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.

Irrespective of people's opinions on sandbagging, the current policy is clearly so restrictive that it's almost pointless to discuss it. Like ignore the three year break for a second, why the hell would getting 4th in a division ever make you eligible to get restricted lol. IIRC this was single elim playoffs too so all that entailed was getting top 8 regular season and then winning playoffs 1st round lmao. my only guess is that tree diffed too hard in a pug or something idk or m17 really hates u cause that is whack

also this fear of old players returning is actually insane to me, i genuinely believe there's <10 players who have ever played this game who could take a 3+ year break and immediately return within 1 division of their previous skill. like bro if platinum comes back i think u could let him play main it's not that crazy

All of the pencils are fucking funny but there's just something majestic about the actual jump being straight up and down too. Harmony of path and form.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSLuQtMezVLBj5YD80Zo71qJ7dVRITdv6zPTpjD3Ekud_Xd-HpXvMduSm7Q&s=10

Don't ever think it's too late to pursue your dreams. Holden held out and so can you.

Open source or otherwise for logs.tf specifically it's probably suboptimal to have such a fundamental part of competitive tf2 be reliant on one dude who hasn't played in like 8 years. Blessed be to zoob, afaict he still fixes shit whenever it breaks out of nothing but sheer love of the game (based based based based) but does feel like a ticking time bomb in some respects.

What the fuck why are u reading this thread out of all of them LOL.

Iirc it was some highlander cup thread that devolved into something about HL impact on comp as a whole or something idk all i remember was the hl players getting owned. I think u dropped a truth nuke that got ppl riled up.

It's been ten years and HL players are still traumatized by enigma. Pretty sure NA hl drama diffs random etf2l shitfest by a mile.

Ok also let me nip something in the bud though really quick for the primarily 6s players on this forum or (newer RGL only highlander players): the NA highlander culture used to be rancid. To the point where any of the 6s players who played a decent amount of HL always talk like this about HL players , and it's not like 6s players in like 2014 or whatever were exactly PC (500$ jeopardy question what did Platinum shout at LAN with a sponsor right behind him?). RGL admins talking like the anne hathaway HR lady meme and the student council larp is always impressive in how ineffectual it all is but it is just true that the general culture shift has much improved the scene and almost assuredly increased the number of players old and new. Some of it is just changes in internet culture at large but it is undeniable that RGL actually clamping down on that type of behavior had a large impact.

While I think some changes that have a similar spirit have gone too far (sandbagging policy like other ppl have mentioned, insofar as it seems to take WAY too much admin time and also tries to invent a solution for a problem that doesn't have one by design), I think the concept of having admins who don't talk like drones whose IPO is in 2 days while also creating rules against like binding slurs to WASD shouldn't be some unachievable mystical ideal.

The second main point ties in with what many others have stated in this thread already about league safety. One obvious prerequisite for this ideal is that admins or otherwise league representatives should be upstanding community members (and obviously in this respect etf2l have horrendously fumbled the bag), but outside of just not being groomers themselves I also strongly believe that RGL should not have on its staff any individuals who have strong and willing ties to groomers.

Note that I'm trying to be careful with my wording here because I do not think that simply having a connection to somebody outed for unsavory behavior should mark you for death so to speak for numerous obvious reasons (plenty of people don't know what their teammates are up to); however, I do believe that going out of your way to make contact with these people, and especially if you didn't already have a preexisting connection, is extremely deplorable. I'm mostly alluding to what's probably a very obvious open secret for both tf2 communities: a disturbing number of medic players in both 6's and highlander go to Nursey for mentoring or demo reviews.

This issue is probably large enough to warrant its own discussion, but to keep it brief this practice is absolutely horrendous for basically every reason already stated in this thread. Not only does it completely trivialize the incredibly serious crimes that Nursey and similar individuals have committed (I personally have heard of this practice referred to as "going to the dark side" for demo reviews in a very joking fashion), but holy shit what kind of precedent does this set? I can already see people joking about getting groomed to get into invite; in fact I would probably bet everything somebody has already made that joke.

