i mean to be fair we played invite because teams FULL of invite players (and the other what ended up being top adv teams) somehow didn't get forced to play quals (didn't know that was even possible to refuse quals, it's literally in the agreement when you sign up) and then tristen asked us and we said fuck it

RGL wants many teams in invite, not four teams, but it is true that the quality drops off, precisely because many people who could play invite don't do it. Not that they should be forced to, I guess, but if they're going to play with a mid-invite level roster in advanced and worse teams are gonna play invite because the invite players won't, isn't that just kinda backwards?

Just as the low inv players should have played advanced and u can scrim up, well, the ppl playing adv when they could play invite can just scrim adv if they want to win and then lose a few more matches. That speaks to having some level of restrictions, such that the hierarchy of teams (and it really is kinda team dependent, not player dependent ultimately) moves somewhat smoothly up the divisions. I don't think there should be four teams that were clearly better than the bottom invite teams with minimal restrictions-- that suggests to me that there should have been tougher restrictions on the teams, or they must be forced to play quals at least first to kinda get a sense of where the level is (ig u can just throw quals but if u don't wanna play invite then just accept harder restrictions)

That doesn't mean that everyone playing a div they did well in or whatever should be restricted, or any team w people that played the div "should have been restricted" or "shouldn't be allowed to play". I don't think it's a bad thing either to play against harder teams. But if you take RGL's position that invite should be filled up, you either accept that invite will be unbalanced because you want to limit restrictions, and then adv will be unbalanced and main will be unbalanced etc (which again, is a perfectly reasonable stance to have), or you want invite to be as good as possible, so you restrict adv and make people play invite, or at least if they want to play adv, they're restricted so top adv - low inv is more similar, and then adv is more balanced etc

this whole thing is about not restricting players, not about moving up. If u believe you can do well in a higher div go ahead. Our team was beating all of the main teams we scrimmed in the preseason so we asked to go to div2.
That season, everyone was freaking out about shining star playing scout in div2 and how she wasnt restricted, so in that sense, it felt extra nice to beat the team with more experience.

what ?

Idk if there was other teams but in the two offclass teams in advanced that season, both teams had several players from main/advanced alongside the invite players. None of those teams come close to qualifying as a mid invite team. Additionally, why should those teams be considered for invite when they are made with the intention of teaching the less experienced players? This kinda goes back to my point of constant 5-0 invite beatings resulting in less engaging practice. You could disassemble those rosters and probably make something mid invite but then what are we even doing.

Hopefully i'm not misinterpreting your point but in the case of a 4 team invite, the team getting the 4th place slot would be better/on par with the top team in advanced. Additionally, the team that is typically 4th seed in invite is usually not the people who continue to play around advanced. i also think its kinda backwards that rgl has to beg and force teams to play "invite", which is a div that should be seen as the highest level of tf2. Why not make it so a team could actually be invited into a fitting, comparable 4th seed that can go back and forth with other teams? not into an 8th seed that gets 1 win?

in situations like these its always important to refer to the ancient texts (mustardoverlord talking about sandbaggers 5 and a half years ago)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/754372412
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/754373878

i feel like admins should assign your team a div with no restrictions, and then you should be able to negotiate class restrictions to get into a lower div. like "you're placing us in advanced, but can we play main if jeremy plays soldier and monica plays scout?" probably a huge headache for admins tho

My point was more like they were mid invite in the sense that they would still beat the low invite teams/teams that played quals (us, angler, jw team ig). ur team and the math team were pretty restricted for the invite players so I don't think that was super unfair, I just think if you want invite to be as competitive as possible then the quals should determine the placements, so the best teams bordering inv/adv do play inv.

4 teams does solve that problem but i was going on the basis that RGL does, which is that invite should be full (8 teams). In that case, a fair quals where everyone has to play is the best way to determine that. It is a problem either way tho when people don't want to play invite. Then you just get the situation that happened that season ig

https://www.twitch.tv/yight/clip/InterestingPoisedJuiceTBCheesePull

I agree with mustard that sandbagging is overrated in itself, however he doesnt really address the problem that we are facing nowadays. The main concern isnt sandbagging/repeating divisions but its the fact that it happens a ton in lower divisions and as a result the upper ones are stagnating. And If invite is full and there are people sandbagging then so be it but whats so competitive about people playing 3-4 seasons of advanced (like um or kronge realm) or main just because they dont want to move up? Not to blame um or kronge realm because its not their fault that they were allowed to play but if theres noone playing the game at a top level then whats the point of having a competitive league ? Thats what the admins are trying to fix.

