Bring Back Free Agency Threads

[eaglesfan036 4,605]

Back in my day we had public free agency threads, where GMs made their pitch in writing, and players had to quote the offer in the thread to accept it. This was way better than the current system because:

 

1) You could actually see what the hell was going on. Now when a FA signs a contract, he is taken off the FA player list and just put on the team's roster. If you weren't paying attention day 1 like me and just want to go look and see what FAs signed where that is not an option. It is way harder to tell where FAs signed than it used to be.

 

2) Teams don't make cool pitches anymore as far as I am aware. Back in the day players from the team would go post in these free agency threads trying to convince them to join the team. Or other members or just commentate on them as well. 

 

3) All the hype around FA is gone. Back in the day it used to be a big deal when the studs like Boom's players signed with a team. Now only the super involved people can even tell what is going on, while everyone else is left in the dust

 

Example

Edited July 4, 2019 by Positivefan036

[Renomitsu 934]

I like this.

 

At the absolute minimum, make a tracker for free agent signings (or if there is one already, make it more easily visible). For most real sports leagues, free agency is a spectacle - just look at the NBA this year if you need any convincing. If nothing else, it should at least be media spot-worthy. As of right now, if I want to figure out where each free agent went this off-season, I'd need to have all of their tabs open and hold them open until they joined a team. which seems inefficient at best.

 

I guess my main concern/caveat to this proposal is that with Discord and private chats though, it's unlikely most GMs/players will have something substantive to say in their threads. I worry that they would quickly devolve into short, courtesy pitches when a player's really been talking to a GM privately and has a deal done prior to the thread.

[hedgehog337 3,483]

if you wanna do public we can do this like VHLM GM's offering new players a contract.

 

When a player accepts a contract from a team then that team offers through portal - done.

[Beaviss 4,958]

Or just have the portal make a notification the same as the vhlm does. The only time it posts is during free agency I'd love to see resigning threads.

[eaglesfan036 4,605]

3 minutes ago, hedgehog337 said:

if you wanna do public we can do this like VHLM GM's offering new players a contract.

 

When a player accepts a contract from a team then that team offers through portal - done.

sounds like the simplest solution to me

[eaglesfan036 4,605]

Just now, Beaviss said:

Or just have the portal make a notification the same as the vhlm does. The only time it posts is during free agency I'd love to see resigning threads.

 

re-signing threads would also be quite helpful, excellent suggestion

[Beketov 9,101]

As a FA I’ll admit it’s smooth as hell now to receive offers and stuff but I’ll admit the public spectacle is definitely gone. I imagine @Will could probably code something to create a FA page for each active FA and then GM’s could make their offers publicly in there like @hedgehog337 suggested. Even if they made them on the portal at the same time then it’s just up to the player to pick one.

 

Its one of those things like VHLM signings where we may have oversimplified it too much. It’s all smooth and works well but it takes the show away from it which used to be part of the entertainment value.

[Will 4,662]

All fair suggestions. I will soon be shifting my Portal attention to all things Team Management so I think we should be able to get some good updates in by next off-season. 

 

For this stuff in particular - I agree with @Renomitsu that a big shortcoming atm is the ability to keep track of whats going on in the Portal. For this I have a Transaction Center in the works that will (hopefully) provide an easy way to keep track of things in one place - not just FA signings but also regular re-signings, bonuses, trades, send-downs/call-ups and retirements - all filter-able by type of transaction, season, team, all that jazz. Also hoping to piggyback off of that to add a Player Movement section to Player Pages similar to what we used to have on the forum. 

 

As far as the FA threads..there could a few options. One would be to create an FA thread for a player when they get their first offer and then subsequent offers could be posted in the same thread (perhaps could allow GMs to type a message in the Portal to include in the automated post). 

[Matt_O 897]

I was going to have a live thread with free agency, reporting on rumors and all sorts of stuff for VSN. Unfortunately since the only info you get about FA is when they actually sign, it just isn't that much fun. Free Agency day is supposed to be one of the most exciting days of the season/off-season, and here it is just a side thing.

[omgitshim 903]

I'd be happy with just whenever a free agent signed or a player resigned, the portal just auto-created a thread in the Free Agency forum to inform everyone. It's hard to track where players have signed otherwise unless you dig through each team roster.

[Matt_O 897]

is this in the works? 

[Higgins 3,618]

Ha when I first saw the automation of free agency I said this exact thing 

Edited August 16, 2019 by Higgins

[Higgins 3,618]