Dynasty Leagues on Sleeper

[BigBawseRoss]

i only tried it once and didnt like it at all, wouldnt do it again until i see a thread like this with all glowing reports. love mfl and agree with the guy that said mfl platinum is the way to work, much better for trades than on the site checking boxes.

[cp3]

I will never play on another MFL league. Clunky, counter intuitive interface at every turn and leagues are pulling out $50-$70 of the prize pool every year to be frustrated.

It's been said many times, but Sleeper blows MFL away in terms of mobile interface and UI in general. The lineup screen is intuitive and easy to use. No more having to click a submit button, just drag and drop. Free agency and waiver bids are easily done. No more separating into groups or anything overly complicated like MFL. Trading had it's quirks at the beginning but they quickly ironed them out and it's fluid and easy to use now, including the ability to do multi-team trades. Sleeper has also added a number of variable scoring formats as well including tiered PPR.

If you like customized graphics or multi-copy leagues and don't mind shelling out money every year for your host site to allow that, then Sleeper is NOT for you, but for everything else Sleepers interface and user experience is second to none.

[bjd5211]

I will never play on another MFL league. Clunky, counter intuitive interface at every turn and leagues are pulling out $50-$70 of the prize pool every year to be frustrated.

It's been said many times, but Sleeper blows MFL away in terms of mobile interface and UI in general. The lineup screen is intuitive and easy to use. No more having to click a submit button, just drag and drop. Free agency and waiver bids are easily done. No more separating into groups or anything overly complicated like MFL. Trading had it's quirks at the beginning but they quickly ironed them out and it's fluid and easy to use now, including the ability to do multi-team trades. Sleeper has also added a number of variable scoring formats as well including tiered PPR.

If you like customized graphics or multi-copy leagues and don't mind shelling out money every year for your host site to allow that, then Sleeper is NOT for you, but for everything else Sleepers interface and user experience is second to none.

MFL Platinum app is far better and simpler than Sleeper imo, it's pretty plain but overall much better and fast than Sleeper in my experience.

[dlf_jeffh]

Awesome input all. Please keep it coming if you have other thoughts and feelings about Sleeper. Thank you!

[M-Dub]

Never played on Sleeper, but weekly double headers and schedule customization are absolute deal breakers for me. Can anyone verify if Sleeper supports double headers?

[mild]

Keep the feedback coming ... the more detailed the better. Be very specific about the things you like and the things that need to be improved. Thanks so much.

Are you guys Sleeper affiliated...?

Or is this... for... something... else...

[FFChamp]

Agree with all the aforementioned Pros and Cons, don't think anything anyone's said is off base.

I think if you've been using MFL for a while and are used to navigating there, you will see Sleeper as a downgrade. If you never used MFL, or only used it for a season or two and have had issues with it not being "user friendly" you'll prefer Sleeper. Same goes for desktop vs mobile; MFL wins desktop, Sleeper for the most part wins mobile.

Probably the biggest Pro which needs to be emphasized again is their support. They are very quick to respond to any support questions/issues. They are constantly making upgrades and adding features and have come a very long way in a very short time. They also prioritize upgrades based on user feedback (aside from those dumb mascots, they were definitely a waste of time seeing some of the issues they could have fixed over that).

My biggest gripe, similar to above posters, are not having a few things which should be a staple in fantasy league platforms and seemed to be a major oversight and I'm not a programmer/developer, but I'd think they aren't that difficult to implement. I've been asking for them to at the very least track/total bench points for each week, preferably also tracking total roster points. We use this in our league to determine draft order for the losers bracket at the end of the season (don't think we are the only ones doing this either) and its really annoying to have to manually add up all the points scored by every bench player for every owner for every week of the season in order to figure out their total points scored starters+bench over the regular season. Hopefully this is implemented this year! *end rant*

Otherwise my league hated MFL (I personally didn't mind it once I got the hang of it) and after switching to Sleeper they are much happier. (They are all primarily mobile users as well).

This sounds like a nightmare for potential points which a lot of leagues use.

