AOL Fantasy Football (1 Viewer)

[Tarkin]

I am working on the AOL Fantasy Football project right now (I had nothing to do with it last year). I need some informal feedback on what went right last year and what went wrong. Do you have general suggestions? Sorry for the short post, but I am in a meeting right now on this.

 

[Addai's Adidas]

What is the pay to be in this focus group?

 

[bigfishboy]

I have used it in different leagues the last two years.

Obviously the reason we went that direction is the FREE part (and it beats yahoo because it is more customizeable). I was willing to overlook the flaws because of it. I would not pay for it unless some serious upgrading was done.

Flaws:

1. THE LIVE DRAFT INTERFACE HAS TO BE CHANGED! We had some people who couldn't make the draft and pre-drafted. This went horribly wrong when we tried to back up the draft. The only way was to re-start which unknowingly wiped out all the pre-drafters information and drafted from the default list. We had to re-draft after the first week of the year it was so bad. That league held it against me all year and will likely not use the service because of this. I never found a way to back up even one pick.

2. The league setup interface was time consuming. They way it is set up you have to go through all of the pages of the setup, you can't just pick and choose the ones that apply to your league. It wasn't a huge deal but compounded the issue with #3:

3. The service was SLOW. It took forever to load pages, particularly in setting it up. I realize with a free service that you have to have advertising everywhere, but that much graphics?

hope this helps.

 

[bigfishboy]

one more:

4. I couldn't even set up the draft until all the owners had logged on and assumed their team. This made it incredibly difficult on everyone because they couldn't familiarize themselves with the format or predraft as soon as they should have.

 

[Tarkin]

What is the pay to be in this focus group?

I would consider this a serious question if I was a new user on this board. However, I have been with FBG since 2001 and I just so happened to get assigned to Sports over here at work I just want us to have a good product. No matter what, this service will be free, including live scoring.

 

[Tarkin]

I have used it in different leagues the last two years.

Obviously the reason we went that direction is the FREE part (and it beats yahoo because it is more customizeable). I was willing to overlook the flaws because of it. I would not pay for it unless some serious upgrading was done.

Flaws:

1. THE LIVE DRAFT INTERFACE HAS TO BE CHANGED! We had some people who couldn't make the draft and pre-drafted. This went horribly wrong when we tried to back up the draft. The only way was to re-start which unknowingly wiped out all the pre-drafters information and drafted from the default list. We had to re-draft after the first week of the year it was so bad. That league held it against me all year and will likely not use the service because of this. I never found a way to back up even one pick.

2. The league setup interface was time consuming. They way it is set up you have to go through all of the pages of the setup, you can't just pick and choose the ones that apply to your league. It wasn't a huge deal but compounded the issue with #3:

3. The service was SLOW. It took forever to load pages, particularly in setting it up. I realize with a free service that you have to have advertising everywhere, but that much graphics?

hope this helps.

Good stuff here. This is exactly what I am looking for. As stated in my last post, the service will continue to be free (with no hidden upsale charges).

 

[Dreamer]

Tell them to make it exactly the same as MFL, except free.

 

[BigTex]

I thought it was/is good especially considering it's free.

#1. As commish, there's limited control over other owner's team. Why is this important? For orphaned teams. I have to delete the owner THEN sign in as another owner and it's a pain in the rear.

#2. Why it is so hard to upload a logo? What about pics in the forum or on the front page?

 

[BigTex]

P.S.

There's noway to lock out individual owners only capable of doing the entire league.

 

[Tarkin]

Tell them to make it exactly the same as MFL, except free.

That would be my dream, but AOL's primary demographic is a more casual fantasy player

 

[Tarkin]

I thought it was/is good especially considering it's free.#1. As commish, there's limited control over other owner's team. Why is this important? For orphaned teams. I have to delete the owner THEN sign in as another owner and it's a pain in the rear.#2. Why it is so hard to upload a logo? What about pics in the forum or on the front page?

Got it. Thanks.

 

[Dreamer]

Tell them to make it exactly the same as MFL, except free.

