Morning! If I exited the game / was eliminated, but I still had a bye, does my team inherit my bye? I thought they did, so Alexpgp and Lordrexfear should know that? If my team was dissolved b/c there was only the 2 left, does my bye just go bye-bye? Can I still gift it off to a player?


PS: 1st!!!!


AW

Edited at 2016-03-30 12:29 pm (UTC)

Of course you had to ask these questions before I've had my second cup of coffee!

I wasn't a fan of the team concept. I don't think it played out the way you (Gary) expected it to play out. I do agree that yes, it did work in the deepening-friendship way for a select few but for most part I found its mechanics cumbersome. For instance, were we supposed to be writing buddies like Team Avocado? If not, then what was the point? I made myself the e-mail person for my teams and at some point we were all asking that same questions.

I've never been crazy about intersections but at least they force people to get out of their comfort zones, so to speak. I don't know if you (Gary) again were thinking teams taking the place of such. If you were, it didn't work because the whole "find a new team or go solo" thing felt very forced, especially for those who aren't keen to team up in the first place.

More after I've had more coffee, LOL.

Edited at 2016-03-30 12:40 pm (UTC)

Another thing re what worked: If anything, teams did bolster a few vets who historically been voted out early on. These particular vets (I won't name them because I don't want to embarrass them) I think benefitted from the concept because it forced readers to read/vote for them because they were part of a team.

Your bye situation:

You were pooling byes and there are *2* of them left. But there are 3 of you left!

So I will leave it out there in the universe, the first two to contact me with a "claimed" receives a bye to use, or give away. If you need it, claim it!

cheapxdate, dmousey and witchwife this means you!

Random thoughts in no particular order, and without benefit of caffeine:

1. Due to current life circumstances, I'd have sat this season out completely if not for the team thing. This is also true for at least one other vet I won't name.
2. Due to same, I'd certainly have dropped by now if certain teammates hadn't poked at me and heaped guilt upon me to stay in. :P
3. I freaking hated the intersection season. Hatehatehate Hated.
4. This team season has been very good for me (aforementioned reasons). That said,
5. I really expected more hi-jinx and shenanigans - hoops for the teams to have to jump through. Some of us expected last week to be a "Surprise! It's the last week for teams, so they are competing internally instead of externally!" week.
6. While I generally dislike the shenanigans, the complete lack of them made it unclear from week to week what the benefit (competition wise) there was to being on a team. Some weeks the number eliminated from Friends vs Rivals was heavily weighted one way or the other, but that wasn't consistent either.
7. The benefits (personal relationships and writing wise) was awesomesauce, though I think Team Avocado may have been more focused on that than most.
8. Go Avocado!

eta: If one of the twists had been a forced switcheroo of teammates, I doubt I'd have lasted. Again, that may be more about where I am personally and the support I got from my team.

Edited at 2016-03-30 03:40 pm (UTC)

I've mentioned this before, but I was hoping to see the "team" aspect be more....like an Olympic team for a single sport not an Olympic representation. Rather than individuals writing individual pieces and compiling said entries as a "team", I wanted to see them working together IN THE WRITING not behind the scenes. (There is all manner of behind-the-scenes dialogue happening regardless of being teamed up.) I like the idea of writers working together to create a cohesive whole. Like an intersection or a duel or an Exquisite Corpse. Using a theme, a style, a single character, or a circus of characters; something to show that the "team" worked together for the final result.

But, that's me.

As it were, I struggled with the voting part of the teams. It felt restrictive and far too strategical.

I applaud your willingness to throw pasta at the wall, G!

I don't think that the Team Experience hurt me, though I'm not sure how much it helped me, either. My team mates and I did perform concrit for each other on occasion, but it wasn't a regular thing. We did occasionally discuss the possibility of performing a "mass intersection", which I personally was in favor of... but the simple fact is that *NONE* of us wanted to step up and be Team Leader, and without a centralized recognized authority it just wasn't going to happen. (In the early days my team mates and I turned to kehlen_crow as our de facto leader, but when she got eliminated we really had now clue how to organize ourselves. Granted, there were other issues which made organizing a mass intersection more difficult: our membership was spread all the way from North America to Eastern Europe, so the time-zone differentials made getting organized even harder.

One final comment: Most of my fellow members were also veterans, like myself. Speaking personally I felt a lot more comfortable working with folks that I already "knew". However, in general principle I have nothing against "newbies", as I recall that I was also a newbie once. Thus, we did try to recruit some newbies after we lost a couple of our original team members.

Anyway, that's my $0.02 USD. Your mileage may vary. Past performance no guarantee of future returns. Offer not good in Sectors R or N. they never come up into the hills.

I did see a lot more "vote for my team" this season rather than "vote for me and any other fine entries." Some teams pulled in way more voters than others, to be sure, and I wonder if the separate polls meant a lot of those opportunities to "share the wealth" was lost.

