We, the crew behind the only RGL Season 20 AM Playoffs coverage, would like to extend one more invite to all reading for our coverage of the Amateur Grand Finals tonight at 9:30EST! We've got a pre-game panelist desk featuring AM players who know the #lore of this season, myself, Nbr1Rckr, Tcmano (our favorite), and more!

As well good luck to both teams, Team Named Finger and OnlySpams, as they battle to be crowned champions! Both teams have improved massively over the season - it'll be a great watch!

Our exclusive coverage starts at 9:15EST on https://twitch.tv/isjustjazzreal - can't wait to see you guys in the chat!

on behalf of myself, nbr1rckr, and tcmano, we would like to extend an invite to all members of the tf2 community to our coverage of the amateur semifinals and finals tonight (Aug 11) and, presumably, tomorrow.

coverage starts at 9:20EST on https://twitch.tv/isjustjazzreal

i'd be happy to frame it up and hang it in my house.

this is all i know
https://imgur.com/a/k3PAjtM
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2818876822

it's a toss-up between this, and the TL who flew out to Oklahoma to literally box a heavy for leaving their team for best HL absurdity of the year

in the message the person siyo is talking with mentions that they were threatened with a lawsuit over copyright and trademark violations. my honest suspicion is that Ford Motors threatened b4nny/resup over copyright infringement because of Ford Gaming using Ford's name and company logo during LAN. i don't think its coincidental that RGL later changed their policies to not allow teams to use name/logos/likeness of real companies to avoid a similar situation.

if you think "would Ford really go through all that effort?" the answer is absolutely yes.

for me its the peach bodyarmor

pickleball

Restriction Decay
Restrictions decay over time and with division movement.
Full restriction in the season immediately following the qualifying placement
Half restriction (admin discretion to lift) after one full year of inactivity or one completed season at the higher division
Full restriction lifted after two years of inactivity or two completed seasons at the higher division
Three-plus years of inactivity returns the player to Amateur status for restriction purposes
This codifies what the rulebook already permits in a way that is automatic rather than discretionary, and predictable rather than opaque.

Transparency
The current system is opaque. Players don't know what restrictions they're carrying until they get hit. This is one of the most consistently raised complaints across the entire thread.
Proposed: each player's profile shows their current restriction status, which classes in which divisions, with timestamps of the placements that contributed and the dates at which decay would activate. Players can self-evaluate before signing up rather than discovering their restrictions in the appeal process.
The published spreadsheet RGL has begun providing is a meaningful first step. Building this into player profiles directly would be the natural extension.

Admin Discretion
Admin discretion is preserved for genuine edge cases but the goal is to narrow the scope of discretion, not eliminate it. The current system relies heavily on admin discretion across nearly every dimension of every decision, which produces both the inconsistency complaints (different admins making different calls in similar cases) and the appeal exhaustion (every restriction is a unique negotiation).
Discretion should apply to:
Edge cases that don't fit the objective rules cleanly
Identification of genuine sandbag intent that the rules don't catch
Granting of decay in cases of unusual non-league activity (high-level pugs, MGE grinding, etc.)
Application of the "demonstrated current skill" criterion when supported by concrete evidence
Discretion should not apply to:
The base rules of who is eligible for restriction
The thresholds for what constitutes a restrictable placement
The decay schedule
Team-context evaluation framework
The goal is that 90% of restriction decisions can be made mechanically from the rules, with discretion reserved for the genuinely hard 10%. Right now closer to 90% involves discretion, and that's the source of most of the inconsistency complaints.

What This Framework Doesn't Change
The reformed policy retains:
Restrictions for genuine sandbag scenarios (e.g., recent invite-caliber play dropping to AM)
The 3-restricted-player roster cap on 6v6 teams
The Adv <-> Invite special-case treatment, in a refined form
Admin discretion for edge cases
The principle that competitive integrity matters
What it changes is the default. The current default is "restrict if any criterion is met." The proposed default is "evaluate whether this player on this team meets the threshold for actual competitive impact, with restrictions applying only when the answer is yes."

