03-24-2024, 07:32 AM
(This post was last modified: 03-27-2024, 08:30 AM by lemonoppy. Edited 1 time in total.)
When I see draft content, most of them are either mock drafts or - now that the draft is finally over - pick reviews. While I'm one of the people who really enjoy those draft contents (especially the DSFL ones), I thought that there was room for some variation. What I'm trying to write here is an informational media piece, aimed mostly at rookie users who are entering the draft process for the first time, providing some information on how the DSFL draft process is managed. I was originally going to write this article a lot further into the season, closer to the start of S49 class creation window. However, I wasn't able to stave away from the temptation of double media (I mean, it's free money. Why would I refuse it?), and decided to write the article right now instead. I'll post this article in rookie chat if it's needed or whatever. Alright then, let's get into the main deal!
The war room
Did you know that there was a hidden corner in your locker room? It might sound shocking, but it's true. Every team (or at least the ones that I know) has a separate channel from its main "teams only" chat section. This channel, which is mostly called the "war room" while the actual channer name might vary from team to team, is where "secret" business takes place. In here, users who are selected to be in management roles - the two GMs and war room members - manage the day to day operation of the team, from setting of gameplans (by sim testing and submitting strats), to scouting and drafting future prospects. Needless to say, there's always a lot going on.
How the war room is run is almost entirely up to the GM. Some GMs prefer smaller war rooms, fearing inducting the lion's share of the team's active users will result in activity level falling in the main part of the locker room. On the other hand, some GMs prefer to keep their war rooms large, as they prefer to give opportunity to more people. A typical war room will have around 7~8 members including the two GMs. Larger war rooms can have more than 10 members in there, while smaller war rooms might have around 5~6 users. The smallest sized war room I ever saw or heard was that of S21 Dallas, during their inaugural draft. From what I later heard, that war room consisted of only 3 people, who were the two GMs in @gucci and @Kyle, along with @W.Sconnie . But despite being so outmanned, this trio not only just managed to survive the massive, 250+ player strong S22 class' DSFL draft, they managed to find numerous gems (and quite a few future HOF players) in the process. This is a very good example stating that sizes sometimes doesn't matter in regards to war rooms.
The selection of war room members is, again, entirely up to the GM. In many cases, GMs will keep their predecessors in the war room in an advisory roles. And along with those former GMs, a large portion of any given war room is made up of older users, who provide valuable experience. Those older users are quite often a part of ISFL war room, so they can also provide early warnings in matters such as player callups. However, the GMs placing a lot of value in experience doesn't mean that there are no new users. As a matter of fact a lot of new users get into their DSFL teams' war rooms within their first few seasons, provided that they are interested. If a new user is active in discord and is interested in joining the war room, the GMs will include that new user in the war room in most cases. After all, the DSFL is a developmental league and players aren't the only ones being developed. Those new users will provide fresh perspective to the team, and will be viewed as future GM candidates by current GMs and team elders.
While like I say war rooms are involved in day to day management of the team, their true value is in the draft process. The offseason is the time when the war room members are expected to step up the most and do their job. This process, which starts at trade deadline and continues through the whole of offseason, is what I'm going to discuss from now on.
The draft process
Our story begins at DSFL trade deadline, when the first players of a new draft class start to create. Players belonging on the new class will start to create starting on a week before DSFL trade deadline. However, the actual work will begin after the stream airs on the trade deadline, as that's when those players are approved and entered into the trade deadline waiver wire. While all GMs will seek to add new, active users to their team (albeit temporarily), the strategy on that might vary based on the team's situation. The GMs of a playoff contender team will try to add players that fills their positional needs, while GMs of some non - playoff teams will seek to add as much players as possible, aiming to start scouting early. During waiver situations, there are two ways to claim a player. The first is quick claim, which is only usable by the top priority teams. When said top priority team quick claims a player, that player is assigned to them immidiately. The other is regular claim, which can be used by all teams including the top priority team. In this case, the player will be assigned to the highest priority team that submitted a claim during the 24 hours that he sat on the waiver wire. If no one claims a player after 24 hours, the player enters free claim, which is first come, first serve and doesn't affect waiver priorities. On a player's perspective, this whole process takes about a day to a day and a half.
While it might seem quite simple in writing, in practice working the waivers require a lot of mind games. You need to predict the actions of other teams, and set your strategy accordingly. And you have to do that while determining the activity level of those new players. This is where the war room comes in handy, as members provide opinions on possible strategies and help find out if a user is active or not through both forum and discord.
