Every season you can count teams that get restricted into death whereas these theoretical teams that quit because the 1st place team is now 3rd is completely fictional (now if were talking about complaining instead of quitting that's a different story)

I took a 5ish year break from TF2 and I was always an objectively bad player and like 6 months ago I was thinking about playing TF2 again and the RGL player restrictions made it really hard to find a team to play with. I really used to enjoy playing TF2 and if I have free time a few nights a week I'd honestly like to play some low level non serious competitive TF2 and have fun and chill.

I'm not even allowed to play Roamer on a no scrim IM team or some goofy stupid class like Heavy or Engineer or Pyro in low level Highlander. I haven't played since RGL season 3 or 4 and I played on some Main teams as a backup and roster rode and I played on a no scrim friend team in the first season of RGL. I played some pugs a few months ago and I was dogshit and did like 150 dpm cuz I'm even worse than I used to be. I just wanna play the funny hat game and shoot rockets and try to hit cool airshots etc. with other bad and like minded players and I feel like RGL doesn't want me to :(

That's a funny way to say teams that disbanded because they were too afraid of not getting a podium placement. So what is your solution? Just let them do whatever they want?

Another nerd essay incoming. Consider these my TFTV magnum opus.

Out of curiosity I went and found how many teams have competed in RGL per season and the numbers are quite telling. The picture is more specific than just "the league is dying."
For our purposes, I've classified all played seasons of 6s into three eras:

Founding & Covid-era boom (S1-S6)
Post-Covid stabilization (S7-S13)
Decline (S14-S19)

What I found, looking at individual divisions:
IM peaked at 39 in S3. Historical average is 24. Last season was 12. IM should be the stepping stone from AM to Main, but instead players aren't making the jump from one div to the next. Some of that is going to be due to AM being free and IM being the first paid division (changing this season) but it's still worth noting. My first season of 6s in IM (S8) we had ~25.
Main peaked at 36, averaged 21, last season was 12. It's more than halved. It was historically the largest division outside of AM and now it's smaller than NC.
Advanced averaged 12 historically, last season was 9. From S5-S12 the average was roughly 17. Now it's 9. Half the division has evaporated.
Invite has hovered between 6-10 for most of the league's history. Last season was 6. The amount of teams is relatively stable, but you'd be hard pressed to call Invite strong, at least historically.

The upper divisions' share of the league is shrinking. In S3, 54% of the league was IM+. In S8 it was 52%. S14 it was 47%. In S19 it was 39%. The league is becoming progressively bottom-heavy and not enough players are making the jump from the bottom. IM lost 37% of its teams since S14 alone (there's going to be attrition from going free -> paid, but I don't think that tells the whole story). And the league is artificially stopping players who would otherwise be competitive within the IM+ divisions from playing their main or playing at all.

That said, let's look at the lower divisions. Both AM and NC in terms of team count are remarkably stable. AM+NC have averaged 60 teams per season for thirteen seasons straight. NC has kept itself consistent as well, averaging between 13-24 teams per season for the last 10 seasons. AM in S19 sat at 40 teams. That was within 4 teams of where S1 was (44) nineteen seasons ago. The lower divisions are doing fine in terms of player count.

The league isn't "dying" per se. The bottom of the league is fine. New players are still showing up. The league isn't losing new players, it's losing developed ones and failing to develop and promote the next generation. The league is stopping players who would provide developmental pressure from being engaged with the league.
At this point in the league's history, each restriction, each killed team, each player who chucks it because they're restricted from playing the class they want to play in a div they would be competitive in is making up a larger percentage of the overall playerbase. The league structurally cannot afford to limit the amount of experienced players in the league lest they risk the overall league itself.

At 200 teams you can afford to optimize for fairness. At 100 teams you have to start optimizing for participation, because there's not enough margin left to sacrifice players for competitive integrity. The current restrictions policy is applying assumptions of a healthier league to a smaller one. The tradeoff has shifted. The policy hasn't.

Every Millie that doesn't return, or team that dies in signup because they can't roster who they want/need, is a self-inflicted loss on a pipeline that's already starving for population.

The league has a demographics problem and a development problem that feed into each other. Fewer players in the upper divisions means less competitive divisions. Less competitive divisions means slower development. Slower development means fewer players moving up. Fewer moveups means the upper divisions keep shrinking. Smaller upper divisions make the game look less appealing to anyone grinding to get there. Restrictions don't cause all of this, but they accelerate it at every step. RGL needs every player it can get, not fewer.