[FFChamp]

In two Sleeper leagues, absolutely despise it. The chat is incredibly slow and clunky, GroupMe is far superior. It doesn't display draft pick numbers when trading you have to refer to the draft chart and see which pick originally belongs to which team, and then go back to the trade screen. I do everything completely through mobile on my phone, and find MFL Platinum far simpler and even the MFL website better than using Sleeper. Overall just do not enjoy the app or see a single improvement over MFL besides being free, and the league fees are negligible anyway once split amongst rest of the league. We've already decided to move on of my leagues to MFL, and hopefully the 2nd one we migrate back to MFL after this year. I absolutely will not join another Sleeper league and am sticking with MFL for the foreseeable future.

We ran into the exact same issue in our test league last year. It was super annoying during the startup draft.

And I'll also second (3rd?) the mascot complaint. It gives it a really cheap phone game kind of vibe, and because it covers such a large part of the screen (on your phone at least) it is very difficult for me to ignore. The problem is also that unlike other issues I don't see them addressing that assuming it is their source of income.

A third issue for me was the lineup page. Unlike say ESPN I sometimes found it difficult to quickly see who was actually in my lineup. Maybe that was our setting, but it lead to mistakes in lineups on multiple teams in our leagues.

They have good aspects of course, as others have mentioned. The game day scoring system is a LOT better than MFL (which is always waaay behind), so is their UI for the most part, and I do like that they address issues quickly for the most part (unlike say ESPN), and that they send you real time twitter news on major news like trades. But I'd still rather pay MFL than have to deal with a damn mascot filling my screen.

I remember this being an issue in the past, but last season I found it was almost instant

[Dynasty_Analyst]

Long time MFL but have almost completely switched over to sleeper outside 2 leagues. Far more user friendly and encourages far more interaction and trading with your league.
It took me a couple days to get used to it but there draft interface is much better, it shows the whole draftboard in a much more condensed way then the giant list on MFL.
The group chat built into sleeper is amazing. I completely disagree that groupme is better. Encourages constant league interaction throughout the year I constantly chat with all my leagues throughout the off-season about football and other stuff. Encourages much more trading as well and a much easier personal message format that allows you to discuss a lot quicker.
Just random things like the much nicer display, player pictures, more in depth profiles when you click on players, mascots I think make it far more superior. I like it because it's more of a one stop shop. I don't need to go to a seperate group me chat to talk to the league. I don't need to leave to check breaking news on Twitter for the most part.

One annoying thing I will agree that the process of trading is worse on sleeper especially with draft picks. It tells you who's draft pick it belongs to, then you have to exit the screen and go look on the draftboard where the teams pick is at. Slightly cumbersome but worth it

[Hottoddies]

Long time MFL but have almost completely switched over to sleeper outside 2 leagues. Far more user friendly and encourages far more interaction and trading with your league.
It took me a couple days to get used to it but there draft interface is much better, it shows the whole draftboard in a much more condensed way then the giant list on MFL.
The group chat built into sleeper is amazing. I completely disagree that groupme is better. Encourages constant league interaction throughout the year I constantly chat with all my leagues throughout the off-season about football and other stuff. Encourages much more trading as well and a much easier personal message format that allows you to discuss a lot quicker.
Just random things like the much nicer display, player pictures, more in depth profiles when you click on players, mascots I think make it far more superior. I like it because it's more of a one stop shop. I don't need to go to a seperate group me chat to talk to the league. I don't need to leave to check breaking news on Twitter for the most part.

One annoying thing I will agree that the process of trading is worse on sleeper especially with draft picks. It tells you who's draft pick it belongs to, then you have to exit the screen and go look on the draftboard where the teams pick is at. Slightly cumbersome but worth it

If the draft board is laid out on a grid, wouldn't it be hard to tell who's pick it is if it were traded? And I thought people hated the mascots.

