Has anyone used or planning to use MFL online auction platform this year? I am commish of keeper league and have to customize different dollar amounts for spending and it does not look like espn will allow that. Any thoughts would be great if not MFL is there another site to have a customized auction? (ie one team has 135 dollars to spend for 12 spots and another team has 200 dollars to spend on 17 players)
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MFL Auction Software 2012 (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter charles26
- Start date
Boss Tweed
Footballguy
I'm the commish of an auction keeper league on espn.com and I'm pretty sure it does allow you to do that. Once people have selected their keepers, go to LM Tools ---> Edit Keeper Auction Salaries and you should be able to enter each kept player's cost. For instance, one of my league's teams is keeping:
Harvin/$23
Dez/$28
Hernandez/$4
so with those values entered, he'll start the draft with three roster spots filled with those players and $145 to draft with.
Full disclosure: 2012 is the first year we're doing keepers so I can't say for sure that's how it's done, but it sure seems like it.
Harvin/$23
Dez/$28
Hernandez/$4
so with those values entered, he'll start the draft with three roster spots filled with those players and $145 to draft with.
Full disclosure: 2012 is the first year we're doing keepers so I can't say for sure that's how it's done, but it sure seems like it.
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GregR
Footballguy
You shouldn't have a problem with MFL as far as your specific issues. My league is a contract league and so teams have different cap amounts and roster space and no issues. Also, we even do a slow auction for bidding on franchise tagged players, then a rookie draft, then an online fast vet auction. So you can even switch about as needed.
The downsides are with the online fast auction interface which is still being developed. I have a thread from last year that details experiences with the 2011 beta version.
I know there are some changes. The FBG staff have used it for mock auctions for the magazine content. One fix is that this year's version is skipping people who have filled their roster, while last years it would make you wait for their nomination timer to expire.
However, when we hit the end of the draft we had a ton of problems with it skipping people's nominations when it shouldn't. I thought in 2011 that the majority of problems we saw happened after we paused it or changed some settings, and I suspect maybe the issues we saw this year could have been the same.
I'm hoping they get the new kinks worked out before we'll do our vet auction in August. At least I could tell they've been working on it as some of the 2011 stuff was fixed.
The downsides are with the online fast auction interface which is still being developed. I have a thread from last year that details experiences with the 2011 beta version.
I know there are some changes. The FBG staff have used it for mock auctions for the magazine content. One fix is that this year's version is skipping people who have filled their roster, while last years it would make you wait for their nomination timer to expire.
However, when we hit the end of the draft we had a ton of problems with it skipping people's nominations when it shouldn't. I thought in 2011 that the majority of problems we saw happened after we paused it or changed some settings, and I suspect maybe the issues we saw this year could have been the same.
I'm hoping they get the new kinks worked out before we'll do our vet auction in August. At least I could tell they've been working on it as some of the 2011 stuff was fixed.
CalBear
Footballguy
I'd like to hear from anyone who has used it (or anything else) to run a live, in-person auction. We've used DD for this in the past, but there are a number of issues with that. We actually don't care about the nomination order, so we can just have the commish nominate everyone, but really we'd like to just be able to say "Adrian Peterson to Wallbangers for $30" and not mess around with timers at all.
GregR
Footballguy
For a live, in person auction the only thing DD or MFL or another such site could do is record the result and display available players and cap room. Which it could do fine, either with or without the auction interface. Commish could just assign the player and enter the salary as keepers or waivers, or could use the auction interface to do so.Unless you're talking about wanting a buzzer system that can identify who buzzed in first to make the next bid. Which neither DD nor MFL are meant to do. For MFL you'd need to have everyone using the auction interface on a laptop, which wouldn't be any different than doing the auction online. There are some systems you can buy made to do that though.
CalBear
Footballguy
Recording the result and displaying available players and cap room is the functionality we need. (And also, not making me as commish have to enter everything by hand after the auction). We tried using CBS's online auction room for this last year, which didn't have any way to stop the timer and still assign players to teams. With MFL, I similarly don't see a way to simply assign players to teams with a salary in the auction room (and have $ spent and max bid recalculated).
