Seeing that we're essentially where we started from pre-COVID, I think it's true that player retention and player attraction are both going to be pretty critical if we want to keep competitive TF2 from kicking the bucket. That being said, we can't rely on another COVID level spike from giving us that peak back, but we also don't have a framework that actually lets us do anything on scale in the way "competitors" of TF2's would be doing, which is industry-level money and a centralized place to do everything. And really, there's no way for us to do that anymore, barring some truly exceptional gravitas that somehow gets everybody in this huge umbrella under one roof.
The money that's in the scene currently is pretty limited, and getting rid of limitations like paying down to play in a higher div works but also counteracts any money that RGL or whoever's charging would need in order to advertise to players that left or for new players to try their hand at learning the formats, which is its own vague and archaic issue that everybody under the sun has tried to solve and can't really get an answer for because of the whole lacking a centralized place problem
Without getting too in the weeds I think one of our boats off was actually getting a competitive launcher and our own game + developers when that had energy going behind it, and it would have solved a lot of issues that mitch describes and that I do agree with fully. That also takes money, and developers, both of which are in short hand because there are few developers and not much money to support them with.This is still a possible route though, and mastercomms has been doing really good work with optimization, but we would need to get on that train before it's too late, which it could already be

mitch really does pull out the stops, I wonder how he's pulling that information up because there's no way that's all prerendered

That username is already in use. Is there a modification to it that you'd like to make?

I clicked on the TLDR and it was 11 pages long with a table of contents

This is kind of an insane thing to do given the allegations though

Hallo Bubschen,
Unfortunately, I can't add your stream to the sidebar until the 90 days have passed, even with your team experience dating back as far as it has. I appreciate your politeness, and send another message here once the days have passed and I will happily do this for you!

name changed from aTooMilks to Shamp00

name changed from Veratig to Tooru

Added stultustf2 to the streaming sidebar

Added Highlander France to the sidebar

changed name from shaffe to ash_nazg

Before I add your stream "directhitenjoyer" to the sidebar under your name, are you sure that's the correct URL? It doesn't seem to link an actual twitch stream.

name changed from Ragnaz to DmRagz

I've updated your twitch handle from quid__ to quidworldwide.

I've added bunnies twitch to the sidebar

I've added Ragnaz's twitch stream dmragz to the sidebar.