Draftstars: Awesome, thanks DS. Lampy Chriseddy999 jayk123

Draftstars: Thanks guys! Hopefully we see a big increase in H2H numbers for 1st week of AFL finals. Also thanks for implementing the player projections for multi game slates.

Draftstars: Great move, love it.

I just tried to create heaps of games and they aren't appearing in the lobby, but my balance has been hit from them.

Tiny bit worried as it was a fairly large amount. Do they take a while to appear? Or do I needa call someone?

Chriseddy999: they are visible, however looks we have a bug when the AFL filter is active. Will get it fixed.

You can also view all your stacked entries in "My Contests" https://play.draftstars.com.au/my-contests/upcoming and they have an icon to show you they are not visible in the lobby yet.

Draftstars: One bug I noticed is that if you create 5 H2Hs, and then try to change your primary lineup under 'My Teams', the teams in your H2Hs that are currently hidden from view do NOT change.

So you have to manually go through your 'My Contests' tab and open up each hidden H2H and then import->update. I got caught out on the first 2 AFL games playing my placeholder lineup in a number of matchups, and lost.

Please look into that this week.

Overall, did you see much of an increase in H2H comps?

Lampy: thanks for reporting this. I will get the tech team to fix this first thing.

Draftstars: why is rake twice as high for "user created" h2hs? (as though there is such a thing as a h2h that isn't user created...) is this going to be our only way to put up more than 1 per stake at a time?

jayk123: this was noted above and consistent with the original Draftstars rake system:

Yes, it will be the only way to put up more than 1 per stake at a time.

Draftstars: Oh please. The original DS site charged more for user created CUSTOM games, like if someone wanted to use a $120k salary cap or create some weird multi day slate that wasn't offered traditionally. Being able to create multiple h2hs per stake is a core feature of all DFS sites. It doesn't (and shouldn't) result in increased rake anywhere else.

Clearly no-one's going to put up any bs user created h2hs, so you obviously want those of us that put up games to get irritated at our games constantly falling out of the lobby and those of us that take games to have less choice available to us because... reasons? I guess you just don't want people to play h2h?

jayk123: we built the H2H's inline with this thread and set out the rake structure upfront with no hidden surprises. We would have built an entirely different system if not for the requests here.

We understand the industry standard is 10% rake on H2H's and we chose to continue with 5% for Draftstars created H2H contests out of good will and support of the feature.

We will take your feedback on board and monitor the progress of H2H's on the platform.

Draftstars: Are you guys going to make it possible to sit more than 1 table at a given limit, with only 1 of those tables showing in the lobby?

For example, PlayerA should be able to sit as many $5 tables they please, but only one of them displays in the lobby. So when one of them is joined and taken off the lobby, a new table displaying PlayerA and an empty spot is created.

Seems like a no brainer from your end as you're missing out on a lot of potential rake. Regs are only able to sit one table per limit atm and they won't notice when it's taken, leaving periods where no one is sitting > less rake for you guys and worsens customer experience.

Chriseddy999: we support that with user created H2H here: https://play.draftstars.com.au/create-challenge

Draftstars: But I'm better off playing blackjack :\

Draftstars: Can you up the max stake limit of NRL H2H's you can sit at to 4 please? There isn't enough action at $100+ games to make it worth sitting them at the expense of 10, 20,50 etc.

Draftstars: Thanks DS. Do DS admins have to create new H2H's manually as they see them or will the system auto-create an open H2H as one is joined?

Knova: we just setup the initial H2H, then when 1 person joins it will clone.

Draftstars: Couple of little things re: the rollout:

1) There's a bug where if the first h2h you take of someone else's is their biggest one, you can't take their smaller ones along side it.

2) Please give us h2hs on every slate including all the smaller ones. There's already a nice h2h tab right there in the lobby, you could just move all h2hs to that tab and take them out of the main lobby to get rid of the clutter. The first DS client was built that way anyway - we needed to tick a box to see h2hs, they weren't there as a default, so it won't be a completely new thing. (Although if you just wanna make sure ppl know h2hs are back for a little while first then that makes sense)

3) On the app, you can't see who each h2h belongs to. Some kind of identifier is needed there so that ppl can easily pick who they wanna play instead of getting annoying clicking around to see who each one is and it often being someone they either don't want to play or aren't allowed to play anymore bc of the 3 stake rule.

