When have you encountered luck in your everyday life?

[retrospace111]

When have you encountered luck or paranormal odds in your daily life? Have you ever mysteriously gotten kicked out of a casino after winning one too many hands of blackjack? Has your phone ever been unlocked by a jealous partner even though you never shared your password? Let’s share stories about these unexplained occurrences that can only be luck or coincidences.

In terms of TPE, the Arizona Outlaws are
1st in Average TPE
2nd in Total Effective TPE
2nd in Total Offensive TPE
3rd in Total Defensive TPE

The Outlaws have the
1st Highest TPE QB
4th Highest TPE RB
4th Highest TPE TE
4th Highest TPE DT
2nd Highest TPE LB
3rd Highest TPE CB

And yet the Outlaws are 5-6 through 3 games. Why? It's not just the Outlaws either. 9/14 teams have 5-6 wins. Are all these teams... mediocre? No. There's too many players on every single team so the league is literally just luck based. You can get solid active players at almost every position now, and the draft has so many players that send downs are more and more common. Being a first year call up is rare at most positions because of how full the league is. The difference in skill level between the teams is so little that every game is almost a coin flip. The league should have expanded by 4 teams in s25, because it's only going to get worse from here. Once s22 peaks, every single game will be a coin toss. Everything is determined by home field advantage, and don't try and tell me it's the nature of the sim. The league needs to expand to many more teams soon before it becomes impossible to build a good team. People are drafting for depth now, not roster holes. Some teams are stacked at almost every position and won't even have more than 1 glaring hole during the draft. This league could easily support 16-18 teams, and something's got to change soon.

[Thor]

The league should have expanded by 4 teams in s25, because it's only going to get worse from here.

The league needs to expand to many more teams soon before it becomes impossible to build a good team.

This league could easily support 16-18 teams, and something's got to change soon.

Strong disagree on expanding by 4 teams in S25.

I think keeping the DSFL with a healthy competition is essential to retaining players during their first season, the only way we could have gone up by 4 last offseason was either contracting two DSFL teams or loosening the IA rules in DSFL.

We need sustainable expansion, not boom expansions that could lead to DSFL contractions or potential future ISFL contractions if the level of recruitment isn't sustained.

Two teams was a safe decision, but the correct one.

[RotticusScott]

I agree with 4 team expansion. There are currently 211 players above 500 TPE, which is where most positions will start being "good" in the sense that they can put up big stats, and another 172 in between 250 and 499, where players can play in the ISFL and not be glaring holes on their teams. Thats 383 playable players split between 14 franchises, or 27 per team (!!!!). The next expansion needs to be 4, if not 6 teams if we are planning to do another round of reddit recruitment in S28, or we'll be seeing 0 competition among teams to truly be better than anyone else in the league. I get that user/gm retention goes down if teams are bad, but the league is no fun when building a great team doesn't mean anything.

[Pat]

I'm very new here, but I think there seem to be a few ways to fix this issue, if you want to call it that:

1) Expand the ISFL further
Now this has some very big issues and implications that could easily backfire on the league. This has been discussed time and time again, but for argument's sake, let's pretend that we do expand it by two more teams. That causes more players to be called up from the DSFL, causing a bit of a talent void for DSFL teams.


2) Change pillars of DSFL team management
In all honesty, keeping first-year DSFL players engaged and happy with their choice to join the league is one of if not THE biggest way to ensure success for the league. If someone has a great first year in the DSFL then there's a good chance they'll stick around (obviously this is conjecture but I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who disagrees). If we start having teams that are 75% BOT teams because there aren't players, well, that causes issues. No one wants that. That's why I think if we DO expand again, we could shake up some GM rules in the DSFL.

a) Allow teams one extra GM Bot
This would allow teams to fill out their rosters a little bit more evenly.
b) Loosen inactive rules
Active players must still start over inactives, but you are allowed to keep inactive players on your roster at a penalty of 25% lost TPE every season


3) If all else fails, pull the trigger on moving to a new sim engine
For all of the griping people do about DDSPF16, the fact is that it is perfectly fine for our league. Yes, the sim logic is...wonky and everyone has already datamined optimal builds and all of that junk. However, moving to a new sim engine (DDSPF21, for example) would breathe some new life into the league. We wouldn't know optimal strats or player builds, and it might keep people engaged who have gotten sick of seeing the things @retrospace111 is referencing.

[slate]

2) Change pillars of DSFL team management

b) Loosen inactive rules
Active players must still start over inactives, but you are allowed to keep inactive players on your roster at a penalty of 25% lost TPE every season

I like loosening inactive rules a lot as a way to address this issue. I think there are probably a decent amount of users who hang around for a bit, stop paying attention, and when they come back they can't find any stats for their player anywhere. I imagine that keeping them on a roster and having stats to show them when they check in on their player would help retention to some extent.

I would propose a slightly different take on it - teams can keep IA players on their roster that still have DSFL eligibility as long as they haven't yet reached the 250 TPE cap.

This rule would maintain emphasis on the developmental aspect, as someone who has reached 250 TPE has basically developed as much as they can in the DSFL. And it would hopefully reduce complaints about competitive advantages since any team that rosters a bunch of IAs in this way isn't keeping an IA superteam of 250 TPE all-stars. It would come with less rules baggage of needing to apply regression and the feel-bad of coming back to your player having less TPE than you remember.