The Underlying Bet
The framework bets that what looks like a tradeoff between competitive integrity and participation is actually a false choice. Aggressive restrictions don't produce competitive integrity at the league's current size, they produce smaller divisions, less developmental pressure, and worse top-end play over time. Trading those costs for restored participation isn't sacrificing the league's competitive identity. It's restoring it.

The questions every decision should answer remains: will this player’s presence in this division, on this team, make games less competitive or more competitive? If the answer is “more competitive”, through developmental pressure, gatekeeping, or simply through the team being viable enough to exist, the player should play. If the answer is “less competitive”, through dominance, sandbag intent, or genuine division skipping, the restriction is justified.

/end

Concrete Restriction Rules
These rules replace the current "top 3 same-division / playoffs in the division above / demonstrably better than everyone else" framework. The "top 3" and "top 4" thresholds are deleted entirely.

Restriction Trigger 1: Division Domination
A player is eligible for restriction in a division if either:
They have won a division on the class in question while playing as a starter
They were on a team that demonstrably stomped a division (near-perfect regular season combined with a dominant playoff run)
By definition, anything short of winning means the team was beatable. A 2nd place finish means losing the grand final. A 3rd or 4th place finish means losing earlier. A non-winning team did not demonstrate it could not be beaten in its own division it demonstrated the opposite.
This is the cleanest line the policy can draw. "Top 3" and "top 4" thresholds are policy fictions. They have no developmental or competitive logic. They're arbitrary cutoffs that produce the absurd outcomes the thread has cataloged. If you didn't win the division, you don't get restricted in it.

Restriction Trigger 2: Recent Higher-Division Success
A player is eligible for restriction in a division if they have won the division two tiers above on the same class, within the last 12 months, as a starter.
Same principle applied across divisions. Making playoffs in the division above isn't evidence of dominance, it's evidence of being a competitive participant. The threshold for triggering a restriction is the same regardless of which division the placement came from: you won, or you stomped.
The two-tier gap (rather than the current one-tier gap) preserves the developmental flow described in the rulebook. A Main winner can play Main again. An Advanced winner cannot play Main on their main class. This means a player can drop one division without automatic restriction, which protects the natural cycle of players stepping back from one tier of commitment to a lower one without leaving the league.

Restriction Trigger 3: Demonstrated Current Skill
The "demonstrably better on a class than everyone else in a division" criterion is retained but defined concretely. Evidence is weighted in the following hierarchy:
Recent match results in the requested division or above.
Recent log-based evidence from matches.
Recent scrim results against teams in the requested division or above.
Direct admin observation across multiple matches.
Scrim results alone are not sufficient grounds for restriction when the player has a documented match record that contradicts them. Scrims have no stakes, no consequences, and teams routinely throw, test, or run experimental lineups. A returning player whose recent scrims look strong is often a player warming up against unprepared opposition. The match record is what counts.
Subjective vibes-based assessment is excluded. If admins want to invoke this criterion, they need cited evidence at the level of specificity a player would use to appeal a restriction.

Division-Size-Relative Stomping Threshold
The "stomping" criterion needs concrete definition that scales with division size:
"Winning the division" means 1st place outright
"Stomping the division" requires a near-perfect regular season (one loss or fewer across the season) combined with a dominant playoff run (no series went the full distance, with strong round differential throughout)
This prevents the absurdity of restricting someone for a strong-but-not-dominant performance. A team that goes 12-2 in regular season and wins a closely-contested grand final has won the division. They have not necessarily stomped it. A team that goes 14-0 with a 60-point round differential and wins playoffs 5-1, 5-2, 5-0? That team stomped, and the players on that team carrying the stomp on a high-impact class merit restriction consideration.
The bar for stomping is intentionally high. The default outcome of "winning a division" is "you might play again, unless you also stomped it." The exception is meant to catch genuinely dominant teams, not strong teams that won a competitive playoff bracket.

