Quote Originally Posted by bronislav84 View Post
Relying on RNG entirely to pick teams? I'm never lucky, and may end up with people I don't know or don't care for. If we go with any draft, let's have an initial core team draft and then open recruitment as Harry described. I guess it's his idea now.
I mean, the point of the RNG would be precisely to put you with teammates that you don't know--it would let people step out of their comfort zones a little and get to know some of the other fantastic members on PXR. New members? They're afraid to pick a team full of people they "don't know" as well--coming from experience, there's a list of teams here and I only know a handful of people. As a not-quite-newbie, I know that everyone here loves WAR, but how do I pick a team? If I get lucky, I'll meet new people. Maybe I won't. Suuuuuper scary, actually. I know you have your experience and desire to be with your friends, and so do a lot of people here, but there are a decent amount of people who aren't in the same boat. Also, meeting new friends.

Also, it's not like all of your friends will all be on different teams. There's a fair chance that you'll get a couple of people that you know really well, depending mostly on how many people you know. If you are friends with roughly 20% of the people participating in WAR, for example, then roughly 20% of your team would be your teammates anyway!

Point being, I think WAR is a place of competition as well as a place of friendship. A lot of the issues that are happening now are, I think, in part because some people feel excluded or isolated from other parts of the community (this is not to single anyone out; I think it goes both ways). However, if you only ever stick with the people you know, how can you ever make new friends? It's not like you can never talk to your other friends ever again because you were randomly rolled onto different teams for a summer.

My biggest fear with pick-based drafts is that there will be a ton of drama. As far as I understand (correct me if I'm wrong), the idea here is to have a few team leaders who would then take turns picking different members for their team? People say that this was disastrous when attempted before because lots of people got sad that they were picked late in the game/often friendships still get split onto different teams/seriously who wants to be that last kid picked on the kickball team. Again, not terribly familiar with the exact history here, but it sounded like people really just got sad and there was a lot more drama than necessary? This sounds weird, but removing the option of choice also removes the responsibility/blame that a team leader would otherwise have to carry during drafting--do you really want to have to prioritize (and publicly) which of your friends you would most want to have at your side?