Congrats to you and your wife :-)

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.

Coming at this from a different angle than you guys: I coach youth soccer for a living. Player development is literally my job. I've also just unsuccessfully went through the restriction appeal process trying to play medic in AM (as a perennial intermediate medic who's never won a playoff series). What that, and this thread have revealed to me is the staff at RGL fundamentally misunderstand how players develop.

Let me preface this by saying I greatly appreciate the RGL admins. I appreciate anyone who helps facilitate competitive TF2 in 2026. Being an admin is a thankless task and they generally do their best in my experience. I understand their rationale, I just think they're wrong here.

Within player development there is the concept of the overload principle. Players don't develop by playing in comfortable environments, they develop by being forced to adapt to challenges that are slightly above what they're used to. A more competent player entering an environment creates pressure on both their teammates and the opposition. They have to adapt, problem solve, and play at a level they've not played at before. That's where the growth occurs. You can't adapt to situations you've never seen.

There's a term in coaching theory for the instinct to remove challenges: "curling parents". They're parents who sweep the ice so that their kids never have to deal with adversity. Think of a u12 team playing a lower bracket to get a medal. Similar concept: not allowing former high level players returning from a break to play in appropriate divisions (like millie). It feels like the division is being helped, but what's happening is that the developmental mechanisms are being removed from the division. Easier short term path, harder long term path. And what normally happens? Those players don't play. That's what overly aggressive restrictions do at the divisional level. You smooth out advanced so nobody plays against the invite offclasser. Or you smooth out Main so nobody plays against the washed, 1 season of invite scout. Or you smooth out AM so nobody has to face a med who can surf a rocket or knows when to leave. Brilliant. Now when those players hit the next division, they have to spend more time adapting, not less.

When you remove a better player from a division through restrictions, you're not protecting the division, you're removing the developmental stimulus. The ceiling is lowered. The downstream effect of that is exactly what's been complained about ITT: you get worse teams in higher placements, and when they move up they're unprepared for the next level. If the hardest team you've had to beat in adv was another adv team, you have no reference point for what invite-level play looks like. Rumpus is right: Dynasty doesn't become a successful invite moveup without playing the sandbagging invite players.

I've seen this from the other side too. My old team bruh moment was the gatekeeper in IM for five seasons. Experienced old heads, former higher-level players, hell we even had Ggglygy, on a no-scrim match-only team. We were the litmus test: if you could beat us, you were a good IM team. I was told more than once that we were the team new IM teams most wanted to beat. You could see the difference too: teams played differently against us in matches than they did in pregame scrims. The stakes changed how they approached the game. Our presence in that division gave everyone a benchmark to measure themselves against, and that competitive pressure made the division better.

Cornsauce brought up a basketball comparison, but I think it proves the opposite point. In youth basketball (and any properly run developmental league) the best thing that can happen to a developing team is to play against better players within a reasonable range. A travel ball team that only plays teams they can beat develop terrible habits. A team that has to face a squad with a kid whos a level above them? They're challenged. They have to play better. The challenge is the development. You wouldn't tell a youth basketball league to ban a kid from the B-League because he played on an A-League team two yearws ago and his team finished 4th. You'd recognize that their presence in that league makes every team around him better as long as theyre not so far above the level that games are non-competitive.

That's the key distiction that I think the current restriction policy is completely missing. There's a difference between a player who will dominate a division and a player who will raise the level of competition within the division. A scout who frags in adv that wants to play IM? That person is genuinely too far above the level. An adv soldier who wants a season in Main? Much more managable. A medic who never won a playoff series in IM playing on a team with first-or-second season players in AM? That's not a threat to competitive balance, that's the type of overload that makes everyone around them better.

I'm not saying restrictions shouldnt exist. There are genuine sandbag scenarios that hurt the divisions. But the current approach treats roster history as the whole picture without asking the question that actually matters: will this players presence in this div, on this team, make games less competitive or more competitive? If you're restricting someone and the result is that a team of new players lose their sixth, a main team loses the chance to have a more experienced player offclassing, or a returning player who loves 6s doesn't even play, you haven't protected competitive integrity. You have just made the league smaller.

how quickly we forget about legends of the game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOJOi32OD10

https://rgl.gg/?a=1856&r=40

Sixes Spring Season Announcement

After 19 seasons and over six years of the same 8-week scheduled seasons, the time has come to mix things up a little bit.

So, we have decided to put our regular seasonal schedule on hold for one season and put on a series of three events that will allow us to experiment.