That would be my dream, but AOL's primary demographic is a more casual fantasy player

Tell them to make it exactly the same as CBS, except free and with customer service.

 

[Reality Football]

I thought it was/is good especially considering it's free.#1. As commish, there's limited control over other owner's team. Why is this important? For orphaned teams. I have to delete the owner THEN sign in as another owner and it's a pain in the rear.#2. Why it is so hard to upload a logo? What about pics in the forum or on the front page?

Got it. Thanks.

Casual fantasy players are lame.

 

[pinequick]

I am working on the AOL Fantasy Football project right now (I had nothing to do with it last year). I need some informal feedback on what went right last year and what went wrong. Do you have general suggestions? Sorry for the short post, but I am in a meeting right now on this.

Maybe allow for a *little* bit bigger picture size on the league front page. It doesn't have to be huge (maybe the same size as Fanball allows), but the current upload restrictions make the uploading picture feature on AOL almost worthless.

 

[Tarkin]

I captured all of these comments and I have Fanball in the room with me right now. Anything else from the people's voice?

 

[renesauz]

I'd make sure somebody is keeping up with the default lists. Most years, those lists are horribly out-dated by August. I've seen retired players drafted in the third before, when the retirement announcement came out in early August, on a late August draft.

I realize AOL is for the casual fan, but it doesn't take too much effort to do the simple things better.

 

[GroveDiesel]

I'll second the comments about the live draft. It's understood that as you get closer to the start of the season, server loads start getting heavy, but each of the past two years we've had some fairly major issues during the live online draft with the draft locking up, the clock not seeming to work correctly, etc.

I also found the league setup to be somewhat difficult to understand, specifically the waivers/free agent portion. There are a lot of options and some seem to cancel other options made on other sections. Two years in a row I screwed up our waiver wire for the first week or two because I had misunderstood something while setting up the league. I like how much you can customize everything, but the wording is just a little confusing in some spots.

Other than that we've really enjoyed it. I think that it's definitely the best free full service league hosting out there.

 

[burd]

I used Foxsports last season and was disappointed w/ the amount of options available eventhough it's a free site. The consensus from most people is that AOL is one of the more reliable free sites w/ a lot of options and i've visited AOL to see if it was something I'd consider using. I set up a fake league to see tha options available and I was surprised by the amount of options that one can use for a free site. So the only input I can provide is what I didn't like about Foxsports and I hope that AOL doesn't have these same issues.

Foxsports was VERY slow in updating on Tuesday mornings. One many a week, scores weren't finalized and wins weren't awarded until very late Tuesday afternoons. In a related issue, the live updates were so delayed it was ridiculous. A game would be half way through the third quarter, but the game tracker would say that it was still halftime.

There was pretty much NO customer service w/ Foxsports. I'd email them about an issue but would pretty much get no contact that my email was even received. I'd basically just have to check up to see if the issue was resolved.

Things I didn't like about AOL (atleast last year's version) was that my team pic and info was all on the right hand side instead of on top. Same goes for the league's page. Can't tell if you're on your team's page or on the league page because this info isn't top and center. The pics could be a little bigger too... that small amount of space reserved on the right hand side atributes to the small pic .. pretty much makes pics useless. Other than that, I'm really looking forward to using AOL this season and I hope I like it as much as everyone who's used it likes.

 

[Addai's Adidas]

I saw you commented on Fanball up there. They REALLY need to have a "my leagues" link once you log in. Currently you have to log in then go to commissioner, then join, the finally a link comes up to your league. You can bookmark it yeah, but if you are like me you clear your cookies in Mozilla at closing.

 

[toppshelff]

I also found the league setup to be somewhat difficult to understand, specifically the waivers/free agent portion. There are a lot of options and some seem to cancel other options made on other sections. Two years in a row I screwed up our waiver wire for the first week or two because I had misunderstood something while setting up the league. I like how much you can customize everything, but the wording is just a little confusing in some spots.

