[quote author=Hatred link=topic=522.msg5118#msg5118 date=1319260364]<br />This is what I&#039;m saying: the one thing the trade did was turn another team into a contender. Whether this was fair or unfair is not the point. The point is, saying trading doesn&#039;t give parity is disproved by this example. While this case in particular is a bit extreme, it&#039;s a perfect illustration of how trading helps.[/quote]<br /><br />I don&#039;t think it&#039;s fair because Goat gave you away more or less, he could have traded you to an even better team than EBL for instance.&nbsp; I&#039;ve never said trading doesn&#039;t help parity at times but overall I think it leads to more lopsided teams than equal ones.<br /><br />[quote author=Hatred link=topic=522.msg5118#msg5118 date=1319260364]The downside was, Goat gave me away for virtually nothing. In a season of more balanced teams with deeper talent, perhaps Xen would have had a nice package[/quote]<br /><br />Perhaps but bad trades have occured a lot, almost every season.&nbsp; I think the main thing we should try and fix is sacrifice trades where captains just give people away for all intents and purposes.<br /><br />[quote author=Hatred link=topic=522.msg5118#msg5118 date=1319260364]It ultimately comes down to captains. If a captain drafts well, he&#039;ll probably do okay as long as he is capable of pointing and shooting. If he doesn&#039;t, maybe a trade can save him. So trading does help, but it does hurt.[/quote]<br /><br />If trading is more limited it puts more pressure on captains to draft correctly.&nbsp; If trading is more flexible and possible it will allow captains to gamble more on the draft and hope trading later can fix their possible mistakes.<br /><br />[quote author=Hatred link=topic=522.msg5118#msg5118 date=1319260364]As I noted above, the trade of me to EBL did, by definition, help parity. But under the circumstances in which it happened, you have to wonder if that was good for the IDL. Most would say no and as time has gone on, I tend to agree. But, as I said: there were two people who could have stopped it from happening, Goat and Ralph.[/quote]<br /><br />I don&#039;t think that trade helped parity, I think you are confusing parity with making one team better so they are more equal to other good teams.&nbsp; Parity = equality more or less.&nbsp; I think of that trade like this, if you had 2 good teams, 2 average and 2 bad, it made one average team good so now you have 3 good teams, 1 average, 1 bad and 1 horrible.&nbsp; It just led to more extreme differences between the groups.&nbsp; We want to move teams closer to average not farther apart.<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; <br />[quote author=Hatred link=topic=522.msg5118#msg5118 date=1319260364]The downside, however, is that a player can use this as leverage as well. He can simply veto a trade if he doesn&#039;t want to play for a certain team, even if it actually makes both teams better. This way, he can basically pull the &quot;trade me to this team and I&#039;ll accept it&quot; crap. So I&#039;m not sure if it&#039;s worth the risk.[/quote]<br /><br />Players already do this to an extent.&nbsp; You told Goat it would be your last season blah blah.&nbsp; I told off Tai when I was on DCL (and to be honest many people feel similar about Tai&#039;s captaining after playing with him) to get him to trade me.&nbsp; I won&#039;t put names out there but I know of some top players who have lied or misled captains to avoid getting picked or traded.&nbsp; Players can already do this but it is frowned upon for obvious reasons.&nbsp; Why not give them an official non-lame way to do it?<br /><br />[quote author=Hatred link=topic=522.msg5118#msg5118 date=1319260364]This ultimately falls on the Commish&#039;. If he sees it as a bad deal, he should not approve it. Simple as that.[/quote]<br /><br />In reality I think the board or commish lack the balls to stop trades and I don&#039;t blame them.&nbsp; Has one trade ever been refused in the IDL by the admins?&nbsp; Even obviously bad trades are hard to argue against as long as they are allowed in the rules.&nbsp; Chewy for Nati could work out for both teams, you never know, but 99.99% of the time a trade like that is a pure give away.<br /><br />[quote author=Hatred link=topic=522.msg5118#msg5118 date=1319260364]But my proposal was to simply erase the captain pick for other captain then swap concept. It&#039;s open to abuse quite frankly. So, instead, simply trade draft positions. It&#039;s easier, less work to do and gives captains the ability to seamlessly move up and down the draft board as long as somebody is willing to deal. Unless I&#039;m missing something major, I don&#039;t see how this possibly can hurt [b]anything[/b] before it [b]helps[/b].[/quote]<br /><br />Basically you just want captains to be able to swap draft positions instead of trading people they have picked?&nbsp; Can&#039;t captains already do this?&nbsp; I&#039;d like to see pre-season trading or deals eliminated myself until a week or two into the season.&nbsp; Is it really fair if you have a certain need to trade draft spots with someone else?&nbsp; Other captains probably do too but for whatever reason they don&#039;t have a captain to swap with them because it only works in very special circumstances.&nbsp; It seems like a random lucky event where it&#039;ll enhance two captains teams at the expense of parity to everyone else.&nbsp; In some cases it could help but DMR/SPE this season were great teams and DMR won the MasterBowl.&nbsp; So again it would be easy to argue trading hurt parity once again.