Thanks for getting h2hs back to us, and great work with all the changes lately!

jayk123: thanks for the follow up.

1) This is not a bug, it was requested and discussed above by Knova:

"E.g. If you join someone's $20 H2H, then they cannot join any H2H you put up for $20 or lower for that slate. If you were to put up a $50 or higher H2H after joining the $20 H2H, then they would be able to join the $50 one, and then not be able to join any additional H2H's of $50 or less against you subsequently."

2) We only just turned them on, so will keep adding slates as we go. We do recognise the lobby will get out of control with H2H's, so your idea of just having them in the H2H tab is probably where we will end up.

3) I think you are referring to the "join more contests" screen. It currently doesn't show who has joined yet, whereas the lobby does show this on mobile & desktop.

It was an early release so we didn't go another weekend without H2H's. More to come!

Draftstars: thanks for the reply! re: point 1), i think that what knova meant was that if for example, Player A puts up a $10, $20, and $50, player B takes those 3 games, and player A then later puts up a $100, player B should still be able to take that game because that player's "highest stake" has now changed. this stops people being able to exploit the system by putting up smaller games until people above them take them, then putting up bigger ones. however, in it's current form, if someone puts up a $10, $20, and $50, you can click the $10 then the $20 then the $50 and take all 3 (which i assume is how it's meant to work), but if you happen to click the $50 first, you can't click the $20 or the $10 anymore, which is just annoying. seems like you should always be able to click someone 3 times, even if you arbitrarily happen to click on their biggest game first.

jayk123: Correct on my point for point 1.

Re point 2: I felt the "tax" people should pay to put up H2H games in the lobby was 1x their highest stake against anyone who wants it, not 1x each stake they sit at against anyone who wants it as others suggested, so the DS system is operating as I envisioned.

The idea of someone putting H2H's up in the lobby and having someone work up the ladder taking their $10, $20, $50 H2H's was not really my intention but I'm okay with that being a thing if someone wants to be first to the trough to put up their games. They could always come to the party later and take everyone else's H2H's at the highest stake they want to play to stop people doing that to them. The one issue I see with this method would be looking at ChrisEddy in AFL who sits at stakes beyond what most players would open games at, so he could always ladder h2h's against everyone.

Draftstars there's also this issue of not being able to sit more than once at a given limit. Players should be able to sit infinite $500s for example, the key being that only one will show in the lobby at a time.

When you click the + sign to join a H2H table after entering your team, it shouldn't be capped to 1. It should be unlimited, though only 1 of them showing per limit.

Draftstars The '+' sign highlighted on the right should go to infinite, or at least 5.

And the other two highlighted parts are two full H2Hs. They should show the contestant sitting in that table just like the open lobby does. Maybe with a ($100, $50) in brackets, if you've already matched them at the $100 and $50 limits.

Chriseddy999: Yep agree with both of these. I think that is DS's intention but because we are all so antsy about getting H2H's back they put them up early for us whilst they iron out the kinks. Something I'm very happy about!

jayk123: the post from Knova specifies once you join the $20 H2H you can't join another H2H for $20 or lower (for that slate/user). This is how we implemented the rule. It sounds like you might want a different rule that replaces this one?

Knova: we think we implemented the rule as originally requested. Maybe there is a grey area that wasn't considered?

Chriseddy999: yes, you will be able to sit as many H2H's for that limit as you can pay entries for (maybe we will put an arbitrary limit in place) once we have the user created H2H's in place with the cloning feature and they will open in the lobby by themselves once filled. (We released early) ;)

Your second point might not be feasible as it's completely different logic on the "submit more" screen. Once we have the user created H2H, it might become less required.

Draftstars: Ahhh yep, gotcha. Thought this may have been the finished product. Sounds good, cheers boys!

Draftstars: Nah you implemented as originally requested. Thanks DS

Draftstars: Really enjoying having H2H's back so thanks DS.

The new system looks to be working as intended but I'll leave the AFL guys to comment on it in more detail.

