i think u should just let them all sandbag, why restrict anyone in game that is dying

i have been interested in starting to play more combo scout. hitting that consistent 55% scatter acc is making it rlly hard to get on a main team, but I'm restricted from playing IM. there are many IM teams looking for combo scouts. Please send your prayers.

my invite highlander soldier danmar33 is apparently too superior for main even though he never even made playoffs when he was in main and proved himself properly

i think moving people up when they have placed top 4 in their division is perfectly fine because theyve already made it to the top and having them play 2 or 3 seasons of main just to be able to win it will hurt their progression even more than by having them move up. Not to mention the fact that moving people up will fix the problem of the upper divisions being unpopulated.

I honestly dont see what you see, 80% of the league is nc-am-im and if theyre allowed to repeat the seasons over and over again until they win then no wonder advanced and invite are underwhelming. If old players quit but no new players come to replace them then the situation we have in front of us is what happens.

Your call to action is a petition to kill the game.

i think the main problem with the approach for restrictions is the hard delineation between for example advanced and invite skill levels. Different teams exist because of different experiences their players want as well as their ambition. Some players want to grind and climb for more perceived prestige, competitive drive, etc. Other players want to play for fun with their friends and, since losing isn't fun, would rather be in the top half of a div; this includes previously ambitious players who want to return after a hiatus but don't care about improving anymore. And of course you can have people with various levels of ambition or tolerance for losing.

If the line between adv and invite is more blended, then the grind teams get more out of playing in their div because competition is stronger and the chiller teams are ironically more likely to move up because the transition is much easier if you can enter invite from top 2 adv and be comfortable rather than dead last permalosing. A less delineated cutoff makes room for the teams that want specific things to actually exist rather than get killed during signups
Advanced and invite are kinda bad examples since invite only being able to get teams from one direction means unwilling adv get vacuumed up, but what I said still applies here and especially does for the middling divs

yes all those friend/offclass teams that wanted to chill in adv and got forced into invite and totally lived is how we get stronger invite seasons. In reality if a team is dominant in a low div it's usually because they grinded for it in which case they are ambitious about tf2 and usually move up voluntarily.
Also in my opinion having circed jerks stay in a div for a long time is a good thing because they 1) bring congruity to the div across time, giving the div a character so that people who played it three of four seasons apart may have some connection or a similar experience and 2) become standards to compete against. It's extremely satisfying to see a gap get closed between your team and the div regulars across multiple seasons

Guys!! If All You Wanna Do Is Beat Up On Main Teams For Three Months You Don't Need To Be In The Div!! You Can Actually Do That For Free!!!! Scrims Are FREE!!!!! You Can Play Them Five Nights A Week And Never Lose If That's What You Wanna Do!!! Why Do You Need To Pay The League To Schedule You Two Scrims A Week If All You Want To Do Is 'Chill'!!

If anything I am on RGL's side with this one. We're running a competition here, right? We're competing? If that's the case then why are we catering to people who have no interest in doing that? Even in other hobbie-level sports its not like the teams of guys that wanna get wasted and fuck around never have to play the teams of guys that wanna win. That's part of the deal here, man. I don't care if you (rhetorical) have a "low tolerance for losing", nobody is forcing you to pay the league fees and play the season. Like I said before, Scrims Are FREEEEEEE!!!! And if you just desperately need to give your money to RGL, how about we run an open 'for fun' div where we don't keep score. And if that's not acceptable, think about why, because, again, why are you (rhetorical) entitled to win a competition against other people without having to try?

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Honestly, I think this whole thing is a nothingburger reddit struggle session about something good happening, that maybe three people are going to throw tantrums over because they can't handle being told they're too big to play in the kiddie pool. Literally who cares. Is this how'd I'd personally handle these restrictions? Probably not. Do I think that this is actually pretty reasonable though? Probably yeah. Sorry bro, third place doesn't mean you're 'perfectly suited' to play the division, it means you're probably a top three player on your class in the div, which means you'd almost certainly fit in just fine the next div up. I'm sorry your friend is annoyed about something the league did, but acting like this decision is somehow 'killing the game' is just gross. Get a grip.

If anything is killing the game, it's this bizarre malaise that's settled over the scene like a fog that makes anything short of the admins letting players do whatever they want the end of competitive integrity. After thinking about it for a while, I actually think that the league taking this more seriously is actually a sign of moves in the right direction. Like I keep saying, we're COMPETING here, right? So why the hell should the whole scene cater to a bunch of jaded oldheads who lost the fire years ago and entitled kids who just want a trophy. One of those should probably be considered more cringe than the other, but neither of them should be the driving force behind league decisions. Because neither of those groups of people is going to bring anything good to the scene at this point, and honestly, I think catering to them is a lot closer to the thing 'killing the game' than class restrictions in main. Just some food for thought.

This could just as easy be framed in the other way as move-ups thinking they're entitled to playoffs spots right away and trying to get placed better through rule semantics rather than demo reviews and practice, but that's obviously not the point
Speaking as someone who hasn't played on casual teams I think its bad for the game if taking a break after having any kind of placement success means that you'll get gigafucked if you ever try to play again and lowering such subjective barriers for making teams will straightforwardly increase the number of teams.
I really hate to just say "get good" because theres no way to not sound dismissive but for all your emphasis on competing and competition its not very healthy for competition if there are theoretical top teams that get simply voided out of existence because vocal complainers didn't want to compete with them. In fact sandbag teams so historically get caught up with by the end of the season that getting a 16-0 record in adv was considered a bad omen.

I actually can't wrap my head around fearing competing with someone who got third last season, that is like the most textbook example of a difficult and beatable team which is imo the gold standard of competition. Even if a 3rd place player would fit into the next div (which will vary season to season and case by case ofc), why not let the player pick? Wanting another shot at a div seems like a totally normal thing that a competitively minded person would do (and always have done)

double-posting because the more I ruminate on this the less I get it
what main player in their right mind is afraid to play this?

https://i.imgur.com/8hxiy9q.png

https://i.imgur.com/FozAP2U.png