[quote author=Fastidious]<br />You can honestly say SUC is a stellar team but they&#039;ve had outside help to secure their team each year.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I fundamentally disagree with this statement in 2 ways.<br /><br />[b][size=4]SUC is a stellar team[/size][/b]<br /><br />SUC is a great team but they got lucky an awful lot, and their dedication is probably the highest I&#039;ve ever seen out of an IDL team.&nbsp; Less so this season than last, but nonetheless.&nbsp; Skill or talent-wise there were comparable or better teams both seasons.&nbsp; Part of the &quot;magic&quot; of IDL is that it worked out for SUC, and their story so far is a pretty great one.<br /><br />[b][size=4]They had outside help to secure that team each season[/size][/b]<br /><br />If by &quot;outside help&quot; you mean &quot;perfectly legitimate trades&quot; then yeah.&nbsp; But I don&#039;t see what the IDL administration should&#039;ve done about it.&nbsp; It seems like your points are:<br /><br />[list]<br />[li]SPE needed JKist to succeed[/li]<br />[li]SUC was &quot;too good&quot; and shouldn&#039;t have become better at the cost of another IDL team[/li]<br />[/list]<br /><br />The problem with making these assertions is that they&#039;re based on quantifications of player skill.&nbsp; As soon as the administration starts getting into stuff like:<br /><br />&quot;Well DMR really needs offense so they shouldn&#039;t trade MionicDonut&quot;<br /><br />&quot;Well JKist is really integral to SPE and trading him to SUC makes this season moot so they shouldn&#039;t trade him&quot;<br /><br />we&#039;re going way too far.&nbsp; And I can appreciate the standard of &quot;this trade shocks the league and ruins a season&quot;, but I personally don&#039;t think any possible trade of any player or players would do that; when I think of that standard I think of throwing games, agreeing to play with a weak roster, namefaking, etc.&nbsp; That stuff shocks me, but JKist playing for SUC just makes me want to destroy that team and laugh at their silly schemes.<br /><br />I mean, can you imagine what would happen if we got into that kind of thing?&nbsp; Players would completely revolt; we&#039;d basically be in the position of telling teams that they have to suck it up, or that their captain is making a retarded decision, and if anything at all went wrong as a result of our decision there&#039;d be no end to the flames.&nbsp; We simply can&#039;t predict everything that&#039;s gonna happen and we refuse to put ourselves in that position.<br /><br />[hr]<br /><br />[quote author=ItalianStallion]<br />I think what fast is trying to say is, how or why should he play for someone when the trade was done without his approval.&nbsp; Sure it&#039;s not the players on your teams decision, but you want to make sure there is no problem with the trade or else, well, this happens!<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Fast and I talked a little about this, which boiled down to, &quot;what should I do if my captain destroys my team&#039;s chances and there&#039;s still 6 games left?&quot;&nbsp; Having been on 2 IDL teams that were horrible (no offense guys&nbsp; :P ) I can say that the worst IDL experience is playing game after game with no prospect of winning whatsoever.&nbsp; So I can certainly sympathize with players in this position, whether or not is as a result of a captain&#039;s bad decision(s).<br /><br />That said, there&#039;s nothing the administration can do about it beyond what we already do:<br /><br />[list]<br />[li]Players who want to be in control of a team are invited to volunteer as captains (there&#039;s usually a couple of spots each season)[/li]<br />[li]Players can lobby captains they trust to franchise them[/li]<br />[li]Captains that continually make bad decisions that cause them to miss playoffs twice in a row will be dismissed[/li]<br />[/list]<br /><br />[hr]<br /><br />[b][size=4]IDL &amp; More Players[/size][/b]<br /><br />IDL doesn&#039;t need new players immediately, but we do need to start pulling in new players at some point, because the current players aren&#039;t going to be around forever.&nbsp; Think about the last 3 seasons and how many new players have joined.&nbsp; That&#039;s a year and a half with... 4 new players off the top of my head.&nbsp; Even worse, we have a problem retaining them - Rhombus isn&#039;t around, MadV isn&#039;t around, Oscar isn&#039;t around, etc. etc.&nbsp; Plus, why wouldn&#039;t we want more players?&nbsp; On one hand I can understand people saying, &quot;Ugh, I don&#039;t want to deal with rookies&quot;, but that&#039;s a little selfish.&nbsp; New players means more talent and different dynamics, and even though some might quit or cheat or other heinous things, we have those problems anyway :D .<br /><br />[b][size=4]Dumb Posts[/size][/b]<br /><br />I want to talk a little about dumb posts too.&nbsp; I worry when I see things getting too serious, like people getting short with each other, throwing insults, or going out of their way to make someone else feel like shit.&nbsp; This applies to in-game and IRC too, there are way too many instances of people being shitty and mean for no other reason than that they can.&nbsp; I hear a lot about players &quot;hating&quot; each other - how can you hate some guy on the Internet?&nbsp; Why would you spend tons of time trolling someone and trying to make their ZD/IDL experience a piece of shit?&nbsp; I don&#039;t want to get all Care Bear or ZD Administration here, but this kind of stuff hurts everyone because it attacks veteran players and rookie players alike.&nbsp; When honest discussion is polluted by rampant trolling, or when rookies are harassed/kicked/banned for silly reasons, the entire league suffers because we lose input, we lose new players, and the new players we do keep get the idea that that&#039;s how you&#039;re supposed to act.&nbsp; It&#039;s all-around super gay, and I hope I see less of it.<br />