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Feel free to use this thread to post your comments and/or suggestions about MAL's Fantasy Anime League.

Why has FAL always limited the bench to only 1 or 2 titles and 3 swaps for the whole season? I think increasing the bench size and number of allowed swaps would make for more interesting week-to-week decisions. The way it is now, it seems you have no shot of changing your fortune if your initial group underperforms in the early weeks. A bench of 4 and up to one swap per week would give more people a fighting chance.

With 4 benched anime, you could cover pretty much every popular anime of any season. Combined with swaps every week, you'd just need to make sure you have the top 5 in every time. Would probably actually make it harder to get anything less than a near perfect score.

You could have a bench (also selected at the start) that only becomes active in the last few weeks maybe? And maybe remove the one-time limit for the instant swap?
Sounds like this would all just make it harder to manage for the team organising this though.

How about a Award for the winner? Like a Card, display picture, signature, or new layout?

We're going to award the top 3 with a banner for extra bragging rights.

Decreasing the bench time too much defeats the purpose of having benched players and would support just having more active titles and no benches at all. The setup as it is allows for people to choose the perspective titles that may do well while having a few backup titles they can use if necessary.

Maybe the bench could be switched to every 2 weeks, but the whole point of Fantasy leagues is speculation and management. Its like poker or stocks, and not everyone will win.

Fantasy sports leagues are popular because Joe Shmoe can make meaningful decisions for his favorite teams, managing active and inactive players, trades, free agency, etc every week. 3 weeks (nearly 1/3 of the season) of prohibited activity after a single bench move reduces the decisions one can make. What sense is there to have to wait so long?

I don't want to blow up your game if it has worked, but the format hasn't changed since the beginning. No one has thought of something or wanted to try something different to improve the player experience?

They already have to wildcard and ace point system to allow people to strategize with their teams more. As far as allowing more versatility and improving the whole experience, its hard to work with an open, non-limited draft of only 60 titles among alot of people. Some people already have the same exact teams, though how they play is entirely up to them. The decision with bench movement could be a deciding factor if they win or not. So maybe shortening the time of bench swapping will allow for a better influence on how well a team does( though we do have a wildcard to allow the player to sacrifice points for the possibly needed bench swap

ANYWAYS, What about challenging another team once a week, like a wager match for whomever has a better point total among the two teams or possibly guessing general point ranges of your top three chosen titles. Something like this could add more competition and interaction between users rather than just wildcards as a means to weaken opposing teams.

I like the guessing point range idea if you guess the total point range right or something you get a bonus and if you're way off you get negative points. However the wager between teams is too much. I think with 100+ teams it would be too hard to manage all of those things and make things even harder on the ones that run this thing for us. Plus it would hurt those that weren't socially active which I find unfair.

An idea that came to mind related to guessing a point range. Right now FAL is all about speculating the absolute most popular new shows each season, reducing the attention to the top 7-8 shows. Also, the bonus for starting infrequently picked shows is minuscule compared the points earned by a typical popular show. But what if players had to build a team that included middle and low 'tiered' anime? It would better test your perception of popularity across the whole spectrum instead of focusing on the top few.

It could work like this:
Each player submits a team of 3 High Tier, 2 Mid Tier, and 2 Low Tier shows (and 3(?) bench spots). The High Tier is scored as always, being the most popular shows everyone knows and bringing in the majority of points each week. Mid Tier shows are anime you speculate are in the middle of popularity. They would be point multiplied x1.5, but if one ends in the top 1/3rd that week, it 'busts' and gets 0 points. This dissuades picking all of the very popular shows because you would lose out on Mid Tier points. Low Tier shows would work likewise; point multiplied x2, but bust if they are in the top 2/3rd. Swaps can occur between Tiers or with your Bench, and are limited to 2 or so swaps per week.

This way, the anime series have roles you assign them, and less popular shows remain important because of their designated team position and the point multiplier. More players can stay relevant even if they miss on High Tier shows because they might end up having good scoring Mid and Low Tiers. It certainly is a more complex system, but I think people will enjoy the level of control and decision making that comes with it.