[Dynasty_Analyst]

Long time MFL but have almost completely switched over to sleeper outside 2 leagues. Far more user friendly and encourages far more interaction and trading with your league.
It took me a couple days to get used to it but there draft interface is much better, it shows the whole draftboard in a much more condensed way then the giant list on MFL.
The group chat built into sleeper is amazing. I completely disagree that groupme is better. Encourages constant league interaction throughout the year I constantly chat with all my leagues throughout the off-season about football and other stuff. Encourages much more trading as well and a much easier personal message format that allows you to discuss a lot quicker.
Just random things like the much nicer display, player pictures, more in depth profiles when you click on players, mascots I think make it far more superior. I like it because it's more of a one stop shop. I don't need to go to a seperate group me chat to talk to the league. I don't need to leave to check breaking news on Twitter for the most part.

One annoying thing I will agree that the process of trading is worse on sleeper especially with draft picks. It tells you who's draft pick it belongs to, then you have to exit the screen and go look on the draftboard where the teams pick is at. Slightly cumbersome but worth it

If the draft board is laid out on a grid, wouldn't it be hard to tell who's pick it is if it were traded? And I thought people hated the mascots.

I'm not paying 5 bucks for an electronic mascot but there fun I don't know why you would strongly dislike them. I was more trying to illustrate that it's clear more effort was put into building sleeper. I like the grid better it shows right on top who drafted or if the pick was traded it shows right on the pick itself the name of who drafted the player.

[dustyroads]

Agree with all the aforementioned Pros and Cons, don't think anything anyone's said is off base.

I think if you've been using MFL for a while and are used to navigating there, you will see Sleeper as a downgrade. If you never used MFL, or only used it for a season or two and have had issues with it not being "user friendly" you'll prefer Sleeper. Same goes for desktop vs mobile; MFL wins desktop, Sleeper for the most part wins mobile.

Probably the biggest Pro which needs to be emphasized again is their support. They are very quick to respond to any support questions/issues. They are constantly making upgrades and adding features and have come a very long way in a very short time. They also prioritize upgrades based on user feedback (aside from those dumb mascots, they were definitely a waste of time seeing some of the issues they could have fixed over that).

My biggest gripe, similar to above posters, are not having a few things which should be a staple in fantasy league platforms and seemed to be a major oversight and I'm not a programmer/developer, but I'd think they aren't that difficult to implement. I've been asking for them to at the very least track/total bench points for each week, preferably also tracking total roster points. We use this in our league to determine draft order for the losers bracket at the end of the season (don't think we are the only ones doing this either) and its really annoying to have to manually add up all the points scored by every bench player for every owner for every week of the season in order to figure out their total points scored starters+bench over the regular season. Hopefully this is implemented this year! *end rant*

Otherwise my league hated MFL (I personally didn't mind it once I got the hang of it) and after switching to Sleeper they are much happier. (They are all primarily mobile users as well).

This sounds like a nightmare for potential points which a lot of leagues use.

They actually do have a category for potential points, referred to on their app as "Max PF", however it's just like a best ball style total showing what the score would have been with the best possible lineup. We actually use the total score of every player on your active roster (starters + bench) for every week to try to show the true strength of your team over the course of the season so the weakest overall team can get the better draft picks. MFL tracked this (as they seemed to track just about everything), whereas Sleeper does not. Even just tracking total bench points each week would be a huge help to cutting down the time it takes to figure that out.

[hockeyBjj]

I use sleeper. Definitely prefer it to MFL (due to free and also mobile ease of use) and fantrax by far

[Ruggenater]

As someone who only accesses my leagues through my phone, I strongly prefer Sleeper to MFL. Sleeper UI is much better/easier to navigate. I'm in 2 leagues that do offseasons in MFL, in-season on ESPN (to remain free), and re-orienting to how to do simple tasks like add/drop takes some time every offseason.

A really big benefit to Sleeper that hasn't been mentioned yet (unless I missed it) is the news feature. I get push notifications with alerts about signings/trades/injuries/etc. way quicker through Sleeper than anywhere else.

[jonniecakes]

Have been a long time user of MFL and don’t mind both the app nd desktop experience.

Does Sleeper keep track of previous league history? I know it’s irrelevant for some but We’ve has this league for 20 years and it’s been fun to reminisce and see past results. Unfortunately we didn’t find MFL until later (2013) so our history doesn’t go that far back. I was briefly looking at this app last off-season; with a bit more time on my hands, I may try a test season and see how it goes.