I&#039;ll be the first to admit that I don&#039;t know any of the circumstances surrounding any of the forfeits, except maybe for DMR&#039;s if it was due to Nostar vacationing in Bermuda.&nbsp; But I have opinions anyway, and I&#039;m sure everyone else does, so let&#039;s get it rolling.<br /><br />I don&#039;t think you can blame forfeits on any specific cause.&nbsp; It&#039;s popular maybe to blame shitty captains or shitty players, but DMR fits neither of those descriptions.&nbsp; Instead, I personally think that IDL needed to do more to be more attractive to more players.<br /><br />Let&#039;s not get carried away though.&nbsp; This is IDL&#039;s [b]TENTH[/b] season; we&#039;ve been around for five years and over that time changed the entire landscape of competitive Doom.&nbsp; So I certainly don&#039;t mean to be all doom and gloom, IDL&#039;s doing a great job and we should all be proud of what we&#039;ve accomplished.<br /><br />=== Competing for players<br /><br />I think we need to take it seriously when players choose to do things instead of play their IDL game, because that means that players who actually are interested enough in Doom to know about CTF, ZDaemon, and IDL chose to do something else - whatever that actually is.&nbsp; Sure some things don&#039;t really fall into that category; I got in a car crash a couple seasons ago, Nostar disappeared into the deep mystical fog of the north Atlantic, etc.&nbsp; But when people just don&#039;t show up or quit, I think we should consider that we lost the fight for their time.<br /><br />=== &quot;Holding the league hostage&quot; vs. &quot;Retaining players&quot;<br /><br />I absolutely don&#039;t think that IDL should twist and turn based on the whims of a few players, regardless of who they are.&nbsp; Rather I think we should always be focused on player retention and playerbase growth.<br /><br />This season&#039;s 8/10/12 team argument is a good example.&nbsp; Again I&#039;m short on details, but from what I understand sticking with 12 teams grew the playerbase because more people signed up because of it than didn&#039;t sign up because of it.&nbsp; And certainly we can agree that more players who would never normally see the inside of an IDL server are playing this season than in recent seasons.&nbsp; If that holds to be true (I think we&#039;ll know for sure based on signups for Season XI) then I think the administration made the right call, regardless of forfeits, drama, etc.<br /><br />=== Improving IDL<br /><br />I think it&#039;s critically important for the administration to listen to players for two reasons:<br /><br />&nbsp; - They feel like they have a say in the league&#039;s direction (and really they do, at least when they talked to me)<br />&nbsp; - You know what players love and hate about the league, and that helps to make decisions that grow the playerbase<br /><br />To return to the 8/10/12 team argument, I talked with Jenova a little about why he didn&#039;t sign up this season, and (paraphrasing) he said he just didn&#039;t want to play games against weak teams.&nbsp; There are some things you can say about this:<br /><br />&nbsp; - Teams are overall stronger when strong players (like Jenova) join the league.<br />&nbsp; - Teams are overall stronger when strong players captain and talent is thus spread.<br />&nbsp; - Some teams are surprisingly strong, whereas other teams are surprisingly weak (ranking players, etc.).<br />&nbsp; - It&#039;s probably impossible to eliminate weak teams.<br /><br />But I wasn&#039;t trying to argue with him, I was trying to understand why he didn&#039;t join so I can give suggestions to the administration on how to get players like Jenova to sign up for the league again.&nbsp; Like it or not we&#039;re a small community, and every player who doesn&#039;t sign up hurts the league in a significant way.&nbsp; Think how much better this season would&#039;ve gone if just 5 more players signed up.<br /><br />With that in mind, I think the administration needs to find out the reasons behind all the forfeits this season, and they should talk to players who didn&#039;t sign up for the last two seasons or who might not sign up next season and see if there&#039;s anything they can do to make IDL more attractive to them.&nbsp; Honestly I&#039;ve found that just talking to players and explaining some of the things that we argue about in #idlb makes a big difference, even if nothing can realistically be done about their complaints.&nbsp; And on some level, players deserve to be a part of those discussions and the league&#039;s direction in general.<br /><br />Overall, I suggest talking to players - not to imply that this doesn&#039;t happen, but I&#039;m emphasizing its importance.<br /><br />To make a larger point, IDL only exists because players want to play in it.&nbsp; If players aren&#039;t signing up, if they&#039;re not showing up, if they&#039;re not practicing, if they&#039;re not uploading demos or talking about stats and strats, then either they shouldn&#039;t be in IDL, or IDL fucked up somewhere.<br /><br />=== Professionalism<br /><br />However - and this goes back to the &quot;holding the league hostage&quot; argument - it&#039;s important to make good decisions for solid reasons.&nbsp; From what I hear some players didn&#039;t want 12 teams this season, but &quot;we got more players&quot; is a great reason for that decision.&nbsp; Way back in the day players were upset when IDL went from 3 to 4 player teams, but &quot;we curbed forfeits&quot; was a great reason for that decision.&nbsp; IDL would stagnate if it pulled back whenever a player was upset.<br /><br />Making good decisions, enforcing rules, maintaining perspective, communicating with the playerbase, and in general not being faggots is what I would call professionalism, and it&#039;s what separates IDL and ZDDL from Skulltag-based events.&nbsp; There are a number of things that go into this:<br /><br />&nbsp; - Understanding the rules<br />&nbsp; - Discussing issues<br />&nbsp; - Being around and keeping up to date with events (who has demo penalties, etc.)<br /><br />I don&#039;t mean to diminish what the administration already does, doing all the stats, entering all the players in for each season, handling scheduling, moderating disputes, etc. etc. etc. is a huge amount of work.&nbsp; And I&#039;m not trying to be like, &quot;ho ho ho when I was on the board everything was waaaaay better&quot;.&nbsp; But I think we can agree there have been pretty huge failures in all of these things this season:<br /><br />&nbsp; - Changing the draft order the night before<br />&nbsp; - Illegal trades<br />&nbsp; - The most missing demos of any season<br /><br />If you guys need more board members, or some board members aren&#039;t doing anything, fix it I guess?&nbsp; For example, it shouldn&#039;t just be mike and Ralphis running stats for 6 games a week, the responsibility should rotate.&nbsp; Bones shouldn&#039;t be the only one hounding captains &amp; players for availability.&nbsp; I know we all have lives and other obligations - I resigned from the board for that reason - but if you&#039;re unable to actually participate in running IDL then you should let someone else do it, there&#039;s kind of a line.<br /><br />===<br /><br />Alright, I think that&#039;s enough.&nbsp; It kind of morphed into a BAWWW post, but I&#039;m really not depressed or disappointed by this season at all.&nbsp; I think it&#039;s cool that players like Killforce and Soulsucka got to play in games and have an impact on IDL, I think it&#039;s cool that even ZD spies like Dannyboy are playing in games, I think it&#039;s cool Doomguy came back, I like the Euro player count this season, and I really like that Funcrusher is an IDL server host this season (hooray!).&nbsp; Things are improving, but there are always to improve further.&nbsp; So what do you guys think?