Now, to respond to some of the points Cornsauce brought up.
On the selfishness point: I think this is a non-starter. A team wanting to stay in a lower division is "selfish" only if you assume they owe their absence to other teams in that division. They don't. If that's our framing, moralizers are equally selfish for wanting an easier path without the challenge of playing a theoretical stronger team. Nobody is owed anything, you have to play the team in front of you. There are numerous examples throughout TF2's rich competitive history of an OP team for a div getting toppled because of the developmental pressure put on the division itself.
The actual questions worth asking aren't about who's selfish. They are:

• What is best for player development within the division and within the league?
  
• If restrictions are a necessary evil (my position), what's the minimum amount needed to minimize attrition while still preventing divisions from being too top-heavy?
  
• Doesn't the presence of stronger players/teams give other teams a concrete target to aim for, and don't they improve from aiming at it even if they don't hit it?

These are the questions a healthy restriction policy answers.

On the "just scrim" point: Developmentally, league play isn't just an organized scrim. It's a fundamentally different competitive environment. Matches have stakes: results are recorded, your season is on the line, you have to show up prepared and actually execute. That pressure itself is an overload that drives a player's adaptation in ways a scrim can't. If "just scrim" was a real answer, then why have a league at all? Why not everyone just scrim?

The answer, of course, is that the league experience is doing something scrims can't. Telling people they shouldn't have access to that because of placements from years ago or whatever other excuse isn't a solution. RGL is actively excluding players from the thing that makes league play compelling in the first place.

at least they're real

i remember after 4 years of not really playing tf2 my friend group and i signed up for rgl and they placed us in Advanced. we scrimmed 1 Main team and lost 5-0 in like 20 minutes and then none of us wanted to pay money to play in Advanced so we didnt end up playing. i think my experience is not super common but honestly i dont think it would kill the game to let specific players sandbag a little bit. a few core players from the same team that were in a higher div previously could be forced to move up to the higher div but when its just a group of players that have never been on a team together before, one high Advanced player cant really carry a bunch of low Amateur players through Main or Advanced lol.

Would just like to say that this thread's title kinda smears m17's name, in my experience, he follows the policy of the League and actually does a really good job being available for league issues, researching whether his ruling follows league guidelines/rulebook, and also actually genuinely giving a fuck. Ultimately, we are discussing the league's policy, and calling him out specifically wasn't called for.

Just pointing it out because specifically negatively targeting admins who care more and take on more decision-making by calling into question their character for league-specific issues has been a trend in the past. That trend is bad for this community and has stopped potential people from deciding to apply to be admins, which is bad for everyone regardless of whether you favor restrictions or not.

m17 is a very good admin and does not deserve any slander

m17 is probably the best admin in terms of the amount of time he put into his divisions (whether you agree or not). while some decisions could be called into question the parity of divisions and seasons he has been head admin in have been very good in comparison to other divs. at least from how i've seen it, he tries his best to rationalize and justify his viewpoints as objectively as possible

what if there were no divisions, you just played or didnt' play. you only played people who had similar records to you, so in the global laddder you only play your rung pretty much. This would remove medals/playoffs for all divisions besides invite, but would solve the sandbagging problems.

seems like there must be an obvious downside to this system (besides lack of medals for lower divs)

like maybe #1 invite would get bored of only playing #2 invite for every match? the matchmaker algo could weigh recent matches or something...

I don't wanna make a thread but would like to say etf2l definitely have this problem too. Last year my team wanted to play a season of mid and play two nights a week. I hadn't played an official (the game itself too really) in about three years, neither had our pocket scout, yet we got forced up a division and had an awful time and I stopped playing again.

We had 3 people that had played div 1/prem but two were medics that would be offclassing (lucky and piggles), the third being agen (tf2 addict). We lost 3 of 5 officials, drew 1, and won 1. Between it being the summer season with people being on holiday, and being in a division we were not cut out for, we had a pretty miserable season that killed any potential desire to play the next.

