So, one of my other issues is this pop-up editor screen. Among other things, it makes it exceedingly hard to refer back to the post I am replying to. I'm actually going to open another tab right now to do so. Also, if it's going to be a pop-up, we deserve a lot more space for composition than this tiny little window. :)
OK, 5 seconds later I just went ahead and quoted your post which is.. ok.. for reviewing. And at least in chrome I can resize the edit box.
The nesting in these quotes is going to get messy, but its probably necessary to keep track.
jdavidbakr wrote:
lordscarlet wrote:
Player cards should have stats
I agree, but I need to spend some time thinking about how best to do this. The stats that are on the player page will not fit on the player card, so it's going to have to be an abbreviated stat listing based on the player's position. Just something that will take some time. It's on the TODO list, but not on the "must do before launch" list.
I actually somewhat hate the player card and the way it pops up, so I wouldn't mind seeing a complete overhaul. I understand the reasoning for the cards, but there's just something I (again, this is obviously just personal opinion) just don't like about them. The closest comparison that I can think of to what you are trying to do that I run into is on the yahoo fantasy sports site. I don't love it there either, but they do a passable job.
jdavidbakr wrote:
lordscarlet wrote:
League stats should mirror the recent addition to team stats. The listing style of one stat per line is near impossible to read
The perspective of the home page stats is actually more to view league records and the current players in relationship to the records. I agree, though, now that we have the stat details like we have it on the page, we need those kinds of stats on the home page stat area. I probably need to rename the "stats" to "records" or something like that, and put the more complex stats on under "stats." That's probably something I should try to get in before the public launch, but I really want to add more leagues before the NFL season starts, and I don't honestly think this will be something I'd be able to turn quickly enough.
If the intention is "records" then I would definitely change the label. However, if that is the intention, it seems to somewhat fall apart when you can switch to a stat and see every player for that. I think if you want a record holder page it would be formatted a bit differently as well.
jdavidbakr wrote:
lordscarlet wrote:
At a minimum, the coloring by position needs a legend. Even with that, I'm not sure if it is is super useful as it currently exists
I personally think that would be too much, the colors really are there just to break up the listing. You commented about the illegibility of the stats on the home page, the rosters were 10 times worse before we added the colors.
, because I just find the colors distracting and meaningless. The colors don't contrast at all, particularly because the default sort progresses as ROYGBIV. I feel like you would be better off with a simple alternating color, gray and white or something. Perhaps I would have to see it, but at first glance the colors seem to imply some significance other than position. After you figure out that is the significance (especially after figuring out that there are two colors per position and a lot of positions with only 2 or 3 players) it really doesn't help. I don't look at it and say "Hey, he's purple, he must be a DT". But maybe that's just me. Perhaps it is because of the muted tone of the colors. I don't know. It really just looks like a rainbow for rainbow's sake to me, though. How does it look without alternating the colors?
jdavidbakr wrote:
lordscarlet wrote:
Slightly bigger requests:
Legibility of events in the graphical live game screen thing. Penalties, what they are, yardage, acceptance/rejection, etc. Anything in the little expanding/contracting textbox are wasted IMO. It is hard to look away from the game action, down to that section, parse through the text that is perhaps familiar to FOF players, but takes a while for me to visually parse out, and then look back up at the gameplay to not miss anything. However, the yellow boxes that say "First Down", "Interception", etc are pretty easy to make out
I actually plan to do some rewrites on the game center, I agree with the difficulty to read the play by play but am open to suggestion on how to fix it. I don't necessarily want to interrupt each play with the text if you are watching it more casually, or make you give feedback to go to the next play, so I'm honestly not sure what the best strategy would be to make this better.
I think a first step would be to try the "yellow box" for some of the more important events. Personally I'm not looking at the box on every play. If there is a penalty, I want to know what the penalty was and perhaps who was involved. If there was an interception, I want to know who caught it. Being the pain in the *** I am, I think part of it is to ignore what you learned from Jim. Just because all of the FOF players are used to it, it doesn't mean its a good format. In fact, I would play with some options that ignore the sentence-like structure, at least for glancing during gameplay. I'm not entirely sure what the solution is, I would have to play with some ideas and see if I could come up with something (its possible I can't). At a minimum, bold some key elements in that string. On the far end, try to come up with something that has consistent spacing throughout. Perhaps something table-esque with the type of play (run vs. pass), the "target" (wr or runner), and the resulting yards. next is the tackler/intercepter/etc. I realize this breaks apart on complicated plays. Perhaps it should be a single line for each "Action". But as a viewer I need something I can consistently find with my eye in the same place with the same spacing so I can find it quickly. The random length string where the person's name and action are a different place every time, that bounces up and down based on string length is just impossible to follow.
Sorry, I'll stop rambling for now. :)
jdavidbakr wrote:
lordscarlet wrote:
Team customization. I don't know everyone's reason for wanting to create a "fake" team, but one of mine is to design the logo/uniform/etc. I think you can look at big FOF leagues and see the care that people put into it. It may seem silly, but it will cause people to care more about their team... and be more willing to pay to maintain it. :)
This will actually be one of the first roll-outs after the launch, but it will be via custom leagues where the league creator will have control over it at first. I might consider giving individual owners the ability to edit their own teams in a custom league.
Some sort of commissioner control could be ok. Because I don't play FOF and live vicariously through Wade, all I really know are leagues like IHOF that are heavily customized. If the individual users have to pass it through the league creator/commish/whatever, that's passable I suppose.
