Did the new &quot;round zero&quot; really change anything? Aside from Saber changing his order, other captains were only affected by one spot. The top 2 spots were too enticing for the top 2 to turn down and the next level of players seemed to have the same impact up until sabers pick. From that point, there doesn&#039;t seem to be much difference from the round zero order and the draft itself.<br /><br />As the thread title says, it could be way too early to tell but I fail to see this as being successful or ground-breaking. Nothing really changed that much.<br /><br />Everybody basically ended up with their original spots and given the level of skill in this draft and the disparity from the top two picks to middle part of the first round, the level of skill available is roughly the same from 3-8 with another considerable drop-off from then there on. I&#039;m not trying to devalue any player, but the fact that everyone (aside from saber) wanted to stay in that 3-8ish range tells me that there was a considerable advantage for the top 2 (maybe 3) over the rest of the field. <br /><br />It wouldn&#039;t be any different if captains didn&#039;t get to pick their orders. I suspect the idea of round zero was to allow captains to move up and down freely. I also am under the impression it was to help new captains pick in a spot not affected by the&nbsp; team&#039;s results from the previous season. Fair enough. It sounds great. But the picking system was rather complicated and the definition of &quot;new captain&quot; is not simply somebody taking the helms as a captain when he wasn&#039;t the previous season. The definition of &quot;new captain&quot; only applies to somebody who has never been an IDL captain. Once again, fair enough. But I fear this may have side-effects not considered until round zero has happened and the draft goes live (or maybe even after the season, who knows). <br /><br />I&#039;ll elaborate:<br /><br />In some ways, captain skill was determined just by the spots in which they were placed to select their draft spot. For example, for players who have been captains before, their records as captains (only in the most recent seasons if I am correct) determines where they end up. But that is only determined once the returning captains are placed based on their results from last season. After that, they get shuffled around for what they&#039;ve accomplished, their obvious playing ability and their past record in the mix amongst returning captains. <br /><br />For the brand new captains, I believe they are placed in the spot in which their team would be based on last seasons results. Then from the top 3, they&#039;d slide down 3 spots (i.e from 1 to 3) or if they&#039;re in the bottom 3 they move up 3 spots(i.e from 12 to 10). Or, at the very least, something along those lines aha.<br /><br />It&#039;s a bit confusing and I&#039;m not sure I understand it myself 100%, but based on the round zero order, that&#039;s the impression I got. Please correct me if I&#039;m wrong and thoroughly explain this if you understand it better. <br /><br />But back to the point I was making. Regardless of what was intended, these spots were determined not just by the basis of what the team did the previous season, but by other previous captain&#039;s criteria as well (referring to the new &quot;not new&quot; captains). So in essence, did we just unintentionally rank captains? Or was that the intention? Either way, I&#039;m not suggesting it&#039;s good or bad but the impression I got from all of the discussions that took place on these forums was that we wanted to stay away from ranking captains. <br /><br />So, to summarize: while the intent was to spice up the draft and make things more balanced, was that actually accomplished? As I stated, nothing really changed that much in the draft order itself. And to be honest, after some rambling and deep-thought, I&#039;ve found that the only thing this did was create more questions than provide answers. Once again, to make sure we&#039;re all clear, I&#039;m not suggesting this is good or bad but I don&#039;t see much of anything actually changing other than the process itself. So along with the questions I&#039;ve asked in this thread and given the unintentional (or perhaps intentional) consequences, was it worth it?<br /><br /><br /><br />