After a player is claimed by a team, either a GM or a war room member from that team will contact him, and introduce them into their locker room. At the same time, GMs and sim helpers in war room will adjust sim strategy and depth charts to include the new additions. GMs and war room members will also talk with the new players regarding their roles during their short stay, and sometimes provide build advices upon request or when needed.
While a week or two as a trade deadline waiver add might be a brief respite from boredom for a player, it is quite an important time for GMs and war room members. During this time they will observe their new players in the locker room. This is very helpful in forming first impressions, and gaining information in crucial areas such as discord activity level. And as the draft class' top recreates usually make their players at trade deadline, teams use this time as an opportunity to determine their compatibility with recreate users.
At the same time, the teams start out the preparation work for their main scouting effort. In most teams, scouting starts by someone (usually a GM) setting up a "draft board", which is a file where every player in the upcoming draft, as well as essential information about them such as TPE level, are listed. Teams will usually start the file when the trade deadline class comes in, and add names as more players create. Some diligent teams actually start sending scouting messages to prospects in this timeline, but most teams wait until the season ends and the prospects are reverted back out of their trade deadline teams.
The offseason begins right as the ultimus ends. That means that the ISFL pre - draft technically begins at the same time. During the process of pre - draft, the GMs of each DSFL teams will be informed when their players are picked by an ISFL team. As this is confidential information, the GMs are forbidden from discussing this information with their war room members who are not in an ISFL war room themselves. As such, GMs will mostly keep this information to themselves. They will message ISFL GMs who drafted their players, and ask them whether or not they are going to call them up. Based on the answeres they get from the ISFL GMs, the DSFL GMs start forming their draft strategy for the upcoming draft. The GMs will evaluate their positional needs considering their losses to callups, loss of DSFL eligibility and inactivity.
While that is going on, the scouting game is in full swing. Scouting is the part where there is the most variation amongst teams. And how a team would scout is, or the "scouting scheme" as I call it, is dependant on the GM, and to some degrees the tradition of the team. Some teams will let scouts message new users on their own device, while other teams will assign specific users to each scouts. And there is a lot of variation on how much scouting load will be placed on the scouts. So on some teams you'll see GMs handling the lion's share of scouting, while on others you'll see GMs delegating to war room members.
Scouting conversation, done through discord, is by far the most important part of draft process for all teams. Through this they will gather information on prospects, and formulate opinions based on those information gathered. All teams pretty much ask same few questions during scouting talk, as they all need to know crucial information such as the user's plan on TPE earning (if the player is going to be a max earner or a mid to casual earner), their willingness to switch positions (and to which positions if they're willing), and if the user has any specific plan for the player. All teams would ask those questions to a new user, while some recreates will avoid being asked those questions through either writing a media containing those information (like I did), or through known acquaintances who have a very good idea on those base facts.
On top of those basic questions, a lot of teams try to add some color to the scouting conversation (as they can be very dreary with only the basic questions asked) by adding questions of their own. This can also double as a quick opportunity to test the user's compatibility with the team's locker room, as those additional questions asked are more often meme questions, and are in line with the atmosphere that the team's locker room have. Scouts feel they have had a good conversation with a prospect when the user was responsive, and they were able to get a good conversation going. Those users tend to get drafted early even if their TPE earning level is not up to top notch, while users who only gave short responses or never responded (or "ghosted" in common war room slang) might see their draft stock dropping despite being high earners.
As I hinted in the last paragraph, TPE level is not as important to GMs as you commonly think. Instead of ranking users according to their exact TPE value, GMs and war room members divide them into rough groups (max earner, semi - max earner, mid earner and casual earner) depending on their pace of earning. A max earner is someone who completes every available task and buys T6 equipment every season. In DSFL they are expected to reach the TPE cap (250TPE) by the end of their first season. On the other side of the scale, casual earners are ones who mostly only do activity checks and occasional PTs. They're expected to end their career in the DSFL, and get to around 150-250TPE when their DSFL eligibility runs out. For recreates this level will mostly be determined by looking at their player histories, and also tracking the progress of their current player. For new users, their earning level is determined solely by tracking their user page, and manually checking which tasks they did.
When the scouting of the class is complete and the earning levels of all users are determined, the war room will set the draft board. Again, how this is done varies between team to team. Some teams have war room members hopping into voice chats, while other teams will just do it on their war room chat. Regardless of the method, in this process teams give grades to each users, and determines their preferences on each of them. They make this decision based on the notes each scouts write after scouting a user (the scout will sometimes be called upon to provide more information or their information), position (and willingness to switch), and TPE level. The war room will also set a preliminary draft strategy at this point.