If sandbagging sacrifices the integrity of the league then theres no place for it.

https://youtu.be/0rAccWTHyGk?si=-6qjfA_WR66S6mTh&t=194

I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what invite is supposed to be. Before we lost so many players, invite was reserved for teams who actually wanted to push the boundaries of playing the game for fun into something more. It was reserved only for the most competitive players, because everyone else couldnt make the cut.

Now we have a problem where the amount of players actually pushing for that highest level is far under the actual amount of players who are "capable" to play at that level. The old guard is no longer in school, they have jobs, families and lives. they cannot commit near as much time to grinding a silly game for fun. They may still want to play, but due to the systems we have in place their only options are to do badly on a class they dont like, or play their old main class and sweat twice as hard as they used to because they are rusty.
The new up and comers have it rough too, they are expected to move up 3 divs in 3 seasons, and then be competitive with players who have 15+ seasons under their belt. Driving strong players away from the league forces the middle divisions to be less competitive, which causes worse and worse teams to win every season, which causes less and less player development to actually replenish the top of the league.

I understand that many of you still want 6's to be treated as an uber competitive esport. I understand that desire, but unfortunately we dont live in that reality. We live in a reality where our scene is DYING. and we are sending players away because we are too scared that new players might have to fight some hard teams. I think the problem of sandbagging is secondary to the problem of having a healthy league, and while I do not think we need more Slow Down Minion scenarios, I think the old gatekeepers of advanced, and hell, main, were healthy for the league and forced players to develop faster, and overall made the player base stronger at all levels.

I've played on a top advanced team and we nearly exclusively scrimmed advanced teams and we had a great playoffs run, genuinely where are you getting this opinion from

what if there were 3 divisions and the middle one had a much nicer prize than the lower one for new guys so the better sandbaggers would go after that middle div for prize money

https://www.twitch.tv/yight/clip/GorgeousHorribleMallardCorgiDerp

legit all rgl admins have to do for this season is revert the decision to have HL exp affect 6s restrictions beyond open. But the fact that they wont even do that shows how disconnected the admin team is from the actual skill spectrum of the community. Meanwhile, one of their own admins (Pibble) complains publicly in the discord that she gets talked down to and called delusional when bringing up problems or questioning decisions.

rgl has such a diehard commitment to creating these granular divisions with class restrictions, but about 25% into a season u can create a power ranking for each div that predicts like 90% of future match results. everyone's losing to teams that are better than them anyway, whats the difference?

people moved up from open to IM in esea largely because even if you were a mid-IM team you were almost certainly going to also lose open, and you got close to 0 real credibility/reward for any results worse than winning. now youre incentivized to win/place in main and a mediocre adv team can go offclass and have a pretty good shot at it.

Coming at this from a different angle than you guys: I coach youth soccer for a living. Player development is literally my job. I've also just unsuccessfully went through the restriction appeal process trying to play medic in AM (as a perennial intermediate medic who's never won a playoff series). What that, and this thread have revealed to me is the staff at RGL fundamentally misunderstand how players develop.

Let me preface this by saying I greatly appreciate the RGL admins. I appreciate anyone who helps facilitate competitive TF2 in 2026. Being an admin is a thankless task and they generally do their best in my experience. I understand their rationale, I just think they're wrong here.

Within player development there is the concept of the overload principle. Players don't develop by playing in comfortable environments, they develop by being forced to adapt to challenges that are slightly above what they're used to. A more competent player entering an environment creates pressure on both their teammates and the opposition. They have to adapt, problem solve, and play at a level they've not played at before. That's where the growth occurs. You can't adapt to situations you've never seen.

There's a term in coaching theory for the instinct to remove challenges: "curling parents". They're parents who sweep the ice so that their kids never have to deal with adversity. Think of a u12 team playing a lower bracket to get a medal. Similar concept: not allowing former high level players returning from a break to play in appropriate divisions (like millie). It feels like the division is being helped, but what's happening is that the developmental mechanisms are being removed from the division. Easier short term path, harder long term path. And what normally happens? Those players don't play. That's what overly aggressive restrictions do at the divisional level. You smooth out advanced so nobody plays against the invite offclasser. Or you smooth out Main so nobody plays against the washed, 1 season of invite scout. Or you smooth out AM so nobody has to face a med who can surf a rocket or knows when to leave. Brilliant. Now when those players hit the next division, they have to spend more time adapting, not less.

