time to give up

[murf]

I used to love an occasional dabble at MOTM and MOTW.

Not possible with these rules and others cheating with false IDs.

[get_on_my_cocker]

I'd like to see a version of TFFO return, a game I was actually good at. At one point I was top (playing under a pseudonym, a female name I think as I thought it would confuse the "professional players"!), but had to sabotage my team as I clearly wasn't eligible to win. I often wonder how that season would have played out if I had carried on playing.

[murf]

I'd like to see a version of TFFO return, a game I was actually good at. At one point I was top (playing under a pseudonym, a female name I think as I thought it would confuse the "professional players"!), but had to sabotage my team as I clearly wasn't eligible to win. I often wonder how that season would have played out if I had carried on playing.

I only played it for 2 or 3 seasons before it died. Loved it, again partly because it was the only game I ever was actually good at! My only season long top 10 finish. Single team only but finished as 4th highest manager just as prizes were reduced to top 3 only.......

Got to be some scope for TFF to bring back something like that. Has part of what FPL has but enough differentials to make it stand out from the crowd. TFF is great as a traditional 'base' game but has been dumbed down too much and lost out to the masses who have migrated to (and started on / only ever played) FPL. Appeasing those masses by free entry hasn't really worked but the stats do say the single entrant makes up the majority of teams so us semi-serious, pay players (and the high-spend, very-serious multis) are clearly a dying breed and the market isn't there.

[Darbyand]

I’ve always hated players per club restrictions. The block defences and packing your team with Cup finalists etc. were always a big part of the tactics.

Doesn't have to be punitive (max 5 per team?) and there could be an amnesty for cup finals....but the January period this season was rubbish. Not my idea of a challenge of fantasy football.

[forestfan]

I’ve always hated players per club restrictions. The block defences and packing your team with Cup finalists etc. were always a big part of the tactics.

Doesn't have to be punitive (max 5 per team?) and there could be an amnesty for cup finals....but the January period this season was rubbish. Not my idea of a challenge of fantasy football.

I guess it was a strange season with the crammed in fixture sets and wallpaper kick-off times etc... as usual in recent years, I put a couple of teams in at the start hoping to rediscover my enthusiasm and then never touched them again!

[Darbyand]

I think most people on here* want it to be hard because they rate their football knowledge and /or fantasy skills. Having a stack of transfers and being able to put 8/9/10 players from the same team in and hope for a run of heavy clean sheet victories was the ultimate dumbing down. Nanny Fricker could have done that by herself.

Give me punitive pricing and problems to solve any time.

* I appreciate we are a small subset of the TFF players... though presumably getting bigger every year as FPL rumbles on.

[forestfan]

Having to put random £2.9m CKs and people unlikely to play in your starting team is equally a lottery though... but yeah, mass transfer churn makes it an admin task more than one of skill. And the demise of the Saturday 3pm kick-off time only adds to that.

[forestfan]

That’s always been my issue with World Cup/Euro games - it’s all about rotating transfers given the matches nearly all kick off separately, so I generally can’t be bothered, and that’s become the case with PL football as well now.

[sportsmeister]

TFFO was a great game and once it was abandoned I refused to pay to play TFF as my protest - losing that £10-£20 a year must have really hurt them.

Interesting that we all wax lyrical about TFF and TFFO but FPL is not far off a hybrid of the two.

I think the peak of TFF was when the only source of KC's was on FISO then Bramneric would adjudicate on the borderline cases before final overnight confirmation.

The introduction of MotM was the beginning of the slippery slope

[forestfan]

The main thing I’ve just never got to grips with on FPL is the price changes, just couldn’t stop team value constantly eroding. Did any of the Telegraph games ever have that?

Apart from the fact that you have to put in a superhuman effort to reach the top million in FPL (didn’t remotely threaten it in 2 or 3 attempts, and that’s probably with a lot fewer entrants than these days!), so other than private leagues there’s no real incentive. Whereas in TFF with about 250k paid entries you could feel some sense of achievement in top 100/top 1000 and aim for cash prizes that were realistically possible.

