[quote author=Xenaero link=topic=134.msg1090#msg1090 date=1252416302]<br />Pretty sure no one at all sees that this is nothing like a league sport, which means I&#039;m likely going to argue the point, much less suggestions for the solution, for the rest of my Dooming days. Look at every sports arena. Seriously, look at them all. Then, take into thought the entire post-season homefield scenarios. Of course this post-season thing works out for them. They&#039;re all the same![/quote]<br /><br />That&#039;s not entirely true at all. Each stadium and arena in sports leagues such as Major League Baseball and the NFL are all different and are advantageous to the team which practices there the most often and/or whom the stadium was built in mind for.<br /><br />For instance, Citizen&#039;s Bank Park, the home of the Philadelphia Phillies, is a newer ball park that was built specifically with the current Phillies club in mind. From the dimensions of the field to the way the wind carries the ball, the park was built for a power game (smacking homers all day) that compliments the style of the club who plays there the most often. <br /><br />Also, in Football and baseball, stadiums are rarely the same from a physical standpoint. There are many different conditions which change the way the game is played which can extend to temperature, wind, and precipitation. <br /><br />The Miami Dolphins can likely be expected to play better in the 70 degree weather in which they practice and are used to than if they were to face the Green Bay Packers in December with snow covering the field. Additionally, some stadiums are domed and essentially cancel out all of these conditions together.<br /><br />On top of this, a factor which rarely plays in favor of the homefield team in the IDL is fan adoration. Unlike in big league sports where fans of the home team can be rowdy and play into psyching out the opponent, the IDL is typically the exact opposite. The trend of IDL spectating is that the underdog is almost always the team which is cheered on by the general public (this is not always applicable).<br /><br />Though an entirely different playing field as seen in the IDL may not be exactly comparable to the natural elements which affect all sports stadiums, it does serve to prove the point that sports stadiums are never &quot;the same&quot; and usually tend to play into the favor of the home team, just as the homefields in the IDL do.<br /><br />Also, an additional note, under the current playoff format, there will always be 5 different unique maps played from the wild card round to the MasterBowl. No map is played in the same game twice throughout the entire playoff/championship series.<br /><br />[quote author=nostar link=topic=134.msg1089#msg1089 date=1252024323]The only other thing I thought would be cool is something like a team tourney. I don&#039;t see why IDL can&#039;t be a host to that kind of thing too. This is where competitive doom gets played. I know we&#039;re a draft based league, but really with the franchise era we&#039;re one step away from having team signups.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />The problem I see with this is that you basically take away from what the IDL is intended to do which is:<br /><br />A) mix up teams on a regular basis<br />B) disperse talent throughout the league proportionally<br /><br />Sure, there have been instances every season where talent hasn&#039;t been spread equally. However, if you truly look back at these occurances, most have happened due to issues which occur at some point DURING the season. Even this summer, the two bottom teams FLS and SPE were plagued by issues which appeared during the regular season, not immediately after the teams were built. Both teams looked respectable on paper and I would argue talent was dispersed fairly amongst all eight teams.<br /><br />However, on the up-side, the other 6 teams in the league fared rather well this season which indicates that both the franchise and draft systems are considerably effective in both diversifying and creating parity amongst the league.<br /><br />Could a team sign-up league do well? Sure, but it likely won&#039;t happen under the IDL banner. For as many attempts as there have been towards a league of a signup format, I have never seen any be as [i]interesting[/i], [i]unpredictable[/i], or [b][i]successful[/i][/b] as the IDL. Have you?