https://i.imgur.com/vnlNzW0.png

Hi team

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/856770408766504972/1150858996543143936/Screenshot_20230911-132133.png

5 teams in adv btw

I think 1 is dying too

if i kill my team does rgl collapse

https://i.imgur.com/GPHCL78.png

the fight for playoffs

combine main+adv and have 8 team playoffs? o_O

what was the last great adv season?

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1069431460680962068/1151321912308412507/image.png

Doesn't this incentivize throwing?

these guys GAME

https://i.imgur.com/hyhKt5l.png

4 dead teams already thoughts?

thanks rgl for killing my team by forcibly moving us to advance with the excuse of saving advance........
so ironic that the div still has the same amount of teams and now main has less teams

thanks rgl for killing my team by forcibly moving us to advance with the excuse of saving advance........
so ironic that the div still has the same amount of teams and now main has less teams

thanks rgl for killing my team by forcibly moving us to advance with the excuse of saving advance........
so ironic that the div still has the same amount of teams and now main has less teams

thanks rgl for killing my team by forcibly moving us to advance with the excuse of saving advance........
so ironic that the div still has the same amount of teams and now main has less teams

thanks rgl for killing my team by forcibly moving us to advance with the excuse of saving advance........
so ironic that the div still has the same amount of teams and now main has less teams

thanks rgl for killing my team by forcibly moving us to advance with the excuse of saving advance........
so ironic that the div still has the same amount of teams and now main has less teams

I personally think Free Agent - Advanced has a good chance at playoffs this season

^ stolen valor alert

Sandbagging is bad, but moving up teams to a higher division and then having them die is also bad. RGL needs to incentivize moving up but that's not going to happen. There's no money in this game to incentivize players to strive for improvement and better placements. What's the incentive to move up divisions if you just have to face sandbaggers from the division above? Due to the nature of invite only having 8 teams, in the instance that invite qualifies run, there will be invite level teams in advanced who didn't make the cut. Why would a team with 1-2 class restricted players in main now want to play in advanced unrestricted if they are forced to move up?

Moving up divisions also requires a larger time investment for players. Scrims start at 10pm EST and can run past 12, making it difficult for East coast players to stay up. Teams in higher division also scrim 4+ days a week which is a large time investment.

In a game with a larger scene, sandbagging is not as large of an issue. Due to how small the total team count is in the higher divisions, sandbagging is a huge issue that needs to be addressed without disincentivizing players from competing.

You are my evil twin

I think there's some insider trading going on within the RGL leadership. What if moving up teams originally wanting to play in Main to Adv was all a part of a ponzi scheme?

I think these move-ups have less to do with sandbagging (there arent any sandbag teams in adv and main has like a couple, and one of which didn't even get moved up lol) and way more to do with the decrepit state of adv. The div has had a low team count for a while but this time it was just not enough teams to adequately run the division.
Theres a couple of reasons for why adv is so dead starting with just how circlejerky the div is. In advanced youre reaching a level of tf2 where teams need more cohesion than any div below. Making a brand new team is just so risky because if the team has too many problems then it just will not be fun and youre locked in for 3 whole months of prison. The work needed to make a team "work" and the risk of playing with new people puts most people off of making new teams so everyone just falls back on circlejerk teams that already know how to play with each other.
Next is just the time commitment. 3 months + preseason is a pretty huge commitment and not everyone has the time. Notice the trend as well of how many people choose to offclass in main on a no scrim team instead of play advanced. are they sandbagging? kind of. but are they going the only route that they have time to play the game? also yes.

as far as solution go i think there are two things that will help a lot. First is just combining IM, Main, and Adv into 2 divisions. Low main can become high-IM, and mid-main and up will have to play against all of advanced unfortunately but those advanced players deserve to play in a division with teams.
Next i think the endless march of season after season should get interrupted. Swapping out a full season for a cup or tournament will have a ton of benefits. Far more people will be willing to play and be willing to make teams when its just a week long commitment or maybe a month if you count pre-cup scrims. Teams that would have played a full season will still be able to participate and can just grind scrims as usual, unaffected outside of not having consistent matches. Plus the relative lull will get people excited to play full seasons and ease burnout so the seasons that do happen have healthier team counts, and maybe even new non-circlejerk teams that decide to stick together.
Basically the monotony and grind of season after season combined with the circlejerkiness of higher-div tf2 means this problem is only going to get worse. It might be too late to restructure stuff this season but i do think going forward some kind of structural change is needed to keep the league healthy and fresh

this seems like the complete opposite of what ive observed. no one moving up a div is worried about the higher div's sandbaggers from 2 divs up—theyre losing to top teams regardless. the people playing the same div over and over without ever having to be challenged, on the other hand, LOVE the anti-sandbagging rules

regardless, neither of the dead teams (and i would argue at least 1 of the other moveups) were also just not sandbagging. my whole team was either offclassing or derusting, and we only played 3 nights a week, 4 at most. we simply signed up in the division we belonged in. scrim results prove this—theres still i think 3 teams who are still in main who were beating us consistently

we said no ty to a request to move up and then got moved up anyway without any further communication for 4 days. for all this we are rewarded with another $15 of fees per person. people figured we'd rather just scrim (dm @50billiondollars on discord to schedule)

theres maybe another timeline where we all suck it up and mainclass and dm for 20 hours a week and send winstons girlfriend on a 3 month vacation backpacking across western europe so we can play adv and get burned out and lose all future interest in the game, but that timeline is definitely not the one where we're given less than 0 incentive to do so

LISTEN TO BOTMODE EXTEND THE TIME BETWEEN SEASONS AND IN THAT TIME DO 6S CUPS !! I guarantee it will have more of a player base in the cups and in the seasons. And PLS make regular ass cups without a gimmick bc every cup I’ve played in rgl either had crazy ass maps or whitelists :-)

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1153164673374507008/1154330641417125929/image.png

Alright where's the Div-1 Happenings thread.

Here because it doesn't make sense to have the separate threads anymore.