I think the only difference that the smaller talent pool has made is that games are sloppier now.&nbsp; New players aren&#039;t as experienced, and they&#039;re not as predictable either.&nbsp; For instance, Strangle&#039;s use of the RL in his offense on map18 is pretty unprecedented.&nbsp; I think that is exciting, and I hope the trend continues.<br /><br />But rookies aren&#039;t to blame for an unbalanced league.&nbsp; Like Nostar said, franchising fixes a lot of draft problems (like how do laggy captains with a high pick get a reasonable 3rd and stay competitive...).&nbsp; Further, I would have stayed on as captain of FLS had franchising not been repealed, and while I&#039;m not the strongest captain ever to play the game, I still have a pretty good record.&nbsp; That by itself adds a lot of balance to the league, to say nothing of the &quot;bonus&quot; draft round where captains who don&#039;t franchise get a pick in normal order.&nbsp; That fixes both EBL and DMR.&nbsp; It also makes stronger players want to play, makes players in general want to show up, and avoids stupid drama like everyone piling up on Goatface, most of whom didn&#039;t even have the balls to do what he did and captain a team.&nbsp; Now he&#039;s trying to not ruin Hatred&#039;s last IDL season for a while and everyone&#039;s shitty about it.&nbsp; I&#039;m with Hatred, you guys can go to hell.<br /><br />No one is saying that franchising fixed everything.&nbsp; It OBVIOUSLY doesn&#039;t get your boss off your back or fix connections.&nbsp; It does create stronger teams of players who are more likely to like each other though, and everything about that is beneficial.&nbsp; I mean, really, it just seems so obvious to me, I don&#039;t know what else to say.<br /><br />I also don&#039;t think franchising was stale at all.&nbsp; There was only one instance where 3 players got back together - which I thought was pretty cool because they were last season&#039;s champs and it was a whole new season to try and beat them, but I guess I&#039;m more man than most - and most captains didn&#039;t even hold their franchise player the full 2 seasons.&nbsp; I guess I don&#039;t know what you guys mean when you say the league was stale, it empirically wasn&#039;t when you look at the teams.&nbsp; It&#039;s like saying a red car is blue, no, it&#039;s fuckin red foolz.&nbsp; Also there&#039;s only so many people in IDL.&nbsp; Look at BBC this season, it&#039;s like Season 6 BSK and EBL crashed Nostar&#039;s house.&nbsp; If that&#039;s not &quot;stale&quot;, then what is?<br /><br />To sum up, franchising was a great idea that Ralphis had.&nbsp; It solved tons of problems and made IDL really tough and fun.&nbsp; But due to some indefensible &quot;stale&quot; argument we listened to player demand and got rid of it.&nbsp; It was stupid and I regret it, and I&#039;d love to hear somebody justify it with logic and reason... but I doubt that&#039;s possible.