@kadian1364

I'm just a first-time FAL participant so perhaps my perception is off, but doesn't that seem like a lot more work for the mods? I don't agree that the bonus for starting infrequently picked shows is miniscule - this is about picking shows that will be popular, so the more popular an infrequently picked show is, the bigger the bonus. That'll show itself more as the weeks progress, I would think. While I can understand the idea you came up with, I find that it makes things overly complicated and being able to make more swaps (while it is understandable in your proposal in order to prevent someone from seriously bombing) seems to take away from the challenge of sticking with a set team for a while. Sometimes simpler is better.

Interesting idea would be to allow one roster swap per season where you can change one of your anime to put another in place at the cost of some points and one of your swaps. It could only be accessed like the first 3-4 weeks or so and the top 5 or 10 anime or so couldn't be chosen to get in. It would give those that chose a dud to get back in. That would add the workload for everyone here though so it's just a idea.

To be honest, there isn't really anything that can be removed from FAL at the moment considering how little one can actually do. As such, practically every suggestion is going to be more work for the organisers.

I'm somewhat against the roster swap simply because the entire point of fantasy leagues is to pick the right team from the start.
On the other hand, really liking the tier idea as it puts a LOT more strategy into things. Almost everyone would end up having unique teams as well since it would no longer be as simple as choosing the top 7 anime. At the same time though, the complexity could actually scare people off. We want something that can attract as many members of MAL as possible (the club has only 844 members at the moment, there's no reason that number shouldn't be far higher).

But who would divide the tiers and decided on what basis? Wouldn't the tier divider already say pretty much what shows are going to yield a lot of points and which aren't?

I think some sort of achievments/bonus would be nice. Something like, for example, if an anime's "Watching" amount changes less than X% form one week to the other, then you get the "Dedicated fanbase" bonus, which gives a 10% bonus for that anime's points (or you could even make the bonus grow, for each week that the number doesn't hange). Or if the amount increases more than say, 30%, then you get the "Explosive comeback" bonus, etc.
That'd make choosing more niché shows beneficial, since the amount of watchers for non-popular shows usually doesn't change that much, I think. And also praises those who manage to pick the hidden gems that explode later on.

If the tiers were going to be done, I have to guess that it would be decided beforehand. Like, let's say we have 51 shows. The top 17 are upper tier, 18-34 are middle tier, and 35 and lower are low tier. This would be based on weekly points performance.

Compared to the tiers idea, I think the Dedicated Fanbase and Explosive Comeback bonuses could be doable and a lot more interesting without being excessively complicated to work out. Would this be done every single week, or less often?

I don't see why it couldn't be done every week. Although I'm just proposing an idea.

You could simply have restrictions on the anime you could put in each tier within your team? As long as the penalty for putting a really popular anime in a low tier in your team is high then everyone will be forced to think about which anime will most likely be unpopular and choose them.
This way it's actually more like just entering two or three smaller teams from the beginning, one for a popularity contest and one for an unpopularity contest (and one in the middle), where they all contribute to your one score.

The dedicated fanbase and explosive comeback ideas are pretty good, certainly make unpopular shows more worthwhile. Well as it stands, I think we can pretty much say that this is the flaw in FAL at the moment. You HAVE to get THE most popular shows right from week 1 otherwise you may as well accept your loss.

Being able to edit your team before registration ends would be nice. While it does make for a bit more work depending on how the process worked out, I think it would be helpful enough to warrant being available. If necessary, there could be a limit on how many times you could edit it in order to keep those compiling the team rosters from getting flooded with excessive changes, like two maximum.

Just joining this club to make this post - I won't be a member by the time you are reading this. Though I may rejoin to comment on replies.

There have been quite a few people posting about the lack of movement and lots of people at the top having one of just 2 or 3 different team combinations and thus getting the same score every week.

How about this for something to make things a bit more interesting:

Every week, the team that got the highest unique score that week gets a point bonus of, say, 2500 points.
This would provide an incentive for people to try to avoid getting the same team as everyone else right from the start, without actually penalising those who do it. For those with the same team as masses of other people it would encourage tactical use of aces and wildcards to get themselves a different score from the others, which would maintain interest. It would also provide a purpose for the booster wildcard beyond just a one-off bonus for anyone who is paying attention.
To prevent the effect of this from getting too big, each player would be limited to only receiving this point bonus once.