When you remove a better player from a division through restrictions, you're not protecting the division, you're removing the developmental stimulus. The ceiling is lowered. The downstream effect of that is exactly what's been complained about ITT: you get worse teams in higher placements, and when they move up they're unprepared for the next level. If the hardest team you've had to beat in adv was another adv team, you have no reference point for what invite-level play looks like. Rumpus is right: Dynasty doesn't become a successful invite moveup without playing the sandbagging invite players.

I've seen this from the other side too. My old team bruh moment was the gatekeeper in IM for five seasons. Experienced old heads, former higher-level players, hell we even had Ggglygy, on a no-scrim match-only team. We were the litmus test: if you could beat us, you were a good IM team. I was told more than once that we were the team new IM teams most wanted to beat. You could see the difference too: teams played differently against us in matches than they did in pregame scrims. The stakes changed how they approached the game. Our presence in that division gave everyone a benchmark to measure themselves against, and that competitive pressure made the division better.

Cornsauce brought up a basketball comparison, but I think it proves the opposite point. In youth basketball (and any properly run developmental league) the best thing that can happen to a developing team is to play against better players within a reasonable range. A travel ball team that only plays teams they can beat develop terrible habits. A team that has to face a squad with a kid whos a level above them? They're challenged. They have to play better. The challenge is the development. You wouldn't tell a youth basketball league to ban a kid from the B-League because he played on an A-League team two yearws ago and his team finished 4th. You'd recognize that their presence in that league makes every team around him better as long as theyre not so far above the level that games are non-competitive.

That's the key distiction that I think the current restriction policy is completely missing. There's a difference between a player who will dominate a division and a player who will raise the level of competition within the division. A scout who frags in adv that wants to play IM? That person is genuinely too far above the level. An adv soldier who wants a season in Main? Much more managable. A medic who never won a playoff series in IM playing on a team with first-or-second season players in AM? That's not a threat to competitive balance, that's the type of overload that makes everyone around them better.

I'm not saying restrictions shouldnt exist. There are genuine sandbag scenarios that hurt the divisions. But the current approach treats roster history as the whole picture without asking the question that actually matters: will this players presence in this div, on this team, make games less competitive or more competitive? If you're restricting someone and the result is that a team of new players lose their sixth, a main team loses the chance to have a more experienced player offclassing, or a returning player who loves 6s doesn't even play, you haven't protected competitive integrity. You have just made the league smaller.

I remember when RGL tried restricting me off of Amateur entirely despite me sucking on both Scout and Demo xd. Like sure, let me get my ass kicked in IM because I was too much of a threat in AM. It took so much convincing to actually have them let me play in AM while restricting me off of Med.

There really needs to be a overhaul of how restrictions are handled. In divisions like Main, you should be able to defeat the people who don't move up or keep moving down from Adv. I spent multiple seasons placing at the very bottom because my teams would never improve or even put in actual work to get to that level.

I don't play this game anymore but saw the thread and had to comment.

Adv <-> Invite is a special scenario that needs to be thought of separately. The way I see it, the best players in the league exist in both ADV and INV, but Invite is specifically where the best players in the league are also committing to a crazy time and discipline commitment for that season. An effective 'top' division that does not involve people revolving their entire life around tf2 sounds like a good thing to me and ADV can be that. Having an invite pool of 4-5 were it is a genuinely competitive push to get in, and having adv be an unrestricted ecosystem of anyone who wants to be there sounds fine to me. You can't force people to seek glory, that's an internal drive.

For lower divisions, I agree with everything justjazz said, I think it sounds healthy for there to be a variety of *reasonable* competition within a division. Making every division guard railed sounds counter productive for skill growth. If I had to throw out restriction rules (because there has to be SOME restriction) I would say if you get 1st, move up or offclass. Or, play within one div of the highest you've played. I'm open to decaying restrictions as well. Maybe 1 year removes one div of restriction.

I will say, I think sandbaggers are lame. Rust is a non issue, you can be a scrim team as long as you want if you fear rust. That said, as rumpus and justjazz have argued, I think it is genuinely healthy for the div's competiton, regardless of the reasons sandbaggers do what they do.

Okay, im lft scrim only, I'm sureeee i'll find 6 who want to do that.

