I think the way we manually rank our draft board could be so much more user friendly. Ideally, I'd love to see either a drag-and-drop draft board (don't know how feasible this is, but it would be MUCH appreciated) or a way to import draft rankings from a text file or spreadsheet or something. For example, if we could just import a text file with a number on each line corresponding to a player's previous rank, and the new rankings would reflect the order that we want the players ranked, it would save me hours every season. Again, I don't know if this is a feasible possibility, but I'd LOVE to see it implemented. Would greatly increase my enjoyment of the game, and would probably cause me to add more teams. The thing that prevents me from adding more is how time-consuming the amateur draft pre-ranking is. At the very least, PLEASE make the ranking window bigger, or give us the option to expand it so we don't only have to see 20 players at a time.

WIS has stated they don't like this idea because it gives an unfair advantage to those skilled in excel, word, etc.  Frankly, I agree.  Though a drag and drop system would be sweet.

Every player has a number (their previous ranking). You then arrange those numbers in a text file in the order you want. One to a line. It takes more skill to log onto the web and get to whatifsports.com than to do this.

Posted by jimmystick on 7/1/2010 10:51:00 PM (view original):
WIS has stated they don't like this idea because it gives an unfair advantage to those skilled in excel, word, etc.  Frankly, I agree.  Though a drag and drop system would be sweet.

Not sure I really care about this issue but did they really say word and excel are part of the game? Not exactly what you said but are owners supposed to buy Microsoft office or something now? That shouldn't even be a thought process when designing a game. If they want to change something, a software program should not be the leading cause to or not to.

I'm just repeating what I've read from the dev chats and forums.  WIS does not want people who are very skilled with excel to be able to export, rank, and import because people who don't know how to do that will be at a disadvantage.  It makes sense.  

Posted by jimmystick on 7/2/2010 10:38:00 AM (view original):
I'm just repeating what I've read from the dev chats and forums.  WIS does not want people who are very skilled with excel to be able to export, rank, and import because people who don't know how to do that will be at a disadvantage.  It makes sense.  

That makes no sense, all you do is export it to excel manually and then do it anyway.

Posted by mitchrapp on 7/2/2010 5:39:00 AM (view original):

Posted by jimmystick on 7/1/2010 10:51:00 PM (view original):
WIS has stated they don't like this idea because it gives an unfair advantage to those skilled in excel, word, etc.  Frankly, I agree.  Though a drag and drop system would be sweet.

Not sure I really care about this issue but did they really say word and excel are part of the game? Not exactly what you said but are owners supposed to buy Microsoft office or something now? That shouldn't even be a thought process when designing a game. If they want to change something, a software program should not be the leading cause to or not to.

OpenOffice is free and does the same thing.

Maybe I don't want to use it. The point being, if they are thinking about a certain change, they shouldn't use excel and word as a reason not to because people are already using it and they should keep that advantage because they "excel" at it. That's just dumb.

I know jimmy stick, you're just reporting. No offense intended with my post.

I don't use excel or any other 3rd party suite to rank my players.  For 10 straight seasons I did it the old fashioned way.  I ranked guys manually.  And it took a good 4-6 hours spread out over the course of the week to do it too.  honestly.  Last season I started using the formula builder, only because for the first time I picked really late in the first round (30th I believe) and I knew I wasn't getting anybody of value that late anyway, so 15 minutes on the formula builder and I was done.  

I know a few others who don't use excel too.  They can make an export/import feature and I'd be ok with it.  I don't think it's going to happen any time soon, same thing with indivual base stealing settings.

Drag and drop would be the easiest solution. The current interface is tedious in the extreme.

I'd love to see a drag and drop UI as well and that was the initial way that I wanted to do it. 

As for importing, another reason why we don't want to allow importing is because we do not want to support third party products (i.e. Excel). You can see how if Excel failed or they came out with a new version that is no longer supported by us how that could negatively impact you guys.