I guess sometimes you need to be the punching bag of a division, it happens to a prem team pretty much every season.

hey man, if you got 1 win and 1 draw, I don't think it was totally unfair to bump you up. at the end of the day, someone has to make some kind of call about what div you play in.

i appreciate that you didn't enjoy that season, but I think that kind of has to do with the players you played with. teams with a big spread in player skill make placements tricky - and this punishes the non-sandbagging players on the roster. do you think you would've won mid?

been laughing all day thinking about the scenario of a guy getting carried to playoffs, being cut from his team in the post-season and then getting true comboed into being unable to play because nobody in the division above will pick him up.

bro i dont fear anything i literally got annihilated 1-15 on a dying team in one of the last invite seasons with any semblance of real competition, just to try and improve. I just want to be given the same chance to play my favorite game as everyone else, and the current rules make it literally impossible for me to play. please stop making a fool out of yourself.

bro your own claim is that there's teams dying because a sandbagging team would deny them a podium placement, how is that any different?

Nah you guys are actually ragebaiting the fuck out of me with these replies. I LITERALLY AGREE THAT THERE NEEDS TO BE CHANGE. Yes the current system is killing teams! But the just fully cranking the dial in the other direction is not the answer! The refusal to acknowledge that there have been sandbagging issues in the past shows you're not being good faith!

I disagree with mustard but at least he actually said his opinion on what should be done. 90% of the discussion from yall is just not constructive in any way! But yes just go ahead and add your anecdotal story to the pile and eventually Daddy RGL will fix it smile!!!!!!

rgl should pay JohnMilter to play IM

I have a lot more general thoughts on this conversation as it's progressed that I'll share at a later date, but I can't let this stand as it is right now: Yes, they literally do. That is the premise of skill-divisions. That good teams move up in order to provide less skilled teams with a meaningfully competitive environment for them to compete, develop, and have fun in. The opposite case (that lower level teams are somehow acting selfishly entitled to "an easier path without the challenge") is not equivalent because we all signed up for a league with skill-based divisions. It's not unreasonable as a lower-level team to expect that that is the outcome. Which I would frankly have a hard time believing that you disagree with, so it's obvious that we're not talking about absolute moral truth here, we're having a nuanced discussion about the degree to which a team is being selfish at the expense of the rest of the league's experience, and when it becomes worthwhile for the league to intervene.

If you believe that a sandbagging team should never have to move up, or even offclass, as long as they never win the division, then I can get where you're coming from. I disagree, but I can see the argument. We're letting a few players stagnate for the good of the rest of the league. I would personally worry about the competitive integrity of any playoffs matches that those teams make it to, but as long as the rest of the game is in a good state and the top level of the scene isn't getting choked out of existence by thinning competition at higher divisions, I don't really have a problem with letting teams sandbag within reason. If that were the case though, I would probably support efforts to reduce sandbagging, and lament any growing pains that happen as a result of these new policies as unfortunate but fixable.

Except that, obviously, that is what's happening, that is what RGL's doing, and that's what we're talking about. I think that the game is struggling for a lot more reasons that just sandbagging, obviously, but I just find this question of 'moralizing' outcomes to be a little silly when all that's happening is people expecting the outcomes they were promised. Maybe they get a little overzealous, which is something to talk about, but this should be a conversation about nuanced solutions, rather than categorical dismissals based on faulty logic. Food for thought.

And on this point more quickly:

This is a fantastic point if we're talking about teams that are trying to grow and improve, but we're not, we're talking about sandbagging teams that are playing artificially below their skill level. They are explicitly, definitionally, avoiding being overloaded and forced to adapt to new challenges by playing in a div below what they're capable of. The point of saying that they can just scrim, is that if they want to play artificially below a level they're capable of competing at, for whatever reason, they can do that in scrims just fine, and actually even still provide the overload that forces less skilled players to adapt & improve. Perhaps to a lesser degree than in an official match, but any less skilled team with a serious improvement mindset is going to be able to get a lot, sometimes just as much if not more, out of merely scrimming better teams (speaking from personal experience).

--

And finally to be clear: I am explicitly NOT talking about the millie team/situation here. They are literally not sandbagging, by definition. They are NOT trying to play at a level artificially below what they're capable of. They ARE trying to play at a level appropriate for them and being caught in an unfortunate loophole in the rules that should be fixed. Absolutely no shade to millie & tree, you guys are both excellent members of the community, losing your participation would be a loss to us all, and I hope this decision is changed so that you can play. BUT I don't think that centering this discussion about sandbagging on a team that is obviously not sandbagging is fruitful at this point. I honestly think that a big part of why this discussion has been so frustrating is because the 'pro-sandbagging' side keeps pointing to a team that is obviously not even sandbagging as a confounding point that is unaddressed by arguments meant to address actual sandbagging. Which is by design because, again, millie & tree are not sandbagging.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. These will not be my final words on this matter.