Seriously though, this has never been a real thing, and players like me who want to maybe get back into competition but have no real fundamentals anymore should be allowed to play the game and learn in an environment conducive to doing so. Pugscrims are not as productive, structured, or easy to improve from as actual scrims with a team, and are also (IMO) way less fun than playing with a cohesive roster that builds chemistry over a season.

Obviously this isnt meant to flame you, I just think telling people to play "scrim teams" isnt a real solution

I 100% agree with everything here. It's even worse in tf2 though, because at least in your example everyone is in a relatively similar age bracket/some kids hit puberty earlier/etc.

In our game, though, I'd be willing to bit that there are genuinely players who have been playing for longer than some of the 'sandbaggers' who return to their division. Not always, of course, but so much of this has always read to me like people being salty that their rate of improvement is slower than the best players, externalizing their frustration by blaming their league environment, and then the cycle of johns just continuing.

Like, let's really think about it for a second. Let's say you're a player who just gets into advanced for the first time, and there's a team that's still significantly better than you- they 5-0 you or 5-1 you at best every single time you play them. Are they up-and-comers, or lifers who have played 5 seasons in advanced? Do they have ex-invite players? Are those invite players mainclassing or offclassing? Are they running a super tryhard schedule and lineup or are they just dicking around in advanced?

My question is- why does any of that matter? All that matters is they're way better than you and your team clearly has a lot to work on. It's just so obvious to me that people moralize about WHY that other team is way better than them because it's easier to just say 'well they don't really DESERVE to win this division' rather than just trying to beat the teams in front of them.

Especially in 2026, when the game is super declining, and it's not like winning main or advanced gets you much, even dwelling on this shit for a second seems preposterous. Maybe if a team is like constantly trying to ring players from a much higher level or something, but even then we're probably stressing too much about it.

I like to remind myself that high invite teams, who in theory represent where everyone else is trying to get to, do not have the luxury of complaining about how stacked their opponents' team is.

Pretty much. I don't consider invite an option since most who I'd build a team with also no longer play the game. I've thought about forming an adv team to eventually play invite, but I'm not willing to play a class I don't enjoy, and even if I was, there would be the eventual problem of probably having to cut someone down the line, simply because they play the class that I do in invite. Additionally, if I took the risk of building an adv team with me on my main, it's very likely that the admins would either force the team to move up, or put restrictions shortly before season start. In either case, I'd rather kill the team than waste 4 months and probably money. I still like tf2, but I'm no longer willing to make sacrifices for it, and I'm fine with never playing another season if things remain unfavorable, especially with there being as many other games I like.

Irrespective of people's opinions on sandbagging, the current policy is clearly so restrictive that it's almost pointless to discuss it. Like ignore the three year break for a second, why the hell would getting 4th in a division ever make you eligible to get restricted lol. IIRC this was single elim playoffs too so all that entailed was getting top 8 regular season and then winning playoffs 1st round lmao. my only guess is that tree diffed too hard in a pug or something idk or m17 really hates u cause that is whack

also this fear of old players returning is actually insane to me, i genuinely believe there's <10 players who have ever played this game who could take a 3+ year break and immediately return within 1 division of their previous skill. like bro if platinum comes back i think u could let him play main it's not that crazy

unrelated to the thread but a few years ago TLR randomly added up to im/main pugs and that was a fun couple nights

I'M NOT AN RGL DICKRIDER AND I THINK THERE SHOULD BE CHANGE. But what is the actionable solution? Many people here complaining without putting forth a concrete suggestion

A huge problem is that there is no systematic way to determine INTENT. Let's say there's a team that's previously won their division, but they want to play that same division again because they want to "chill." They claim it'll be balanced because they won't be giving their all to the game. How do we (we, the rhetorical admins) know if that's true? Honor system? So we let them play, and a few weeks into the season it turns out that they're doing a full scrim schedule 5-6 nights a week. What are we supposed to do now? Restrict them retroactively, or outright remove their team from the season? Do we overturn the matches they've already played? Not to mention, how did we even find out that they broke their promise in the first place? Do we expect admins to keep a running track of certain players' logs just to determine their conditional div placement? Even if the answer is yes, what about MGE, or KovaaK's, or demo reviews? Maaaybe the players could report this kind of stuff, but I seriously doubt that teams would be in cahoots enough with each other to get enough information, or even that players would be aware enough to keep track of who is and isn't under a conditional agreement for the div. It becomes clear pretty quick that you cannot realistically quantify who is "grinding" and who isn't. We can't run a league like this.

