cup which is then put in the microwave for two minutes and then it is served. The sauce is a wonderful gloopy mixture which has a little kick that comes out at the end once the sweetness of the honey has went away. The chicken and pork just melts in your mouth as you make your way through the tea cup.

The correct way of having this BBQ tea is to drink it like you would any other cup of tea. It may sound strange but it has to be tried as it is quite easily the best food on offer in the city of Austin.



Task 19)

Yeboah wakes from his sleep and has a look at his phone. He always like to read twitter first thing in the morning to keep himself up to date with all the goings on around the world. What he didn’t like was seeing #cancelyeboah trending. “I knew this was coming” he thought to himself.

Although Yeboah is a nice guy he can explode with rage if his buttons are pushed. He had decided to go to a basketball game on his day off. He got himself a court side seat and was looking forward to watching the game in peace. A player from the away team noticed Yeboah sitting at the side and started to throw abuse his way whenever there was a break in play. Yeboah took no notice of him at the start. At first the abuse was all about Yeboah and his play which he’s fine with as he hears that anyway whenever he plays a away game.

Towards the end of the game though the abuse started to get more personal. The player was obviously just wanting a reaction from Yeboah. With not long left to go in the 4th quarter a timeout was called and the ball rolled towards Yeboah. After the 20th crude joke about Yeboah’s mother he couldn’t take it anymore. He picked up the ball and threw it straight at the guy. It hit him in the chest and put him on the floor.

As expected the video of the incident was everywhere within minutes. Yeboah had to be escorted out of the arena and news outlets were calling for all sorts of punishments. But to Yeboah, the guy deserved it so after a few minutes of reading through the #cancelyeboah tweets. He put his phone down and went back to sleep.


Task 28)

There’s good and bad points to the new sim for me. I would like to say though that the guys in the sim transfer team have put in a lot of work and there has been improvements throughout the season.

At first I didn’t like the sim presentations but they’ve grown on me as the season has went on. Being able to see the ball on every play is good, even if some of the passes defy the laws of physics. I like that each team has their own individually designed field even if some of the fields look a lot better than others. My player’s stats took a major hit but I did expect it after the sim transfer articles that came out before the season so that wasn’t a surprise. My team KCC experienced one of the crazy running back performances this season, with someone going for over 200 yards on five carries against us. I know there’s been a lot more massive runs this season so I do hope it is something that is looked at going forward as it can get a bit ridiculous.

I think with a few season of tweaks and improvements the new sim will be much improved and be vastly superior to the old sim.

[FootballIsCool]

Tier 3: SHL Affiliate 
Different forum user name Hockeyiscool

Tier 2 Task #7
 My tale of getting to the international simulation football league starts out with my friends. My friends, Borgo San Lorenzo, Madison Hayes and Evan Jones created in the ISFL and told me to create, I was hesitant to join because I had just become GM of a rebuilding team in the SHL and did not think I had the time to dedicate to the ISFL, a few weeks had passed and they were talking about it occasionally. They were all really excited for their draft that was about to happen. I then watched the S26 ISFL draft with Evan Jones as he was the first to create and was a member of the S26 class. I was so impressed by the quality of production associated with the ISFL draft. I also was laughing the entire time, the personalities on the cast were very playful, warm and that I decided to join. Since joining the international simulation football league my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. As soon as I created I received an invite to the offensive linemen server which has been a positive group of people encouraging others to succeed and play the type of player that they desire and I have fully immersed myself in being an offensive lineman.  I was a little overwhelmed with all of the discord invitations to different DSFL teams that had interest in scouting my player, Stumpy Jones. Open discord Locker Rooms was a concept that was foreign to me. I had only joined a few of the discords to get a taste of what goes on, I think it was London, Dallas, Norfolk and Portland. From my perspective it was really chaotic. Since being drafted to Portland I was extremely impressed at how involved  Zeagle and SouthPaw have been. The way they run the team is a mastapiece; they have really great systems in place of keeping people engaged and providing proper tools for one to find success. Hordle is a decent guy, so is Arkz.  In reality there have been so many people that I have met through the ISFL that have been overwhelmingly positive. I’ll only name a few but the entire list I have is hella long. I’ve been really impressed by xtitanx that guy is so hype and his activity has been great, Miller, thiath, 23, StadiumGambler, Cklues, LB3737, Kya, r0tz, etc... 

I’ve been very satisfied with how Stumpy Jones has performed. It’s difficult to complain after winning DSFL Offensive Lineman of the year. In an extremely close Pancake race with Cheese Farley (one less pancake, one more sack allowed) I’m happy to bring home the accolade. I can hardly remember being picked for the DSFL draft. I would say from what I remember I was surprised at how late I was drafted in both the DSFL draft and the ISFL draft that happened.
Lastly, I think something that could be implemented is in the Sims is to show the box scores between each game to display stats for all positions. For example there isn’t an accurate way to see how many stats  an offensive linemen gets in the sim until the index is updated. As an offensive lineman this has killed my enthusiasm to watch the sim. I just do my weekly updates and wait for the index to be updated. This may be fine for me, but I feel like other people may not enjoy the inability to see their player stats during the sim and it may cause people to more likely swap away from being offensive linemen just because the sims aren’t exciting for them. 

[593ish words]

Tier 3 Task #21

The team that I think has the best branding in the International Simulation Football League is a tight race between the Chicago Butchers and the Colorado Yeti but I must give the best Brand to the Colorado Yeti.The colors are crisp and make the eye pop. I enjoy the use of the Colorado State Flag in the branding. I also think that keeping the yeti completely shaded was a very clever decision and gives the logo a lot of balance between the bright, sharp colors of the colorado state flag backdrop and Black of the Yeti. The allusion of the mascot being unknown was something I have never seen before in a logo and must give tremendous praise for it. Overall it’s a logo that has great flow and I could see myself getting merchandise that has this logo on it.

The team that I think could use a refresh is the Yellow Knife Raiders, I mean Wraiths. I just think the Wraiths logo has too many similarities to the Raiders of the NFL even down to the color choices. I think it lacks creativity in regard to color choices and design, to my eye it is unimpressive and not at all what I visualized a wraith to be. I would have expected something more ghostly or ghoulish.

[219 words]

[enigmatic]

SHL PT

[mee]

SHL 2.5 TPE

Task 16 2.5 TPE
The bank is taking ISFL money? For like 50 cents? You, that is an unreal deal. I will go ahead and trade every cent of my $3,473,490. That should net me over $1.5M. That's a pretty solid chunk of change my guys. But what should I do with it? Well, I'm feeling pretty hungry at the moment, so I need to spend about five maybe ten dollars on pizza. I need Discord Nitro. You know how those cool people come and they just put it all those cool emojis that we the plebians can't use? Well I would love to join that elite group of people that are so cool.
So with my pizza and discord nitro as my first two purchases, I think it's time to update my gaming rig. A new PS5 with a few new games sounds like a start.
With all this money, I should invest just a bit back into the sim leagues. So I will purchase FHM as well as DDSPF to allow myself a more immersive experience in these leagues.
With more money left I think I should buy some of GME stock before it goes even higher. A tad of bitcoin as well. Some Amazon. And just some in the overall market.
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Task 17 2.5 TPE


Task 23

Honestly think the grey/silver helmet would contrast nicely on the purple jersey and could go great with grey/silver pants.