The "competitive environment" is barely changed at all with sandbagging teams involved outside of what number is in the standings or who wins in playoffs (usually).

What's being discussed is subjective and if someone for example thinks that low invite is advanced and top advanced is low invite then this post offers absolutely nothing because its taking for granted the premise that these are teams that do not belong and that the top of one div ought to be worse than the bottom of the next div.

In contrast while more sandbag-friendly posts obviously also have their biases about where to "draw the line" so to speak, when we talk about the benefits conferred on a div by having stronger opponents, easier transitions upwards with a more overlapping skill gradient between divs, less friction for returning to the game or making teams in general we're making arguments that hold true regardless of where you subjectively draw the line.

I'd care a lot less about the topic if the outcomes of what kind of sandbag action were taken was also subjective but they're not. On one side you have rules actively killing teams whereas the other side has what exactly? The boogeyman of some god team dropping two divs as an analogy for a mid-invite player dropping a div to mainclass on a friend team? Am I supposed to care?

Pedantic point I'm about to make, but according to the sheet with restriction rules somebody linked earlier, restrictions after getting top 4 can be lifted via admin discretion depending on strength of season/player. I would argue then the millie/tree fiasco cannot be a "player(s) become(s) victim of blindly applying previously established rules" type situation (rather common in RGL's history) if it's already acknowledged that admin discretion can, and I assume has in the past based on the asterisk, override these types of blind restrictions. Thus it's not a loophole at all but evidence of the current sandbagging policy working as RGL intended. There is nothing here to "fix"; if anything, the fix already exists. It was a deliberate decision to mark millie and tree as too strong for the division.

FWIW I agree with you that most ppl are talking past each other a bit and maybe a bit too willing to hit the nuclear option button. But you can't really imply that the 'pro-sandbagging' side is making some sort of specious argument when they do the following:

when, in the eyes of the only people who quite frankly actually matter, they are literally sandbagging, by definition, and this sandbagging label isn't some freak happenstance but rather entirely intentional in nature.

I understand that theory and practice are separate insofar as one can be anti-sandbagging in principle but acknowledge that it's mostly pointless if the ones enforcing the rules are braindead when it comes to the restrictions, but even in a fully hypothetical situation a philosophical advantage of the 'pro-sandbagging' side (acknowledging that the delineation is mostly arbitrary) is that you by construction avoid stupid shit like the millie/tree situation. Of course a simple counterargument would be to state that for these extreme cases like millie/tree it is obvious that the anti-sandbagging policies, whatever they may be, would not apply, and thus any particular realizations of that fact are simply instances of poor practice and not an indictment of the theoretical merit of the anti-sandbagging position.

But is it actually that obvious? After all, RGL is not some malicious entity that likes to kill teams for no reason. They clearly agree with many of the points brought up in this thread about the benefits of appropriate skill divisions, the substantial negative impacts of sandbagging teams, etc. etc. and clearly restricting a player that is in no way too strong for the division runs counter to those ideals. Individual admins I'm sure also ascribe to these ideals; people have brought up M17 and sung his graces, and I'm sure (or at the very least desperately hope) he isn't like "yeah fuck those players serves them right"; rather, he probably laments having to kill a team but genuinely believes that it would be better for the health of the division if they were not allowed to play without restriction.

Despite all this, somehow it keeps coming up that a team that is "obviously not even sandbagging" gets shot dead. A repeating phenomenon, no matter who the admin is or who the players in question are. So while in theory it seems blatantly obvious that, at the very least, extreme "non-sandbaggers" shouldn't be victim of anti-sandbagging policies (let alone people more borderline), the 'anti-sandbagging' side does actually need to argue in principle that the this is genuinely the case, that the loss of players caught in the crossfire are either 1. a necessary evil and/or, more ideally, 2. fully preventable. Because empirically speaking, there is basically no existing evidence that that is actually possible. Despite it being blatantly obvious it still manages to be a reoccurring issue; thus, to simply abstract the issue away by saying that it is pointless to discuss teams that are "obviously not sandbagging" is dishonest at best.