Wow, what a great event. I truly enjoyed that a lot more than I thought I would. When I posted about a mock draft on a Sunday morning after setting my NFL fantasy lineup, I didn't anticipate this outcome! There were several things that made this exciting, but my favor part and some may agree was watching as the picks came in by the "Captains" and them discussing why they chose who they chose. I did not ask this of them, but it just goes to show we got the right captains to lead this first draft. Thank you to Stan, SHM, Kart, Vane and PhoenixKnight for doing such an outstanding job on the draft. Also Congratulations to SHM for being our first ever winner of the fantasy draft.

So where do we go from here. Captain Jack and I have message back and forth a few times, trying to brainstorm on how to make this event better or even if we should. Does it need changing? What is is missing? Several players left feedback on the "Chit Chat" forum and also messaged me privately. Here are some discussion points to consider. Please add your two cents as we will do this draft again and we want to make it fun and include everyone.

Pre-Draft:
* Should we change the draft format or leave it the same. I.E. Less captains/Larger teams, More Captains/Smaller teams, Leave the same.
* Who drafts next? Who will be the captains? It was suggested that the first 5 picked be the captains. What happens when these 5 pick the Captains who drafted in this first draft? Should we have new captains each time or is it fair if Kart is a captain multiple times in the future.
*School Yard Draft Pick (just go in order), Serpentine, Auction Draft (assign values to players - Huge amount of work but willing to do this)
*What else

Draft:
* I think we all agree we want Captains feedback as to why they chose who they did. Great element to the draft in my opinion. Gave some new players some insight into the game they are just learning
* Suggestion came in of a Chat Room or Temp Guild for the players selected during the draft. This would allow the captain and the players picked to talk and share ideas on future votes perhaps, but the main thing is to just get to know one another.
* During draft I kept a running list of players picked and posted after each round at the request of one of the captains to avoid having to scroll back pages to see who was selected. Any changes to this?

Post Draft:
* Voting - Lots of comments on how voting should be done. 1 vote, 2 votes... Thoughts? I think it turned out pretty fair, but can we make it better?
* Prizes - I don't expect the MILLIONS to continue as prizes and I wouldn't ask the players to donate such huge amounts again. So how do we handle this? To be a captain you pitch in 5 mil and this is the pot? Looking for thoughts here.
* Achievements - I believe Captain Jack is working on Achievement Badges for some people. We should see something like this soon or an announcement of it. Such as Winning Team, Winning Captain and first 3 rounds of draft... But I await a go ahead from CJ on this. If they come, wear them with pride.
* How often should we draft? 3 months, 6 months?

What else guys. Lots to think about or maybe nothing at all. Maybe just leave it alone. Let us know what you would like to see and we will discuss this. I would love to run another draft maybe in 2 or 3 months from now once we get everything ironed out.

Lastly, thank you again for Captain DaVinci and Mohammad for the great donations for prize money. Thank you.

you might have read what i posted in the past an i mentioned we should do a mock draft every month that maybe has a pot of 5 mill and then the winners of the 5 months in between the mega drafts ie. we have 1 draft a month and the winners of those drafts go into the mega draft and the mega draft is just like this last one i also want to add that a captain that was on the mega draft cant be on any of the drafts for 6 months to give others the chance to win.

this is just my input everyone is diffrent

Pre-Draft:

next draft - first 5 picked be the captains.
future draft - perhaps some variation - drafts focused on particular aspects of the game for example, new players, dream pirate team, top financial team,


I liked the Serpentine selection

Draft:
Captains feedback - +1

Chat Room or Temp Guild for the players selected during the draft. This would allow the captain and the players picked to talk and share ideas on future votes perhaps, but the main thing is to just get to know one another. +1

During draft I kept a running list of players picked and posted after each round at the request of one of the captains to avoid having to scroll back pages to see who was selected. +1

Post Draft:
* Voting - ability to rate teams instead of a single vote for example 5 teams, you get 5,4,3,2,1 to assign to the teams by how you rate them.
say you can give 5 points to your favorite team and 4 points to your next favorite team, ect

If I did not comment on it I am neutral or don't have anything helpful to add.

2 votes.

I really enjoyed the draft and the post draft smack talk or in my case political advertisements. This was the most fun I have had in the game in a good while. I would also like to congratulate Sir Henry on winning, but then the paraplegic tap dancer always wins the talent competition. lol

The serpentine draft format I felt worked really well. I would suggest it stay the same in future drafts.

Who should be team captains and how many captains? I would think this would be best if it was left to 5 captains or if more captains were involved then less choices. You are talking about selecting what some would consider the top 50, 55 with captains, player in the game. I like the idea of it being an honor to have been selected. If you go with more than the 50 selected it would lessen the honor involved. The choice of captains is something beyond my thought process. There are too many ways to determine who will be captains. I can just say this, if you are selected to be a captain it will be great fun.

