Agreed on the first and last, but the 1 draft is something I really don’t like.
I made that case plenty of times, but I really don’t play this game to random into a family with 4 idiots that go berserk after one lost planet and piss away the round. Happens every time, typically with hotheads from the US. I have a lot more fun playing with the team I selected myself.
I honestly do get where you are coming from… but the randomness in rounds like that caused a lot of other things as well.
Plus, you’re forcing n00bs to play with those folks. Which is probably one of the reasons there are hardly any new players or there’s pretty much no one returning to this game.
A lot of players are set in their ways and just playing this on auto-pilot. There’s no real excitement anymore.
These players, veterans, don’t get in touch with new players either…
It’s a whole vicious cycle IC is in right now and the only way to improve is to hustle things up and force people out of their comfort zones.
But that’s just my point of view =/
I understand people wanting to play with their friends, but by reducing drafts you are increasing the chance of newer players playing with people who know what they are doing.
Also, by only have 1 or 2 drafts in small families, it still allows you to control a decent portion of the family while recucing the chance of a full drafted fam dominating the round like we are seeing in the current round
Note, I do agree more fams, and smaller fams is a great idea.
I also agree that we should build something in that prevents auto rejoining. (7 day delay is a good one).
BUT:
There’s a shitload of assumptions there that I fundamentally disagree with.
In order to get new players in a fam, you don’t need to limit the draft spots to 1, leaving 2 slots open for non-draft leaves plenty of space for new players.
Or introducing criteria for players to join a certain ‘locked’ spot - only for players that recently finished the ‘new joiner training (galaxy)’ for example.
Then you continue and make an argument I can’t figure out if it’s pro or con your own idea.
So you force randomming noobs/new players in fams with Vets, while you argue that Vets don’t mix and just do auto-pilot play?
Now I would argue that having new players join in the fam is a great idea, every time we have it, I love to help them and they become quite good pretty fast. But I don’t think you need 1 draft spot in a 5-7 man fam for that.
I play quite a number of galaxies, and have been playing IC since forever, and I play with plenty of oldskool vets and we’re trying out new stuff, nothing auto-pilot there.
That’s nonsense, their domination has nothing to do with the full-draft. We have seen fams dominating galaxies since the beginning of the game, in all settings, galaxy sizes, round lengths etc.
You could even argue that non-draft increases the chances of domination, because one fam might get lucky and get all the great players. It;s not skill-distributed, so no guarantees with randoms either.
I agree it would be great to come up with a way to distribute new players over fams with experienced players. I just don’t agree that lowering draft slots will increase the joy people have in the game, neither the experienced players nor the new players. Least of all it will increase the powerbalance to families, if you think that, please check the EOR ranking for rounds where we actually did have random based fams.
I think you’re making some well thought points there, so I’m going to meet you in the middle;
6 players per family, 3 drafts, 3 randoms.
You get the advantage of having 2 veterans at your side you know you can rely on while opening the possibilities of meeting/training new people to play with.
The whole problem with locking teams as is, is that the current teams have been pretty much the same since 2014. We all know who plays with who and where they will be playing with next round.
It’s the people who like each other, because they know they will pretty much dominate the round.
Then there’s the 2nd and 3rd, with an amount of slightly less active players. Then there’s the 4th and 5th, with even less active players.
You get less and less activity going down because they know for them the round is pretty much over as they will be farmed a bit and can then find out what’s left to fight over.
If you have 3 vets with 3 n00bs in maybe 4-5 teams, you’ll have more competition and the n00bs might stay around longer. Making them regulars in the long run. They will get randomed into new families and this spreads knowledge and creates greater competition.
Which is what we all want in the long run =]
Yea, thats sounds good, or at least a lot better. But you’re assuming that non-drafts are noobs. which is not the case. You stated before that there are not enough new players, hence, the randoms will not be new players but vets that didn’t like- or just didn’t get- drafted.
Hence my point of making certain slots only available for brand new players. Of course that could also get abused, but it’ll be a lot more difficult.
We’re seeing here that we have fam members in 3 main categories:
Remember too that draft spots really mean +1 for the friend group, as you need somebody to “anchor” the family. So 2 spots for example is really 3 friends.
