I rang for a nr6s cup once and its fun to pub around for a couple hours
more than that is too much for me personally

the most important thing is that they never get a job

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?

at least they're real

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)

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'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

The reason these aren't equivalent is because a team in a div is facing 90% of the same competition regardless of if sandbaggers are allowed or not and the only change is 1 or 2 hard teams to play, whereas a team being forced up a div are facing a completely different competitive landscape that is nothing like what they wanted to sign up for
You can absolutely still tell sandbaggers to get good and move up but there's obviously a big difference

How are adv teams going to develop to an invite level if there are no invite caliber gatekeepers for them to compete against? Rather that just talking in platitudes why not look at the actual reality of how teams actually being prepared for invite means teams move up into invite? Invite caliber and advanced are not nor should they be mutually exclusive terms
Here's an example: season 7 grands was between a sandbagging donovin and a sandbagging gungon. What was the outcome? The 3rd place team dynasty became an extremely successful and exciting invite moveup team two seasons later.
Was this match any less prestigious than if yeti and death cult were culled in the pre-season? Is there any actual discernible loss of competitive integrity by letting people with invite success compete for top 3 adv? So why kill teams like these for the short-sighted goal of making invite stronger for 3 months while making the rest of adv far less capable of actually moving up by the end of the season?

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

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)

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

all the americans are too scared to say it so ill have to say it: YES!

overrepresentation of ulmpst or is he just more tf2 guy than most?

that really sucks if it's true and it seems completely pointless also