GregR
Footballguy
You should be able to do that fine, I probably wouldn't use the live online auction for it though, to avoid the timers as you mention. I'd use the slow online auction to enter the players. (General League Setup, option down near the bottom for what type of auction or draft).You'd turn off your commish lockout so you can submit bids for any team. Then in your General Auction setup, set auctions to end something .00002 days after auction starts, which is about 2 seconds. Then as each player is won in the live auction, you go start an MFL auction for the player, submitting the winning price as the opening bid by the team who won him. MFL ends that auction a couple of seconds later and the player gets moved over to the team and salary cap info updated for display on a projector.Only thing I think you'd lose would be that suggested list of next player up for auction that the live auction interface has. Which honestly, some owners might prefer that list not be available anyway for owners who can't keep track on their own.
Briman
Footballguy
My league will be doing our auction draft online this year with MFL. How does the bidding work? Our typical live draft has everyone bidding and when it slows down the commish says - going once, twice, gone to end the bidding. How does that work online - does the timer reset everytime someone bids giving a set amount of time for the next bid?
I'd love to hear a report back from some one that has actually used this for dynasty league with players that already have existing contracts.
CalBear
Footballguy
We just finished our auction, which is a 2-keeper league (keepers aren't part of the auction). We eventually punted on using MFL's software for it; it's just not designed for in-person auctions (according to my experience and their tech support0. We wound up using FanDraft, which worked great and imported into MFL with no problems. But it's not cheap ($35).
GregR
Footballguy
Online, you take turns nominating a player with an initial bid. A countdown starts, which I believe can be adjusted by your league. Generally 10 or 15 seconds. If it hits 0 and no one else bids, the player is awarded. If someone else bids, the timer resets to the full time increment and starts counting down again. So basically you have 10 seconds (or whatever increment) after a bid to increase it, or the auction is over.The problem I've seen with MFL's auction, and this was back in June or July, was that the nomination part got really messed up bad near the end of the auction. We're using the MFL software but I'm expecting that at some point I may have to start all the auction as commish, with people using the chat feature to tell me who and what the initial bid is. Normally they have some amount of time (30 or 45 seconds, something like that) to nominate the player themself, or it skips them. The software was skipping people, essentially giving zero time to get their nomination in. Hopefully it was fixed since we had that problem. It didn't do that last year when we used it.As far as dynasty and existing contracts, there weren't any issues. Before the auction I cleared any contract details from players not on rosters. And I have it set so winning bid becomes their salary price.
Thanks so much. I guess we'll give it a try.
GregR
Footballguy
Well, this doesn't sound good. From an MFL support board thread on the live auction module at http://forums.myfantasyleague.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=30635
Sounds like the nomination order thing is still messed up. I'm going to submit a support ticket about it just to try up the priority of getting it fixed.
GregR
Footballguy
I put in a ticket about the nomination order. MFL replied they have been working on it and made some changes but aren't sure they have fixed it.
They mentioned the commish has a "skip current nominee" button, so if the nomination order does get off you can hit it a few times to cycle through the teams and back to the team who should be up.
They mentioned the commish has a "skip current nominee" button, so if the nomination order does get off you can hit it a few times to cycle through the teams and back to the team who should be up.
GregR
Footballguy
Happy to say we had very good results tonight with our live auction. No major issues at all.
No problems with nominations skipping people. The only thing even worth mentioning is that when someone's nomination timer ran out, the cpu would nominate someone, but wasn't starting it necessarily as the owner whose turn it was to nominate.
I was logged in as commissioner and I noticed after awhile that it would nominate as whatever team I currently had the commish login set to bid for. Since I was bidding as myself, it would start bidding on a player for my team regardless of whose turn it was to nominate.
So easy enough work around, whenever I saw anyone was down to about 10-15 seconds on their nomination timer, I switched who the commish would submit bids for over to that owner, and then let it default to whatever player was next up and that's who they would get nominated.
That was really it for issues. We have a minimum and maximum roster size, and I had to use the Skip button for teams who used up their cap without hitting the max roster size yet... those who maxed out on players it skipped on its own.
Much better experience than earlier this year.
No problems with nominations skipping people. The only thing even worth mentioning is that when someone's nomination timer ran out, the cpu would nominate someone, but wasn't starting it necessarily as the owner whose turn it was to nominate.