We are just switching over to AOL from Yahoo!Plus. Love the customization and the price! Have to agree with Grove, though, on the clarity with waivers, trades, etc. Not clear what happens in off-season, not clear how waiver order is determined, not clear on "league votes" or "commissioner rules" on trades, etc. I'm not a casual fan, quite serious actually, but many of my league mates are casual. However, the commish shouldn't have trouble understanding.Then again, I'm simple.Thanks for the heads-up on live-draft. It looks great, but we will have a back-up plan if it crashes.I am still not clear on how to assign keepers. It talks about rostering your keepers before going into draft mode, but don't see how this gets done. In draft mode, it is a lot of work to add keepers (we have 4/team, 14 teams).Also, we have a different drafting order where we go three rounds last to first, then serpentine after that. The "mixed draft sequence" isn't an option in AOL, so will have to change out guys by hand (pain in the rear).Finally, on trading draft picks, it doesn't allow specificity as to which pick you are dealing. For instance, I had 3 first round picks and traded one away, but there is no way to specify which one. This has to be kept off-line, then corrected before live draft kicks off.Of course, these are all bigger problems with Yahoo!

 

[lebowski]

I did not like the menus and the usability of the site. In fact I switched to a pay site because people in my league could not figure out the menus. If you made it a cleaner and easier to use I would consider switching back.

 

[cowboyz]

wasn't there problems with service availability?

 

[burd]

Will AOL have a draft randomizer on its site?

My league has always had every owner at the draft so there was no need to do a live draft. Others have said that they have had many problems w/ live drafting. Will the issues w/ live drafting mentioned above be corrected this year or is it a case of heavy traffic that's causing the prob and there's no way of fixing it?

 

[apkballa]

At times the Live Scoring did not work for me during the season. I finally figured out that the live scoring did not work on AOL. I had to use Mozilla or Internet Explorer to be able to view live scoring.

 

[burd]

At times the Live Scoring did not work for me during the season. I finally figured out that the live scoring did not work on AOL. I had to use Mozilla or Internet Explorer to be able to view live scoring.

Did the Live Scoring work consistently w/ Mozilla or IE? I don't mind using either so long as the Live Scoring actually works on a consistent basis.

 

[Lowen1]

I've used it for 2 years, with no real problems. The initial league set up was kind of time consuming, but I looked at every option because it our first time with a customized league. We have pretty much every scoring and lineup option we wanted (don't play IDP, so I can't comment on that part).

We have a live, in-person draft at a local bar. Afterwards, as commish, I fill the rosters. So, we've never used the live draft room.

Live scoring sucked the 1st week both years, but I had the same problem when I used CBS Sportsline, Yahoo and Fanball in prior years. By week 2, things were pretty much ok.

As far as I can tell, AOL is the exact same product as Fanball's Commissioner service - except you also get the Fanball Owner's Edge stuff for free as well.

As for changes, maybe make the default setting that the commish can access other teams - then allow teams to opt out if they want.

Otherwise, keep things the same and my league will be happy.

 

[apkballa]

At times the Live Scoring did not work for me during the season. I finally figured out that the live scoring did not work on AOL. I had to use Mozilla or Internet Explorer to be able to view live scoring.

Did the Live Scoring work consistently w/ Mozilla or IE? I don't mind using either so long as the Live Scoring actually works on a consistent basis.

I ended up using it in the later part of the season. But It worked every time I accessed it.

 

[Eli2Shockey]

Ive been using AOL for my home league for 2 years

LIKES

1. Free Live Scoring, great feature and makes us comeback.

2. Plenty of commish options to set the league up just how you want it.

3. League Records , its cool that they carry over every year and accumulate.

4. Being able to draft offline and update it

Neutral

1. We draft off line so i have no idea how the online draft works.

DISLIKES

1. Site is very slow to browse through FA's and their stats. Most of my league members say they use yahoo and then just pick up the guy on AOL.

2. Applying for the players on waivers It's a bit annoying have the A player , B player , C player setup instead of just being able to add the potential transactions you want into one menu.

