First I would like to thank each and every player here at Fantasy Racing Online that made this site what it is. This is our 4th season and was the biggest yet thanks to 2 BRAND NEW games: the Salary Cap Challenge and the 2nd Half Showcase.
As far as prizes are concerned, I have emailed out everyone who I have marked down as being owed. If you believe you are owed prize money and have not received an email from me, please send me a message as soon as possible to fantasyracingonline18@gmail.com
As always, I try to do what I can to make this website the best place on the internet for fantasy NASCAR. Part of that is continued education for me, and another part is new ideas and improvements. For the former, I have paid to learn more about developing some of the back end here on the website so that I can add some more functionality into the games and make the overall user experience better.
The second part–ideas and improvements–are ongoing in my head, but I always want to hear what you–the players–think. After all, you are what make Fantasy Racing Online what it is and what it will be.
Below are some of the ideas I’ve been throwing around in my head for possible changes to the games next year. None of these are final, they’re just ideas. I’d love to hear what you think of them, as well as any ideas you have. You can leave a comment on the bottom of this page (anonymously or logged into your account) or you can send me a direct email.
Again, thank you. I look forward to 2016, and I hope you do too.
My Thoughts on Potential Changes
The Showcase: The current version of this game (with handicap values) has now been running for two years. The first two years of The Showcase had four groups of drivers that you picked from. The goal with the formats of this game are to create diversity among the rosters and have different drivers being picked. With that being said, that is pretty difficult to accomplish. There are just some drivers that are going to be on >60% of rosters quite often. One facet of this game that makes it truly unique is the “All Star Driver,” though, where that choice’s points are doubled. This has been with the game since inception and will probably remain there. My idea for improvement is to limit the number of times you can select each driver as your “All Star Driver.” If we put a limit of, say, 4 times you can select each driver as your “All Star,” that means each team would have to select AT LEAST 9 different drivers throughout the season as an “All Star Driver.” The only issue with this idea is that I don’t have a way of automatically tracking this for the players, although I could create a spreadsheet that could keep track how many times a team picked a certain driver as the “All Star.” That would just be extra time for me.
Salary Cap Challenge: This game was brand new for 2015 and the initial response was amazing. I think many people interested in fantasy NASCAR like to set a roster and just enjoy the season, as opposed to making a new one every week. Plus, I believe many fantasy players love salary cap games. Overall, I don’t see much change needed for this game. One idea for improvement that was mentioned to me earlier in 2015 for the Salary Cap Challenge was the ability for teams to change things up a bit with their roster(s) if they’d like to. The question then becomes how many drivers could be dropped, how often, and what the deadline would be. I welcome feedback for those.
2nd Half Showcase: This was another brand new game for 2015, and I feel like the competition here was nice. Your team could make up (or lose) a bunch of spots in the standings in just one week. Overall, the number of players in this game was lower than I would have liked, but I think we have a solid foundation to work with here. Also, there’s plenty of fantasy racers that love to get a “fresh start” halfway through the seasons. My ideas for improvement are including a spot for an “All Star Driver.” This should have been a no-brainer! But it slipped my mind. My initial thought is to make the “All Star Driver” cost twice as much as normal (meaning, if his/her salary is $20,000 regularly, it will be $40,000 if they are the All Star Driver). This would shake things up quite a bit I believe! What do you think?
Pick Six Contest: The Pick Six Contest was a random idea by me back in the Racing4Glory days and has kind of just stuck around. Currently it is a FREE game for those who sign up for The Showcase and the champion of the Pick Six Contest wins a $100 prize. I see no reason to change anything with this game, but I’m listening if you have an idea.
Auction Series: The format of the web pages made things difficult for those playing last year to get accurate bids and totals. Plus, it actually crashed the site the night before the Daytona 500. Luckily I was able to get it back up. I will be looking into how to make sure that the bidding goes smoother next year. One idea that was given to me was limiting the number of drivers each person can win.
Other improvements: I’ve been researching how to make it so that players with multiple teams only have ONE login. I have yet to get that successfully implemented, though, and I have no timeframe of when (if ever) this will be accomplished.
Again, these are just some ideas I’ve been throwing around in my head. Let me know what you think.
1.. I agree that the 4 time maximum on the All-Star Driver would be tough to implement and require alot of bookkeeping to keep track of what races are comng up and how many times you can use the driver again. I think that the Handicap numbers kind of take care of the problem to some extent anyway. For example, when Logano was winning all those races his handicap went to zero and probably caused lots of people to not choose him as the All-Star Driver. My overall feeling is that it would be a great idea if you didn’t already have a Handicap value. I think that the Handicap value does a great job of distributing the All-Star Driver week-to-week. I vote for no change here as your rules adequately account for distributing the All-Star Driver without the extra bookkeeping..
2. The only issue that I see with the Salary Cap game is that once you publish the teams, people would want to match their rosters with the leading teams. If you want to give people another opportunity, I would suggest a 2nd half to the Salary Cap game that would consist of different values for the drivers that would remain constant throughout that second half.
3. Agree with putting in an All-Star Driver in the 2nd half.
4. Pick Six game is great as it is – my only thought would be to add excitement at the end of the season by giving 5 extra points for an exact selection during the last few weeks of the season. It isn’t the fairest way to do it, but it would add excitement by allowing more teams with a chance to win by getting lucky at the end.
5. I made this suggestion earlier regarding the AUCTION. That is, to allow a maximum of two drivers per participant to enable more people to have an opportunity to get a driver..
What about a 1 race fantasy team. This would give everyone a shot at winning a race. Winner take all or payout for 1st 2nd 3rd. I would imagine that players in season or half season leagues that fall way behind would enjoy a chance to win at least 1 race. Its easy to lose interest when you know your team is out of the running. Also some people have interest in certain races and they are not locked in to all season. Jim
I have enjoyed playing your games the last few years. Also, while I like your ideas on improving the game, I have no thoughts about additional changes.
It is my opinion that anytime you can limit the number of times players can
pick the same top 5-10 drivers every single week the game & competition
is better. Also requires more skill and knowledge. Not just the “all star” driver
but the entire pool. So your thoughts seem to be headed in the right direction.
How about using the allstar driver only one time for the first half and one time for the 2nd half. That way you must use 18 different allstar drivers each half. It will make you think ahead!
In P6 game, how many positions pay. 1?
Ray: Yes, only 1st place pays for the Pick Six Contest.
My opinions Jordan:
No limit on how many times one can use an AStar driver. That complicated things and doesn’t work for me.
Salary Cap Challenge – no, do not allow modification’s during the season. Leave it as it is; a true pick em and weep game. Easy to play.
Auction Series – no, don’t put limits on how many drivers each bidder can end up owning. This’ll kill the game. People won’t bid on earlier auctioned drivers as they’ll fear they’ll ‘reach their quota’ before the top ranked drivers are suctioned at the end of the night.
Its never bothered me that one or two players buys several drivers. The odds of me winning money in the end are the same whether 10 drivers are all owned by one person or they’re each owned by a separate person.
Great job all-around my friend!