In order to set their final draft strategy, the teams need one last piece of information, and that is callup status. While GMs receive preliminary information about their draftees and older players being either called up or sent down, that can change when the real senddown list is announced after the conclusion of ISFL draft stream. This is because of ISFL teams having a change of strategy, or because of players requesting to be either called up or sent down. So the teams will tweak their draft boards based on the changes that happened on the real callup list, and prepare for the DSFL pre - draft which starts at midnight after the ISFL draft stream.
During the pre - draft, the war room is always on call. GMs and war room members will go through the draft according to the strategy they set, making revisions as changes happen. Typically, teams will keep a list of players they want when their pick is close, and the GMs and the war room will spend most of the time during the draft discussing and revising their list of best available users. Sometimes, GMs or war room members manage to find a "gem", who is usually a late create or a user who was previously considered to be IA, but has responded to them late. This kind of variation will greatly alter the team's draft strategy, and in a lot of cases result in big moves such as trades. The DSFL draft is full of sudden developments like this, such as a player suddenly being called up in the middle of DSFL draft, or a player who was deemed ineligible due to inactivity suddenly returning out of the blue. The war room is exepcted to provide advise and help form out a course of action throughout the draft, and especially after those sudden developments.
The work of war room is still not finished even after the conclusion of DSFL pre - draft. They now have post - draft waivers to process. Players who created after the first pick of DSFL draft was made will be be declared non - eligible for DSFL draft, and instead will be entered into the waiver wire after the conclusion of the draft. As this is an additional opportunity to gain active players, DSFL GMs and war room members will also scout those late joining users, and tries to find active users to add to their team. Unlike trade deadline waivers which is basically a rental for a week or two, this waiver placement is permanent. So teams tend to be a lot more prudent in making their decisions, and the post draft waiver adds are discussed and monitored on a similar level to that of actual draftees.
When all that is over, the last job of DSFL GMs and war room members is to watch the draft stream, and invite their new draftees to their locker room. They will often have a watch party in their own locker room, which enables team members to hype up and congratulate the newest draftee right after they are drafted and invited into the locker room. They will also do the same for waiver adds, who are usually announced after the conclusion of main DSFL draft stream.
So this is the typical trade deadline to offseason scouting cycle for a DSFL war room. As you can see a lot is going on in the war rooms even when everything seems quiet and people are complaining of boredom. What I wanted to say through this article is that while it seems like a lot - and to some degrees it can be - being in the war room is great fun. You can see a whole another aspect of the league in the war room, and you can experience things otherwise you'll never be able to. So rookies, if you are active and want to see more of this league, join the war room! Who knows if you'll be a DSFL GM in a few seasons?
The war room
Did you know that there was a hidden corner in your locker room? It might sound shocking, but it's true. Every team (or at least the ones that I know) has a separate channel from its main "teams only" chat section. This channel, which is mostly called the "war room" while the actual channer name might vary from team to team, is where "secret" business takes place. In here, users who are selected to be in management roles - the two GMs and war room members - manage the day to day operation of the team, from setting of gameplans (by sim testing and submitting strats), to scouting and drafting future prospects. Needless to say, there's always a lot going on.
How the war room is run is almost entirely up to the GM. Some GMs prefer smaller war rooms, fearing inducting the lion's share of the team's active users will result in activity level falling in the main part of the locker room. On the other hand, some GMs prefer to keep their war rooms large, as they prefer to give opportunity to more people. A typical war room will have around 7~8 members including the two GMs. Larger war rooms can have more than 10 members in there, while smaller war rooms might have around 5~6 users. The smallest sized war room I ever saw or heard was that of S21 Dallas, during their inaugural draft. From what I later heard, that war room consisted of only 3 people, who were the two GMs in @gucci and @Kyle, along with @W.Sconnie . But despite being so outmanned, this trio not only just managed to survive the massive, 250+ player strong S22 class' DSFL draft, they managed to find numerous gems (and quite a few future HOF players) in the process. This is a very good example stating that sizes sometimes doesn't matter in regards to war rooms.
The selection of war room members is, again, entirely up to the GM. In many cases, GMs will keep their predecessors in the war room in an advisory roles. And along with those former GMs, a large portion of any given war room is made up of older users, who provide valuable experience. Those older users are quite often a part of ISFL war room, so they can also provide early warnings in matters such as player callups. However, the GMs placing a lot of value in experience doesn't mean that there are no new users. As a matter of fact a lot of new users get into their DSFL teams' war rooms within their first few seasons, provided that they are interested. If a new user is active in discord and is interested in joining the war room, the GMs will include that new user in the war room in most cases. After all, the DSFL is a developmental league and players aren't the only ones being developed. Those new users will provide fresh perspective to the team, and will be viewed as future GM candidates by current GMs and team elders.
