Hopefully in this thread I can clarify some things about why the size of Salvation is so small and what our plans are for the future aswell as start a discussion with your input about what our next step should be.

If and when we expand it will be similar to the division system of EQL, we would add a 2nd division where the players who weren't picked to the first division would play.
WE WILL NOT EXPAND TO ONE HUGE DIVISION UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
We wish to keep the high level of skill and there's not enough good players (in our opinion) to make even more teams, I'm sorry if this offends you but we won't change on this subject.

First of all I want people to understand that we've had ideas and plans for an expansion of the Salvation draft league but decided not to go with it for the first season.
We had some legit concerns that I think most of you will agree with:

We didn't have a great timetable, summer is soon upon us and we didn't want to wait untill fall/winter to start up the league, this scene isn't exactly getting any younger and we've taken some hard hits lately, our community size is at an all time low, for example we only have 24 teams in EQL this season (I'm not putting blame on EQL in any way, I'm just describing our situation).
So for us waiting wasn't really an option, we wanted to get some excitement and interest back into quake ASAP.
With that said, we felt like we didn't have enough time nor manpower to justify trying to create a 2nd division with another 10~ teams for this season.
As you can see the signup period is less than 10 days and we had no captains for a 2nd division which would take time to recruit, and looking at the amount of signups sofar we probably wouldn't have been able to get enough players for a 2nd division on such short notice.

Getting captains, players and making a schedule that would work for a 2nd division we would need more time and probably more admins so we stuck with something we thought we could handle and that would be a great testing ground to see if a draft league is anything for the future of the qw-scene.

To summarize, we first wanted a trial season to see if the league is anything the quake players are interested in, and to see what eventual problems we will encounter and there was not enough time for us to justify a league on a larger scale just yet and if we took on too much and tried to please too many, we might've ended up pleasing noone.


Our plans for the future

If the league is a success and that players would like to see a 2nd season, then if there is enough interest we are planning to create a 2nd division similar to how div1 and div2 have worked in past EQL seasons (play their own groupstage and playoffs).
A big question is if there's enough people who would want to play in a 2nd division, you won't be playing with milton, para, bps etc.
The skill lvl should end up being around div2 and lower.

One idea we've been contemplating if we have enough interest for a 2nd division would be "team affiliates", we would first of get 10 captains for the 2nd division and have them draft their players after the 1st division draft is over and instead of free agency each 2nd division team will be "paired up" with a 1st division team to become sort of like sd1 and sd2 or sr1 and sr2.
So when a 1st division team would need to use a free agent they would have to use a player from their affiliate.
I hope to create a sort of "sense of family" between the team affiliates, that perhaps when the 1st div team needs a standin for a prac they will get someone from their affiliate, the tactics talks that could be going on in the div1 team would hopefully be shared with the affiliate.
I would love for the teams to share a priv IRC channel etc, so the 2nd div team can be bit apart and see what goes on with div0 players and be able to ask for advice and hopefully learn a little bit.
Ofcourse how much sharing, bonding and teaching will actually go on is entirely up to the players and alot of people might be sceptical about this, but I think putting a few guys under the same roof and hopefully removing the feeling of "this is a complete stranger talking to me" it would be less overwhelming and almost feel natural to help out a little bit with tactics, give some suggestions and use the 2nd div players for pracs if needed, they are afterall my "teammates".

Thanks for reading and I hope some things were cleared up for you and we could get your opinion and ideas for how an expansion would look.

I would love to captain a div2 team if, which is most likely, I wasnt picked to div1. So there you have your first captain.

I think 'div2' based on the same format (10 teams of 5 players) would be at serious risk of inactivity because most (not all) of the really keen players will likely already have been picked in the 'div1' draft. So you may get a fair number of 'casual' players or just kinda random signups that can't be relied on (this happens in every tournament, I have never seen any online QW tournament involving 50 players where everyone who signed up played all their games).

The idea about having affiliate teams sounds interesting but it feels like something that might work better if there was some degree of continuity between seasons, i.e. you play 1 quick season then inbetween something could change.... lots of ideas floating in my head but maybe lets say each div1 captain can choose one player from their affiliate team to 'promote' into their main squad. Idea being it encourages them to take more interest in the affiliate team and helping them to develop because their affiliate team is basically where they get their new blood from. Of course the big issue with such an approach is the inevitable changes in player activity between seasons i.e. can you expect the same players to still be active for future seasons and if not then the idea of fresh drafts makes more sense even if it disrupts continuity.

Overall I believe a sensible approach has been taken in terms of keeping things simple for the first season, see how that goes and then maybe look at tweaks and/or expansions to build into future seasons. Yes for players who don't make the cut it could be a bit disappointing but Salvation is not the only 4on4 league around so there are other possibilities.

With affiliate teams you need to keep the same teams from season to season in order for it to make sense. And seeing how much our regular clans are fluctuating in activity and players in them it might be hard to get it to work. This idea might even work better in the normal clan scene.

Well for the div2 system we wouldn't necessarily need to keep team player limit to 5.
And yes, I have a bit of a hard time myself figuring out how team affiliates would work when there's no continuation of teams through the seasons.
I guess the div1 and div2 captain could remain linked, but from where I stole this idea of team affiliates the teams get to keep 3 players after each season and rest has to enter draft, that way the players who are kept will continue to bond that sense of family.

I can understand this since the gap between the top and bottom in EU QW is huge. However, would going beyond 10 teams be a possibility? The IDL is 12 teams and setup similar to the NFL where you have 2 conferences and 4 divisions. Each conference has 6 teams and each div has 3 teams. It's all one league but teams compete to win their div which is automatic playoff berth and play their div rivals more (generally twice), next they play conference teams then maybe a one or two cross conference matches. Playoffs are separate from each conference (div winners + 2 wildcard teams per conf) until the finals when the winners of each conference championsips play. I like this system since it promotes rivalries a lot more than just one giant div. Also since the finals is winner of one conf vs winner of other conf they likely have never played each other before so it is a bit of an unknown.

I think the affiliate system is interesting and could work well if you can link different div captains across multiple seasons. However I think you don't want to promote players being officially attached to teams across seasons as then the draft loses a lot of it's purpose. Captains will likely stick around multiple seasons so that right there will be your continuity. Captains also will at times repeat certain players they liked more so than other captains. One thing IDL tries to do is make new captains come in from time to time. Basically if a captain doesn't make playoffs two seasons in a row they are pushed to step aside and let someone else try for a season. Some of the best IDL captains have only been average skilled players but they knew how to lead and win somehow.

IDL has tried various ways to involve the left over sign ups but it has never found a successful way to do so yet. They've tried a div2 style league but that was a big failure as the leadership from div2 captains was very lacking. Another season they tried having the regular captains pick and lead the div2 teams and that worked a little better but still it wasn't that great. All the div2 players would have much rather had a spot on a div1 team even if they played little.


Agree with this. I think captaining a draft team is harder than leading a clan since it is often people who don't know each other and you are more likely to have various issues than a group of friends in a clan. With longer seasons teams and players will get to know each other fairly well and come together. IDL is typically 9 weeks plus pre-season and playoffs. I get to know everyone on my IDL teams extremely well and often it feels similar to any clan I've been on. Generally dedication and time spent is related to skill, so casual guys are unlikely to be dedicated enough to make good leaders (but I'm sure exceptions exist).