Overall I think that the ISFL runs as well as it can within the constraints of the sim, as far as the actual gameplay and player engagement goes. Live commentary would be truly incredible but has a couple of challenges to overcome, namely finding a large enough stable of commentaters to avoid burnout. But also, following the dots at the speed that they move can be really challenging and would likely be hard to do for a commentator. I think perhaps picking one game a week to highlight with commentary, played at regular speed, would be the best way to do it but this would also create large headaches for the sim team. Ultimately, I think the biggest change that needs to be made though is not related to the sim but to the league economy. It really feels like a struggle to be able to afford the baseline items you need each season (training weekly and t4-6 equipment) while having enough money left over to engage in the more entertaining activities like casino events or ISFL survivor. The current economy set is stagnant, with the people who've been in the league the longest boasting massive bank accounts that they can't possibly spend with newer users, even those with league jobs, struggling to make ends meet and still have cash left over to collect Dotts cards. As an example, graphics graders may make between 6M and 10M for a seasons worth of work but process hundreds of millions in payouts over a season easily. I don't really have a solution for this aside from a total re-analysis of the costs of league activities and equipment and a rebalancing of the economy, which I understand would be a ton of work.
My first suggestion is beat writers. It would probably never happen because it would most likely go horribly wrong or toxic but it would make for a more immersive league experience. Journalism is a big part of the sports world after all. Each team would have a beat writer along with someone who covers league office related stuff. Since injuries don't exist, they would mostly tweet things like trade rumors, locker room shenanigans, position changes, or statistical factoids related to the team. Imaginative writing would also be required for tweets about training camp or general team activities. I haven't exactly thought about how it's going to work, since they are going to need (limited) access to front office discussions and gm chat or things of that nature.
My second suggestion is a more minor one. A new award category for "Best Play of the Season." Everyone would get a vote(just like MOP) and they would choose from 4-5 pre selected gifs or video clips. Obviously dotball gifs aren't as exciting as real football but it would be a good way to remember some of the league's greatest moments.
From a (mostly) outside perspective, the goings-on of the league seem to be running smoothly right now, so I don’t want to make any major system changes. What I’d like to do is expand some of the off-season activity to include more engaging content. Specifically, the weeks between the start of each draft and the draft presentation are a barren wasteland of nothingness, in terms of sim news. My proposition would fill that time with a new, easy-to-run alternate reality league.
The Proposal: It would be cool to re-run the sims of the season in a time-compressed format. Through the course of a week, the ISFL (or DSFL, depending) would get to enjoy a second run at the season in a “what if” scenario. Load the preseason file & take it out for another trip around the block. The sim is inherently flawed – you wouldn’t be able to account for player progression through the season, so teams would perform just as well in week 15 as they do in week 1. That shouldn’t hold us back from having a good time, though. Think about all the cool content we could get in the media section as a result. Using only the sim file from the start of the season is a good way to pre-emptively shut the door on any “we would have won if…” conversations before they start. Let’s have a fun time with it! Who’s with me? …guys? Prompt Wrote:With the new season underway, there's a lot of excitement in the air. However, what potential change could make the league even more exciting? Perhaps live play-by-play during streams? Unlimited cap? List what potential suggestions that would make the league better! Can even be silly suggestions as well! I'm personally mostly interested in things that would make the player experience more interesting rather than the stream experience - something like play-by-play or recaps/highlights could be neat, but I don't know that the number of people who would watch it makes it worth doing the work. I'd be more interested in something like allowing more personalization/impact for new players while also not devaluing more experienced players. Ignoring the feasibility of it, I think something like offering randomized traits for purchase could be interesting. Ignoring that the sim engine probably wouldn't work with it, creating a new trait available for purchase in that year only for 25 TPE that provides a positional bonus for each position seems neat. I think it should be the same for all players in a given position to make comparisons between players in the same year a bit more clear, and I think randomness rather than a cycle would help avoid needing to figure out the "best year" to create a player in to take the most advantage of the traits. I think it would also need to be exempt from the DSFL cap in some way to allow high-earning 2nd year DSFL players to still be able to get the trait if they're already at 250 TPE. There's definitely a chance that it could lead to certain years of creation leading to higher-performing players in some positions (potentially distorting HOF/historical comparisons), and you'd need to figure out how to handle position switches, but I think it could be a good way to create a little more dynamic environment for players. Draft Steal (retired S35 CB) - Profile/Update | Wiki Troen Egghands (retired S22 DE) - Profile | Update | Wiki
I think everyone in the league would agree that the most important change to the league would be some Special Teams coaching. How many times has a game come down to the wire only for one of the teams to kick a field on the one yard line on first down? How many times have we seen a game turned on it's head by a 30 yard punt from a maxed kicker? Seriously, these guy have all the talent and leg power in the world but if they don't have the fundamentals down pat, how can we expect them to perform week in and week out? It's about time that this league starts to invest in some of it's unsung heroes, each and every week these guys are grinding it out only to fall apart at the last second to no fault of their own. If that doesn't work then we can probably just ban kickers I suppose.
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