I know I'm wasting my breath because the owners and developers of the game are clearly happy to collect record participation numbers each year (even if >50% are sock puppets trying to be #1 after a Friday night game) with minimal effort, but to me the areas for improvement are:
* forward classification: absolute joke that Mo has never been a forward. Kane's defection left EH as the only premium forward, with ownership pushing 90%. Time to enter the 21st century, classify all wide forwards as fucking forwards (clue's in the name, dipshit), and change from 2-5-5-3 to 2-5-4-4.
* make pricing more dynamic. Every year you get someone like a Palmer who breaks out and dramatically out-performs their starting price, everyone buys them in, and yet by season's end they are still an absolute bargain. Palmer is the top scorer in the game, 12 points clear with one game left, yet still only costs 6.3 from a starting point of 5.0. Those who spotted him early get little reward and squad conformity is off the charts. Enough with the +0.1 and -0.1 nonsense, make those prices soar and plunge. After a number of sub appearances, Palmer announced himself with 4g 3a in his first 6 starts, but afterwards his price was only 5.1. If it had gone up to,say, 7.5, then continued to rise to 10+ as he kept scoring, maybe we'd have some diversity and leagues wouldn't be fixed in place from November onwards. Make price changes dependent on performance rather than transfer trends and you might get more interesting outcomes.
* I also play an AFL fantasy game where you recruit a squad rather than just a starting lineup plus a couple of emergency subs. At the same time, there is a seasonal transfer limit, so you need to think about depth and keep something in reserve for injuries. Something like this could work in FPL, albeit with allowances for the winter transfer window. Let's say you choose a squad of 3 GK 8 DEF 6 MID 6 FWD, each week you name a starting 11 plus 4 subs like you do today, and you can make up to 50 transfers for the season with a weekly limit of 2 (in the AFL game you have a one-time "boost" that lets you use 5 in one week, for emergencies). Keep the free hit, triple captain and bench boost (for the 4 subs only, not the squad).
With dynamic pricing and a seasonal transfer limit, they could also do away with the transfer profit tax, which to be honest is a stupid idea because it discourages managers from moving away from a player who has surged to 50% ownership, therefore increasing conformity yet again.
They could also try rewarding stuff other than goals and assists, so that defensive midfielders have a role in the game, though I remember playing a world cup game that did that and it was a bit crap because it just felt like a lottery.
