FINAL THOUGHTS
Well our first season on the Sleeper platform is in the books and alas it was not as smooth sailing as I had hoped for.
Some major issues for me as commissioner are despite being assured I could do all the same things I could on NFL.com’s fantasy platform that simply turned out to be untrue.
For a start the IL is meant to be and has always been a non-fractional scoring league but on Sleeper that is not an offered setting it seems - so we had to have fractional scoring this season just gone, - against my wishes. I have contacted Sleeper support to ask if they can allow this option for next season but they do not reply to e-mails. Sadly their support has turned out to be just as bad as NFL.com’s was (and that was one of my main reasons for switching platforms as I was assured Sleeper were great at that)! Sleeper have completely blanked me with regards to listening to feedback or responding to requests for support when I have posed them questions. The ‘Support Center’ button on their website does not work - clicking on it does nothing other than highlighting the words Support Center but never loads anything (is it supposed to)?
At the bottom of the screen (see below screen grab) it says the following:
If the conversation tooling fails to help, you can always contact Sleeper Support via Email support@sleeper.app.
Well I have sent about a dozen e-mails to support@sleeper.app without getting so much as an acknowledgement let alone any kind of reply to any questions asked, feedback submitted or requests made. I have even resorted to calling them out on ‘X’ in the hope I could get some kind of response from someone at Sleeper but still no joy.
It’s like the twilight zone - I was assured by Shawn Brenchley (NEW ZEALAND GM) that Sleeper were on the ball and very responsive to requests and so forth but that has not been my experience this season just finished.
The other very time consuming unforeseen issues I have encountered are around display issues that differ between the sleeper website and the sleeper app. On the website it does not show team logos or team names - but usernames and user logos - which is most awkward for this league as we are competing as countries. So all the screen shots you see in this thread including poll results have all been manually created by me as originally they all show usernames and user logos - not team names and logos. So I have had to screen grab the regular season standings table on the app - where it does show team names and logs (aka COUNTRY NAMES & FLAGS), send that to myself in an e-mail then open said e-mail on my laptop and copy the pictures across into the paint programme where I then edit them and spend hours to create the displays needed showing correct team names and logos (aka country names and flags) to replace sleeper usernames and user logos. Just so I can show in the poll vote results, final tables and playoff trees etc., all the correct countries and flags. All this was standard on NFL.com but due to this weird display discrepancy in how Sleeper displays things now takes me so much more added time.
Furthermore on NFL.com once a season was over it showed in the history area where every team officially finished for that season - this was important for working out the draft order for the following season as we have custom rules governing that. Alas Sleeper does not do this - there is no final list of where each team officially finished so I again have had to spend time having to work this out manually and then create a screen grab to show this by again cutting and pasting the team names and logos from the regular season final standings tables on the app. So loads of work to make the screen grabs you see in the posts above and why it has taken me so long to finish all this off since the fantasy season ended.
I do all this because I really care about this league, like to keep a history and make it available to all by having it viewable on this forum so anyone can go back and see who finished where, or what the results of polls were etc.
I wish someone from Sleeper would read this and take on board this stuff but alas don’t think they are interested in making their platform even better by incorporating some of the options NFL.com has like:
- Commissioner ability to lock various actions on a per team basis. i.e. to make trades, adds, drops, vote in polls etc.,
- a setting to have a non fractional scoring league
- having as much functionality on the website as the app
- make app and website league displays match (perhaps have a toggle switch so commissioners can choose whether to display team names and logos or usernames and logos)