While like I say war rooms are involved in day to day management of the team, their true value is in the draft process. The offseason is the time when the war room members are expected to step up the most and do their job. This process, which starts at trade deadline and continues through the whole of offseason, is what I'm going to discuss from now on.
The draft process
Our story begins at DSFL trade deadline, when the first players of a new draft class start to create. Players belonging on the new class will start to create starting on a week before DSFL trade deadline. However, the actual work will begin after the stream airs on the trade deadline, as that's when those players are approved and entered into the trade deadline waiver wire. While all GMs will seek to add new, active users to their team (albeit temporarily), the strategy on that might vary based on the team's situation. The GMs of a playoff contender team will try to add players that fills their positional needs, while GMs of some non - playoff teams will seek to add as much players as possible, aiming to start scouting early. During waiver situations, there are two ways to claim a player. The first is quick claim, which is only usable by the top priority teams. When said top priority team quick claims a player, that player is assigned to them immidiately. The other is regular claim, which can be used by all teams including the top priority team. In this case, the player will be assigned to the highest priority team that submitted a claim during the 24 hours that he sat on the waiver wire. If no one claims a player after 24 hours, the player enters free claim, which is first come, first serve and doesn't affect waiver priorities. On a player's perspective, this whole process takes about a day to a day and a half.
While it might seem quite simple in writing, in practice working the waivers require a lot of mind games. You need to predict the actions of other teams, and set your strategy accordingly. And you have to do that while determining the activity level of those new players. This is where the war room comes in handy, as members provide opinions on possible strategies and help find out if a user is active or not through both forum and discord.
After a player is claimed by a team, either a GM or a war room member from that team will contact him, and introduce them into their locker room. At the same time, GMs and sim helpers in war room will adjust sim strategy and depth charts to include the new additions. GMs and war room members will also talk with the new players regarding their roles during their short stay, and sometimes provide build advices upon request or when needed.
While a week or two as a trade deadline waiver add might be a brief respite from boredom for a player, it is quite an important time for GMs and war room members. During this time they will observe their new players in the locker room. This is very helpful in forming first impressions, and gaining information in crucial areas such as discord activity level. And as the draft class' top recreates usually make their players at trade deadline, teams use this time as an opportunity to determine their compatibility with recreate users.
At the same time, the teams start out the preparation work for their main scouting effort. In most teams, scouting starts by someone (usually a GM) setting up a "draft board", which is a file where every player in the upcoming draft, as well as essential information about them such as TPE level, are listed. Teams will usually start the file when the trade deadline class comes in, and add names as more players create. Some diligent teams actually start sending scouting messages to prospects in this timeline, but most teams wait until the season ends and the prospects are reverted back out of their trade deadline teams.
The offseason begins right as the ultimus ends. That means that the ISFL pre - draft technically begins at the same time. During the process of pre - draft, the GMs of each DSFL teams will be informed when their players are picked by an ISFL team. As this is confidential information, the GMs are forbidden from discussing this information with their war room members who are not in an ISFL war room themselves. As such, GMs will mostly keep this information to themselves. They will message ISFL GMs who drafted their players, and ask them whether or not they are going to call them up. Based on the answeres they get from the ISFL GMs, the DSFL GMs start forming their draft strategy for the upcoming draft. The GMs will evaluate their positional needs considering their losses to callups, loss of DSFL eligibility and inactivity.
While that is going on, the scouting game is in full swing. Scouting is the part where there is the most variation amongst teams. And how a team would scout is, or the "scouting scheme" as I call it, is dependant on the GM, and to some degrees the tradition of the team. Some teams will let scouts message new users on their own device, while other teams will assign specific users to each scouts. And there is a lot of variation on how much scouting load will be placed on the scouts. So on some teams you'll see GMs handling the lion's share of scouting, while on others you'll see GMs delegating to war room members.
Scouting conversation, done through discord, is by far the most important part of draft process for all teams. Through this they will gather information on prospects, and formulate opinions based on those information gathered. All teams pretty much ask same few questions during scouting talk, as they all need to know crucial information such as the user's plan on TPE earning (if the player is going to be a max earner or a mid to casual earner), their willingness to switch positions (and to which positions if they're willing), and if the user has any specific plan for the player. All teams would ask those questions to a new user, while some recreates will avoid being asked those questions through either writing a media containing those information (like I did), or through known acquaintances who have a very good idea on those base facts.