3) If all else fails, pull the trigger on moving to a new sim engine
For all of the griping people do about DDSPF16, the fact is that it is perfectly fine for our league. Yes, the sim logic is...wonky and everyone has already datamined optimal builds and all of that junk. However, moving to a new sim engine (DDSPF21, for example) would breathe some new life into the league. We wouldn't know optimal strats or player builds, and it might keep people engaged who have gotten sick of seeing the things retrospace111 is referencing.

This please.

I strongly believe that sim testing is bad for the health of the league. For as many new users as there are like me who want to try and develop new ways to improve on sim testing, I believe there are at least as many who get somewhat disillusioned with the league when they learned how "solved" game planning and builds and everything are.

I do think that moving to a new sim engine only means that this process of optimizing will get reset and that eventually we'll be back to where we are now, but the new life it will give the league in the short- to medium-term would be huge.

[Raven]

We've wanted a new sim engine for like 3 years now, if there was a good replacement we would have probably moved by now eh

[Pat]

I would propose a slightly different take on it - teams can keep IA players on their roster that still have DSFL eligibility as long as they haven't yet reached the 250 TPE cap.

This rule would maintain emphasis on the developmental aspect, as someone who has reached 250 TPE has basically developed as much as they can in the DSFL. And it would hopefully reduce complaints about competitive advantages since any team that rosters a bunch of IAs in this way isn't keeping an IA superteam of 250 TPE all-stars. It would come with less rules baggage of needing to apply regression and the feel-bad of coming back to your player having less TPE than you remember.

That's a great alternative to my, "impose regression on IA's." Unless maybe we do both? If you have an inactive on your team who's maxed out, you have to cut their TPE from 250 to 150 or something like that? If they then come back, you can shoot it back up to the 250 cap the following season.

[slate]

We've wanted a new sim engine for like 3 years now, if there was a good replacement we would have probably moved by now eh

What is wrong with DDSPF21?

[Raven]

We've wanted a new sim engine for like 3 years now, if there was a good replacement we would have probably moved by now eh

What is wrong with DDSPF21?

Haven't been around enough lately to hear what would be wrong with DDSPF21 specific. Which is a shame.

[Memento Mori]

The league should have expanded by 4 teams in s25, because it's only going to get worse from here.

The league needs to expand to many more teams soon before it becomes impossible to build a good team.

This league could easily support 16-18 teams, and something's got to change soon.

Strong disagree on expanding by 4 teams in S25.

I think keeping the DSFL with a healthy competition is essential to retaining players during their first season, the only way we could have gone up by 4 last offseason was either contracting two DSFL teams or loosening the IA rules in DSFL.

We need sustainable expansion, not boom expansions that could lead to DSFL contractions or potential future ISFL contractions if the level of recruitment isn't sustained.

Two teams was a safe decision, but the correct one.

I have to disagree, because of the section that I've bolded.

Let's look at the number of users required to sustain each ISFL team. On offence you roughly need 1 QB, 2 RBs, 4 WRs/TEs (1 TE and 3 WR or 2 TE and 2 WR depending on if you want to play a TE at WR in some formations) and 2 OTs. That's 9 players, additional players are depth pieces or play interior OL, which is only viable at higher TPE due to the permitted weight of interior OL bots. On defence, you need 11 players. You could make a case for a 12th if you wanted to play 3-4 on running downs but didn't want to play one of your CBs at LB and one of your safeties at the vacant CB spot. 20 per team gives a full active lineup on both sides of the ball.

The last five activity checks have been completed by 317, 329, 341, 344 and 344 users. We have enough active users to sustain about 16-17 teams.

I just took a look at the TPE tracker, and there are roughly 92 additional users who are not active according to the rulebook definition, but have players who are either on an ISFL roster or who were recently on an ISFL roster. For example, guys like slm and scorycory who most of us would intuitively consider active are not active according to the rulebook. So the "real" number of users we have is around 410-430. That's enough to sustain more than 20 teams.

The reason I bring up the number of users currently in the league is because I think it makes the case that the level of recruitment doesn't need to be sustained in order to guard against future ISFL contractions. If we expanded to 16 teams and began recruiting zero people each offseason, then we could continue to sustain 16 teams as long as 25% of the league didn't quit. If we expanded to 16 teams and recruited even a small number of people each offseason, we would be able to continue to sustain 16 teams.

You are correct that I and others are viewing this from a very ISFL-centric viewpoint and the DSFL is important, but not expanding the ISFL so that we don't need to contract the DSFL (which is, consciously or unconsciously, what HO chose to do) makes the ISFL worse, because it makes the teams similar in quality and the league very luck-based as a result. The ASFC last season is a great example of that. A conference of six teams being comprised of four 9-7 teams, an 8-8 team and a 7-9 team is a problem.

Being ultra-conservative with ISFL expansion so as not to harm the DSFL may improve retention for DSFL players and for newer users, but an unfulfilling and luck-based ISFL will reduce retention overall and mean that more users choose not to recreate at the end of their ISFL careers. There's no point making the DSFL great and welcoming and immersive and enjoyable if after they leave the DSFL they move up into a league which is less great, immersive and enjoyable as a direct result. The DSFL needs to serve its purpose well and be a functional league in its own right, but the ISFL needs to come first and the ISFL needs to be as good as it can possibly be.