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TOO MANY BOTS
TOO MANY BOTS
Here is an example of an Auto League that SHOULD have been tough to win with 8-10 owners- 6 REAL Owners and by the way, not slugs or easy pickin's - but add 6 BOTS and it's trash, -
6 Bots is 3 too many - I can WAIT, when I started here guys would take a shot and fill an Auto League - now instant gratification makes winning worth less,
6 Bots is 3 too many - I can WAIT, when I started here guys would take a shot and fill an Auto League - now instant gratification makes winning worth less,
Re: Re: TOO MANY BOTS
There definitely feels like an imbalance here, too many leagues and/or not enough active owners. It seems harder and harder to fill both custom leagues and auto leagues alike now.
However, until this site gets better balance, I see bots as necessary. I have 20+ leagues sitting around waiting to fill, at some point playing with bots is much more enjoyable than not playing at all.
I would also encourage other owners to join more leagues. I know some want to have minimal leagues to keep on top of things, but that also doesn't help fill the many leagues of PC.
However, until this site gets better balance, I see bots as necessary. I have 20+ leagues sitting around waiting to fill, at some point playing with bots is much more enjoyable than not playing at all.
I would also encourage other owners to join more leagues. I know some want to have minimal leagues to keep on top of things, but that also doesn't help fill the many leagues of PC.
Re: TOO MANY BOTS
In fairness to Guy, many Auto Leagues have owners who stay in them after they conclude and redraft, he has been reticent about closing them due to them being a standard for some.
But Consolidation is needed to return the challenge of defeating talented owners - the bots are routinely bad, I have heard of them winning a league, but have never seen it myself - they generally end up occupying the worst 6 teams in a league
But Consolidation is needed to return the challenge of defeating talented owners - the bots are routinely bad, I have heard of them winning a league, but have never seen it myself - they generally end up occupying the worst 6 teams in a league
Re: TOO MANY BOTS
It's more complicated. And I do agree the whole system could use a re-think, but it would require some painful loss of leagues for a lot of people. The problem is, there are a lot of different types of leagues, but there actually are not that many of each type. For example, there are only three or four Best of 2024 or All Time Greats leagues with less than 7 owners in the league right now. I agree some of those could afford to get deleted, but which ones? Which seven owners do I piss off by deleting their league that's been around for years? I've already deleted the ones that have almost no owners in them.
New leagues get created when none are available, such as "Daily Draft Deadball Keepers".
Then you have the fact that people want different things. Some people want their keeper league to stay around and not get deleted, for example, and would rather have bots. Some would rather not have bots and wait.
One thing almost nobody seems to want are smaller leagues with less teams. That makes keeping leagues around and filling them a challenge.
I wonder if having "bot-free" options might work - these would be leagues that take longer to fill up, but might create unique demand, and we'd really have to limit how many of them get created.
Another option could be trying to make the bots more competitive. But honestly, competitive or not, I don't think anyone really loves playing with bots. That said, they are much worse in baseball than they are in basketball or football, I think largely due to the fact that those other sports don't have Quick Drafts. The bots right now get really bad teams in Quick Draft leagues.
New leagues get created when none are available, such as "Daily Draft Deadball Keepers".
Then you have the fact that people want different things. Some people want their keeper league to stay around and not get deleted, for example, and would rather have bots. Some would rather not have bots and wait.
One thing almost nobody seems to want are smaller leagues with less teams. That makes keeping leagues around and filling them a challenge.
I wonder if having "bot-free" options might work - these would be leagues that take longer to fill up, but might create unique demand, and we'd really have to limit how many of them get created.
Another option could be trying to make the bots more competitive. But honestly, competitive or not, I don't think anyone really loves playing with bots. That said, they are much worse in baseball than they are in basketball or football, I think largely due to the fact that those other sports don't have Quick Drafts. The bots right now get really bad teams in Quick Draft leagues.
Re: Re: TOO MANY BOTS
I suggested this during a past discussion about bots but nobody commented on it. I think the biggest issue is nobody wants to be one of the last teams to join a Quickdraft Autoleague so it has to be filled with bots. If the drafting order were set randomly AFTER the league filled, so nobody has a perceived advantage by being one of the first teams to join, then this would not be a problem.
Re: TOO MANY BOTS
You're not wrong, but I think the whole appeal of Quick Draft is signing up and drafting right away. We would end up with a really high abandon rate if you couldn't draft your team immediately. I've been chewing on some ideas to try to make Quick Draft more fair, but it's really hard. It's gotten better over the years, but it's a hard concept to make fair for the last few teams. Even if it was "more fair" I think the perception would always be that you're getting the shaft if you draft later. But yes for sure, it's a contributing factor to the problem.
