Everyone who says that getting more players or that convincing more skilled and responsible people to be captains is more important than revising the draft is correct.&nbsp; Not a moment of recruitment time should be sacrificed for the sake of draft revision, or anything else I can think of for that matter.&nbsp; More on this in the other thread.<br /><br />However, if anyone wants to think about the draft, there are three distinct issues to consider:<br /><br />1.&nbsp; Draft Order<br /><br />Independent of the format, we need to decide who &quot;goes first.&quot; In my opinion the various choices fall on a continuum from least parity and most of what people are calling fair, to most parity and what people are calling even.<br /><br />First, we could have a completely random order.&nbsp; This would be the most fair since it wouldn&#039;t prefer any captain over any other, and this is how the draft was originally ordered if I am not mistaken.<br /><br />If the draft is anything other than random, we have to give preference to some captains over others based on some metric (I use &quot;metric&quot; loosely here).&nbsp; Thus, every nonrandom draft is unfair in some way, but to varying degrees.&nbsp; This metric could be number of months having played zd ascending, player age, W/L record of the clan they&#039;re in, whatever.&nbsp; Right now we use past season record ascending.&nbsp; The benefit of these systems is that, if they can accurately judge a captain&#039;s skill level (as a player and as a captain), then we can order the draft to compensate for more unskilled and more skilled captains so that we can have a more even league.&nbsp; When this idea was introduced, it was praised by almost everyone.<br /><br />If you don&#039;t think that captain skill should be compensated for, and that all captains should be treated equally, then consistently you must support a random draft and cannot support the current system.&nbsp; If you support the current system, then consistently you must believe that captain skill should be compensated for.&nbsp; After that, the question is how best to do it.<br /><br />Other metrics may be more accurate gauges of captain skill level.&nbsp; One option we have discussed is the captain&#039;s total past record.&nbsp; This way, if somebody has a bad season, they are not considered a bad captain in the next season (and given a preferential draft spot).&nbsp; In my opinion, this is a more accurate gauge of captain skill.&nbsp; Arguments against this are that captain&#039;s improve over time, and we should not take into account what happened 4 years ago, etc.<br /><br />I believe that a captain&#039;s total player record is an even better gauge of his skill because I think playing ability factors more into a captain&#039;s influence on his team than captaining ability.&nbsp; Obviously many people disagree with this, and you don&#039;t need to make arguments about it here.<br /><br />For this reason, I believe that something like player record over hundreds of priv games would give an even more accurate read of player skill level, and therefore of captain skill level.<br /><br />And, as you all should know, I believe that the collective opinion of a group of players (i.e., the administration) is an even more accurate gauge of captain&#039;s skill level, and would compensate for the difference in skill level even more successfully.&nbsp; This is illegitimate for obvious reasons, and we don&#039;t need to discuss it here.<br /><br />Finally, I think that if, instead of a draft, the teams were all put together by a group of knowledgeable players (i.e., the administration), the league would be as even as it could possibly be.&nbsp; On the other hand, this is as unfair (and frankly, unfun) as things could possibly be, and is only a theoretical point.&nbsp; (Perhaps this belongs under format.) So, the options run from most fair and least even to most even and least fair:<br /><br />0: Random draft<br />1: Draft ordered by... Past season record<br />2: ...Total past captain record<br />3: ...Total past player record<br />4: ...Total past priv record<br />5: ...Administration ranking<br />6: Hand-picked teams<br /><br />Other metrics would fall somewhere in this continuum.&nbsp; Again, this is my opinion, but one with which, as always, I tend to agree.<br /><br />Obviously, options 3-6 are arguable, impossible, or outrageous.&nbsp; You don&#039;t need to tell me why.&nbsp; In all likelihood we will stick with 1 forever, with the possibility of moving to 2.<br /><br />2.&nbsp; Draft Format<br /><br />This is what I discussed in the last pre-season&#039;s thread on the draft.&nbsp; This is the ABC&#039;s and so on.&nbsp; This also includes the possibility of picking your spot in a snake draft (or even an ABC CBA CBA draft, which would be interesting).&nbsp; Whereas issue 1 determines whose skill should be compensated for, issue 2 determines to what degree the skill is compensated for.&nbsp; A straight draft compensates a lot, a snake draft very little.<br /><br />I want to say that some board members are strongly considering a draft where captains, in the ordinary draft order, choose which snake draft spot they get.&nbsp; This [u]is[/u] a topic you should discuss here (or wherever).<br /><br />3.&nbsp; New Captains<br /><br />Since the current system is based on past season record, we have to decide what to do with new captains who do not have a past record.&nbsp; The traditional method is to have them randomly inherit the draft spot of retiring captains.&nbsp; This seems illegitimate for obvious reasons, since the new captains have literally nothing to do with the team name they are inheriting.&nbsp; However, our method of randomly inserting the captains between playoff-makers and playoff-non-makers was met with negativity (even though, despite some claims, it does &quot;make sense,&quot; it just may not be the right way to do things).&nbsp; For next season, we may very well revert to the original system.&nbsp; This is also a topic you [u]should[/u] discuss here (or wherever).<br /><br />Finally, I want to say that if the administration is going to make any changes to the draft, those changes will probably not be made for this coming season but for next season.&nbsp; This is because now that the previous season is finished, we all know what the draft order is supposed to be, so any change of the draft could be subversive manipulation (we don&#039;t want Hatred to have the #1 draft, etc.).&nbsp; The changes will probably be made for the next season for which we have no idea what the draft order is going to be.