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It's Christmas in July - Draft Dominator software available for your desktop (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter David Dodds
- Start date
I have been a faithful user of the Classic Dominator and have been fortunate to draft competitive teams every year. Like others, I have tried the new DD version. First of all, I appreciate all the hard work Footballguys staff have devoted to the new version. I am not sure if others have experienced the same problem, but with identical settings and projections the player rankings for the Classic and new DD version are not exact but off, sometimes 2 or more player rankings. Has anyone else observed such discrepancies? What do you do in terms of trying to make sense out of the lack of consistency between the Classic and the New DD in making selections? I apologize if this is not the right place to ask this question.
Short Corner
Footballguy
Anyone ellse's DD go haywire tonight? Was in the middle of preranking my players on nfl.com and all of the sudden 17 of the top 20 are WRs.
Short, I did notice some strange things with DD this evening. I am not sure, but Jason Wood's projections for RB are not available. I have no idea if this is the reason but I also noticed the same thing as you. I should have mentioned this in my earlier message. I changed Woods' projections to 0 and that seemed to correct the issue somewhat.
dkp993
Footballguy
JamesTheScot
Footballguy
I understand your role in all this. So do not take my comments as being directed at you personally. I hope you can see our frustration and pass that along to the powers-that-be.
If Classic isn't available next year and the new DD doesn't have a way to simultaneously access all the various information contained in the multiple windows I could access in Classic (as I described in my previous post on 8/9/16) and it cannot import league settings and rosters from MFL, I will not be a subscriber or purchaser of FBG's products. That isn't a punitive decision primarily based on anger, it's primarily motivated by inadequate product specifications versus my needs as the end user. I only ever subscribed to FBG's because of DDC. Despite my frustration over the lack of refinement in DDC over the years, DDC is/ was still the best program out there for how I like to run my main league auction. I have struggled with the decision to stay with FBG's over the years over the lack of refinement in DDC, primarily over the positional break-out issue, but have stayed because DDC was still better than the competition.
I say "primarily motivated" because if DDC is dropped then the current FBG offering is no better for my uses than competitors' products. And at that point anger would be the tie-breaker against FBG's. Because if I'm going to shell out money on an app that is inadequate for my purposes, I might as well purchase from someone new for the next few years and see if they will appreciate my brand loyalty and incorporate my feedback. The worst that they could do is continually ignore annually repeated consumer feedback ... as FBG's has done to DDC users since I have been a subscriber. At some point you know the Devil You Know well enough to realize things aren't going to get better. At that point, you're better off rolling the dice on the Devil You Don't for the mere chance that things could be better.
Simon Shepherd
Footballguy
All comments above fully heard and jotted down and will make sure to share with Joe and David. They are already aware of the love that you guys have for the classic DD. Even if we were to ever replace it, the way in which that would need to be done would have to involve a) a huge amount of input from the biggest fans of classic DD to make sure the new system lives up to it and b) much better guides, communication, video, instructions, FAQs to help you guys figure out how to use the new app and how to achieve classic DD workflows in it. It's still early here for 2017 but I just wanted to post quickly here so you guys don't think your comments are unheard or ignored.
Short Corner
Footballguy
What is the explanation behind Woods projections the Friday before Labor Day weekend? Superb timing. Biggest draft weekend of the season and the slow/non response from support forced me to punt on the app for both of my drafts.
Simon Shepherd
Footballguy
I agree this was horrible timing. For the one time the projections got messed up to be that Friday evening was not good. Simply the games played column was missing from the projections that were uploaded to the site.
The solution will need to be that we implement more rigorous checking when people upload projections to check for this kind of error.
We will be doing more automated testing like this moving forward. One of the things that really frustrated me personally was that the Sencha testing tool we were planning on using was not up to scratch in time for when we needed it. It looks like it is now; so I'll be programming in as many tests as I can, teaching the testing platform as many different league permutations as I can think of, and then having every test run for every league.
We know we need to do better here, and we will.
Short Corner
Footballguy
Maybe just look at the draft list after uploading? The fact that it was done so haphazardly shows that at least one person there doesn't give two ##### about what they are doing. Pretty close to zero confidence going forward. How hard is it to make a single click to check your draft list after uploading? If people are too lazy to do that I don't know how you can count on them performing a more rigorous check. Nobody at the wheel support wise didn't help either. And again, on that weekend. SMH.Simon Shepherd said:
I should expect as much though. Have the rest of the perfect draft articles been published yet? [/sarcasm]
Simon Shepherd
Footballguy
Ok, I'm sorry that in this case a sincere explanation and apology is not enough. I do understand. We'll just do what we can here to make sure that never happens again.