For example:

week 1:
player A - 34430
player B - 34430
player C - 33973
player D - 31424

As player A and player B have the same score as each other, player C would get the point boost here, increasing his score to 36473

week 2:
player A - 74322
player B - 74322
player C - 73974
player D - 73242

This time player D would get the point boost, increasing his score to 75742, as player C has already got it and so cannot get it again

total scores at end of week 2:
player C - 110447
player A - 108752
player B - 108752
player D - 107166

The point bonus has enabled player C to get rank 1, boosting him with his unique team over player A and player B who went for the same team. However, the effect isn't all that big - player D, despite also getting the point bonus, was unable to overtake players A and B.
Some adjustments to the point reward may be necessary, but you want to be providing incentives for people to go for this without making it crucial to getting a top ranking. Looking at the current ranking figures, 2500 seems to be a reasonable value for this which is why I picked it.

But does this put players who have all gone for the optimal team at a disadvantage? Unlike most suggestions to encourage unique teams, no it does not.

To demonstrate, look at what happens if player A uses an ace in week 1 for an extra 1k points.
In week 1, player A gets the bonus, as well as the 1k points for the ace. Player C does not get the bonus, but instead gets it in week 2. Player D does not get a bonus in either week (but is still able to get it in a later week).

scores after first 2 weeks:
player A - 112252
player C - 110447
player B - 108752
player D - 104666

Now, player A is in the lead. Note, however, that had player A and player B BOTH successfully used an ace in that first week, neither would have got the bonus, and so player C would have been on top after those two weeks. Hence the tactical element of it.

For even more detail of the tactical nature, you only have to look at the impact this would have had on the current FAL season.
In week 1, LeopardTheGreat would have got the bonus, with his unique team.
In week 2, however, the points would have gone to Dilvish. Yes, that's right - his FAILING an ace gave him the highest unique score for that week. With this system, one would be able to tactically LOSE points, in order to give themself the highest unique score. After all, the 2500 point boost from the highest unique score outweighs any of the losses from ace failure or wildcards. Is that a bad thing? No. After all, it again provides more of a reason to do things that at the moment are basically useless, and it is basically a gamble. If it pays off, you have just boosted your score (although you may have been able to win through a different method later anyway). If it fails, you've just hurt yourself for no reason.

It adds a whole new level of strategy, boosts incentives for actually using wildcards which at the moment are largely pointless (especially the extra swap one which would go from basically useless to the least painful of the point-reducer gambles that one could do), and also encourages people to seek out team combinations that not too many other people are using (even if there are multiple people with a team combo, it's easier to get the score boost when there's 2 of you than when there are 10). All that, without being over-powered and without forcing people into weaker teams or teams they don't actually want. Not bad, right?

Anyway, that's my idea.
Wonder if anyone will actually bother to read it.

Some quick suggestions I've thought of:

1. Week 1 swaps shouldn't be allowed. This season, too many players were able to correct their mistakes by a quick swap, thus making the whole purpose of having an initial team pointless.

2. We need more variety. Having a 5+2 team usually allows to cover the most popular shows as long as the player did some research. So it would be nice to change something in this regard. For example,

a) As previously suggested by others, increase team or bench size. The former could be better I guess, but I'm not really fond of this idea as a whole.

b) Decrease team or bench size. That was done before, and is a better option than the previous one imo.

c) Make swaps obligatory. For example, we can have a rule that requires players to swap at least 3 times per season. Perhaps we can even have fixed weeks for that (say, week 4, week 7 and week 10), or that could be done whenever players wish. We can also add another wildcard option that would allow to reduce the number of obligatory swaps to 2. Personally, I like this, since it will require players to put more thoughts into planning.

d) A bit crazy suggestion but still: in some sports, the best and the worst results of a participant don't count for the final score. We can have something like this as well (thus, it won't matter how many points the best and the worst show you have on your team scored, only 3 middle ones). This could also work together with the increase of the team size.

3. More things to award points for. For example, an X points for every review of a series that has more votes as "helpful" than "not helpful" by the end of the season. Can't think of anything else at the moment.

4. The length of the game. At the moment, it's 14 weeks, but there's not many series that last for 14 episodes. Most of them end by the week 13 or even 12. So, shortening the game period is something that could be considered as well.