Originally posted by Diesel:
Greg,
I'm concerned over Fanball's software. I used their service in the past when I used to be commissioner of my hometown league and it was voted down after one year because of technical issues. But this was around 8 years ago.
I knew people who used Fanball just last year, and they said it was their one and only year using the service, because of the live scoring and speratic problems with the waiver wire.
I don't know if this is true, but someone said that WCOFF used Fanball at one time, and Fanball always promised to upgrade their software but never did....
When I met Ryan last year, he definitely left an impression that said to me that the NFFC will be bigger than ever imagined...With that, I hope the website has been upgraded to be more effecient to cater the larger audience, or if I may, the higher paying audience...
I heard that baseball had a rough start and there were some unhappy customers. Is there some way you can assure myself and all that may be thinking what I'm writing, that the service from fanball will be all that is expected from the NFFC?
As I'm writing this, I reminded myself to let you know. I can't sign in to sign up for the $850 NY Auction League at 5PM. I can sign in on top of the homepage...It even says "Welcome Marc Quitsch"...But I can't sign in in the middle of the page where it asks prior NFFC members to sign in there so you may register for an event. I know it's only MAY, but I thought we should be able to sign up by now. Another problem with fanball.
I'm always one of your biggest endorsers. I just want to be sure that I'm getting what I pay for, and with all I stated above, I'm not 100% yet.
Sorry for the negativity. I just really want to expect what we've always seen from the NFFC, under new management.
Thanks for your time,
Marc Marc, no worries for the questions. There's no question that half of my job this off-season is going to be winning back my most loyal customers. I've never seen so many areas where people are either doubting us or concerned about us. But that goes with new ownership and in many respects we probably deserve the scrutiny.
I have no problem addressing the back-end software. I too used Fanball's commissioner product last year for the first time in my family league and totally struggled with it. I won't deny that. I'm not very computer literate, but I know how to set football rosters and I'll admit I struggled last year. I know that product will be better this year, but either way it's not the product the NFFC is using.
Commissioner products are a BEAST because they have to take into account different options for every facet of the game, from lineup sizes to scoring, to league sizes, etc. Many companies struggle with new commissioner products out of the gate and Fanball was no exception. What we do in the NFFC is basically one set of scoring, one set of rules, and a few variations. We use a contest back-end, not a commissioner product. There are less programming nightmares involved with what we are going to set up for the NFFC back-end, if this makes sense to you. So comparing the two isn't fair at all, even though the same programmers are involved with both.
What we learned from baseball is that we need to showcase all of this to you weeks in advance of the season. We can't unveil it on the fly. So we have a goal of weeks in advance (I don't want to nail the date down just yet) for all NFFC members to see the back-end and we'll get that done. Many of the user features you'll be using for the NFFC are tested thanks to the NFBC. Yes, we struggled out of the gate in the NFBC with FAAB the first day, with standings the first day, with rosters because of FAAB. We really had our work cut out for us and I wish we didn't have a single hiccup over there, but we did. It was a rough, rough start. Hell, it almost killed me!!
But we made the corrections and have improved each day. FAAB took FOUR MINUTES to run this week. By 8:04 pm all leagues (180+) had FAAB results. We have an improved Conditional Bid process that works very good now and we created a one-page Free Agent Quick page that lists all free agents in your league ON ONE PAGE. You can even bid from there. The free agent lists aren't as long in football as they are in baseball, but this page is a great innovation that NFFC folks will love.
The Roster Grid and some other features are also better, but of course the road to improving all of this has taken a toll on some NFBC owners. Others have been patient with us and like the results now. But again, we take the blame for the early struggles. The good news for NFFC owners is that much of this is now ironed out and we'll show you what we have very soon. I think you'll like it and the good news is that WE ALL OWN this back-end, so every tweak we make for the better remains ours going forward. We want YOU to like the back-end because it's yours. When it's developed it's a savings for us, but it's also easier for us to improve because we own it and we want to make it better.
The draft software we'll use for all NFFC online leagues is also owned by us and you'll have free access to Mock Draft from this site by mid-June. The draft software allows you to have default Rankings or My Rankings, to sort by scoring categories and more. There are more stats per player than what you had on MDC.com. We're also going to bring traffic to this area to really help with the ADPs. Stay tuned for more info there because you'll like it.
Hope this helps. I plan on being here all day tomorrow to answer questions and get everyone on the same page...with every subject. I know the questions are coming and we'll get it all out on the table and hopefully move forward. You know me well enough, would I handle this any other way?
Thanks again. Great questions.
As for WCOFF, yes, they used TQ Stats for the first 2 or 3 years. CDM owned that. Their commissioner product had to be completely redesigned last year, so I'm not sure that part is relevent. But hope that info helps, too.
Founder, National Fantasy Football Championship & National Fantasy Baseball Championship
Twitter: @GregAmbrosius
