"Wow it looks almost the same!"

That was the first piece of feedback last month, and yes at first glance, this isn't a radical overhaul of the appearance of the game's interface. MFN is 10 years old at this point, and much of what it does doesn't meet the standards expected in 2024 - not least of all when it comes to mobile devices. Since the aim is to broaden the appeal of the game this means that in order to go forwards I have to go back a little to fix problems that didn't exist when the UI was first designed. To use an analogy, we're renovating the house but need to bring the foundations back up to code before we can look at replacing the windows.

Not that I expected anyone to be particularly excited by the changes you've seen so far, but understanding the rationale behind them might help.

Anyway, in April I've completed the migration of the depth chart system. Drag and drop has been replaced with menu actions which will make this page not only work better on mobile devices but be easier to work with in general. The new depth chart has some tweaks to the way you interact with it, including that it now limits how you can move players to another position, whether by changing their position or putting them in the depth chart. What does this mean? Under or overweight players will be restricted to positions they're fit for. No more being able to game the system by taking advantage of that loophole.

This isn't something I'm going to spend time implementing into the legacy UI. Until the beta release of the new UI becomes final you'll still be able to take advantage of this weakness in the old UI. On which note, one of the last remaining items for me to complete is the toggle between the legacy and beta UIs.

With the depth chart updates the primary elements needed to actually play the game are in place in the new UI. The big to-do item remaining is the Draft War Room. In May I'm going to focus on setting up the infrastructure to allow for you to switch back and forth between the new UI and the legacy UI - so in June you will be able to start using the new UI for most of your activities outside of the draft. The war room is going to be a fairly significant undertaking and I don't know that I'll be able to complete it in a single month. After the war room is ready, there are a lot of smaller, but significantly less complex items to complete.

Please continue to add ideas to the thread in the suggestions forum. I'll review all of the submitted ideas once the UI upgrade is in my rear-view mirror and we're looking at gameplay improvements.

Good stuff, thank you. My one big ask for the war room is very important and should be very simple. Please number everything. We shouldn't have to count how many more picks until we're up, or how many guys we've got in a particular list. Thanks so much for all the work, and I'm especially excited for the position loophole change eventually.

Fair enough. I'll keep my money in my pocket until you get back to gameplay improvements.

Can we get some of the expected parameters of what position switches are allowed and what's not with the new UI? As leagues will have a choice to make soon, we'd like/need more information before we actually decide please.

It will basically be limiting position movements and depth chart assignments to be within position groups.

Sounds like a good plan, as long as the player generator/draft classes assign players with certain skills at the correct positions. No more slow wr with max strength and run blocking but no hands, lineman with no strength and blocking. Same thing with big and little guys on defense being born either the wrong size or inverted skill sets.

Redacted, who cares

I assume the depth chart then will not allow e.g. WR as RB as long as they are not converted to RB.

Considering how many successful small rbs have been in reality, as well as large wr, I really don’t see the big deal there. Weight shouldnt be the determining factor at who dominates which position, it should be height and skill with contested catches vs running through contact…

But I get your point if it’s the visual of seeing WR attached to the leading rusher stats, maybe the player size shouldn’t automatically change with position designation, or it shouldn’t impact speed as much as it does. There have been plenty of real nfl players that make the conversion or play both positions interchangeably, they might be the closest “tweeners” or easiest swap to make. Pretty much every position can move up or down the size scale 1 or 2 spots depending on talent, but we should discourage trying to move from one extreme to another. Will this strictly be rule on the depth chart prohibiting a player designated as wr or db from being subbed onto the front lines? But if said player was assigned as a linebacker they could play down on the line?

I think we need a middle ground. Exploit ball is one extreme but switching to no positional changes is the other extreme. As player creation stands now, we'll need to switch some players because too often players are better at a different position than they're listed as.

It's sounding like we won't even be able to move a DE to LB and imo that's not better than what we have now.