Here is some quick feedback for the little things with H2H's for the next update:

Draftstars: Will you guys be introducing an 'unregister' option? Because that would be useful with the limit of 3 open H2H contests at any one time. Example say if you had 3 open H2H contests at $5, $10, $20 and weren't getting any action, so you wanted to get rid of your $10 H2H and open up a $50 H2H.

Draftstars: Is this for all sports? The issues the "3 stake max" address don't even exist in NRL. Is it possible to have NRL be 5 stake max or 4 stake max and monitor it moving forward whilst keeping the other sports at 3 stake max?

Lampy: this makes sense for H2H's. We will add this to stage 2 of delivery.

Knova: initially it will apply to any sport to reduce scope and get it live. We can review this once it's live.

Draftstars: Well done fellas, unreal customer service. Seriously impressive. That solution hit the nail on the head and solves everything imo. Not sure I fully understand point 3 though, but from what I gather it seems good as well.

Draftstars what about some extra high stakes alternatives between now and the release of the new H2H stuff? Can't see any downside to offering a few extra high stakes games or mid-high stakes games as they always fill. Just more rake for you guys and happier regulars between now and then.

Not a priority obviously, but seems pretty easy and logical to do

Chriseddy999: Thanks!

Point 3 was to address Knova idea here;

"E.g. If you join someone's $20 H2H, then they cannot join any H2H you put up for $20 or lower for that slate. If you were to put up a $50 or higher H2H after joining the $20 H2H, then they would be able to join the $50 one, and then not be able to join any additional H2H's of $50 or less against you subsequently."

Draftstars: Point 4 should be optional, similar to old ability to turn MMB on/off. Not sure if it is/isn't here given wording. 90% of people will have it on but if 2 guys want to go at it with multiple h2h's per slate against each other, they should be able to.

The other points are sufficient to stop someone forcefully taking multiple H2H's against someone who doesn't want to play them more than once

Chriseddy999: we will throw a few up and see how they are received. Keep in mind, none of the above will apply. They will just be normal contests with max 2 entrants, payout Top 1.

Knova: this use case could be handled with "private contests" once we turn them on. We have tried to keep the rules generic to benefit the majority of users.

Draftstars: Great to. See feedback is being taken on board with the construction. Tip of the hat for that.

I also believe @chriseddy is on the right track with a rankings system, though i would like to see it implemented with tiers. Now i get that this is big money for some of the players on here and they are very good at fantasy sports, but the same people winning all the time with their 50 entries takes the fun out for people like myself who only pop in 1 or 2 lineups. This is why h2h is disproportionately popular on this site, we have a much greater chance of an equal contest and even a few wins. This is not to knock Jaykay or knova or kiwinoz or any of the other players i would deem "top tier". Good luck to them, but i know i avoid h2h with knova et al, but really enjoy my long running battles with ropatitime, muddy and the like. I think a lot of beginner players get turned off when they try their hand in a mini (where the winner had 50 entries) and a h2h against a top tier player, and get completely flogged, thus losing interest. I would like to see a number or letter appear next the players name to allow players to, match up with players of a similar record/ability. And bring back single entry features, God I miss them. I really enjoy DStars and have been on here a few years now, but i rarely play the features anymore because of the same people winning using their multi lineups systems consistently. H2H is the most fun aspect of ds these days and i think we lesser players need to be protected to some extent, we play for the enjoyment, not as a 2nd income. Again, not having a go at the top tier guys, just trying to create a more level playing field for the rest of us to keep enjoying ourselves.

MPFairhall: thanks for the valuable feedback. We had discussed internally about a ranking system. Lots of room for improvement ahead of us here.

Draftstars: as i said earlier, i think its great that your taking feedback on board and ha ing the players themselves involved in the process. Well done.

Deleted post, as just saw DS post while I was writing.