Team-Context Evaluation
Restrictions are issued to a player on a specific roster, not to the player in general. When a player joins a new roster, restrictions are re-evaluated based on the new team's overall composition.
A team-strength assessment combines the experience levels of all six rostered players. The current rule of "maximum 3 restricted players on a 6v6 roster" is retained as a backstop, but the more important standard is qualitative:
A roster where the strongest player is meaningfully above the division while the rest are below or at division level: that player may not require restriction, because their presence elevates without dominating.
A roster where multiple players are above the division, even if individually each player would be borderline: stronger restrictions apply, because the combined team strength is what determines competitive impact.
This codifies the principle that the question is "what does this team do to the division" rather than "what does this player do."

Adv <-> Invite as a Special Case
The Adv <-> Invite transition has historically been treated as a special case for restrictions. Earlier versions of this framework tried to apply the same logic but on reflection, the developmental principle that drives the rest of this proposal has to apply at most levels of the pyramid, including this one with one important caveat. Removing Invite-caliber players from Advanced to feed Invite is the same dynamic that hollows out IM and Main when it's applied at lower transitions. Advanced needs its overload too. Rumpus's Dynasty example earlier in the thread is exactly this: Dynasty became a successful Invite moveup because they played against sandbagging Invite cores in Advanced. Restricting those cores out of Advanced would have prevented the development that made Dynasty's run possible.
So most of the Adv <-> Invite line gets the same restriction logic as everywhere else: prevent dominance, not skill differentials. The standard triggers (winning, stomping, demonstrated current skill) apply unchanged.
The exception is top Invite. These are the actual best players in the game, and their carry potential on their main class is high enough that they can dominate Advanced rather than challenge it. A player who has won Invite on their main class is in this category. The "raises the ceiling without dominating" principle that justifies allowing experienced players in lower divisions doesn't apply when the experience in question is "won the top division of the game."
So: Players who have won Invite on their main class are restricted from playing that class in Advanced. They can offclass or play Invite. This is a hard rule. The dominance threshold is met by definition.
Low-to-mid Invite players (Invite playoff appearances, lower Invite finishes) are evaluated against the standard framework. Decay applies. Recency applies. Team context applies. Their presence in Advanced provides the gatekeeping that develops future Invite teams, not a guaranteed division-warping effect.
The structural problem my earlier draft was trying to address: "Invite isn't filling at 8 teams" is real but it's a different problem than restrictions can solve. It's a population problem, and the answer is structural: size Invite to the population of teams actively committing to top-level play, with qualifiers determining marginal seeds. In the current era, that's probably a 5-6 team Invite. As the league grows, Invite grows with it. The goal isn't to brute-force an 8-team Invite by forcing teams upward; it's to preserve the integrity of the top division at whatever size the committed population supports.

Apologies in advance for a multi-part post. For permanency's sake thought it would be better to have it all posted in the actual thread as opposed to a pastebin or a google doc. Here is the full text from my own drafts:

I would like to thank RGL for their decision in restricting me off medic on an AM team of NC moveups, one division below what I’ve played most of my RGL career (highest placement 7th place) saying that I would be “too strong” for the division requested. I look forward to taking someone else’s developmental spot on pocket soldier. However, congrats to Danmar33, Millie, Tree, and others who were unrestricted for this season in other divisions.

I’ve been working on this framework since my last post ITT. After my appearance on the Overtime Podcast (shout out Bethnicz, Rumpus, Warped, and Witness for the great discussion) I thought I’d spend part of my Saturday and Sunday cleaning it up. My hope is that it will serve as a starting point for a more relaxed restrictions policy that would allow for greater participation and player development, and that it sparks discussion internally and externally.

