I'm just gonna say despite any head admin stuff:

a.) I wouldn't have gotten into comp without UGC and I started in highlander (didnt know ESEA existed until I heard about it from people playing in newbiemixes)
b.) Generally the admins were understanding and made decisions well (at least from my point of view in my experience)
c.) Highlander is a game mode and it is fun to some people. Personally I don't care for Highlander. The issue is that people play Highlander and it takes away from people who do 6v6. This season both Jaguar and I denied many tryouts who were good players but also played Highlander because we wanted to scrim on Sunday and Monday but there are teams that don't do that and have Highlander players. There is an issue, in my opinion, where players play only Highlander and not 6v6.

Generally reasons tend to be:
a.) its not fun. (valid reason but allot of HL players who play this play a 6v6 lobby and say 6v6 is not fun. That usually isn't the case the other way around. Most people who play 6v6 will say "I used to play Highlander but 6v6 is so much better"

b.) Toxicity of 6v6 players (in my experience highlander players are by far more toxic and i'm a person who experienced wpj power pugs as an iron medic...)

c.)They don't have time ( there are many people who play 6v6 who only play 1-2 scrims a week or only matches)

d.) They cant play their class/their class isn't played in 6v6. (valid only if you enjoy playing strictly one class 100% of the time. In our scrims our flank scout legit sac's and plays sniper many of our stalemates, unskilled will sack and go spy a few times, engi is almost always used on last (mini sentry or not), heavy is used as well not only on last holds but last pushes. The only class that doesn't receive much use is the pyro, which is why we have a "update" coming soon that's supposed to attempt to "fix" pyro.

tldr: Highlander players who only play HL for the most part haven't played 6v6 enough to make a good decision on whether they like HL or not. however 6v6 players who play HL generally try to play both or say that they like 6v6 better and it's more skilled and HL is very aids.

also ugc admins were fine imo.

In theory, if you wanted to play in a North-American equivalent of etf2l (or just get rid of ESEA), you would need the overwhelming majority to join it, thus forcing the minority that wants to stay to also leave.

Assuming that's true, and assuming it would be beneficial to the scene, what would the way to achieve that goal be?

I don't agree because things can be an issue without being big roadblocks or the sole downfall - I mean this is the whole point of something being a minor issue in the first place. If being elitist assholes turns some people away - in a small community that actively needs way more players to stem a significant decline, compared to games who have 12+ million players a month - then there's no way that it isn't at least a minor issue. Hell, I'd say toxicity is a minor issue in all those other games you're likely talking about too.

I am NOT saying that Team Fortress 2 would be some magical huge game if everyone was sunshine and rainbows (because this isn't close to the major issue blocking TF2 from being a big game, that's all on Valve, also that's impossible to ask for), but that 6s would undoubtedly be more populated than current if overall people were nicer to the people they were wishing would play competitive in the first place.

Saying it isn't a minor issue at all is saying that you believe that the competitive scene wouldn't be more populated at all if people were overall much nicer. Do you really think that is the case? That no one has ever been turned away by the overall competitive community attitude?

FWIW, I mostly hold this viewpoint because I:

* was a player that almost didn't get into competitive due to people from this community who were dicks on my pub of choice back in 2008. I only got into competitive personally due to the 6v9s I played in so that was on Cerious and Yz50 and Blaze pretty much.

* was around before HL really existed and remember what the pubber perception of competitive 6s was by the vast majority of those guys pretty thoroughly (hell I still meme about it with "you just gotta adapt" but people nowadays don't even get that meme. This was like the common pub argument against weapon bans for like 3 years rofl, I still remember when the first weapon ban in 6s happened with the Sandman and there was this huge SPUF thread about competitive players suck and they just gotta adapt to getting stunned in place)/still actively engage in pub communities to know it hasn't really changed that much at all.

* know pubbers who tried to get into competitive through Highlander and quit due to some of the attitudes they encountered.

* know Highlander players that refuse to give 6s a try due to some of the attitudes they encountered.

* know former high level players/staff who quit that partially don't want to come back due to the attitudes they've encountered. (the other more bigger part being Valve sucking)

This is basically most of my "inner circle", and I'm really the only one left still actively playing out of all of them. These are mostly people I've known since 2008-2011, which is way before the competitive decline happened. So basically, my perspective on this is shaped by that heavily. Likewise, I'm sure you know plenty of people currently playing competitive that don't really care about it and so you think it's less of a problem, so that shapes your opinion.

I don't think there's any future for tf2 if developers don't appear to even care about the game. A lot of the good players that used to play tf2 have moved on to other games i.e. Overwatch with caring developers, regular updates, who also actively takes and implements community suggestions. Why should people stick to a game when there are better alternatives?

as much as the community cares about the game, we're not forcing people to stay

anyone can quit this game at any point in time, it's their choice

and this is why tf2 isn't what it used to be

Agreed, if the current mood is still "If you don't like 6's and our(community) attitude exactly as is then you're welcome to just leave or ignore it." then threads like this will become more common and b4nny will no longer have other teams to give him money.
I'm not personally invested either way, but from an outside point of view I agree that many players are turned away from 6's who maybe would have strengthened the scene. Corsa is probably correct that comp TF2 players aren't as big o' dicks as CS:GO, Overwatch or DOTA 2 top level players, but they also have more to lose by not trying to grow their league.

ur arguing something i'm not suggesting. i absolutely agree with everything you said but i'm only saying that there are some people who literally think the opposite of what you said:

and i'm just saying, that is most definitely not true, as you are agreeing with as well.

i meant that in the context of "why stick to a game if there's better alternatives"

if someone feels they'll be more happy, more successful, and more financially better off playing a different game than tf2, or just leaving tf2 all together, then why should we stop them?

if you don't like a video game, why subject yourself to playing it? you're only gonna make yourself miserable

mongo alert

At first I laughed before realizing I literally got into UGC as a 13 year old pyro main with no money.

Creating a ETF2L clone is our only way forward. Nobody wants to pay to play a dead game in a league that doesn't give two shits about us.

lol

well at least we got some balance changes