 

[burd]

Will AOL have an option that I can input info from previous years from other sites?

Is Fanball free?

 

[apkballa]

I am converting my league into a Keeper league. Since this will be the first year of us doing that. How can I have team keep their players and take them out of the Live draft pool?

 

[gadkins]

Thanks for the site I have been running my league for a few years know. I got a couple of things I would like.

1. I would like the ability to change other owners email addresses. On more than one occasion the owners entered invaild or old email addresses and couldn't recieve league messages through the email forum.

2. Ebay style bidding for free agents. Maybe you have but I don't know how to set it up. My rules state that you can bid 99 dollars for a player but if no one bids on him you get the player for $1.

 

[pinequick]

Will AOL have an option that I can input info from previous years from other sites?Is Fanball free?

No, Fanball is 60 or 70 dollars, I can't remember. Maybe higher this year, I don't know.I will 2nd the idea above about inputting previous years records. I have paid Fanball for the past three years, and it has been promised every year. I'm tired of waiting. May as well go to AOL for free, since I get the same service (and our league's history page over at Fanball isn't accurate anyway). If AOL offers the option to input previous year's records on the league history page, it would become our league's ideal site.

 

[pinequick]

Thanks for the site I have been running my league for a few years know. I got a couple of things I would like.

1. I would like the ability to change other owners email addresses. On more than one occasion the owners entered invaild or old email addresses and couldn't recieve league messages through the email forum.

Second this. Also--uploading logos for team owners. They like to have them, but some don't know how to do it. As the commish, it would be a heck of a lot simpler for me to just do it for them.As I mentioned with the news story pictures above, could the logo picture dimensions also be increased? The size allotted now almost makes it pointless to have logos.

 

[burd]

someone above also mentioned that searching through the free agent pool was so slow on AOL that the owners searched on Yahoo for speed and then made their choices on AOL. Will this issue be addressed?

I think the most common problem w/ all the free sites is that they don't have the resources of the pay sites and as a result, things move very slow. Is this the price we pay for using free sites or can this be fixed?

 

[PrestonV20]

Something that i just noticed is that are no rookies yet in the player pool. A lot of people have rookie drafts for their keeper/dynasty leagues. Its not a huge issue but it would be nice for those leagues with early drafts. Great site though... keep it up!

 

[Sidewinder16]

I've been running a league through AOL for a couple years nows and generally have been pretty pleased. One thing I might suggest, though, would be to increase the playoff format options and/or incorporate more customizability. I can't remember the specifics at the moment, but I seem to remember that setting up my playoffs wasn't as straightforward as it should be (we have a "Championship" playoff and a "Toilet Bowl" playoff) and the options were somewhat limited.

Otherwise, I give a to a pretty decent free product.

 

[JoeSteeler]

Something that i just noticed is that are no rookies yet in the player pool. A lot of people have rookie drafts for their keeper/dynasty leagues. Its not a huge issue but it would be nice for those leagues with early drafts. Great site though... keep it up!

Weird. All rookies are in the Fanball player pool. I looked at AOL but 1. didnt like that it wouldnt show traded draft picks and 2. didnt know how long it would be around. I thought maybe AOL would frop Fanball in the near future.

 

[valhallan]

Tell them to make it exactly the same as MFL, except free.

That would be my dream, but AOL's primary demographic is a more casual fantasy player

Then why ask the Shark Pool? Go find some casual fantasy players.

 

[pinequick]

Something that i just noticed is that are no rookies yet in the player pool. A lot of people have rookie drafts for their keeper/dynasty leagues. Its not a huge issue but it would be nice for those leagues with early drafts. Great site though... keep it up!

Weird. All rookies are in the Fanball player pool. I looked at AOL but 1. didnt like that it wouldnt show traded draft picks and 2. didnt know how long it would be around. I thought maybe AOL would frop Fanball in the near future.