[sportsmeister]

The main thing I’ve just never got to grips with on FPL is the price changes, just couldn’t stop team value constantly eroding. Did any of the Telegraph games ever have that?

Apart from the fact that you have to put in a superhuman effort to reach the top million in FPL (didn’t remotely threaten it in 2 or 3 attempts, and that’s probably with a lot fewer entrants than these days!), so other than private leagues there’s no real incentive. Whereas in TFF with about 250k paid entries you could feel some sense of achievement in top 100/top 1000 and aim for cash prizes that were realistically possible.

OK get the point on price rises

Brings a bit of a FOMO mentality to FPL

[murf]

The concept of changing player prices is, in theory, a good one but when you then have to base your strategy on following price rises rather than the core concept of getting players who score points then the essence of FF is lost... so on that count alone FPL is not for me.

I also hate FPL's gimmicky chips and captains but the latter was part of TFFO"s charm (I see the possible hypocrisy) but in TFFO it worked with flanges and made teams more diverse and killed the block defence issues.

15 transfers in a season across an 18 man squad - now that was PROPER fantasy football!

[SamD]

May I put in a good word on TFF?

Yes, the Telegraph, GFM and other administrators made/make mistakes but I've generally enjoyed the game's simplicity over almost 30 years, ie:
- fixed player price and budget
- no captaincy points
- and, in particular, running or joining prize super leagues to compete with pals, ex-colleagues and FISOns.

No other game seems to provide these. Let's hope Telegraph bods aren't being put off renewing the game in future seasons.

[forestfan]

Yeah, (re. FPL) if I want things where prices change constantly I’ll stick to stock market investment or exchange betting... for me the essence of FF is prices fixed for the season and identifying value from that at different points in time (I also like auction/draft games, where you largely have a fixed squad with perhaps some transfer mechanism - I played a private auction league loosely based around my workplace for about 20 years!)

[Spinynorman]

I've asked TFF if they would allow just a couple more teams to allow a reasonable balance between "serious" teams and those with restrictions to allow joining in with a few side games.

[morganb]

I've asked TFF if they would allow just a couple more teams to allow a reasonable balance between "serious" teams and those with restrictions to allow joining in with a few side games.

Perhaps you could suggest that they could introduce having the option for each team to opt in/opt out of aiming for the TFF prize money, with a max 5 which can go for the prize and any others used for side games and the like.

[morganb]

Oh, and FPL isn't too bad as long as you don't treat it too seriously - I did ok in it this season. The FPL Draft format is quite fun too (no gimmicks or budget).

[get_on_my_cocker]

I think the peak of TFF was when the only source of KC's was on FISO then Bramneric would adjudicate on the borderline cases before final overnight confirmation.

I used to check Bramernic's verdicts too...and I was the one awarding the KCs!!!

[murf]

I think the peak of TFF was when the only source of KC's was on FISO then Bramneric would adjudicate on the borderline cases before final overnight confirmation.

I used to check Bramernic's verdicts too...and I was the one awarding the KCs!!!

We always suspected that!

[Darbyand]

I think the peak of TFF was when the only source of KC's was on FISO then Bramneric would adjudicate on the borderline cases before final overnight confirmation.

I used to check Bramernic's verdicts too...and I was the one awarding the KCs!!!

How recently were you awarding them? I was one of the few who was glad to see the back of them. They were great originally for rewarding what genuinely mattered in creating a goal, but towards the end I reckon 80-90% were getting a 2nd KC many of them plain silly. But with so many goals worth an extra 11 TFF points and only 5 of them going to yer actual bloody scorer it was another thing that moved the game away from its "purest" form IMO.

[bluenosey]

I actually played it this time for the first time in about 5 years ish.

As has been said, it's not as gimmicky as fpl (I kept on missing the Friday night cut offs - grrrr) but the worst problem is the number of transfers. I played the game like I used to years ago and ended up with too many transfers at the end. Someone above nailed it when they said it becomes more of an admin task than taking a hunch on a transfer. So 20/25 transfers would be nice.