The Sixes team will run three events between January and April 2026 in place of a typical spring season. The first will be a Map event the weekend of Jan 10th, the second a longer Cup event in which we will experiment with divisions and match times, and a third very special event that we will have to wait a little bit before unveiling.

Event 1: Sixes Experimental Map Cup #6

In the first two weeks of January, we will hold a Cup to try out four maps that are in active development with an eye to being viable for Sixes league play. Matches will take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with each team playing a best of 2 format - meaning they play a 30 minute half (no overtime) of two maps to make a total match. In this format, ties are entirely possible during regular (non-playoffs) matches. To incentivize teams to push the maps to their limit, this will be a paid cup with a prize pool for the top 3 divisions. A portion of fees will be set aside to help fund the 2026 RGL LAN event as well.

We have several strong map candidates under consideration for this event—but are still open to reviewing more before finalizing. If you've seen a map that you think has potential, make sure to mention it in your post-season survey responses. We will be reviewing map suggestions from the survey before finalizing the pool for this event. Maps with an active mapper will be given priority so that feedback from this cup can be implemented in future versions.

The event will be structured like many of our recent Experimental Cups, with divisions set in alpha groups by experience/skill. We aim to have minimal class restrictions for this event.

For the top 3 divisions, the total fee will be $10 ($6 towards the prize pool and $4 for LAN sustainability), and for the bottom 4 divisions, the total fee will be $4, entirely supporting LAN costs for 2026.

Experimental Map Cup: (all dates subject to change)
Registration Opens and Map Pool Announced: Dec. 15
Registration Closes: Jan 4
Teams Assigned to Divs: Jan 5
Fees Due: Jan 8
Matches Created: Jan 9
Matches: Jan 13, 15, 20, and 22
Playoffs: Jan 27 and 29

Event 2: Mini-Season Cup

Our second event will be a mini-season event in February and March. This event will be a shorter season of Sixes in which we will experiment with a different division structure and schedule.

We've heard requests in the post-season surveys for differing start times and feedback that the traditional season can be a long grind, so this special miniature season will let players experience a very different schedule. Through this, we hope to find out if there is appetite for different match times and schedules for future seasons and events in RGL Sixes.

Instead of our typical divisional structure, we will have only Amateur, Main, and Invite divisions.
The Amateur and Main groups will be split into two divisions each, a BLU version that has 9:30PM start times and a RED version that has 10:30PM start times. Teams can self-select BLU or RED based on what works best for their schedules at registration.

To ensure we can populate the time-based groups, we will compress the divisions. Teams coming from Newcomer through Intermediate (non-playoff) will be eligible for the Amateur division. Teams coming from IM playoffs and above will be eligible for the Main division. We will look to minimize player restrictions for this format.

Teams will be allotted two matches per week for four weeks, with matches default scheduled to Tuesday and Thursday. A 4-team playoff for each division will be scheduled in March.

The fees for this event will be flattened, with a $15 player fee for Amateur ($9 into the prize pool, $4 LAN sustainability, $2 Anti-Cheat fee) and $25 for Main and Invite ($18 prize pool, $5 LAN, $2 AC).
Mini-Season schedule: (all dates subject to change)
Registration Opens: Jan 12
Map Pool Announced: Jan 19
Registration Closes: Feb 2
Teams Assigned to divs: Feb 7
Fees Due: Feb 8
Matches Scheduled: Feb 8
Matches: Tuesdays and Thursdays- Feb 10 through March 5
Playoffs: March 10 and 12

Event 3: Special Event Cup

Our final event of the Spring season will be another Experimental Cup, but the dates, teams, and details will be announced later in January. This event is slated to take place in late March into April, featuring more traditional weeknight matches and divisional structures. This event will be a free event, and we believe the sixes community will be extremely excited once details are released!

more in the article

i cant lie, the halloween powerhouse map goes incredibly hard

we are so back

namey played prem ozfortress and invite rgl

https://rgl.gg/Public/Team?t=14152&r=40

when i lived in australia and competed in ozfortress, our scrims and matches (only one match a week, by the way) were at either 7/8 or 8/9, depending on whether we had new zealanders on the team. moving back to NA and having 9:30/10:30 start times was too much. it got to the point where i had to stop trying to grind and settled for a match-only team, and even that was still hard to maintain. it’s not fun going to bed at midnight because you’ve spent 20 minutes failing to push snakewater last. stop letting the west coast hold us hostage

remember when tftv was worth visiting

FROYO b4nny : send someone better

https://www.twitch.tv/essentialstf/clip/SpeedyTolerantMeerkatDoubleRainbow-qOXQHDlwUpDPIWoj

overall a disappointment

https://logs.tf/3813349#76561198054268866