[quote author=Quiksilver link=topic=504.msg4863#msg4863 date=1317702099]<br />Well... I have skipped the last two season signups, but I&#039;ll probably go ahead and sign up and start privving again, although I pretty much feel like privving during pre-season should be a time where the lower tier players try to impress potential captains. Every preseason priv felt like there was little to no opportunity to get in on a match because of the age old &quot;We pick our own kid&quot; style that prevails so heavily. <br /><br />But then again, I haven&#039;t privved with you guys since last winter season, so I guess we&#039;ll see.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />You actually bring up a really good point here, Quik. As competitors, we generally try to build the strongest team we can in priv so we can reserve rights to spam victory binds after we&#039;ve defeated the other team. The question is, do we do enough to try and help encourage new players to join priv? For lack of a better way to put it, probably not. We can advertise it to newer players all we want but if we don&#039;t step up and pick them, it does us no good as they won&#039;t waste their time sitting there watching people kill each other. <br /><br />The question then becomes what solutions are out there? Realistically, it&#039;s really hard to say. The majority of the time, the people we get in priv are guys we all know and when it&#039;s stacked, we don&#039;t like to exceed more than 4-5 players at a time and leave the weaker players there to watch. And when there is that rare occasion of a new guy coming in wanting to give it a shot, we don&#039;t do anything with it. <br /><br />In theory, we could probably try new methods of picking players to get new guys in there. Think about it, when we have that kind of stacked priv, the same players eventually get picked over and over. The only shot new players or weaker players have to play is if they get selected to cap. What if we made the players who finished on the bottom part of the scoreboard sit a round and give someone else a try? It&#039;s not the most accurate because generally the runner will end up with the least amount of points unless it&#039;s a one-sided affair or it&#039;s a map like 13, where the runner generally kills a lot, gets flag touches and has the advantage of 200/200. But either way, how probable is something like this working? It&#039;s really hard to say and I&#039;m not sure anybody has an answer as it ultimately depends on what people want to do when they get selected to cap. <br /><br />I&#039;ve heard people suggest doing a small tournament with some newer guys, somewhat IDL-R like with IDL rules being in place. Someone would have to organize this though. And someone would also have to be willing to play in it and give some of these guys some suggestions, tutoring, etc. From a practical standpoint, would we even be able to develop this, run it, finish it and expect everything to be done before the IDL begins? Sure, but it&#039;d be a lot of work and there&#039;s no guarantee we&#039;d get enough people giving it a shot. We&#039;ll have to see, I&#039;m interested to hear what people have to say.&nbsp; 