Great post and points jbreheny! I laughed a number of times is usual with your great sense of humor and loved the words you made up! Those especially made me chuckle. Very clever.

I think you're right in that the main reason it's slower is because the lower value of steem and just less people on steem in general because of that. Unfortunately many of them are just in it for the money and leave when it's questionable or they can't make as much, when in reality you make even more when the value is down based on my understand, assuming it ever goes back up that is! And perhaps some people think it won't ever go back up and others just don't understand that dynamic, but for those who stick through these hard times it might end up being very rewarding for them in the future if the value does go back up!

Now... On to your points.

Forget the newbies.

I also spent a lot of time, many hours trying to bring in people from the #introduceyourself tag and I think... Right now I can only distinctly remember I think one person, no maybe two who played from that effort... So as much as I like the idea of bringing new players in, it just wasn't worth all the hours I spent in the long run. So I kind of agree with you here, but I still like the idea that our game appeals to new comers to steem and I still like the other quest we do where we help newbies to steem as well. So, I wouldn't necessarily say "forget the newbies", but I won't be able to spend as much time in the future trying to market to them myself. Also yeah I agree it's better to focus on people who are already here and who aren't as likely to quit right away as many newcomers do.

Peer to peer judging.

I think this idea is epic. I'm not exactly sure how it would work and I think we should all talk about it more to get a better idea of how it could work, but that is one of the main things that's holding us back right now and I think it would make the game more interactive and engaging and improve the community feel if we could get the players in on it more. HOWEVER... I'm pretty certain I proposed this last season and it got voted down because people were worried about groups forming to vote each other wins, so... We might want to try to
figure out a way to do it where it's more difficult for friends to make each other win as opposed to neutral judges who have no real stake in the conclusions in terms of who wins and who loses.
Definitely something to think and talk about more though!!!

Team play.

Team play is also something that was discussed before and I'm in favor of the idea and think teams might form naturally anyways if we get popular enough which would sort of tie into the players being able to vote and the last point, however at this point we have such small turnout that I'm not sure how feasible it is and I would still like it if individual players were allowed to play without being forced to be on a team.

Guest participation.

This is something that is allowed in the finals if people are too busy, they can have someone play for them and then split the prize however they want if they win, though I think it would be a good idea to allow it in the regular season as well and yeah it would be great to see @kryptocek ! Though still haven't heard from him and I kinda have my doubts he's going to play in this season which is a bummer. Was hoping he'd play in at least one round, oh well.

The ideas presented here are mostly just a minor brain dump. I believe the primary goals for the IFC should be to increase participation, speed up to movement between rounds and, most importantly free up time for the IFC creator @apolymask. With some fine tuning and the ability to set some things on auto-pilot the IFC would be free to scale to new heights.

Some great ideas and I majorly agree with you here, especially in regards to freeing up time for me as I've become busier and busier with my new job and trying to get my life in better order.
There was one other point you mentioned which I forgot to address about allowing the players to pick the rounds which I think ties into this, and.. That could be interesting, however at the same time that's one of the main things I'm thinking about in that I feel like I need to make the rounds a lot easier to judge at least in the regular season, during the finals we can have lengthy all out entries but I think during the regular season we need to work on making it so the entries are easier to judge and I have a few ideas in regards to that, but not sure how that would work if the players could pick rounds. It's certainly something we could and should talk about more. After the season is over we'll do another vote and we can bring up some of these issues and vote on them as a community.

Thanks for the awesome entry and the really good ideas! Gave me a bunch to think about and I think your ideas are super helpful! Great job!