Again, I don't see how this applies to the teams trying to climb, instead of the teams that are LITERALLY trying to stay in the same div and play teams THEY KNOW THEY CAN BEAT! You can easily turn the argument on its head and say, "Why are we hindering the development of high-placing players in a div, instead of forcing them out of their comfort zone into the next div up?" And remember, the MAJORITY of players in a season DO NOT get restricted. So I'd argue the improvement conditions are actually slightly better for the lower teams already. I hear what you're saying about gatekeepers being better for div development, but where do we draw the line? Half the people in this thread are complaining about admin decisions, so I don't think leaving it up to admin discretion is going to satisfy many people. Also note that in youth sports, most players just AGE out of their age group, so they're fine with letting a team repeat wins for a year or two until they get moved up that way. We obviously can't do that for tf2 lol

MY IDEA FOR A SOLUTION: (tell me what you think!!!)
-- All the divs adopt the system that advanced has in the current RGL guidelines except change it to 2x repeats instead of 3x (advanced could probably stay 3x).
-- THE PLACEMENT THRESHOLD SHOULD BECOME A PERCENTAGE OF THE DIV SIZE. Should placing 3rd get you restricted? Well, placing 3rd out of 8 teams is very different from placing 3rd out of 24. I propose about top 20-25% (this number could be nudged tho idk) of the div should meet the placement threshold.
-- Get above the placement threshold 2x and you get restricted.
This system with its numbers should be clearly posted for each season so players can know what to expect, and it should be followed much more closely; admin discretion should be used as little as possible. Additionally, something could appear on your RGL profile that shows your restriction status, similar to how restrictions currently appear on team pages. Maybe meeting the placement threshold (regardless of trophy) gets you a "token" that shows anyone viewing your profile your progress toward a restriction. For example, if you place top 20% in main as scout, you get a Main Scout token on your profile. If you get one more Main Scout token, you then have 2, so you'll be restricted from scout in main.

If people want it, you could also add decay to this. So after 2 or 3 seasons (or something i'm not sure on the numbers) that a player is inactive, they lose a token and their restriction is lifted. Get another top placement, and they'll gain their token back and be re-restricted.

This would slow down restrictions without completely removing them, and more importantly, it would make the system transparent for the players. I think right now a lot of people are upset not necessarily out of unfairness, but because they just genuinely don't know what the system is supposed to be. Too much is left up to admin discretion, and the admins have to juggle too many factors (player's historical performance vs recent performance, current div strength, player's teammates and their perceived strength, and more) that there's just no way they can make accurate or fair decisions for everyone.

A lot of what we are talking about is that intent doesn’t matter, simply the effect it has on a division. Of course intent cannot (nor probably should it be) governed by a small pool of largely volunteer staff.

I think RGL putting out a spreadsheet that both admins and players alike can source is a great first step. Without that we’d probably be arguing largely about inconsistency. Now that there is a baseline to determine consistent rulings, we can refine those rulings.

As for actual rulings, i don’t think anything short of winning a division should get you restricted in it, since by definition you were not unbeatable. I think it gets trickier when trying to compare achievements in the div above to a lower div (such as should ADV playoffs restrict you in main). Again, i’m not defending a team’s intent when they play a lower div, nor whether or not it is beneficial for that particular team to play the div they are playing. I am solely basing that opinion on how it effects the division as a whole and I've been convinced that it’s beneficial, or at least unharmful

I think we just need to put tristen on the case as he is obviously the greatest admin when it comes to making restrictions in his respective div

My solution is to basically have zero sandbagging rules at all, other than like a group of advanced players going down to newcomer to run pyro and heavy and still win 5-0 in 10 minutes. Anything short of that, I think it should basically be a free-for-all. Plus, maybe some aggressive roster lock rules for sandbagging players, so you can't swoop in just for playoffs, or come in only to help a team qualify for a div and then bail to a better team right away. Is that concrete enough?

As Pancake said, this framing is still entirely based on moralizing around the sandbagging team themselves, when I think that's completely irrelevant crybaby shit.

Sidebar: it's also hilarious to me that usually the complaint I see is "it sucks when sandbaggers are barely trying and still winning because they're better." But now it's also a problem if they DO try? It almost seems like, no matter what, people will come up for an excuse for why it's unfair that they're losing to a different team.

