I&#039;ll say this in regards to Ladna&#039;s Ralph/Him comparison:<br /><br />The one thing the draft can do is help Ladna build a good team. This is because Ladna is a capable player and simply needs to find his great player through the draft. Ralph, on the other hand, will be the great player on his team and simply needs to find two stellar players. It balances out if Ladna gets that great player he&#039;s looking for. But there&#039;s no guarantee either way you slice it. So fixing the draft won&#039;t change that. Talent will.<br /><br />I&#039;ll put it like this: if Legion was twice as good as he is now (which wouldn&#039;t make him great, it would make him stellar, someone of Ladna&#039;s caliber), FLS would have probably beaten SPE. That is the benefit of the first pick, the downside is well-documented, however. That&#039;s why, as I said, the only way Ladna will beat Ralphis is if we have more talent so Ladna can find that capable 3rd. If he does, then there&#039;s absolutely no question that it would be 50/50. That&#039;s why I continue to stress that we should find ways to bring in more talent, not alter the draft. <br /><br />Now, some would read this and say based on what I&#039;ve argued, I&#039;m actually supporting the idea of a new draft system - no, that&#039;s not it at all. I&#039;m saying that some Captains like Ralphis will be extraordinarily great, others will be slightly above average. And quite frankly, altering the draft to change this won&#039;t make it even; it will turn it into a disadvantage to Ralphis (assuming we went from snake draft to straight draft and Ladna gets 1-4 and Ralph gets 8-12). I don&#039;t believe that is fair to Ralphis or the IDL. Because now you&#039;re discouraging anybody who doesn&#039;t land 1-4 to step up and be a captain. And that&#039;s my argument against the straight draft. <br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />The question becomes how do we promote the IDL and and find ways to bring in new blood. The continuous word I&#039;ve seen throughout all of these threads is &quot;growth.&quot; We want the IDL to grow, so we have to find new players. That&#039;s the key. <br /><br />The downside you&#039;ll get with new players is inexperience, inability and the mystery to as whether they&#039;ll pan out or not. We can contribute to this by, once we&#039;ve managed to get some new guys in, giving them more opportunities to play. Will it require some of us to step up in priv and let them play? Absolutely. The games won&#039;t always be fun but it&#039;s a great thing for the IDL if these new guys are getting tons of action. You don&#039;t get good through pub, you get good through priv. Pub might teach you a few basics but priv will teach you the basics and deeper fundamentals, all-the-while enhancing what these new guys might already know.<br /><br />If you want to contribute to the IDL&#039;s growth, try doing more of that. It&#039;s productive and gives people a sense that they&#039;re welcome to join our community. They will have to put the work in and not all of them will be great but it&#039;s far better than just playing the same old people over and over again and watching the league eventually die. <br /><br />We have plenty of time to get these guys in here and giving them some opportunities to play and learn before the draft. If we get a few who to out to be awesome, that&#039;s a win. I&#039;ve gone through ZDaemon (took a ban for it, too - don&#039;t tell me I don&#039;t love the IDL!) to get these guys. I still like Skulltag might have a few guys worthwhile. The Quake community is definitely worth giving a shot, too. But I can&#039;t do it alone; I need help. I&#039;m encouraging everyone to step up and advertise the shit out of IDL to get guys in here as soon as possible. Once we do that, we&#039;ll work with them and see where it goes. <br /><br />Also, this was totally a ramble post. It&#039;s 4am and I&#039;ve been meaning to post something along the lines of this for the last few days. I just finally got to it and said fuck it, if I don&#039;t do it now, I&#039;ll probably never do it! So don&#039;t come down on me too hard, okay? :P 