We could have the best of all worlds by having an equal distribution of by type every round as @Mrblonde describes, but also splitting random types to account for @Hala’s point above. So given a family of 7, you’d always have
This would fill up less evenly, but would be more likely to balance everything discussed above. If drafting or drafted, you’d still get to ensure you play with at least 2 of your buds. You’d have 2 more possible experienced randoms, and yet 2 more new people to train.
This is all considering a brand new round though; we’d need to also think about how stay in fam rounds work.
One thing we could do is change the “stay in family” option at the end of round with “chance to stay in family”. The difference being that at most, only 50% of the family will actually stay together (decided at random), forcing a semi-shuffle with the rest.
The “anchor” of the next round’s family is then part of the old family, with the rest of the spots being re-opened for randoms, split again by type.
This would preserve “family building” across several rounds, while also preventing top fams from bubbling up to the top at the expense of interest from everybody else, which makes for predictable, less competitive, and boring rounds.
I read bunch but sort of got bored of reading towards the end of the comments.
This could potentially stop same teams every time but allows for friends to be together and keep those 3 spots for possibility of n00bs joining any fam.
EDIT: force people that would like to be drafted to be a part of the RNG for picking. This stops people not putting themselves forward if they want to play with friends but also gives a chance for them to be together.
That wouldn’t guarantee newbs in fams, just randoms. It doesn’t quite solve the problem @Hala described, might still end up with stacked experienced randoms.
I do like the playground draft component though. I can see that being combined with the random by type reserves I mentioned above.
How about if the playground pick was combined with anonymity.
A Team Captain picks races/roles and not players.
Each player beforehand nominates what they would like to play before draft.
When the player gets into the fam they are limited to certain races depending on their pre-draft race/role picks.
You could then add 1 or 2 draft spots at the end of the playground picks to sort out the missing spots
I fundamentally disagree that drafting causes overpowered fams. It just doesn’t.
Agree on all your other points though 
Hala, you’re right that drafting doesnt guarantee an Overpowered fam but it does if its done correctly.
I disagree, I think it actually kind of balances fam powers. I rather think no/very limited draft spots creates overpowered fams, because there is no correcting systems for multiple very strong players landing in one fam (something that is bound to happen if there are many fams).
No drafting. It creates cliques within IC and within families.
Yeah, it is fun to play with your buddies and it gives some security, but it is really easy to forget that those randoms are equals. Yes, they may even be equals in activity and skills. It is just hard to accept for the clique, because it would require trust.
Your comment about very strong players hints that drafting would spread them equally to families, but in my experience the strongest players tend to flock into groups. Thus some groups who want to play together are stronger than others and by allowing drafting one allows them to make unequal base, where randoms are then dropped. Do you think there is very strong players randoming also? What if one or two of those super-randoms land with the most powerful drafted group. Is there correcting system for that? I think it is more likely to happen, than if all players random.
I get that some players want to know at least some of the players, so there would not be nasty surprises of inactivity or social incompatibilities. That trust to other draftees although usually makes those randoms liability unless proven otherwise (takes half the round) and still your draft buddies come first if need to choose arises.
Non-drafted galaxy is more random and more equal. You have to make new friends. You have to trust a stranger. Sometimes you random into same fam with an old friend and it is nice too.
Of course, if we would draft all the fam members, like a real sports draft, pick by pick, it could be equal too. Been there, done that and it was quite fun too. Of course someone with high pick number could feel left out, but it would be fam’s responsibility to make him feel welcome and useful. Otherwise fam could be running fewer cylinders than other fams.
@I_like_pie - can we pull the EOR fam rankings somewhere for the last 5 full-draft 5+fam member galaxies, and the same for the last 5 non-draft galaxies?
I wonder if we see big differences in the differences between the fams.
Rankings do not show how equal players are within families.
I have to say, that not all partially drafted fams are unequal within. It is just more common fault in drafted fams than in random fams. Just my experience of them from some time back.
I thought you were talking about power differences between fams, not within fams?
Both, but mainly about the drafted clique within the fam.
Cliques is an attitude and mentality thing, I really don’t think not having drafts will prevent cliques, people just need to accept their randoms. I’m pretty sure all randoms felt very welcome in our fam this round, we did our best to integrate anyone we got, but let’s check.
Did you guys feel welcome in the fam this round? @TC @Fungus @Rookie
Hell yeah! This was my first round back in 10~ years and immediately felt included. So much so that I was pretty bummed learning that sticking with the family for next round was wasn’t a guaranteed thing.