If there are any RGL admins who are actually serious about player development and retention, how restrictions kill both, my DMs are, and have been open. I look forward to hearing from you.

An Updated Policy Framework for RGL 6s Restrictions. Highlander, you’re on your own.

Optimizing for Participation
The central question that should drive every restriction decision: will this player's presence in this division, on this team, make games less competitive or more competitive?
This framework isn't arguing for the elimination of restrictions. It's arguing for a restriction policy that actually answers that question and that follows from RGL's own existing rulebook.

Foundational Principles
These principles should be stated explicitly in the rulebook so that admins, players, and the community share a common understanding of what restrictions are for.
1. Participation is the first priority. A player who doesn't play because of a restriction is a worse outcome than a player playing in a division slightly below their theoretical ceiling. The cost of overrestriction is invisible (teams that don't form, players who don't sign up) but it is real, and at the league's current size it is the dominant cost.
2. Restrictions exist to prevent dominance, not skill differentials. The presence of stronger players in a division is a feature of competitive play, not a bug. Divisions need a ceiling that pulls everyone in them upward. The threshold for restriction should be "this player will dominate this division" not "this player has more experience than the median player in this division."
3. The unit of evaluation is the team, not the individual. A player's competitive impact is determined by who else is on their roster. The same player can be unrestricted on a roster of newer players (where they elevate the team's level without dominating) and restricted on a roster of fellow vets (where the combined team strength is too high for the division).
4. Recency over history. Skill is current. A placement from years ago is weak evidence of present-day ability. The rulebook already acknowledges this principle; the policy should enforce it.
5. Divisions are developmental tiers, not skill checkpoints. RGL's own division descriptions describe each tier as a place where players are becoming better: "developing," "refining," "learning," "strengthening." (see rule 1006.2.2) A player can be in development within a division for multiple seasons without having "completed" it. The policy should not treat a single placement as proof that a player has graduated.
6. Second, third, and fourth place is not first place. A team that didn't win a division was, by definition, beatable in that division. Restrictions should not be issued for placements that represent losses. The line is winning, not placing.

Aligning Policy With the Existing Rulebook
Several of the issues in the current restriction practice stem from the rulebook's existing rules not being consistently applied. The first set of changes is enforcement, not reform.

Skill decay should be automatic, not discretionary. The rulebook already states that "consideration of skill decay may be given after one to two full years of no competitive experience." In practice this is rarely applied. Players with 3+ years of inactivity are still restricted on the basis of placements from before their break.
The proposed change: skill decay activates automatically after 12 months of inactivity, with admin discretion only to deny it in unusual cases (e.g., the player has been grinding at a high level in pugs or other leagues). After 24 months of inactivity, all restrictions are removed. After 36 months, the player is treated as an Amateur Player for restriction purposes.
Preferred division should be a real co-equal factor. The rulebook lists "preferred division" alongside skill level "in no particular order" as placement criteria. Currently preferred division is functionally a tiebreaker at best, and is regularly overridden.
The proposed change: a team's stated preference cannot be overridden purely on the basis of individual player history. Overrides require an explicit competitive-balance justification grounded in team composition, not aggregated player records.

Weighted experience should actually be weighted. The rulebook says all seasonal experience "will be weighted" including roster-rider experience.
The proposed change:
Starting seasons count fully
Substitute seasons count partially, proportional to games actually played
Roster rides count as zero. A player who rosters on a team but never plays a game in the season hasn't competed at that level. They've appeared on a roster. Treating that as equivalent experience to a starter is the rulebook's most consequential failure of its own weighting principle.

Implementation can mirror the RGL Pugs system, where players self-report each season's role (starter / sub / roster ride) when registering. The data already exists for verification through logs; defaulting to player input scales the system without overloading admins. Starting medic seasons specifically should be evaluated against playoff series wins rather than aggregate placement, since medics carry less and have less individual impact on whether a team wins than fragging classes do.

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