The ultimate question is does Smirt truly believe nobody but himself is smart enough to figure this game out for themselves?
I've seen Smirt blow a gasket when someone says luck didn't go my way...good game. He demands acknowledgement & respect for his skills which he has developed through hard work.
From Bryson to Armoredgiraffe and the many in between if someone has success and beats Smirt, he jumps to one of several conclusions:
*JDB helped them with tips or access to the code.
*new owner X is Bryson returned
*they just copied someone else's gameplan and don't know anything themselves
*they stream 1 or 2 plays which is BS and a real owner develops deep layered gameplans.
It seems Smirt feels like he is the only owner capable & intelligent enough to figure this game out for themselves!
Bryson had success because he used 100 strength players on his offensive and defensive line.....I will take Smirts word on it because I don't ever remember playing him.
Is that something that is so out of the realm of figuring out for yourself? When I started playing MFN and began screwing with my player weights, Strength on my offensive & defensive line seemed like a pretty save bet to me.
The code has changed multiple times since Bryson dominated and I did a deep dive on strength as it affected linemen and found it to be less important then I expected. So someone doing the same thing back in the day and finding out it was of great importance seems plausible.
PS
As for me liking Smirt or not....the fact is he has been in the XFL since day 1....I've been giving ultimatums at least 10 different times that if I don't kick Smirt out of the XFL.....they would quit or not join.
How I feel about Smirt isn't so black & white.
THE GOODHe is a great competitor who follows all league rules and I've learned a ton playing against him which has made me better. He has made playing against him in the AXC Conference game an event since it has happened a ton. He is a nice guy for the most part who has helped owners get better.
THE BADHe is super-competetive and he gets angry when he loses. Owners who on the rare occasion beat him have to walk on eggshells when commenting about it. He can become defensive, angry and jump to conclusions at times which creates unneeded drama.
WHY I DEBATE HIMSmirt tends to lean into conspiracy theories and maybe some of them are true but I try to balance out the paranoia with reason so everyone can decide for themselves what they believe. If the only voice in forums is one-sided then that becomes the narrative so I tend to take the devils advocate role.
I don't think I'm always right but my job involves data analysis for the government which means I have to sort through a bunch of noise to get to the facts. I guess I've been doing it so long that it creeps into my gaming life.
CONCLUSIONI don't hate Smirt but it annoys me when he attacks owners for cheating or being a duplicate account with no evidence other then a hunch. It has played out many times where Smirt was 100% positive of something when a little digging proves he is wrong.
The craziest part of the whole thing is Smirt hates Bryson for winning too much and gaming the code and for the last 3-4 years I've received 20-30 PMs from various owners claiming the exact same thing about Smirt!
It's my opinion that their is no such thing as cheating in MFN....anyone is capable of doing the same exact things as anyone else. A cheat is something someone is using that others have no access to do.
It is also my opinion that JDB has zero reason to help any owner win or lose. He writes the code and runs hundreds to thousands of Sims before incorporating those changes into the game using a pseudo league full of 32 A.I. owners. He then releases the updated code and monitors all the data from all 300 users which illuminate problems and concerns which he then goes back into the code to fix.
Any interference or influence JDB would give to specific owners would invalidate all the data. That's how beta testing works! You release the code and allow people to play with it which reveals things the A.I. would never uncover.
I've been playing MFN for 5 years and the owners I've actually hated are:
Grandadb
He cheated in the XFL playoffs by implementing the use of WRs & DBs to block punts which was one of the only rules at the time. He took over a team halfway through the season and never once used a WR or DB to block punts, once the playoffs began he used overrides to place WRs and DBs on the front four (ST RUSHERS) of the punt return formation. To top it off, he lied about it when after in the Wildcard & Division round he came close but blocked no punts then in the NXC Conference game, he won 63-56 after blocking a punt which resulted in a touchdown. What should have been an alltime classic NXC Conference game was ruined by someone who purposely cheated then lied about it. He even denied any knowledge of how to block punts when he was one of the first to use it in other leagues. The result was he was kicked out of the league and Smirt ended up losing to the A.I. in the Title game.
BoogerHe was a league administrator in a now defunct league who would get drunk and cuss out anyone who questioned him. Many owners had serious issues with him. Eventually, tribewriter sent me a PM concerning Booger where Booger had PMed Tribewriter about running a league and gave Tribewriter his email address which was:
JohnAndereau@something.com
The problem was in that defunct league which Booger was admin and owned a team, another team was owned by someone named JAndereau. To make it even worse, thise two teams had made trades between one another. I went on the league forums and told everyone and he denied it with conviction and went on a cuss-filled rampage against me. I send a PM to JDB and asked him to confirm if the 2 owners shared a common IP address and it was confirmed.
TheAdmiralTo a lesser extent, he makes the list because he pushed for version 4.6 to be released despite clear and obvious problems with the passing game. My problem with him was the fact he could never compete in version 4.5 so when JDB gave league admins the option to use "bleeding beta" which eventually became version 4.6 instead of 4.5....TheAdmiral switched all 3 of his leagues and started to find success despite not being able to pass the ball for more then 2,000 yards a season. None of that was the problem, it was his championing of making version 4.6 the MFN default for all leagues. He had learned how to win in the new version over 9 seasons (3 seasons in 3 different leagues) and now he wanted everyone to have to convert. The 9 seasons of data produced in his 3 leagues plus the data from MFN-1 showed the passing game had went from 2010 passing to 1968 passing. It was a clear step backwards in the game but JDB took a poll in MFN-1 and 8 owners voted "yes" to release the new version. That's 25% of the owners in 1 league deciding the fate of every owner in MFN and The Admiral was the lead cheerleader.
I did think TheAdmiral had good qualities and he ran good leagues so despite my issues with him personally, I was sorry he quit. Smirt, Raidergreg and I really went at it with Theadmiral in the general forums so the notion Nosedive-neil was TheAdmiral returned seemed highly unlikely since he spoke to Nosedive via PM, as did Raidergreg and we both found him friendly, inexperienced and eager to learn which is 3 things TheAdmiral was not.
HONORABLE MENTIONSThere have others like Bill Stein and a few others who simply blew a gasket and went on profanity laced rants in my league forums and after several attempts to settle them down in private and in public....they wouldn't stop so I had no choice but to boot them. Hate is too strong a word for them because it was more sad then hate which forced me to take action.
