[quote author=MassVC link=topic=517.msg5006#msg5006 date=1318535330]<br />No, Hatred, I mean 50/50.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />No you don&#039;t.&nbsp; You&#039;re saying elite captains start 80/20 against poor captains, and you want IDL to bias against them somehow to the effect of 20/80, so that it [b]ends up[/b] 50/50.&nbsp; Hatred is saying that the 20/80 is a waste of time, and that poor players/captains need to work on getting better, or just learn to deal with losing to better players.<br /><br />[quote author=MassVC link=topic=517.msg5006#msg5006 date=1318535330]<br />Ladna: &quot;There&#039;s no possible draft that can affect parity differently from any other draft.&quot;<br />Mass: &quot;A straight draft can do that. (Here is exactly how...)&quot;<br />Ladna: &quot;I&#039;m not talking about a straight draft.&quot;<br />Mass: ??<br />[/quote]<br /><br />After performing a quick Firefox search, I don&#039;t believe I said &quot;There&#039;s no possible draft that can affect parity differently from any other draft&quot;.&nbsp; If I implied that anywhere, I apologize, because I certainly don&#039;t think that!&nbsp; What I do think is:<br /><br />[quote=Ladna]<br />There is nothing the draft can do (and still be called a draft) to achieve more parity than it already does.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />This is because any further movement is overshadowed by several other variables, which I&#039;ve enumerated at least once elsewhere.<br /><br />If you want to be logical about it (and I am sure that you do ;) ), I am disagreeing with your original premise that later draft picks are &quot;worse&quot; than earlier ones, in any draft system.&nbsp; Sure if you take the extreme positions #1 and #12, then the difference in skill of the playerbase generally dominates the other variables.&nbsp; This isn&#039;t always true however, see Xenaero + Whiteboy and Tai + Whiteboy for a treatise in how even the best player can destroy your team because you have no team chemistry.<br /><br />My position is that while draft position has an effect on team success, it is far from the sole or even dominant determinant.&nbsp; In any draft system (Oh God a sentence fragment!!!).<br /><br />[quote author=MassVC link=topic=517.msg5006#msg5006 date=1318535330]<br />[quote author=Ladna link=topic=517.msg5004#msg5004 date=1318532231]<br />[Making the league even] is perverse.<br />[/quote]<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Another thing I didn&#039;t say.&nbsp; I&#039;m not against parity.&nbsp; I just think changing the draft to achieve more parity than it already does is futile because it&#039;s overshadowed by several other factors.<br /><br />&quot;Hey guys, this is the IDL administration.&nbsp; I know we already fucked up pretty hard and we&#039;ve got a big disparity in captain skill here.&nbsp; So as a result, LordBritish now has to play left-handed.&nbsp; That should do it.&nbsp; Parity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!&quot;<br /><br />[quote author=MassVC link=topic=517.msg5006#msg5006 date=1318535330]<br />This is the same primitive witch-hunt claim made in every discussion about parity that evenness is necessarily unfair (to the enfranchised, the powerful, the fortunate), and that unfairness is intrinsically evil.&nbsp; But I can&#039;t argue against this anymore than I can against the claim that being a cow is intrinsically holy.&nbsp; It just isn&#039;t.&nbsp; I think evenness is a virtue, and I think fairness is evenness.&nbsp; You do not.&nbsp; That is that.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I make no such moral claims.&nbsp; I do think that elite/veteran captains might feel like they have a better shot at winning or having fun if they don&#039;t captain if they&#039;re disadvantaged too harshly, and on the moral continuum of:<br /><br />Strong Captains &lt;========================&gt; Weak Captains<br /><br />that&#039;s bad.&nbsp; But I can see an argument for achieving parity in captain skill by choosing captains of relatively similar skill (even though it would be difficult to do that and maintain parity throughout the draft, because of the varying advantages the draft gives).<br /><br />If that&#039;s indeed the goal, then again the draft has nothing to do with it, and it comes down to captain selection.<br /><br />Furthermore, because you can quantify neither draft position advantage/disadvantage nor player skill, you have very little chance of properly biasing the system to achieve parity.&nbsp; The only thing you have to go by is record, which the draft already takes into account.&nbsp; In other words, there is no such system that says:<br /><br />&quot;Oh, Hatred is a 10 point player, Ladna is a 4 point player, and the cap on team skill is 16.&nbsp; That means Hatred can draft 6 more points worth of players, and Ladna can draft 12 more points worth of players&quot;.<br /><br />And even if there were, it&#039;s subjective at best, and captains should be the ones making those decisions.<br />