On top of those basic questions, a lot of teams try to add some color to the scouting conversation (as they can be very dreary with only the basic questions asked) by adding questions of their own. This can also double as a quick opportunity to test the user's compatibility with the team's locker room, as those additional questions asked are more often meme questions, and are in line with the atmosphere that the team's locker room have. Scouts feel they have had a good conversation with a prospect when the user was responsive, and they were able to get a good conversation going. Those users tend to get drafted early even if their TPE earning level is not up to top notch, while users who only gave short responses or never responded (or "ghosted" in common war room slang) might see their draft stock dropping despite being high earners.
As I hinted in the last paragraph, TPE level is not as important to GMs as you commonly think. Instead of ranking users according to their exact TPE value, GMs and war room members divide them into rough groups (max earner, semi - max earner, mid earner and casual earner) depending on their pace of earning. A max earner is someone who completes every available task and buys T6 equipment every season. In DSFL they are expected to reach the TPE cap (250TPE) by the end of their first season. On the other side of the scale, casual earners are ones who mostly only do activity checks and occasional PTs. They're expected to end their career in the DSFL, and get to around 150-250TPE when their DSFL eligibility runs out. For recreates this level will mostly be determined by looking at their player histories, and also tracking the progress of their current player. For new users, their earning level is determined solely by tracking their user page, and manually checking which tasks they did.
When the scouting of the class is complete and the earning levels of all users are determined, the war room will set the draft board. Again, how this is done varies between team to team. Some teams have war room members hopping into voice chats, while other teams will just do it on their war room chat. Regardless of the method, in this process teams give grades to each users, and determines their preferences on each of them. They make this decision based on the notes each scouts write after scouting a user (the scout will sometimes be called upon to provide more information or their information), position (and willingness to switch), and TPE level. The war room will also set a preliminary draft strategy at this point.
In order to set their final draft strategy, the teams need one last piece of information, and that is callup status. While GMs receive preliminary information about their draftees and older players being either called up or sent down, that can change when the real senddown list is announced after the conclusion of ISFL draft stream. This is because of ISFL teams having a change of strategy, or because of players requesting to be either called up or sent down. So the teams will tweak their draft boards based on the changes that happened on the real callup list, and prepare for the DSFL pre - draft which starts at midnight after the ISFL draft stream.
During the pre - draft, the war room is always on call. GMs and war room members will go through the draft according to the strategy they set, making revisions as changes happen. Typically, teams will keep a list of players they want when their pick is close, and the GMs and the war room will spend most of the time during the draft discussing and revising their list of best available users. Sometimes, GMs or war room members manage to find a "gem", who is usually a late create or a user who was previously considered to be IA, but has responded to them late. This kind of variation will greatly alter the team's draft strategy, and in a lot of cases result in big moves such as trades. The DSFL draft is full of sudden developments like this, such as a player suddenly being called up in the middle of DSFL draft, or a player who was deemed ineligible due to inactivity suddenly returning out of the blue. The war room is exepcted to provide advise and help form out a course of action throughout the draft, and especially after those sudden developments.
The work of war room is still not finished even after the conclusion of DSFL pre - draft. They now have post - draft waivers to process. Players who created after the first pick of DSFL draft was made will be be declared non - eligible for DSFL draft, and instead will be entered into the waiver wire after the conclusion of the draft. As this is an additional opportunity to gain active players, DSFL GMs and war room members will also scout those late joining users, and tries to find active users to add to their team. Unlike trade deadline waivers which is basically a rental for a week or two, this waiver placement is permanent. So teams tend to be a lot more prudent in making their decisions, and the post draft waiver adds are discussed and monitored on a similar level to that of actual draftees.
When all that is over, the last job of DSFL GMs and war room members is to watch the draft stream, and invite their new draftees to their locker room. They will often have a watch party in their own locker room, which enables team members to hype up and congratulate the newest draftee right after they are drafted and invited into the locker room. They will also do the same for waiver adds, who are usually announced after the conclusion of main DSFL draft stream.
So this is the typical trade deadline to offseason scouting cycle for a DSFL war room. As you can see a lot is going on in the war rooms even when everything seems quiet and people are complaining of boredom. What I wanted to say through this article is that while it seems like a lot - and to some degrees it can be - being in the war room is great fun. You can see a whole another aspect of the league in the war room, and you can experience things otherwise you'll never be able to. So rookies, if you are active and want to see more of this league, join the war room! Who knows if you'll be a DSFL GM in a few seasons?