It's really not from lack of care. I think key staff are overloaded through August and early September and we have to make some changes there to have more eyes on this and more checking procedures that are automated too. I can assure you from the inside perspective it's certainly not down to laziness.
We had 3 people including myself on support at the time. I'm sorry we didn't get to you in what was an acceptable response time to you. All queries at that time were answered within 24 hours (our average first response time from June through August was 9 hours) but again, the best solution here is that we work hard on making sure this doesn't happen again.
CalBear
Footballguy
I don't "love" the classic DD. In fact I think it's a really bad piece of software. But it brings unique functionality, which is why I continued to use it until this year. This year I gave up and did my own spreadsheet in Google Docs.Simon Shepherd said:
The things that are bad about the classic DD (UI and UX) are just as bad or worse in the new DD. And the new DD doesn't deliver any unique functionality; it's the same as every other draft tool, only not as good.
Simon Shepherd
Footballguy
What this tells me is that the new DD is doing a poor job at letting you know what it's doing under the hood. But it is so much more advanced in what it's doing there and the features it has. There isn't a single other draft tool that has half the advanced options, settings and algorithms. But we'll do better with transparency of what it's going, for sure.
As a quick example - there is no other draft tool that considers player upside as well as expected outcome. Let alone slowly increase the relevance of that automatically for you as the draft progresses. I could go on and on and on but feel like I took the bait already there so....
Ok, I'm going to get back to work here on these tools. Thanks again for everyone's input.
CalBear
Footballguy
See, I don't view this kind of magic as helpful; it's actually counter-productive. I'm already considering upside myself as I'm using the tool; I don't want its rankings changing based on someone else's idea of how important upside is at a given point in the auction. I'd rather have better and more display of information I can use myself, which is functionality that classic DD does have (although the UI/UX is quite poor). For example, I can see at a glance how much each team has spent, what their max bid is, and how many players they've taken at each position. I review that on the fly in every competitive auction.
Mr.Pack
Footballguy
I used it for all three of my drafts (1 Auction).
I got used to it, but no way do I know how to use it. I watched the videos twice each. You guys go so fast, there's no way to really get it down. (Maybe I'm too old to get it).
1 - Didn't like that there is no look ahead and suggestions for your team as the auction or draft is going on. There is a "hunch" for other teams before they pick, but once it gets to your turn, it's "OK, your turn to dominate" Thanks. I rely on that on along with my gut feel, to form a pick.
2- Setup. I set it up for 17 players. We have keepers. The auction "Amount Left" were off all the way through. I finally had to go in on the fly and set it to 16 rounds and then it corrected itself. Big time flaw there. I would have thought Keepers would be counted among player roster size. Some had oe keeper, some had two. DD didn't have it right.
3- I want to embrace change, nut there is just so much there to learn. You would really need to take a 2-3 day course (16+ hours) to get it all. Yea in the videos you explained a lot, but you also work with it every day, so going as fast as you and Joe went was absurd.
I pay for this because I don't have the time to go through my own projections. I didn't get what I paid for, I got something I had to learn on the fly and I'm just not happy. I loved DD Classic, just enough info at your fingertips and very intuitive. This new one probably is better, but without dual monitors and MAJOR trianing, it just isn't what i was expecting.
I got used to it, but no way do I know how to use it. I watched the videos twice each. You guys go so fast, there's no way to really get it down. (Maybe I'm too old to get it).
1 - Didn't like that there is no look ahead and suggestions for your team as the auction or draft is going on. There is a "hunch" for other teams before they pick, but once it gets to your turn, it's "OK, your turn to dominate" Thanks. I rely on that on along with my gut feel, to form a pick.
2- Setup. I set it up for 17 players. We have keepers. The auction "Amount Left" were off all the way through. I finally had to go in on the fly and set it to 16 rounds and then it corrected itself. Big time flaw there. I would have thought Keepers would be counted among player roster size. Some had oe keeper, some had two. DD didn't have it right.
3- I want to embrace change, nut there is just so much there to learn. You would really need to take a 2-3 day course (16+ hours) to get it all. Yea in the videos you explained a lot, but you also work with it every day, so going as fast as you and Joe went was absurd.
I pay for this because I don't have the time to go through my own projections. I didn't get what I paid for, I got something I had to learn on the fly and I'm just not happy. I loved DD Classic, just enough info at your fingertips and very intuitive. This new one probably is better, but without dual monitors and MAJOR trianing, it just isn't what i was expecting.
Tau837
Footballguy
@Simon Shepherd, @David Dodds, and @Joe Bryant:
More than 6 months later and early in the offseason. Can we get a matrix of features in Classic compared to what will be in the new version in 2017? Can we get insight into your backlog and what features/bugs you plan to address this year? Etc.
