my two cents...
i can sympathize with gotas intentions...
people tend to place a lot of faith in "strength in numbers" both IRL and in games, so games do tend to bloat quite a bit; and beyond that, i can also agree that it's easy for players not to gain experience as much playing with teammates who can easily win the game for them without assistance.
however... look at counterstrike! most maps are designed for games of 5v5... and yet... 16v16 games go down all the time, with an even sprinkling of noobs and pros mixed in together... it changes the dynamics of the game a lot (makes a big difference when you KNOW that there will be at least one person around the next corner.) does winning a match of 16v16 require as much skill as winning in a 5v5? probably not... or at least, different sets of skills.
i suppose that's the difference of playing for the win, and playing for fun... i can remember losing clan matches and totally freaking out... i can remember winning clan matches (not often hur hur) and feeling like a million bucks!
through all of this disorganization and craziness... new players emerge who are head and shoulders above the rest in terms of skill! why does this happen? because counterstrike has a well-established system of teamplay and organized clans. players are often exposed to clanplay in counterstrike; if you are good enough, you are invited for a scrimmage, and maybe will be recruited... if your clan is good enough, you may be promoted up a league, if you suck, you will be relegated down. of course, many players are merely there to play the game casually, and have no desire to improve their skills... throwing them into a smaller match with good players will not make these casual gamers better.
so i guess my counter-proposition is... lets try again (because i know people have attempted this before) to create a reasonable clanplay system, something with a round-robin league to start (so that it doesnt matter how many teams want to play) and then an elimination tournament at the end to determine who truly is the best.
lots of good things are happening in spring these days; integrated news into the lobby would help keep people interested in league/clanplay as well as instilling the desire for them to join the league and play... we are working with a nice spring stable version right now, so there shouldn't be any problems of a technical nature. also, we have a lot of springers interested in commented replays, in both in the aspects of producing them and of watching them, so there shouldnt be any lack of coverage or information available about the games... in fact, there seems to be enough beef and tension surrounding various social webs of the community, that if certain players signed up, then others would go "oh haha i HAVE to play now, if only to annihilate ____". i'm also aware that some of the top tier players have recently given up spring; maybe this would be something to draw them back into the fold.
there are TONS of active clans, but as far as i can see... no scrimmages! IMO, its time for [teh], [PWN], [PinK], [PiRO], [XHC], [GL_HF], [K], [PYB], [7uP], [fi], [SiC], [BLC], [eXe], [ZxC], [MARS], [Friends] and anyone else i've forgotten to put their clans honor and rep on the line

all of these guys AFAIK have at least 3 people who are good enough IMO to play in a league.
ofc... theres still the problem of starting the league up... what mod to pick? how big should the teams be? what maps to use? what format should the league / tournament use? how do we get everyone online at once to play? and more importantly... is this a good idea or am i completely off the mark
