Do not oppose this team or else you will think this...

advanced+ doesn't even start till 10, so stuff usually goes till midnight at best

More old players are leaving now than in the past, as in the rate of people leaving is faster. Your point about new players is true but my point is that as it stands it feels like so many resources are pooring into making the newbie experience better and easier, with the idea that this new blood will then climb the ranks etc. The issue is though the upper divs are just suffering, and expecting people to be contesting froyo or something a year after getting into 6s is super unreasonable.

More resources should be put towards finding what higher div players actually want out of the game and things that could make people want to keep playing. In your post you mentioned IM+ even has problems. The game will not be sustainable if it's dedicated to new players who don't want to pay, and the people who are fine to pay for higher divs feel like they're being ignored/the divs mean less and less, and people keep leaving. The cycle rgl is going for in get new players that will eventually make invite is fine, but neglects current adv/invite has been on the decline in # of players and "actual competition" for years now. Once the new players are good enough to play at higher divs, why would they? Higher divs require a much more significant time commitment than lower divs, and the experience feels like it's a second thought or something so frequently. I get invite gets more casted matches, but past that, what is there?

Rgl doesn't necessarily need to incentivize people to play higher divs- I don't think something like higher prize pools or something will fix this. If people don't want to play they won't. I just think the people who do want to play shouldn't feel like it's an uphill battle to do anything, as there are so many unnecessary annoyances or constantly mentioned problems, like not knowing map pool, experimental/no playoffs format, season too long for most people etc. just to name some of the issues that were brought up in this thread.

Rgl is acting too afraid to really make the changes people want. Rather than make people play higher divs, I don't know why there isn't more incentive to have teams live season to season, which lets us finally move away from this 2 month reg szn format. If a team will live, it doesn't care about shorter formats, and if a team will die, I'm sure some people wouldn't mind being released from their teams a week or 2 early. More living teams will also actually lead to more teams in higher divs, instead of the constant decrease.

No thread exists as far as I'm aware. I am not trying to flame rgl or some garbage, just want to talk about some of the stuff going on that feels so difficult to communicate at times. Despite how some things have been handled publicly, making this about blah blah x admin sucks isn't the point here. I'm hoping this can open some sort of communication with rgl so things can be more managable and enjoyable in the future.

This szn advanced has been pretty messy. Even looking past the elijah situation, playoffs was changed 2 or so weeks before they were supposed to start to mirror the invite format, but then that was changed, and never clarified. There was then a post about the format, that was then changed. Currently, there is no format for adv playoffs, and teams are just playing whenever is convenient, but it's all under time pressure because people made plans following the original post.

I mention this because it really feels like it's just dogpiling onto the issue that is higher div player retention. I know rgl puts a lot of focus into gaining new players and even over the last couple of seasons, these efforts are easily observable from # of teams in lower divs.

However, the opposite has been happening in main+, where every season has fewer and less teams, and a general feeling of seasons being mickey/weak/pointless for many players. I am not sure what rgl can specifically do to correct this, but I think it should be discussed to see if people can potentially come up with a solution or just discuss how it has been and their experiences.

I also want to say that I don't think rgl has been doing a terrible job or anything. I think overall in the past few years rgl has improved a lot at the goals it has set out, I just mention this problem in higher divs because it hasn't really been acknowledged as much as I think it should have been.

I had this happen to me like a year ago, I removed everything, verified cache, put -autoconfig into launch options, launched, closed game, added stuff back in basically one at a time (after removing -autoconfig). I can't remember what actually ended up causing everything, I just remember my config setup was a mess at the time so I remade files and stuff to be more organized.

goat

Wasn't the whole thing like 2 months ago a dev saying pve would not come, or at least not what was promised/what people cared about

Hit the shitty unsurfable splash for like 50 damage and then easy direct

I think people trust AC team once they come to a conclusion. The problem is how long it takes for anything to get done which is what mustard is talking about in more detail.

The precedent of the "players making their own league/splinter divs for playoffs" or whatever you want to call this is a very dangerous one. Sure in this case it makes some amount of sense because elijah has clips that are impossible to justify and no one wants to play against a cheater, but it could easily get out of hand if other people or other divs try to do the same.

What if main players decide this season, the sandbag won't win, and decide to make their own pseudo-div without them? What if AM players decide fuck it I can AC better than rgl and just arbitrarily ban someone they think is cheating?

Ideas like this, while good to force change upon rgl as was intended (rgl literally ignored this entire problem until the announcement of GGL lol), should not be seen as the norm, and certainly should not be rgl sponsored. While I don't think rgl does everything right, it's the best thing na tf2 has, and if ideas like this are not only allowed to exist but seemingly encouraged, it could easily destroy rgl and comp tf2.

This is why Arcadia's decision to go over the entire staff's head was incredibly immature, as it circumvents the authority the AC team has in a problem like this. Arcadia effectively decided to shadowban Elijah from rgl, because he does not actually have the authority (despite being rgl owner) to ban him. While I personally think Elijah is cheating, I don't know for sure, and the AC team is the highest standard of proof we have to decide if someone is cheating or not. To ignore their judgment is a terrible look from rgl.

You are right about people complaining on the sidelines doing nothing isn't helping, but wasn't rgl literally saying recently tftv threads and stuff help to understand how players are feeling?

This pseudo league/cup/garbage thing exists because players were extremely frustrated that after the 3rd thread about Elijah this season, rgl has said nothing other than we won't be changing the cheating punishment.

If we can't talk about it without you getting upset, and can't try to solve the issue you refuse to acknowledge without you getting upset, what do you propose? Was I supposed to join the rgl admin team 6 months ago to prepare for this event? I would've never imagined things get escalated as far as they have been, this entire concept exists as an "if rgl does literally nothing we'll do this cuz who cares".

I understand rgl has a lot of passion to comp tf2. I think rgl has made a lot of improvement to comp tf2 from my time in the scene, and this doesn't exist to be a giant fuck you to rgl but rather as a way of voicing the degree of frustration the players are feeling from this szn. Getting mad cuz players are frustrated will accomplish nothing. The playoffs teams may not have people in the rgl staff, but having literally no communication over an issue that has existed for months, and then making a passive-aggressive shitpost because we're actually trying to solve the issue is worthless to solving anything.

if you don't like playing kovaaks or aim trainers and stuff as most people don't, a good way to get used to new sens, lower or higher, is just playing source movement modes like surf bhop or jump. surf especially feels like a very natural aim trainer to help you learn to smooth out your aim and get comfortable with pretty much any movement you would need to make in game.

There is no "something else" that's even relevant. He's provided what people would need to see to know if he's cheating or not. Playing on a lan team or reinstalling tf2 doesn't prove anything. Posting his demos, streaming pov etc. does, and with that, people have made their conclusions. No one is saying he hasn't provided enough or complaining that he's not doing what people ask of him or anything, so I'm not sure what you even want.

This thread started with someone watching that stuff and realizing it made no sense.

Why is the justification for no perma bans to be people might reform like habib or nyxi? This game is 15+ years old and the those are the 2 examples of cheaters not being complete degens like they are 99% of the time. Why are we letting cheating be as big a problem as this, when rgl even admits to not having the needed resources to prevent it all, all in the hopes of letting the next habib or nyxi come up? No shade to these players but if the discussion is going to be as black and white as it has been, then these players simply didn't deserve the second chance they got. The fact they actually changed and grew off of it is fantastic but is an anomaly. The cope of not perma banning cheaters being that in 15 years 2 people managed to not be complete losers is even an argument is just insane.