TOO MUCH of a BAD THING!!

The first few announcements about this season's player price changes finally started to drop on Sunday evening (obviously the ideal time to publish important notices!!). Usually, FPL likes to spin this process out over at least one week, sometimes more like two. And this year they are trying to boost 'user engagement' by supposedly running polls on their new Whatsapp account to determine whose price will be revealed next. This suggests that we might yet have to wait quite a while for the game to be relaunched.

The hold-up this year is likely due to an advertised incorporation of a bunch of new AI bells-and-whistles into the game (essentially automating 'The Scout' to give personalized player recommendations.... so that no-one has to pick their own teams any more??). I think that is something we could really live without. The headlong stampede towards the premature adoption of AI in every facet of online life has already RUINED Google, and Youtube (where at least half of new content, and just about 100% of the ads now seem to be entirely AI-generated). That kind of new software integration really needs a lot of testing (if it is to be done right; sadly, I suspect it won't be!), and that is almost certainly why the relaunch is already a week or so later than it has been in most recent years, and looks like it might still be another week or so away.

[Well, at least they did get the game live again on Monday evening! I suspect FPL Towers felt pressured into doing so more quickly than they had wanted because the intensity of the backlash from their community had been getting too much for them: every one of their inane new teaser posts - or announcements of yet another unnecessary change to the game dynamics - over the past few days had met with a torrent of scorn and derision and mounting wrathful impatience online.

Of course, the relaunch didn't go entirely smoothly. They still haven't cured the longstanding glitch that your password gets 'forgotten' every year, and you start off being apparently locked out of your account, having to go through a vexing password reset procedure (just to restore your original password...). Then, only the app version of the game appeared to be working, the web version still frozen in a perpetual 'update'; and many were reporting functionality problems on the app too. By Tuesday morning (still barely after midnight, UTC) things seemed to have got straightened out; but it was an inauspicious start to the new season.]

Oh, but wait - THERE'S MORE. Much, much MORE!!!

Over this past weekend, FPL has started up a fair old barrage of information-drops on other topics, a veritable TSUNAMI OF SHIT. There are to be major CHANGES to the game this season. And not just 1 or 2,..... but 3 or 4 or 5..... or??  Honestly, I've lost count. And it seems we might not be done yet! Even my planet-sized brain is overwhelmed, struggling to process all of this.

I will try to put out brief posts analysing - and criticising - each of the new changes at some point over the next few days. But first, we'd better wait for them to stop with this sensory overload.

One FPL commentator I occasionally follow has aptly summed up this MESS thus: "It's as if they asked ChatGPT for suggestions to improve the game, and then just ran with every single answer."

GOD HELP US! The folks at FPL Towers, the ones in charge of the game's design, are obviously a bunch of incompetent morons who are intent on destroying the game we so love. I am seriously tempted to abandon the official Fantasy Premier League for one of the rival versions run by newspapers and broadcasters and so on.

# NoMoreChanges