[JackG]

What's insidious about the remaining problem that you described, Leav, is that is requires no collusion to implement. It's quite easy for any given alliance to, without warning, start scoring against themselves. Granted, we might not be seeing much of it happening, but it doesn't mean the game still is not poorly designed or that there aren't holes like this to exploit.

Perhaps, for practical purposes, the update removes enough of the incentive that teams will listen to whatever sense of ethics that whisper about the spirit of the game. However, some teams that are truly "playing to win", as David Sirlin would say, score against themselves to help themselves. It's sad, really, that the GDC, with all their great minds can't, for the life of them, design a seeding system without these unintended consequences.