Re: Re: TOO MANY BOTS
One reality/problem of quick draft is that there are certain owners who ONLY play 1 or 2 different types of quick draft leagues. They know every player, who they can get at what RK level, who out performs at a various RK and they always draft immediately. Their win %'s and # of rings are so skewed because of this. I know myself, and I am sure other owners, just avoid any quick draft leagues that specific owners are in.
Re: TOO MANY BOTS
To be really competitive, you have to join Keepers and stay in them season to season. The 1st season or so might be a little tough, but after that it gets easier to field a highly competitive team. And yeah, there are guys who specialize in one particular player set, like ATG, and play almost 100 teams with it - to the point where they could put a team together in their sleep. I will join leagues with the top guys just to "poke the bear" - sometimes as the last guy in. This site has become REALLY competitive over the years - my best advise is to look at the rosters of the teams that are winning the most in your leagues and note what players they are using.
- The Sheik
- The Sheik
Re: Re: TOO MANY BOTS
I am not even talking about Keepers, but non keeper quick drafts, where some returning owners can put together a roster that simply shouldn't be. How does a quick draft allow an ATG roster to get Ruth, Bonds, Williams, McGwire, all on the same team?
Re: TOO MANY BOTS
I’ve been playing mostly customs lately with just a couple auto teams (1 long time keeper league) mostly random quick draft when I’m bored. In honor of the thread, I think I’ll join a quick draft of every type of league today!
Re: Re: TOO MANY BOTS
https://www.pennantchase.com/league..
This League is a good example of another Auto League- No Keepers that has 5-6 solid, returning owners, a couple of new owners joined this year, I hope they stick around, that would be great.
I saw someone, name escapes me -but a good long time owner posted he was going to join a few, had lots of available slots,- what the heck, even if your last, you might have 4 or 5 bots in there - buy a lottery ticket
This League is a good example of another Auto League- No Keepers that has 5-6 solid, returning owners, a couple of new owners joined this year, I hope they stick around, that would be great.
I saw someone, name escapes me -but a good long time owner posted he was going to join a few, had lots of available slots,- what the heck, even if your last, you might have 4 or 5 bots in there - buy a lottery ticket
Re: Re: TOO MANY BOTS
I have no problem with bots for when leagues just won't fill up. I'm sure it's incredibly time consuming to get them even to the point they are now, but my observation is that part of the reason they are so uncompetitive is due to not having a roster construction (ie teams with 5 catchers and no SS drafted) and playing multiple players out of either primary or secondary position. Even mediocre players on bot teams are made atrocious when their fielding % is sub .900, which compounds the pitching issues. Not knowing what goes into it, I don't have a solution so I hesitate to even bring this up, but wanted to offer my two cents on improving bots rather than eliminating them.
Re: TOO MANY BOTS
bots seemingly ignore defense, speed, and roster needs and or are missing how valuable it is to a teams success
Re: Re: TOO MANY BOTS
For the quick draft, why couldn't the player pool be randomly split into 12 equally sized, stratified by Rank, sub-pools, with each team eligible only for players in their sub-pool? Then there would be no advantage to signing up first; no disadvantage to signing up last.
Re: TOO MANY BOTS
I like the idea Acecannon, but if you separate players only by Rank then all the other intangibles also need to somehow be considered, a pretty difficult task to decipher -
Even simpler would be - no draft until League fills, after it fills, no dropping out. Then a random draft order is generated and teams draft when it's their turn. The draft style would be a NORMAL Auto league, you get to pick from a set of players offered by the SIM
There would need to be an e-mail or Page alert and a time limit, say 6 hours? to draft, if you miss your slot, the next team drafts. Whether the team that missed their draft goes back 1 spot or to the end would be a thought
I bet most leagues once drafting starts would be complete in a day or 2 - and when you consider you have an equal chance to get a good draft slot, even drafting 1st can sometimes be a disappointing, you only can take what your offered
Even simpler would be - no draft until League fills, after it fills, no dropping out. Then a random draft order is generated and teams draft when it's their turn. The draft style would be a NORMAL Auto league, you get to pick from a set of players offered by the SIM
There would need to be an e-mail or Page alert and a time limit, say 6 hours? to draft, if you miss your slot, the next team drafts. Whether the team that missed their draft goes back 1 spot or to the end would be a thought
I bet most leagues once drafting starts would be complete in a day or 2 - and when you consider you have an equal chance to get a good draft slot, even drafting 1st can sometimes be a disappointing, you only can take what your offered
Re: TOO MANY BOTS
@acecannon I’ve chewed on your idea before. It’s not simple though. You’ve got to ensure you have a good balance of players at each position, and you’d have to make it dynamic enough that it still feels random. You’re going to have to have some players in multiple pools and so you still have the problem of the first owner getting all the best players in a particular pool. Then you have Quick Draft keeper leagues. So what happens when some of those players in a particular pool are already on certain teams? But yes, there may be some elements of this idea that could be used to make the draft more fair.