You're correct, you can't run a league like this. What an amazing waste of resources to have admins trying to like interrogate team leaders and figure out what's in their mind, all to preserve a status quo that everyone hates anyways! If anything, I'd rather those admins devote their resources to making sure the move-up teams (especially to invite) are good enough, rather than that sandbagging teams are bad enough.

And again, why does it NEED to be balanced? Let's say there's 1 team in main or something that is sandbagging and goes 16-0. Who gives a fuck? It's one season. Everyone else should see it as an opportunity to get better for the next season. Also, how common is it really that one team loses like 0 rounds all season? If anything, I've seen froyo do that to invite teams more than I've seen most of these supposed sandbag teams do it to their opponents.

Again with the moralizing. OK, let's accept that those teams staying in the same div are giant cowards, who would rather disband than move up. Great, who cares? Instead of forcing them to disband and having 1 fewer team in your dying league, they stay in the lower division, and eventually players with more ambition will pass them by anyways.

Like I said, I would draw the line way way way beyond where it is in RGL. Admin discretion is only in play so much because we're operating on faulty assumptions in the first place.

I think it sounds like exactly what I already don't like about this whole framework. Why do I care if some guy who got 3rd twice playing scout is still playing scout in my div? If he was really that amazing he'd probably be out of the div anyways.

honestly if a team wins a div, i don't see any issue with them playing that div again as long as they weren't stomping

Gotta support the best lan ever man

I would just like to remind everyone that in season 18 of esea (my first big comp 6's season), trip, safrix, blues, kanon, muffinz and whoever else beat a team of woodpig adjacent literal invite sandbaggers in esea open grandfinals. Most of those players went on to be invite playoff caliber like less than 3 years later. If I'm not mistaken it was most of their first or 2nd seasons so

idk grow up babies, back in the day if you wanted to win your shitty div you were competing against john milter and 5 other 30 year old virgins (respectfully)

Because it's fun?

Is this discussion not about keeping the game alive? Imagine in any other game if a diamond rank player could choose to play in gold lobbies just because they felt like it. People literally quit games over bad matchmaking. I find it insane that you think dissolving all meaning behind divs and letting people self-sort will have no issues and end up being a preferable experience.

I mean, in a way, you're right. Ideally there are no restrictions, because there are no divs. In a perfect world, we would take all ~100 teams, throw them in a giant round-robin pool, and play it out. At the end we'd have a perfect ranking from first to last. But obviously nobody has time for that. You could do a bracket and get a similar result in a fraction of the time, but then FROYO has to play 50+ matches, while the newcomer teams only get to play 2. That doesn't sound fun on either end.

We have divisions as a compromise between time, competitive accuracy, and player experience. Are the divisions completely arbitrary? Yeah, totally. But they're arbitrary in a CONSISTENT way (at least somewhat, that's what we're trying to fix!!!). Even if you find 1st place meaningless, almost everyone enjoys improving. You need some kind of semi-consistent structure that players can measure their growth against.

And yeah, I'm moralizing sandbagging because it's often selfish, at the expense of other players' experience. There's nothing wrong with being a stagnant team that doesn't want to go 100%. But why do these teams always seem to hang out at the top of divisions? Why do they find it unacceptable to "chill" in the lower half of teams? They're optimizing for their own experience with no regard for the rest of the playerbase. Your idea sounds nice, but you realize it will just be a scramble for everyone trying to get their perfect amount of competition, and most people will fail to do so? Everyone can't be a winner, and since there's ego involved from all parties, we need a system to balance things OBJECTIVELY.

Besides, as ghadilli mentioned, there is already a self-sorting system in scrims! People act like being worst in your div is this terrible, miserable slog that you have no control over... Matches take like, 2 hours per week, maximum! Most people spend triple to quadruple that amount of time scrimming! You can just play your matches, get rolled, and spend the rest of the week having fun with your team scrimming down at whatever level you feel comfortable with! For anyone who's butthurt about it, it's quite literally a skill issue!

Yes, the current system is too restrictive, but a free-for-all isn't gonna work either. Yes, TF2 is not some tier-1 super-esport, but it's not full dead either. It's so lame that you guys think we're at some point of no return, where we should just give up any notion of competitive structure and just make RGL a pug league. There are other ways to enjoy sixes for those who don't enjoy the seasonal/divisional format.

dafuq?