How often should this be done? I don't like the idea of mock drafts or monthly drafts. This is too significant event that you stumbled upon to make it that often. I say no more than every 6 months. Let us look forward to it. Let us have time to enjoy what has just happened. This turned out to be something I never considered. You saw people who had no interaction with each other giving credit to others whom they recognize as doing well. It brought the community closer together. Please give it time to be enjoyed and planned for the next one. Rushing it will take away from the seriousness and the overall enjoyment I am afraid.

Congratulations to Shadowood for putting on a great event. Hmmmm, I need suggestions on something for Kaptains Day. This is going to be hard or impossible to top. After this, I just hope it will be interesting.

I agree if this is done to often It will not be as fun. However I think this is a good use of the forums and would like to see more events of this sort.
Perhaps we can figure out something completely different but on a similar scale of player involvement. I think it would be nice to have about 4 large events of this sort, held every 3 months. 2 drafts per year 6 months apart, and perhaps 2 other events of a similar scale also 6 months apart and offset from the drafts by 3 months.

i would suggest the new captains be chosen randomly from the top 25 people picked in the draft. that way they come from the most prestigious positions, but there are still enough that we don't get the same captains over and over again. (because honestly, if we do it by just the top 5 are the new captains, most of the ones this round will probably be first round picks)

Kart wrote:This is too significant event that you stumbled upon to make it that often. I say no more than every 6 months. ... Rushing it will take away from the seriousness and the overall enjoyment I am afraid.

You said it perfectly, Kart. Every 6 months is often enough, I don't want to lose the novelty of it by running it every 3 months. Let's run a different game every 3 months and leave the fantasy draft for twice per year.

Who will be the captains? We could say the first few players picked each time will be the next captains, excluding people who have already done it and people who have gone inactive since then or declined the opportunity. That way the honor goes to new people every time.

5 captains is the perfect number. I can't keep track of more than 5 teams.

2 votes.

First off, well done Shadowood! Its been said many times already and will not be said enough. This was a remarkable event mate, hats of to ye. It was both an honor and pleasure to be one of yer chosen captains.

Second, congrats to SHM are in order! The first ever PG fantasy draft under ye belt mate, an honor well deserved. ( Now look out for Vanes Team comin' to collect that reward from ye )


Thirdly for the draft itself. I believe it was managed and executed very well for a first go. I believe 3 - 5 captains be enough for future drafts, any more and it loses the prestige that comes with bein' picked. Serpentine method worked very well, this i would leave for all future drafts. As for the occurrence of such an event, every 6 months is enough, Kart explained the reason for this rather well. When it comes to any sort of reward, the potential for CJ to give out achievements to some is quite adequate in my mind, gold not be necessary. Voting also went well, but i believe allowing 2 votes each would be acceptable and even fun if there were a minimum of 5 teams involved. I would like to see specification on the type of team we are building, rather than who's the general best. Perhaps one draft would be designed for the captain to pick the best Political Team and compete for that title. Other ideas could be, best pirate team, most likely to control the world, the best merchant team ect.

Break Down of thoughts:
* 3-5 Captains
* 5-10 Picks per team
* Serpentine Draft
* Held Twice Yearly (once every 6 months)
* 2 Votes if 5 Teams or more / 1 Vote if less than 5 teams
* Specify what type of team needs to be picked for the draft

trying to repeat something to create the same buzz often erodes quickly to same old, same old.

to keep it exciting the concept should be guarded well but with some twist every time.

for me i would say:
not more than twice a year
not more than 5 captains (that way newbees like me can still manage to get a feel for who they are)
serpentine worked out fine

add:
specific purpose (dominance, wealth, influence, ships stolen, largest fleets or income per day etc.)
pre-game vote (after announcing the purpose, everybody can nominate one player as 'captain')
popular vote and jury vote (the previous captains become the jury and cannot be nominated)
pre game betting pool (10.000 gc per bet; based on jury vote)

alternative1:
new beginning:
Captain Jack creates competition ID's and gives the teams temporary access to these for the duration of the competition. all teams start from scratch and are given a specific goal (e.g. conquer a port) to reach and the first team who gets it is the winner. (this could only work when an temporary npc port is created ) after the competition all the assets from the temporary accounts will be auctioned and transferred into credits and gc. the winning team will get this as prize.

alternative 2:
junior league
the captains pick players with id's above 60000 (or 50000 to 60000 for a pro league). Guilds are formed and have to achieve multiple goals in a month time. the captains are coaches! they train and mentor but are not hands on participating)