SCM - the timed window was brought up higher in this thread.I think everyone is vastly underestimating how many owners simply wouldn’t draft and you’d end up with a lot of CPU drafted teams anyway and be back to the same problem. It also doesn’t solve the problem that the first teams get an advantage, but it tries to solve the problem of people not joining leagues - I don’t think it will do that. People join quick draft over daily draft specifically because they can draft immediately and not wait for anything. If you have to wait three months to get your quick draft time slot only to find out you draft 11th, people just won’t join quick draft leagues or won’t bother to draft their team.
SCM - the timed window was brought up higher in this thread.I think everyone is vastly underestimating how many owners simply wouldn’t draft and you’d end up with a lot of CPU drafted teams anyway and be back to the same problem. It also doesn’t solve the problem that the first teams get an advantage, but it tries to solve the problem of people not joining leagues - I don’t think it will do that. People join quick draft over daily draft specifically because they can draft immediately and not wait for anything. If you have to wait three months to get your quick draft time slot only to find out you draft 11th, people just won’t join quick draft leagues or won’t bother to draft their team.
Re: Re: TOO MANY BOTS
I gotta tella. Overall I just love this community. The ability to converse back and forth with ideas of how to improve this site is commendable. The site master being involved and willing to hear criticism as well as praise. The critics are respectful and just looking to help the overall experience for the majority of the time. It is great when we listen and share ideas. Thanks PC.
Re: TOO MANY BOTS
Just wondering , when are we going to see the rolling dynasty leagues ? Maybe these problems could be addressed there ?
Re: Re: TOO MANY BOTS
Well said @jimgriddy I really appreciate the ideas, I definitely wasn't trying to shoot anything down. I think a combination of improving bots, and working on a fairer Quick Draft is a good start - if these don't help the problem, then maybe a new Quick Draft concept altogether will be necessary, but I'd like to leave that as a last resort due to the level of work and the reality that a new system may not be welcome by many.
@Mrbubbles1967 good question on the dynasty style - that could help convert some of the glut of auto leagues to a new format and thus reduce the huge number of auto leagues, but it may also pull some owners into a different format and make Auto Leagues harder to fill. Hard to say. It's probably going to be a couple months, I just finished the redesign so it's back on the list.
@Mrbubbles1967 good question on the dynasty style - that could help convert some of the glut of auto leagues to a new format and thus reduce the huge number of auto leagues, but it may also pull some owners into a different format and make Auto Leagues harder to fill. Hard to say. It's probably going to be a couple months, I just finished the redesign so it's back on the list.
Re: TOO MANY BOTS
@Gbacci Just thinking out loud, why would there have to be players in multiple pools? You could expand the player pool enough that there's no overlap. This would lead to a richer free agent pool after the draft, which also helps even things out. For the keeper leagues, the "keeper" players would just automatically be assigned to that pool, I would imagine.
Re: Re: TOO MANY BOTS
@acecannon I do appreciate the spirit of your idea. But, we’d have to basically double the free agents in auto leagues, essentially adding hundreds of new players that nobody wants, all so we can have a unique pool of players for each of the 12 teams to draft from. The owner is still going to likely select a roster from the original pool and not touch any of the cruddy new players we’ve added. Your team is now totally out of your control and entirely dependent on this “pool” that was created for you, with a bunch of poor players thrown in to create the illusion that you’re drafting your team. The reality is, the unique pool has already determined which star players you’re going to be offered. For example, if the first basemen in my pool are Lou Gehrig, Johnny Mize and three newcomers who rank far worse, it’s unlikely I’m drafting any of the newcomers anyway, and I’ve lost any shot at Todd Helton or Frank Thomas because they are in some other team’s pool. I just don’t think that’s a Quick Draft experience anyone wants.
I think there’s probably a way to keep it interesting and still offer the best players without cluttering the league with unwanted free agents, but my brain is still hurting trying to figure out the way.
I think there’s probably a way to keep it interesting and still offer the best players without cluttering the league with unwanted free agents, but my brain is still hurting trying to figure out the way.
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