[quote=&quot;MassVC&quot;]This is the crux.&nbsp; You are telling me (and you are not the first person) that making the IDL fair will cause elite players to walk.&nbsp; Elite players do not want an even playing field; they do not want to have to put an equal effort into a game in order to win as does a bad player.&nbsp; Instead, they want the odds to be in their favor because they are elite players.&nbsp; They want it to be an uphill battle for the novice players.&nbsp; If you turn their 80/20 odds into 50/50 odds, they will walk.[/quote]<br /><br />That is completely absurd. Elite players like myself, JKist3(when he played), Chewy, Nostar (on occasion), Ralph (when he has the time) are always trying to practice and put maximum effort into our teams to ensure their success. Balancing out the league to give novice/shitty players a better chance isn&#039;t even close to 50/50. It&#039;s more like 20/80 elite/novice players. The other reason is that we came to be elite by [b]practicing[/b] all the time. I didn&#039;t get to be good at DooM or CTF in the last few seasons by sitting on my ass and eating chips all day; I got to that point because I put in the work. I get that not everybody has the potential to be that great with all the work in the world, I don&#039;t think any less of anybody for that. But we can&#039;t sit here and possibly try to balance the league by literally screwing half of it so that shitty players who haven&#039;t put in the work can have the opportunity to compete. That&#039;s not fair to us or the league for that matter. If they want to be great players, then practice. I&#039;ve tried to help anyone I can but when they stop showing up or coming on to practice, I can&#039;t fix that. Nobody can. So why are we wasting our time on trying to do just that? <br /><br />It&#039;s like I said, if we want to advertise and get new people on, we need to be doing it now instead of discussing why you think a straight draft is better than a snake draft when everyone in this thread knows the straight draft will never happen. Why? Because the league starts in 3 months and in those 3 months, if we reached out more and got some newer guys to come on, that&#039;s probably an additional two months they&#039;d have to practice and get better and have the opportunity to make a team as a 3rd and over the season see drastic leaps. If we don&#039;t, it&#039;s hard to say that they&#039;ll sign up. I understand your concern, Mass, but I just don&#039;t think your mind&#039;s in the right place here. And I&#039;m not saying that advertising alone will get a ton of new players, but if we spent more time doing that and it landed us one decent player with potential, then that would be far more productive than sitting here and talking about something that won&#039;t happen.&nbsp; <br /><br />Now, to get back on track. More discussion about 3rds:<br /><br />You saw the value of a 3rd last season and the difference it made. You and LB got rid of your 3rds for safer, more reliable (and quite frankly, much smarter which is a skill in and of itself) players in Gyross and Saber and it landed both of you a great deal of success. I wound up with Mobius, and while Mantis isn&#039;t the greatest, probably a 3rd in and of himself, I can&#039;t help but feel like if I had someone like Rust or a true second, my team would have been much better off. But giving me Mobius with Rust wouldn&#039;t have changed the outcome of my season - it still would have been bad. That&#039;s not to discredit Mobius but that&#039;s the harsh truth everyone faces. And that&#039;s why 3rds are so important. If you have a 3rd who can hardly point and shoot, it doesn&#039;t matter if you have Chew and Nostar on the same team, they&#039;re not going to go very far without someone who is coordinated/skilled enough to friggin&#039; kill someone. <br /><br />