And of course the kicker here is the following: you can do the above (reach out to pedos), you can be known to do the above, and still remain an RGL admin.

https://i.imgur.com/lZWIeK8.png

Jercer is the head HL admin for reference. Vandeer was on hl staff until last season where I believe they left of their own volition (but importantly was not axed for this). Vandeer started playing in 2021 (two years after Nursey's ban) so they are not an old acquaintance of Nursey, at least competitively. I am not the person in the above screenshot, mostly because I would not be ok with anything less than the removal of vandeer entirely. Though it would not surprise me if the reporter also believed that and simply gave the "make him pinky swear Nursey is gone" option to ensure that at least something positive would occur. After all this response came just 2 weeks after this same admin tried to forfeit a team out of playoffs for being too shit at cp_steel based off nothing but a twitch cast.

https://i.imgur.com/yLeJWVd.png

Here is a screenshot to show the shared logs between vandeer and Nursey. You can check this yourself on logs.tf/dev. As you can see there are quite a few pugs, more than I've personally played in maybe the last 4 years lmao, and notably started just before and continued into vandeer's tenure as rgl staff. This was not an instance of pugging with Nursey before the truth came out; these were numerous, repeated pugs on mains (who knows, maybe more exist on alts!) well after the fact.

I want to make it clear that I have no evidence as concrete as logs to show that vandeer went to Nursey for mentoring (vandeer is an HL med). Perhaps somebody has a discord screenshot lying around, but I have basically no desire to talk to any of these individuals. However, not only have I heard this from people I trust, there is basically no other reason a player would suddenly enter Nursey's clique like that (unless they are a victim). It's just not reasonable to think this especially for an adult. Nursey's circle is (obviously) very enclosed - in fact, many of the players in these pugs are, sadly, the same people mentioned in the thread that brody linked to earlier.

I'm sure I do not have to convince many tftv readers on this particular point but I do want to be very clear here. Any player who has been around for long enough, and you do not really need to be around for that long these days, realizes that Nursey is problematic to say the least. Anybody who goes to them with this knowledge is making a conscious decision to not care about their crimes and contribute to a practice with harmful downstream effects all to get better at fucking highlander medic. I'm sure the astute reader can infer my thoughts as to whether this should disqualify you from representing RGL as a whole.

I have been trying to steelman this decision by Jercer, or anybody else involved, to not immediately let vandeer go. Unfortunately, I feel forced to conclude that this is either one giant miss by them that's totally somehow not indicative of a deeper issue or (more likely) it is a sign of what this thread is exactly about: a sustained, pervasive nonchalance towards an issue that should be treated with the most utmost severity. These actions scream "so what?" or "eh, they said they're not talking anymore so it's no big deal", a reaction that I think is highly disproportionate to the disgusting, but unfortunately all too common, practice of crawling directly to Nursey, a pedo, for video games.

Again, to be abundantly clear, this is only the side of the story I've managed to piece together as an outsider. Maybe there exists some absolutely absolving reason for a new medic player with no prior ties to Nursey to suddenly seek them out and pug with them that also makes it appropriate for them to be RGL staff. You will have to excuse me if I sort of doubt this exists though. But again, I only know what I know.

I want to reiterate I personally have nothing against Jercer. I do not believe that they are pro-groomer in any way or anything even close to that. But as I'm writing this it really is hard to not think about the fact that over the years many highlander players were blacklisted from becoming an admin. Some for good reason. In fact I would not be surprised if I personally find some of those people really fucking annoying. But the fact that such a blacklist exists for people who are abrasive dickheads, for people who have maybe stepped on a few too many toes, but not for people who have in a very obvious fashion gone out of their way to talk to, mingle, and play games with people who are legitimate threats and have induced serious harm on the most vulnerable of community members, it really makes me ashamed to say that I've played in such a league.

Any more on my end would probably just be beating a dead horse. Instead, I will leave off with what are RGL's own words. I implore the RGL admins to read the statement and think about whether people who go out of their way to initiate a new relationship with a pedophile meets this standard. And for any future hires by RGL I seriously beg them, please for the love of god, do not hire anybody who is or has gone out of their way to interact with groomers or people who should not be around minors in any capacity.