Looks like AOL rolled over sometime recently. The rookies are now in the player pool. Although the images that I uploaded are missing? Hopefully that will get straightened out.Looks like all the drop-down links at the top of the Fanball pages are over on the left margin of the AOL pages. And here's what really slays me (from Fanball's perspective)--LESS advertising than at Fanball. 60 bucks over there for the same engine, and you PAY for more ads. Never will figure that one out.

 

[Rebirtha]

The front page is loading wrong. The Standings are all the way to the right with the player news and message board.

The Player Listing and Stats page isn't loading.

 

[jcuadrado]

been using it for my work league for the last 2 years and we like it...but....as said earlier...the images on the homepage are too small....logos are also too small. How bout being able to customize what you see on the front page. The guys in my league would like to have the forum on the front page...

 

[ManODaHour]

I've been running a league through AOL for a couple years nows and generally have been pretty pleased. One thing I might suggest, though, would be to increase the playoff format options and/or incorporate more customizability. I can't remember the specifics at the moment, but I seem to remember that setting up my playoffs wasn't as straightforward as it should be (we have a "Championship" playoff and a "Toilet Bowl" playoff) and the options were somewhat limited.Otherwise, I give a to a pretty decent free product.

I agree with this...very difficult to set up a toilet bowl. My toilet bowl is the biggest two losers (whoever can't win in the playoffs). They play for the Golden Plunger and the responsibility to buy beer for next year's draft. But AOL/Fanball only advance the winners. I have to keep track of this stuff by myself and write up reports on the message board.

been using it for my work league for the last 2 years and we like it...but....as said earlier...the images on the homepage are too small....logos are also too small. How bout being able to customize what you see on the front page. The guys in my league would like to have the forum on the front page...

I agree with this as well. Would love to be able to customize the front page to show only the options that I want.As someone else said earlier, I need the ability to change email addresses instead of sending out a whole new email to start someone up and then delete the "old" owner. Really tedious!Otherwise, quite happy with this FREE site. Can't hardly complain, can we?!?!?

 

[Tarkin]

Sorry that I have been away from "my" thread for so long. I have been placed on a much larger project for AOL Sports, but I am still "consulting" on Fantasy Football. If you haven't noticed, pre-registration is available right now.

 

[PrestonV20]

Another thing i just noticed is that when you trade away draft picks they are still available to trade.... even though you just traded them away. Basically it forces us to keep track of draft picks traded instead of the AOL software keeping track. Hope that makes sense.

 

[toppshelff]

Another thing i just noticed is that when you trade away draft picks they are still available to trade.... even though you just traded them away. Basically it forces us to keep track of draft picks traded instead of the AOL software keeping track. Hope that makes sense.

Yes, very confusing.We are having huge problems accessing the site at all. Not sure if it is a firewall issue... sometimes it works, usually it doesn't, always it is very slow...Still don't have players loaded.Any updates?

 

[pinequick]

Another thing i just noticed is that when you trade away draft picks they are still available to trade.... even though you just traded them away. Basically it forces us to keep track of draft picks traded instead of the AOL software keeping track. Hope that makes sense.

Yes, very confusing.We are having huge problems accessing the site at all. Not sure if it is a firewall issue... sometimes it works, usually it doesn't, always it is very slow...

Still don't have players loaded.

Any updates?

Who are you looking for? All the rooks seem available in my league...

 

[RageRhino]

league story graphic and team and league logos are not showing up in my AOL league. when will this be fixed?

 

[Rebirtha]

The front page is loading wrong. The Standings are all the way to the right with the player news and message board.The Player Listing and Stats page isn't loading.

Both of these problems were fixed. It looks like we're good to go GB AOL.

 

[toppshelff]

Fixed my player problem (didn't allow teams to pick-up players in off-season, therefore they couldn't see them).

Looks like serious firewall issues at work. Will likely have to go somewhere else. Anyone know a "shortcut" around this?

 

[bigfishboy]

Tried to draft on AOL last night. Total dysfunction. I have defended AOL a lot in the past and still believe it is a good option for inseason management. But cannot support using the draft window.

It was so bad, we will have to draft over. Horrible.