Still good though, and I'll no doubt be back next year.

[get_on_my_cocker]

I think the peak of TFF was when the only source of KC's was on FISO then Bramneric would adjudicate on the borderline cases before final overnight confirmation.

I used to check Bramernic's verdicts too...and I was the one awarding the KCs!!!

How recently were you awarding them? I was one of the few who was glad to see the back of them. They were great originally for rewarding what genuinely mattered in creating a goal, but towards the end I reckon 80-90% were getting a 2nd KC many of them plain silly. But with so many goals worth an extra 11 TFF points and only 5 of them going to yer actual bloody scorer it was another thing that moved the game away from its "purest" form IMO.

I awarded every KC from about 2001 to 2020.

[Darbyand]

Was the move to double KCs for most goals a Telegraph request or a gfm thing?

[Hogmeister]

I actually played it this time for the first time in about 5 years ish.

As has been said, it's not as gimmicky as fpl (I kept on missing the Friday night cut offs - grrrr) but the worst problem is the number of transfers. I played the game like I used to years ago and ended up with too many transfers at the end. Someone above nailed it when they said it becomes more of an admin task than taking a hunch on a transfer. So 20/25 transfers would be nice.

Still good though, and I'll no doubt be back next year.

For me, the death knell of TFF was a) taking the transfers up to 40, an b) when they allowed transfers between matches, instead of a daily deadline of the earliest fixture.
Back in the day I played TFF with my mates, on the basis it didn’t require a lot of hands-on management. Unlike FPL you didn’t need to adjust your team every week and so it suited the casual players (like my mates) much better.
However now, with 40 transfers and flange opportunities most days, it requires more attention than FPL, which has the simplicity of a single deadline each week. So TFF no longer suits the casual player, and (for me at least) FPL has more depth for the serious player.
I know why TFF made those changes, as (for revenue purposes) they needed people to be visiting the website more often. But they ruined the game IMO.
For the last few years I have enjoyed playing FPL but have increasingly found TFF a chore - and so don’t think I’ll be playing TFF next season.

[sportsmeister]

I actually played it this time for the first time in about 5 years ish.

As has been said, it's not as gimmicky as fpl (I kept on missing the Friday night cut offs - grrrr) but the worst problem is the number of transfers. I played the game like I used to years ago and ended up with too many transfers at the end. Someone above nailed it when they said it becomes more of an admin task than taking a hunch on a transfer. So 20/25 transfers would be nice.

Still good though, and I'll no doubt be back next year.

For me, the death knell of TFF was a) taking the transfers up to 40, an b) when they allowed transfers between matches, instead of a daily deadline of the earliest fixture.
Back in the day I played TFF with my mates, on the basis it didn’t require a lot of hands-on management. Unlike FPL you didn’t need to adjust your team every week and so it suited the casual players (like my mates) much better.
However now, with 40 transfers and flange opportunities most days, it requires more attention than FPL, which has the simplicity of a single deadline each week. So TFF no longer suits the casual player, and (for me at least) FPL has more depth for the serious player.
I know why TFF made those changes, as (for revenue purposes) they needed people to be visiting the website more often. But they ruined the game IMO.
For the last few years I have enjoyed playing FPL but have increasingly found TFF a chore - and so don’t think I’ll be playing TFF next season.

What - no highlander!!

[Hogmeister]

What - no highlander!!

It's telling that my fave TFF side game is the one where you can completely ignore your team in certain weeks (the ones where you are safe from elimination), which helps reduce the chore. But no, I think it'll just be FPL for me next year.

[get_on_my_cocker]

Was the move to double KCs for most goals a Telegraph request or a gfm thing?

Telegraph kept tinkering with the KC rules, which allowed pretty much every goal to have 2 KCs. It made my job so much harder having to take into account the changes each season, and I found it infuriating how they would not publish a clear concise list of KC rules.