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where football is no longer an XI player game!

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12345678
Dumbledore
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where football is no longer an XI player game!

Post by 12345678 »

my main whinge with draft kings has always been the 8-player format, although the scoring is more fun than fanteam i've always felt FF should be XI player where possible.

therefore i've played fanteam as they had a lot of 11 player contests, despite a full weekend i can't see better than a 7-player game! in other words DK is now better on both scoring AND the number of selections to play a game.

the less selections, the less skill. make it 4/5/7 player and clearly the decisions and therefore the skill are reduced, particularly with such basic scoring. even worse we still see the impact points creating even less variation and encouraging block entries.

personally i dislike pursuit which enable you to pick anyone, it's alien to FF players and i think reduces the skill further compared to budget FF but can live with that. what i can't live with is 4/5/7 player in large fields.

the issue is with such a top heavy payout in large fields you need some wild stuff generally to top 3. that means if you play solid most of the money has gone and you will likely lose, the way to go is bad selections and therefore low ownership ;) personally i like to try and pick well crafted sides so 7-player or less just are not for me.

my choice is obviously to play or not to play and pretty much i simply won't play but will play DK (just).

i don't have anything against fanteam and will happily play any 11-player games, but obviously they are being withdrawn from the market.

clearly there has been a whole lot of tinkering going on and others have already given up over it. it does concern me that they could be in financial difficulty seemingly twisting and turning to get extra entries whilst risking haemorrhaging existing players. that said given the huge investment required to get where they are you would be hopeful they will last.

re entries i think most slates make a slight profit for them currently and would comment you won't get huge overlays because us punters are too greedy to allow it ;) :lol: however if the games are poorly designed then they will struggle to ever fill them.

in the meantime i will play the 11-player games, largely ignoring the rest and play some Draft Kings too besides seasonals.

I still wish them well despite all the tinkering and banning some of us from their social media for constructive criticism.

hopefully someone sensible will improve their games and reintroduce the 11-player product or i personally will vote with me feet as i have progressively done.

not sure how many regular fiso players there are, i know simon plays plenty and has been pretty disappointed with it all and rui who has been loyal for longer than me has had enough seeing the 11-player classic game all but extinct and now even 11-player pursuit has gone. for me dumbing down don't work and it remains to be seen whether it works for fanteam or not.

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Re: where football is no longer an XI player game!

Post by CBN »

It's hard to argue with much of this. I'm not very good at it but the 11 player format with a budget (not pursuit) is near enough perfect. I'm not convinced them keep chopping and changing formats is good for retaining and growing the customer base because I think people quite like getting comfortable with the format and then keep coming back for.

Sounds like they are going to run a mega-money season-long game next season which I'll be very interested in provided they don't dick around with the format. What they had this year seems to be near enough spot on (i.e. copy FPL!).

My impression is they have fairly wealthy backers so I'm not that concerned about medium-term viability. Mind you, if they open entries for next season's game before paying out this one then might suggest cash flow is a problem...

All in all, if they get it right - FanTeam is likely to become my main fantasy football game. And I couldn't have imagined saying that a year ago. They are doing a fair bit right, to their credit.

p.s. charging for withdrawals is still an utter joke.

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Re: where football is no longer an XI player game!

Post by 12345678 »

i think they have got this wrong in two places and i don't think it will become apparent to them any time soon.

firstly dumping the XI player format will lose players, yes i know many are not able to play DK due to location but in the UK we can. i also think it will put off new players. i had expected it to be my main game next season but now i don't know what i will put most energy into, i simply don't trust fanteam to deliver a good product any more, regardless of financial security. as you say the withdrawal issue is another concern, i wouldn't expect a financially secure organisation to do that.

where i feel they may have misjudged is this. there are now some huge multis out there bolstering entry numbers as many like myself cut back due to pursuit (who wants scores amended by a mathematical calculation bar the few) and the lack of 11-player games. for me their issue is this, the large multis will only play in huge numbers long term in my view all the while games are not filling and thus their scattergun approach is ok. if they ever manage to increase low to mid stake punters then i think those huge multis will reduce their entries. therefore this dependency on them means you are far further from ever reaching full contests than would appear to be the case. so the nirvana for fanteam of full contests and a 10% take is in my view far further than it might seem.

the problem of too simplistic scoring becomes ever more exposed by reducing the number of selections to make a team and there is no doubt draft kings is vastly superior in its scoring. there is a lot they could learn form the DK model if they cared to study it in many respects but they are extremely high handed as you know and will not countenance that they could be wrong!

at end of the day it is their ball and they can do what they like with it but we also have a choice to go and play elsewhere!

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Re: where football is no longer an XI player game!

Post by admin »

As Andy says, the tournaments are just for 1 or 2 matches this weekend meaning, quite rightly, select just 5 players (form the 2 or 4 clubs) in a pursuit format. (The pursuit format encourages you to consider players from the underdog team(s) but more importantly for FanTeam means it will be rare to have ties, partic due to C and VC choices).