It was a good idea in principle, and I think some teams^{[Citation Needed]} did well with it. Others ... not so much. It's hard to force camaraderie on people who'd rather work alone, or are thrown together by a game twist. And that makes the structure a hindrance rather than a help. Some of the refinements suggested might make it a bit more intriguing / frightening / useful, though, if it does return.

I have mixed feelings about my team experience. I understood when I joined in the idol fun that we could choose not to be in a team, then there was that week or so when there was some pressure to team-up. I spent that period of time all angsty. As hard as I resisted being on a team I loved being on a team. Though our team didn't last too long I felt very welcome and enjoyed getting to know some people I didn't know outside of idol.

If teams were to be part of a future idol season it wouldn't stop me from joining in the festivities, and I certainly wouldn't put off being part of a team as long as I did this time. I agree with those who referenced "intersecting". I think that would have been fun, and heightened the writing experience a lot.

Edited at 2016-03-30 04:43 pm (UTC)

Teams left me pretty indifferent. Some people did great things with it, some of us were left going, "...well, okay, um, let's give it a shot..."

I got to interact a little more with people I wouldn't otherwise get a chance to talk much with, but that was about it. Ultimately, if it's a part of Idol again, I might do it—but you could not pay me enough to be a team captain. I hate saying no to people, and I had a lot of really great people asking if they could join up with me after all the spots were already filled...not a pleasant experience! :P

So here's my 2 cents on teams.
[Initial caveat: I am 100% new to idol]

I would not have joined idol if it weren't for teams. I was tapped specifically to be an Avocado, and spent most of the first few weeks going, "What the actual heck is going on??" :P And it's been fun! For me, the team aspect is 90% of why I'm still here and STILL having fun.
I don't always have time to hang out in the GR (or comment as much as I'd like :<) but my take-away is that while there were other teams, many of them chose to be less intensely committed to the team aspect, either because it is as competition, or because the chemistry just wasn't there (it isn't, always.) What people DO with the team structure is up to them. I think it awards a great opportunity for small groups of writers to gel, though. :D And I certainly feel that I benefited from it. (And do, still! Avocados forever!)
[I would like to state just for the record, that we didn't really run into an issue re: a 'leader.' All of us stepped into the roll at certain points, but the majority of the time the 'leader' was just whoever started that week's email chain. :) It was pretty organic, and we have zero structure related to that. We are basically guacamole - CHAOS, green, tasty.]
I came for the teams, I stayed for the teams, I'm still here because I have tasty green goop in my heart.

The main issue I had with the set up was, in the beginning especially, things were weighted against teams so that for a large part of the game there appeared to be no direct benefit for being in one (excepting the community aspect, and the benefits to ones writing when you get great honest feedback, which totally p0wns.) This evened out as it went on, but if I were a vet of idol, I don't think I'd have been very inclined to hop into a bed that was twice as likely to set fire.

I enjoyed the comraderie of my team, but the effects of the teams on voting? Not at all.

Because of the division, we had periods where people in teams felt freer to vote their hearts in Rivals, and vice versa-- as opposed to voting for what they thought were the best stories, period (at least, that's how I usually vote).

We had forced teams near the end, which created weirdness that I didn't really like, and we had huge swings in eliminations from Teams OR Rivals that resulted in sending better writers home rather than those I might have expected to see.

I realize there's always randomness anyway, from friends-list/Twitter/Facebook votes. But this felt more unfair than usual.

Season 10, eh? Why am I not surprised? :D Well, at least that means it's fun enough for you to entertain the idea-- because I know the effort is draining.

Man, these topics....

Late as hell to the GR as usual (DAMN YOU REAL LIFE!) but...

The team thing helped me a ton. Like, a metric assload type ton. I was a latecomer to the Avocado Squad. I initially went into Idol this mini-season thinking I'd drop out after a few weeks. I therefore avoided being on a team at first because I figured I'd be half-assing the whole thing and it would be completely unfair of me to get on a team and drag them down with a bunch of sub-par crap. I burned both my byes almost immediately and was about to bow out the week I got recruited into Avocado Land. And then it was just like - okay, well, if I screw *myself* over, I can totally live with that, but if I'm on a team with *these* badasses, I can't afford to screw it up because damn there's some A+ talent here and I need to pull my weight. So for me at least, the teams not only served as motivation to not drop out, they served as motivation to try really really hard to not post lame bullshit. (I'm not saying I succeeded every week, or even the majority of the time! But there was major motivation to at least put forth the effort.)

I had some other shit typed here but it's not really relevant anymore since some comments got deleted, so here's an ASCII art butt. (__|__)

Well, I guess if everyone would have been on a team...it would have been more FUN. And maybe a twist or two like -switching over or intersections or using one prompt for one team; would have been exciting.
It wasn't a bad experience as such, but maybe I was expecting a bit more out of it. Which means, I wouldn't mind a repeat of this, coz there is scope for improvement..:)