I was logged in as commissioner and I noticed after awhile that it would nominate as whatever team I currently had the commish login set to bid for. Since I was bidding as myself, it would start bidding on a player for my team regardless of whose turn it was to nominate.
So easy enough work around, whenever I saw anyone was down to about 10-15 seconds on their nomination timer, I switched who the commish would submit bids for over to that owner, and then let it default to whatever player was next up and that's who they would get nominated.
That was really it for issues. We have a minimum and maximum roster size, and I had to use the Skip button for teams who used up their cap without hitting the max roster size yet... those who maxed out on players it skipped on its own.
Much better experience than earlier this year.
We've been using MFL since it moved from FFLM a few years back. We run an auction league with contracts, Taxi, IR, signing bonuses, contract extensions on trades, and restricted free agents. It gets complicated, especially since you can never place a player on Taxi other than when you first draft or pick up from waivers (with a caveat or two). (The rule mechanics are surprisingly simple, but using draft software is a challenge.)
MFL is the only site I have found that lets me do what needs to be done, but it is still very kludgy on draft day. To do a draft using either of the commish-driven approaches, I would have to take several steps, on several screens after a bid was won:
-Add the player using the Load Roster screen
-Set the player's cap and contract length using the Set Player Salaries screen
-(Possibly) move the player to taxi (and bump someone else off) at Taxi Squad
This really slowed things down, especially in hour 10 of a 12-hour auction. It also got pretty risky, as it would not take much to screw up some data across all those screens. So, I got to where I would keep a round at a time offline (spreadsheet & paper) and then enter every round or so.
This year, I used the online auction capability, but not online. I used it just as commish. If commish has superuser on, you can set the auction to 1 player at a time and set the timer down to the lowest setting. I still conducted the draft live, but when a player was won, I was able to enter the team, player & salary in the live auction window and it was accepted almost immediately. I still had to go back in between rounds and add contract lengths, and I also had to do taxi manually, but overall it was the easiest draft I've ever had by far.
We did not use the software to track nominations. I was too concerned about the risk to use it for anything more than I did.
MFL is the only site I have found that lets me do what needs to be done, but it is still very kludgy on draft day. To do a draft using either of the commish-driven approaches, I would have to take several steps, on several screens after a bid was won:
-Add the player using the Load Roster screen
-Set the player's cap and contract length using the Set Player Salaries screen
-(Possibly) move the player to taxi (and bump someone else off) at Taxi Squad
This really slowed things down, especially in hour 10 of a 12-hour auction. It also got pretty risky, as it would not take much to screw up some data across all those screens. So, I got to where I would keep a round at a time offline (spreadsheet & paper) and then enter every round or so.
This year, I used the online auction capability, but not online. I used it just as commish. If commish has superuser on, you can set the auction to 1 player at a time and set the timer down to the lowest setting. I still conducted the draft live, but when a player was won, I was able to enter the team, player & salary in the live auction window and it was accepted almost immediately. I still had to go back in between rounds and add contract lengths, and I also had to do taxi manually, but overall it was the easiest draft I've ever had by far.
We did not use the software to track nominations. I was too concerned about the risk to use it for anything more than I did.
Sabertooth
Footballguy
Do you guys use a hard cap or soft cap.
GregR
Footballguy
Hard cap. Ours is a contract league as well. We don't get into limiting X number of contract years per team... we just have each new contract is 3 years, but then we let teams give up to a 2 year contract extension (with raise) after year 2. And there is a franchise and 2 transition tags that can be used when a player's contract is up for right-to-match or getting rookie draft picks as compensation if they let the player go. When used a tag stays on the player for the first 3 years of his contract, you can't just franchise tag someone every year like in the NFL. (Actually, the NFL doesn't let you tag someone every year either, the tag stays on NFL players the length of their contract if they sign one while tagged... so NFL teams almost always remove the tag before signing anything with the player longer than the 1 year tender. We don't give that loophole.)
CalBear
Footballguy
FanDraft worked great. It seems strange that the online tools don't have the simple mode of stopping the clock and letting the commish enter nominations. (CBS has the same problem).
GregR
Footballguy
You can do both of those in MFL. Sounds like what he is doing is entering contract details that go beyond just a winning bid.