I do ask them to run a full traditional GW comp (which they have done recently) that fiso members are more used to and which will give the smaller and more skilled entrant a better chance over the big multis but as it's towards the end of the season, and with so many matches happening at different times, their focus is on these 1 or 2 match comps where winnings would be recirculated back into the next game. More chance next season there will be full GW comps although 20/21 will be compressed a bit if it starts as expected mid Sep.

It shouldn't be long before details of FanTeam's massive season-long EPL game for 20/21 are published. This will be my focus for 20/21 (if I can stay focussed during the season!) and FanTeam's game website and funcionality has been really good making it easy to play.

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Re: where football is no longer an XI player game!

Post by admin »

By the way the 100k GW38 tournament (20k 1st prize) should be a 11 player comp because all 10 matches are taking place at the same time. It looks like it will be in the pursuit format (for the reasons I give above).

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Re: where football is no longer an XI player game!

Post by 12345678 »

i 'd disagree with this chris 'The pursuit format encourages you to consider players from the underdog team(s)'. if anything it encourages you to think about abandoning them ;) the budgets are nice and tight, so in classic format you have to pick budget players. in pursuit you can choose not to.

not saying that is a strength or weakness on its own, just feels alien and not sure many like the idea of getting the best score and losing out to a fanteam calculator ;)

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Re: where football is no longer an XI player game!

Post by admin »

Of course you're right that with a tight budget XI man team then you do need to bring in some budget players if you want star players, albeit for a game run just over one GW then players are priced appropriately by FanTeam just for that GW (and they do pitch their pricing at about the right level, basing it on sportsbook odds, so bargains are hard to find unlike with a season-long game).

Then again if the underdog upsets the odds and gets, say, a 0-0 then their pursuit based CS points are worth more than the CS points for the defence from the favourites which does seem fair.

I found pursuit format a bit odd to begin with but it makes sense for these shorter type of games where you often have mismatched teams and obviously FanTeam don't want a load of teams tied on the same number of points.

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Re: where football is no longer an XI player game!

Post by 12345678 »

the last bit yes agree, pursuit was seemingly a very good idea to avoid ties as much as possible by effectively creating different values for each player to get round the weakness of the scoring for DFS, it has now in my view been corrupted and misused in XI player games where it is not needed.

we have had this before of course in SDT where they always marked up a CS against a stronger team with their ratings and downgraded for a strong team vs a weak team. similarly for goalscorers but a goal is a goal and a CS is a CS and they quite rightly abandoned it!

the answer is to make more players sensible choices by good pricing which to be fair fanteam already do! there is little point going down the same wrong turn as SDT did before abandoning it as a bad job! for me it is a completely unnecessary tried and failed approach to use pursuit in 11-player slates.

the biggest fault in fanteam design which they refuse to change, seemingly on the basis that they know best is the impact points. that heavily encourages blocks and goes against everything all their tinkering tries to achieve. compare the old star game vs the metro game, the star game was far superior and the only real difference was they didn't have the equivalent of impact points that the metro had.

i personally feel the decision making has changed and those responsible have made a long series of extremely poor decisions, adding in the extra TW in the season long game was clearly wrong as the balance of opinion on fiso showed. the failure to refund the CL when the format was completely changed and fixtures removed is also completely wrong as the changes dramatically effect who you would have picked and some players will be lost due to the real TW being open. It's sad to see the list of bad decisions continuing in my view and i think the view of the majority as you will see from the fiso threads. i can only assume those making the decisions are very naive, particularly in terms of their understanding of seasonal games.

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Re: where football is no longer an XI player game!

Post by henrikinaski »

Totaly agree. 11 players no pursuit is the Best format

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Re: where football is no longer an XI player game!

Post by admin »

FanTeam have set up a full round GW36 comp 11 player (non-pursuit) format with a 5 euro entry starting with the 1st GW36 match tomorrow at 8:15pm

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Re: where football is no longer an XI player game!

Post by CBN »

I'll enter but the prize being 10% of the 'Main Event' says everything about how they see the eleven player game :(

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Re: where football is no longer an XI player game!

Post by admin »

CBN wrote: 14 Jul 2020, 07:50 I'll enter but the prize being 10% of the 'Main Event' says everything about how they see the eleven player game :(
At least it is an option (and the entry fee is 25% of the Main Event and restricted to half the entry numbers of the Main Event). They are, after all, a Daily Fantasy Sports company so if they can offer weekly or season-long games as well as their staple diet of Daily games to their main customers then it gives fiso members something else to play. If the Full Round Classic gets close to being filled then maybe they'll be encouraged to offer more.

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Re: where football is no longer an XI player game!

Post by henrikinaski »

Will play

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