The Simple Made Stupid: EA Sports Fantasy Football Review

[HaemishM]

Fuck EA in their tiny little asses.

[WayAbvPar]

I don't hate EA quite as much as Haemish, but I may hate the FF more. The website was just godawful, and having to pay for the privilege of slogging through it several times a week was just insult to injury. If you want a game, go buy it- don't subject yourself to the pain of the fantasy football 'service' for a chance at a free game.

[Nebu]

Any chance we could get more concrete examples?  I realize from your review that player information and a few of the site features are clunky, but does the system have any merits?  I've been playing FF for years in both pay and free leagues and find that every system has problems. For example, Yahoo settings can be very limiting as far as scoring schemes and roster slots.  Also limitations in how playoffs are handled or omitted.  Each site that I've played on has a significant number of tradeoffs.  I tend to choose a service based on getting the scoring/draft/team settings that fit our league's style of play.  It got so bad one year that I ran my league entirely using excel spreadsheets. 

Does the EA site offer anything unique that makes it an alternative to other forms available on the web or is it really such a limited copy of what already exists?

[WayAbvPar]

It has most of the features you would expect from a pay site, but they are cleverly hidden behind far too many non-intuitive dropdown menus. An example of annoying feature- you can view your team on on screen, but are unable to make any changes (add/drops. lineup changes, etc) without going to an entirely different menu.

The dropdown menu bits were the worst- you can't see what all the choices are, so you are stuck mousing over the whole goddamned screen trying to find out how to set your lineup.

I have used 3 pay sites (CBS, ESPN, and EA) and one free site (Yahoo), and EA is easily the worst among them. Were I to choose a winner among those, CBS Sportsline wins in a walk.

[Nebu]

I have used 3 pay sites (CBS, ESPN, and EA) and one free site (Yahoo), and EA is easily the worst among them. Were I to choose a winner among those, CBS Sportsline wins in a walk.

The worst because of the difficulty in managing the convoluted mechanics of the site or the worst because it has the fewest features?  This is what I'm asking.  What features is it missing?  Also, is there nothing that EA offers that can't be found elsewhere?

[WayAbvPar]

There weren't any features I found glaringly missing. There may have been extra features that were the bee's knees, but that I never found due to the interface. I seriously spent as little time as I could managing my team there because the process was so irritating.

[Nebu]

Here's my thing:  I love yahoo, but there are 2 really big things that I hated about their setup.

1) You are forced to have a playoff.  I hate playoffs in FF because later in the season the more valuable players are often resting if their team has clinched.  We often just end our season after week 12 or 13 and the best record wins.

2) The roster was too limiting.  Our leagues use a pretty unorthodox scoring and bench setup and most online leagues won't accomodate it. 

To WAP and Haemish: Thanks for the input on EA.  I wasn't considering it even remotely and your comments help cement that feeling.

[HaemishM]

I found no features on EA's site that I haven't seen on other sites, both pay and free. It's most complete feauture seemed to be retracting money from the wallet of people who don't know about Sportsline or Yahoo.

EDIT: Ok, so the competition for a free game was something it did over the others. But it's an EA game. Leprosy, whorehouse, venereal disease, withered genitalia.

[Sky]

My prediction: EA buys the right to ALL FANTASY NFL FOOTBALL.

I just want my NFL2k6.