I sent Jon a message that said I would try to put together a list of things that I believe could be documented better on the site.

My first step is to make a confession: I have not watched the tour. I do not plan on watching the tour. Perhaps I am in the minority, but I hate video-based documentation. It's not quick to scan, it's hard to go back to review, and I can't copy and paste a specific section to someone to help explain things.

Having said that, perhaps others can weigh in on the topic. I know the video tutorials are much easier to create, and offer the ability to perhaps explain things better in some cases (for instance, I assume the gameplanning is much easier to explain through video).

Even if there was no addition of documentation, I think the existing documentation could be much easier to find. Once you are in your league, there are no links to it. Even if the "tour" link remained, I would love to see some contextual links to the existing documentation. If I am on the game planning page, provide a help link that goes to the game planning video.

In addition to the contextual video help, I think some text help would be beneficial. Some pages in particular could use a blurb at the top of the page, or perhaps a "help" link that accordions or pops up some help.

I told Jon I would try to come up with a list of the sections I believed could use more explanation, but it seems even better to use this league as leverage for some group think (and perhaps some help for Jon in how to word things) on those items. What I can think of off the top of my head:

• Explanation of Cur/Fut/Rat


• Explanation (or improvement of) color bands. I understand their intention, but are they helping anyone? Perhaps a color key?


• Game planning - I actually think the short description here helps a lot, this is the sort of thing I would like to see more often. Just wanted to drop that in here. :) I would love to see a coach generated gameplan, though.


• Misc gameplan options: Definitely need more explanation here, especially per the discussion we had last week regarding the hurry up logic


• Playbook: The first time I came to the site and started to setup my team I got to the playbook and closed the site. It's a bit overwhelming for a noob like myself. The first thing I freaked out about was "OMG I need to choose all my plays?!". It turns out that you don't. If you don't setup a playbook your team does not sit in a huddle trying to figure out what to do. I think it would be wise to let the user know that they don't have to choose a playbook, but it is more beneficial if they do so. It seemed less overwhelming after a few weeks of looking at the scouting (to be discussed later), etc.


• Scouting: Has this blurb always been here? Perhaps I'm just too stubborn to read instructions. ;) I think this makes sense.


• Depth Chart: Again with the color coding that really means very little to the user IMO.

Thanks for the ideas and the perspective. To answer your question about the scouting, I did add that after we talked :-) I'm also going to do away with the "Rat" column, it's too difficult to explain and frankly I'm not finding it as useful as I thought it was going to be.

I'll go through and add some text like I did to the scouting in some of the other places you mentioned. The colors are really meaningless other than to help visually differentiate between the positions; that was a later add, without the colors the roster was quite difficult to comprehend.

Good point also about putting the tour link in the league menu.

I'm going to spend some more time looking over your post and make some of these changes. Anyone else please feel free to weigh in as well!

The links to "help" while in your league screens is a great idea...JDB already mentions he likes that idea

I must say that I like the video tutorials. True you can't copy and paste it for instruction, but for myself I like to watch someone do it rather than read a bunch of text and try to figure out how to do it. This may be a personal preference so I would like to hear others comments on this topic.


I think there is a coach game plan, I believe you click the "recommended" button and a coach generated game plan loads. Same with the depth chart if I'm not mistaken.

That's FOF :)

In this game it's reset but I've never liked that naming convention. I think "Coach's Default" or something like that would be more clear.

As for the coloring for the player tiles this is something that's definitely helpful to any of us conditioned on FOF over the years and I can see why non-FOFers haven't warmed up to it yet.

In this game it is the coaches recommendation as per the warning screen that comes up when you click the "recommended button".

"Have your coaches set your gameplan

Are you sure you want to let your coaches set your gameplan? The weights of your gameplan - both offense and defense - will be reset and filled with your coach's recommendations. You will still be able to make changes once the gameplan has been set. This will not change the plays in your gameplan".

so it is a coaches game plan. Now the naming may not elude to it being a coaches game plan but it is a coaches game plan.

That button used to say "reset", I hadn't caught that it was changed.

aahhh, okay. I wondered why you had said that it just reset. The game plan looks rather plain and I for one wouldn't want to use it...or maybe I need a better coach :)

We *all* need a better coach