[2/2]

Around when this thread was first active I wanted to post something regarding how leagues and admins, in particular RGL, handled grooming and predatory individuals. Eventually I chose not to out of fear that it would derail the thread, especially when a lot of productive discussion was occurring, but given the other HL thread and the fact that the discussion here has concluded I wanted to raise particular concerns that I've had with RGL. So apologies for the necro, but I felt that the topic serious enough that it warranted these posts, and I didn't want to start a new thread given that much of what I am about to write is related to the great points that Tob, ghadilli, and others have brought up. Some examples specifically regarding the leagues are as follows:

My main concerns are twofold: the first is that at least as currently written, RGL rules are in my opinion insufficient at blocking groomers or otherwise dangerous individuals from participating in the community within a realm that I believe they [RGL] should have jurisdiction. Obviously I do not expect the staff to trawl through every private discord or DM's or whatever ready to execute any player that has any ties to a groomer (seems like a bad idea regardless), but I do think at least playing/pugging with said individuals should be prohibited by RGL. In fact, precedent on this front already exists in the form of an (intentionally) limited policy, see the following:

Note the particular focus on the "scrim" portion - explicitly denoting that normal pugs would not constitute a violation. To my knowledge this is because of RGL's general policy on not policing things off-platform, and also to note is that this policy extends to everybody who is permanently banned - the bulk of whom I suspect are some mixture of cheaters, serial harassers, ddosers etc. but not groomers explicitly. Notably however RGL does consider off-platform evidence with regard to minor safety.

In short I believe that, using the above rationale to justify the inclusion of off-platform evidence, this policy should be extended to include pugs. It is just exceedingly uncomfortable to realize that there is technically nothing prohibiting somebody from hosting newbie pugs with Nursey so long as it doesn't resemble a scrim in any way, and given that this particular population as mentioned already in this thread is particularly vulnerable I believe RGL should put as many safeguards as possible in that regard.

[1/2]

I think it's a pretty open secret that there were lots of people willing to be admin at one point in time (2020-2022? 2023?) that were basically blacklisted, more or less confirmed by ex-admins. I cannot say for certain if this still holds in 2026 but the sense that there exists an admin circlejerk probably doesn't do wonders for the impetus to apply anyway.

But broadly agree with the spirit of Alto's reply.

On the following point specifically:

I'm not even sure if this is true (there is probably an argument that NC is more heavily catered) but regardless it's really not clear at all how RGL doing the things that invite wants has anything to do with the grievances you listed. If you played in advanced yeah getting forced up probably disrupts things but I seriously doubt that idk amateur division sandbag policy is somehow better or worse because the impostors are in invite or some shit.

This part is unavoidable. Not even a tf2 problem I'm fairly certain in real sports the biggest market teams could also do this, and if you want an esports comparison if the top 10 melee players boycotted a tourny for some rule change similar things would happen as well.

I knew that one mumble server that I've been accidentally paying for the past 7 years would finally come in handy

This is in-depth work, thank you for this. I remember the original vid, kind of crazy (well, maybe not that crazy) that nothing has changed.

Regarding this point:

A plugin that just reversed priority of flames from oldest -> youngest (fixing the wall bug) would I imagine be pretty uncontroversial. Hard to argue this isn't a bug and is pretty low impact compared to other plugins already allowed such as self-reflect fix or ghost crossbow fix.

If there was just a simple change that would fix the point blank bug(s), analogous to reversing priority fixing the wall bug, I think that would be similarly uncontroversial. To my understanding though, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the point blank bug is not so easy to fix and manifests because of the messed up ramp up system, and fixing it would probably require a total overhaul of the system or disabling it outright. To me this is more contentious because while I do think the ramp up as currently implemented is bugged (the point-blank behavior being the most obvious example), overhauling the system feels less like a bug fix and more of a "trying to read what Valve was intending to do" which seems, to me anyway, more like a (pro)mod in spirit.

Of course I don't really think that the current iteration of Blue Moon ramp up is what Valve probably intended; that being said, this is also the same company that just prints extremely incorrect things on patch notes especially related to pyro. Obvious example here are the "cone-shaped airblast" or "reduced air control for a short period" or "total push force slightly increased", none of which were touched in Blue Moon. The push force one is particularly egregious because a stated intent for the JI overhaul was for the airblast recipient to have more control (i.e. this was "Valve's intent"), but the actual system arguably has even less but was never changed after the fact, perhaps signaling that this is what the devs intended all along. Similarly while I think the wall bug and point-blank bug are almost surely not intended, reading the machinations of Valve devs is basically impossible and as far as I'm concerned the rest of the ramp up system could be totally what they had in mind for whatever godforsaken reason, making any changes to it """feel""" like less of a bug fix.