This would also be the same for the players who don't want too post in lobby and just lurk in the corner. too access h2h's in lobby you need to click enter h2h contests, 1-10, 2-20, 5-50, 10-100, 20-200, 50-500. 1 "room" per slate allowed. once joined a contest from a particular room then you cant join another room. think this would encourage a steps progression. if player is doing well in the 2-20 then he can move up to the $5-$50 and play his $20 games but maybe throw in a $50 without having to compete with a $50-$500 player for the $50 h2h. Also it doesn't have to be them set ranges, but that just an example

Instorgata: Nah mate, that's a great suggestion. That's exactly what I'm suggesting, except a limit of 3 stakes instead of the 10% rule. Basically you're limit would be 5 stakes.

And your point about the weak players never open sitting is something I discussed earlier when jayk123 said,

"i don't think that it's good for the game for people to select the "protect me from being preyed on" option and still get sniped multiple times in a row by the same person when they put up games. there's just something psychological/emotional that happens when someone takes more than one of your games. to me that's the exact type of thing that drives recs away"

Clearly speaking for himself, and not weak players at all. As he's well aware that no weak players ever open sit. And if they do, it's never more than one table that is always snapped up within 10 minutes anyway. I replied to jayk123 with all of this but he hasn't replied.

I also replied to him about him absurdly suggesting I may have a hidden agenda with my 3 band limit suggestion. What don't you get mate? I'm the #1 cash player on Draftstars - literally every further restriction to the rules is going to be WORSE for me. I'm doing the exact opposite of what you're suggesting I'm doing. What don't you get about that? If I was fighting for my own profits, I'd have the band as wide as possible. I'd be agreeing with what everyone is saying in here.

You can't keep making completely incoherent statements that attack my integrity and not back them up as soon as I call you out on them. Because to the naked eye, people will actually believe the nonsense coming out of your mouth. You have this weird tendency to just make completely absurd or contradictory statements that you express with such confidence that most people would just take as the truth. And that's not on when you're speaking about me (I'm not just referencing this instance, you know what I'm referencing).

This all might seem like an overreaction, but there have now been numerous instances now where you've attacked my character with completely false/misleading statements to which I've let slide.

You are just a solid regular who parades around like an elite reg and disguises his intentions behind everything he says. In reality, only your volume is what makes you decent, and you're very worried that all of these changes will ruin any profits you are making. Everything you suggest is in some way beneficial to you and it's so transparent. Stop overselling yourself and misleading people that are otherwise oblivious.

Chriseddy999: Haha woah. That was quite the twist ending after pleasantly scrolling through all of that discussion. I'm not interested in trainwrecking what has been a fruitful and promising thread so far. DM me if you want :)

Re: the thing about feeling "preyed on". On MB, I have a rule for myself where I don't take more than 1 of anyone's game unless they're playing high stakes. But obviously sometimes you forget someone's SN, and take their game the night before, then in the morning they put up another one and you see it and take it. (There are a lot of Jimmy07 and Johhny29s out there, especially early in each season.) I've had numerous people complain in the chat when I've mistakenly taken the second one, despite me rarely ever doing it. And anyone that's lurked the Rotogrinders board over the years can attest to the endless whining about people at small stakes having multiple games taken by Saahil, Chipotle etc.

Obviously that's all just anecdotal evidence, and maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me to be a thing. As you've suggested throughout your posts, the most important people are the recs, so asking them would be the best thing. Maybe DS could do some kind of targeted survey towards people that have played a reasonable amount of casual h2h?

Chriseddy999: Looking back at your original post, I echoed most of what you were suggesting without realising. So we're mostly on the same page. The only difference is my twist on it that instead of restricting players to 3 bands, have DS only provide 5 bands/stake levels total across the site for a player to choose from.

I'm sure your system would work, but can you explain the whole 3 band rule in one 'layman's terms' paragraph popup that a rec player would understand? If you can, and DS say that it won't be an issue implementing that framework, I'll vote for your system.

Basically, I think we're over-complicating things when we can have a relatively straight forward, easy to understand system that ticks almost every box.

Does anyone see any downside in funneling H2H action into 5 stake levels vs the previous 9 stake levels?

Oh and Chris, check your ego at the door before returning. No one likes a big head.

Lampy:

Doesn't feel very well written, but I think I'm just about done with this thread.

No arrogance involved Lamp. This was well, well overdue. One of the richer things I've heard in a while just quietly. If you disagree with anything, my door is always open for prop bets mate.