[quote=Timeless][b]In other words, we are pushing teams up to be the punching bag for upper division teams. How does this bring competitive value to the league?[/b]

I think players forget how much quicker you improve if you play against better competition. As someone who has been around for a while, advanced teams would get better MUCH quicker if they scrimmed invite teams and objectively looked at demos. However, there's this "winning only matters, can't wait to type .log and feel good about myself" and not a "Why did our push work? Why did it fail? What are the top invite teams doing as a default setup". There's also endless resources of streams/youtube/people to just ask questions.

The big issue though is that you fail to recognize that there are advanced teams that want to "seal club or smurf" in advanced. When winning is the only metric used for TF2, it promotes stagnation. People win advanced and refuse to move up or play invite, it's toxic to the main players.

[b]I think improving to the point of being able to have someone else cut their main rostered player for you is insane. [/b]

But it happens.[/quote]

There is a line here though. I agree playing against better players makes you better faster but when you get obliterated by a large skill gap there is too much to digest/learn. One side stomps are never good for competitive value in ANY div not just Invite. Moving up the WRONG teams kills motivation and puts stress on TL's to make hard cuts to their teams to be competitive at a level they didn't expect to be at.

[b]I think improving to the point of being able to have someone else cut their main rostered player for you is insane.

But it happens.[/b]

Like yes? This is a survivorship bias answer though. MOST people will not be able to convince a TL of a [b]winning [/b] team to cut their main rostered players unless there is some amount of drama with that main rostered player.

Ok but these teams who were forced to move up into invite have already gotten wins. They are playing a lot of the same teams they already would have since multiple teams got moved up.

[quote=GOOSE_THE_DUCK]

[b]Someone has to lose the match, and there's always gonna be a team at the bottom of the leaderboard. [/b]
In other words, we are pushing teams up to be the punching bag for upper division teams. How does this bring competitive value to the league?

[b] Sure you have that season, but its barely taking up any of your time, and you can choose who you scrim.[/b]
Are you saying if you got moved up to Advance from Main, you can just scrim main teams and just take the loss on match day? I'm sorry, but if your team can only compete in the division below then maybe you should be in that div? Call me crazy.

[b]And if you care that much about winning, if you work hard, any moveup can get better and take a couple hard-earned wins in a higher div, or get asked to play on a better team if you out-improve your team.[/b]
I think improving to the point of being able to have someone else cut their main rostered player for you is insane. Teams are not always worried about having who is "best" cause that is always subjective. I imagine that these players that out-improve their team will just end up as subs on better teams.[/quote]
To your first point, you are misunderstanding. Mathematically there is always a team that is on the bottom of the leaderboard. It is impossible for a division to only have a high end and mid end. There is always a loser, that's how competition works. Not everyone gets to be the best in their division. Like yogrrt has said, it's important that each div has a viable playoff structure, and that necessitates a certain number of teams per div, even if that includes moveups. And teams on the bottom of the leaderboard still improve way faster than the team in the division below that wins the division. That's valuable, and any player in the higher divs will tell you so.

And your second, I would prefer that moveup teams scrim teams in their division, but I understand that not every team is mentally strong enough to lose a lot of their scrims, and it isn't that valuable if they lose 90% of their scrims, because then they don't get as much practice for close games with time pressure. But not for one second would I believe that a team genuinely trying to improve would always lose on match day against a team just 1 div higher than what they believed their skill level was weeks ago when they got their placement. Especially when, frankly, advanced and main is not as large of a gap as advanced and invite, and advanced moveups usually get a win or at least a few really close games in invite. There are plenty of invite players willing to do team map reviews and occasionally watch demos, and their insight (if actually actively listened to) is super valuable.

For your last point, you are again misunderstanding, I am not saying that a player should expect to improve to the point that another team cuts their player for them. Rather, after the season is over, you get more exposure to other players in that division, and if new teams form, you'll get the call up. That's how it's worked for more than a decade, and I can give you plenty of examples of solid Invite players having that exact trajectory. And also, as timeless said, there are also times that players get poached because they get really good. Happens sometimes.

I just want to run it back in 4s with some friends