also if i'm looking deep in my heart and being SO forreal, if you request an admin look at your gameplay to prove you can play in a lower div, you should have to pay 5-10 bucks, i'm sorry

#freejustjazz

great write up. i heavily agree with you, especially with the idea that contesting for podiums doesn't indicate that you're too strong for a division. making restrictions about strength of team instead of the individual is also 100% on the money. there are a couple parts of your proposal i think you could shore up though.

• alting is an unfortunate reality, particularly at lower levels. i don't mean that as a boogeyman, an AM team got banned last season for it. so i like having automatic skill decay, but i would maybe scale back how far it goes. it wouldn't be appropriate to let arekk play AM by default, for instance. making it a maximum 2 div drop might work, and then still allow for admin discretion for weird situations.
  
• you didn't address it, but HL-based restrictions could relax quite a bit. the most common restriction i see in AM is like "cannot play heavy" which on one hand, great we don't have to fight a perma-heavy. but also who cares, let them play heavy. i have a friend who can't play AM medic because she had IM HL experience. let's ease up on those restrictions quite a ways.
  
• you're right that team strength should guide restrictions. my team would dissolve if our players were individually sorted into skill divs, even though as a team we're consistently 4-4 in AM. i don't know how you can allow for this team-based evaluation while also letting players see their individual restrictions before signing up. those seem at odds with each other. maybe if you had elo for every player at every class and then allow people to calculate if their team would meet elo thresholds? that might might work but would be a big undertaking. speaking of which,
  
• my only fundamental concern with the proposal is how much work it might take. all the other small policy stuff can be ironed out and squabbled over. volunteer time is already at a premium, like it hasn't really been possible to schedule NC/AM matches on mondays, since schedules rarely get posted early enough. the more admin-intensive the solution, the more i'd worry about feasibility. specifically, i think the stuff in Restriction Trigger 3 is the most likely to be time-intensive if you get into cross referencing logs, direct observation, etc. as i understand it, the proposal is to say "no restrictions unless the admins prove out a case." if this only happens once or twice a season i think that's fine, but if 10 teams require attention then it seems less feasible.

all those criticism aside, i do 99% agree with you and would prefer your proposal over the current system. i would love to see you strengthen the proposal in the few ways i mentioned, but even if you didn't, i think it's good enough to try. there's a limit to how unrestricted you should make the league (AM simultaneously has too many player restrictions while have too big of a skill differential between the top and bottom teams), but i don't think you would approach here. thanks for writing it up

nope

he got role restricted to medic it's not a big deal

honestly if a team wins a div, i don't see any issue with them playing that div again as long as they weren't stomping

i feel like admins should assign your team a div with no restrictions, and then you should be able to negotiate class restrictions to get into a lower div. like "you're placing us in advanced, but can we play main if jeremy plays soldier and monica plays scout?" probably a huge headache for admins tho

this is our year no question

the way you describe yourself reminds me of friends who struggle with a fundamental lack of self-love. fear of failure, lack of motivation, etc was all downstream. i hope this isn't the case for you but i would give it some thought

lolguy

if you gotta use chatgpt to write your announcement can you at least leave the emojis in? seeing some shushing faces and biceps would make me believe in the project more

i'm always surprised by people complaining about cost. $100 for lan is exceedingly reasonable. i don't think i'd even blink until you're pushing at least $150

this shit's bleak and it makes you feel helpless. i get people making jokes so they feel even a bit of control over the situation, but i feel you that it doesn't fix things.

if building uber takes ammo, you might need to run engi to have a dispenser!

i like the "roamer justification" genre where the player includes all their successful sacs from the season. i feel like i can really imagine what it might be like to live that way <3

there was a lot of silly bullshit back in the day. stuff i remember:
- badlands getting released and 6s finally having a map everyone thought was good
- damage spread used to sometimes allow a pipe to 1shot a scout
- stickies were bullshit to a degree you can't even imagine. couldn't even break them for a while
- seagull explaining to our team how bombing created a damage differential
- running backburner pyro on cp_well mids because it gave you +50 health
- grinding 39/39 achievements on an empty server whenever a class update dropped
- a hundred leagues popping up and getting abandoned
- dealing with double sandman on cp_fastlane when it could fully stun ubers
- natascha in 6s
- f5ing the soldier update page to get a service medal
- having to use binds for autoreload and rapid fire pistol
- most of all booting up the game for the first time on xmas and realizing it was the best game i had ever played