[quote author=dew link=topic=178.msg1565#msg1565 date=1267152271]<br />i&#039;d rather be on a constantly losing team than benchwarming for the leader even in week8.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I think you&#039;re the only player that feels this way.&nbsp; Riding pine can be frustrating, but playing week after week and losing is definitely worse.&nbsp; I&#039;ve done both, and as long as we won or I couldn&#039;t have done better, I didn&#039;t care.&nbsp; I&#039;m not trying to tell you that you&#039;re wrong (you were on SPE last season after all), and I think there&#039;s a lot of validity to the point &quot;I joined IDL and got drafted, but I don&#039;t play&quot;.&nbsp; This happens because we have 4 players on a 3v3 CTF team.&nbsp; If we didn&#039;t have that extra player, we&#039;d have a lot more 3v2s, 2v2s and forfeits.&nbsp; A lot of players will say, &quot;a game played with your 4th is as good as lost&quot;, but look at FLS: the only constant in our lineup whenever I setup a strategy is Whiteboy.&nbsp; The other players are based on capability, chemistry, the other team&#039;s capabilities and the map.&nbsp; And at first it might seem like FLS&#039; situation is rare, but it&#039;s really not: in Season 5 DMR, SUC and BSK had usable 4ths, and that&#039;s just off the top of my head.&nbsp; In fact, quite a few teams are successfully using their 4ths this season.&nbsp; You just got picked by the evil SUC, whom we all know is the bad guy in basically every sports movie ever.<br /><br />So this puts us where we are now.&nbsp; Games played with 4ths aren&#039;t guaranteed losses, so if we get rid of &quot;extra players&quot;, then we lose:<br /><br />[list]<br />[li]The potential to win if your original lineup if unavailable (this happened frequently to SUC last season, and they had last pick!)[/li]<br />[li]Choice of strategies[/li]<br />[li]Ease of scheduling[/li]<br />[/list]<br /><br />But for the sake of argument, let&#039;s say that we only had 3 player teams.&nbsp; That means we could expand to 12 teams based on our current player base.&nbsp; It would also mean that DMR would be completely screwed, BSK would be screwed, and KGB might be in trouble.&nbsp; It also means that captains are much less likely to take a chance on a high-pinging player (or a player with a questionable connection/attitude/attendance, etc.) because they have no outs.&nbsp; In fact, it makes IDL much more fragile in just about every way, which is something we try to avoid.<br /><br />That said, that&#039;s just my feeling on it, and it&#039;s highly opinionated.&nbsp; If everyone else feels like having a player on your team that plays infrequently is lame, feel free to say so.<br /><br />[hr]<br /><br />I sort of feel consensus forming on a couple points.&nbsp; I don&#039;t want to stop ideas or slow the thread down, but here&#039;s what I see people agreeing on:<br /><br />[list type=decimal]<br />[li]Franchising is gay (does anyone think it&#039;s a good idea?)[/li]<br />[li]New maps are good, but the community should have some kind of say about the final list[/li]<br />[li]BYE week sucks[/li]<br />[li]Non-3v3 games blow and should be banned[/li]<br />[li]We need some kind of outreach to get new players (and maybe be less snobby/elite/etc.)[/li]<br />[li]More teams is better[/li]<br />[li]Everyone hates Mistopher[/li]<br />[/list]<br /><br />1-4 we can fix pretty easily.&nbsp; We can roll back franchising, we can have you guys vote on some maps and we&#039;ll pick some new maps or w/e, we can get rid of the BYE, and we can ban non-3v3 games.&nbsp; 5 &amp; 6 really require everyone to make an effort, we can add more teams and mess around with divisions/conferences and stuff (I like the suggestions in this area so far, more more!) but it hinges on us having enough players to do it, and it means we need players to step up as captains.&nbsp; This means reaching out to new players, wearing [IDL] tags in Public CTF, making forum posts on the ZD forums, PM&#039;ing players with quakenet info and calming them down when Nostar bans them for no reason, etc.&nbsp; There are currently 32 players and a handful of free agents, 10 teams is 40 players, 12 teams is 48 players.<br /><br />Other weird things to think about:<br /><br />If we get rid of 4ths, then right now we can expand to 10 teams... and if you stretch it a little we can do 12.<br /><br />If we go to 4v4, but don&#039;t require that teams have 5 players, then we can do 4v4 with only 32 players and 8 teams.&nbsp; Otherwise 8 teams, 5 players each is 40 players, which is the same as expanding to 10 teams.<br /><br />Currently there are only ever 8 benched players (sometimes less depending on per-round rosters).&nbsp; If we increase teams, we increase the number of players that might not ever see game time.<br /><br />[hr]<br /><br />I know there&#039;s a lot of ideas that were thrown out that I didn&#039;t bring up; but that doesn&#039;t mean they&#039;re crappy ideas, I just get the feeling people are tired of me talking about everything.&nbsp; So keep at it!