I'd like to discuss something mentioned in the "Aphex unfairly forced to forfeit a match" thread.

Basically I said: "There are restrictions for high skilled mercs/substitues, but nothing in place to stop such a player officially joining a team (after the seeding period) and playing for you all season"

Following that Ritual pointed out:

"Season 2, my team lost in the finals against CiB, but CiB was carried heavily by players from Onslaught"

"Season 3, my team recruited fucking locklear half way through the season"

I could list several other teams/players who have done this though pretty much every other season but I don't want to call anyone out, I'm happy to quote Ritual as they said it themselves.

In my opinion if you join a team you shouldn't be able to play for another team in the same season. There is a huge "transfer window" before the season starts, players have enough time to play with a team through pcw's and seeding matches to find out where they fit in. If you're team gets knocked out out/performs poorly then too bad. You shouldn't be able to then switch to a lower skilled team that's still in to carry them.

Can anything be done about this as I feel there is a huge gap in the rules right now letting teams/players abuse this...

Sometimes teams fold and there are players left who want to keep playing and it's not their fault.

There are rules to stop people joining 1 week before the playoffs I think and that eliminates people in the knockout rounds getting carries. Seems good enough

Fair enough, I'm not saying I want people to miss out, I just think there needs to be something in place to stop people joining teams that are drastically lower in skill (a lot like the substitution rule), this will still leave plenty of options for players, but will stop the D1 players carrying D2 teams, D2 to D3 etc etc.

I wasn't aware of this rule you speak of, is it new for this season? Like I said I want to avoid point fingers at teams/players or call people out but as you brought up that rule I have to ask, wasn't you allowed to join oF for their final match against vD last season? Which in turn at the time was arguably a Prem/Higher D1 skilled player joining a D2 team...

4. Teams
(f) Teams may add and remove as many players to and from their roster throughout the course of a season until rosters are locked.
(g) Rosters will be locked and changes are no longer permitted, one (1) week before the conclusion of the regular season for each respective division.

The problem is that a lot of established teams in the same div probably won't take a player on because they are established. They don't need new players because it won't be much of an improvement and normally the other teams are "Full".

Lower divs will take the player on because it's an improvement (carry or slight improvement).

It's ok for people to ask me about my team history because in my eyes I learned a lot from each team and enjoyed playing in every single one. I joined not to carry, but to play, although I understand that I am considered better than div 2 which makes my history questionable. I also like to think that it qualifies me to speak objectively about why I joined and to contribute to this discussion more than most other players.

I was in duplex (Div 1, top div at time but div 1 team in todays terms) until August when I got bored of the game and quit to focus on study. I then joined T&T div 2 (3rd tier) team for season 3 and when they disbanded I joined oF, another div 2 team. I joined 8 days before the semi-finals against RaZe, and then played in the finals against vD. Should I have been able to? In the rules back then, yes, but now I don't think I should have.

Another example is when I first joined the competitive community. I joined a div 3 team initially and then was picked up by Duplex in div 1 mid season. Duplex folded and I joined Hardday (div 2) right at the end of the season, 1 day before the final, and played. I was essentially a merc in this situation, and radical were actually told and accepted me to play.

With the current iteration of the rules, I would not have been able to play in either scenario regardless of skill. I now think that that is entirely reasonable. Both times the seasons had already progressed to the knockout stage. It's tough because I would not have been able to play at all; no one would have wanted me to join for PCWs because I wouldn't be able to play in the knockout. However, the trade off is fairness for every other team involved and I now think that's worth more than the players who are left in limbo mid season.

I do think that players should be able to join 1 week before knockouts though because that allows more people to be involved and included if something goes wrong in another team.

Determining skill however is very subjective and would require some sort of comity/board to decide if a player can join a team or not which is retarded because then you don't get to play with friends and it could be subject to bias which causes drama. If you assume my skill at the start was duplex standard (top division), then I couldn't play with my friends in hardday, team work and tactics, or onfire. Look at Pipo and vD. He's a slightly different case because he's stuck with them and actually brought vD up but he is essentially a carry who also came from a div 1 team.

One improvement I can think of is to have all the knockout games in one weekend to speed up the seasons to allow the limbo players to get back in the scene. However this has it's draw backs of time consumption, tiredness, boredom, intensity etc...

Go talk to macpersil about this... rofl