Just my two cents. Not an RGL admin though, and maybe other people will disagree.

it is 2016 and we are still talking about the whitelist
it is 2021 and we are still talking about the whitelist
it is 2026 and we are still talking about the whitelist

you cannot escape the cycle of samsara

(good vid)

I think for NA clear choices would probably be b4nny, jay, kobe, yomps, and habib. Botmode is probably also in this tier. After that it's dicier but I actually think yight as an example is a pretty good choice after those 6. Something like branslam/highfive/yight/lolguy (?), though I'm sure I'm missing some.

I think this probably is too restrictive to be interesting IMO. Also I think there's a universe where 6 b4nny's lose to stacked froyo cause they all ego each other lol.

Not everything I read in 2025, but some highlights:

Pale Fire, Nabokov: Reread, but it still holds up and is probably my personal favorite Nabokov. Kinbote's larger-than-life presence mixed in with the pseudo academia-style writing really clicks for me. The amusement park comment in the intro immediately sets the tone and many of the quips he drops ("undeodorized French woman, secondary homosexual implications, etc.) I find hilarious. One of a kind, absolutely beautiful prose.

Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon: I could see why somebody would really enjoy this, but it doesn't work for me personally. I can't say this definitively but my sense is that it hasn't aged particularly well. May reread at some point though. Certainly unique if nothing else. I've heard that Pynchon himself doesn't regard it very highly.

Babel, Kuang: This book is fucking terrible.

Reads like leftist "Atlas Shrugged"; the characters are less people and more vehicles for the author to show why their beliefs are ontologically correct and any other viewpoint is dumb and stupid. The characters are so black and white that you almost can't help but feel a sense of endearment towards the author - how could a veritable adult be so sheltered in their upbringing that they come to view the world in this way. Unfortunately this reverie is quickly broken for two main reasons.

One is that the book that has already explicitly painted "these are the good guys. Anything they do is good. These are the bad guys. Anything they do is bad" somehow still needs to go out of the way to mention "colonialism bad" ad nauseam. I genuinely cannot tell if this decision is because R.F. Kuang thinks all her readers have severe CTE or if it's some weird virtue-signaling maneuver to make explicitly clear that she holds [correct opinion], which in it of itself also speaks to the "quality" (so to speak) of the people she is trying to appease. Both positions are affirmed because Kuang's diatribe on "colonialism bad" is literally just that, there's no in-depth argumentation, perspective shift, nothing even approaching substance at all. She seems deathly afraid of adding anything interesting beyond "colonialism bad" because of...why? I can't say for certain. Regardless, the end product is just sanctimonious mind-numbing drivel, the absolute worse any didactic literature has to offer.

Second main reason is that because the characters are split into either upholders of virtue or pure unadulterated evil, any "bad thing" that happens to anyone in the latter camp cannot actually be a "bad thing" because "bad things" don't happen to bad people, only "deserved things". Obviously. This leads to some borderline sociopathic moments by the "good characters"; prime example is when one of the "bad" characters nearly (very minor spoilers)

A position which, by the way, is also explicitly affirmed by the narrator. Just in case you thought Kuang could threaten you with any modicum of character complexity. Truly an insane viewpoint to have, one that I sort of doubt are Kuang's true feelings on this subject (well, I certainly hope anyway) but I suspect are a byproduct of the aforementioned [suspected] crippling fear of any dilution of the "colonialism bad" messaging.

By the way this is a fantasy novel. Probably not abundantly obvious based on what I wrote above. But also it's a book about how British colonialism succeeded because they had magic that intrinsically ties with a fundamental aspect of the human experience (language) but somehow the only difference this has led to from real life is that characters in the 1800s speak with 21st century lingo. I could keep on going on this point and the fantasy world-building elements in general (it's shit) but I am already a little ashamed as to how much easier it is to write about something I loathe rather than something I enjoy.

Truly detestable novel.