yeah I'm feeling the same about this, its beginning to feel like UGC 2.0. I haven't played in a hot second bc every time I play its a clusterfuck between players and administration

-former rgl admin who had no fucking clue what i was doing at the time of my reign

I agree with all these points and have experienced them. Further, I think the speed of RGL posting their casted 6s and HL matches to YouTube is abysmal. It should not take 5 months to move a hour long video from Twitch to YouTube.

I agree 100%. I've had disagreements with how bans have been doled out to people and myself personally because how they've been handled, even when it goes against what admins have said previous. Confronting the moderation team about questionable ban decisions means you get met with "Well, we've already made the decision and we're not budging. Have an RGL-riffic day!" and I think that's a slap in the face to those people who want to support competitive TF2, but get met with a subpar moderation team with personal agendas rather than the best interests of all players at heart.

I've been playing since around the same time as Katryna ugc season 17-18 highlander, the idea of having league fees for highlander is a joke. Even esea got rid of their fees for the open division, you just had to ask someone for their esea insider code they weren't using and the season was free.

These are like 14-15 year olds with no money who just want to play a video game, if you lower the stakes (money) you lower the incentive to care as much about winning each individual match. These teams in RGL will just die if they lose 1 or 2 matches, or if they know they won't make playoffs, people aren't playing to just play tf2 anymore. It's just toxic clout chasers putting each-other down because they don't know how to do anything else.

And don't even get me started on RGL lan, these guys host their "grass roots" lan event in the middle of a city at a premium venue, then on top of that charging people $35 at the door, and $80 to play in the open tournament, let alone the actual tournament that people are there to see. Nobody is asking for this, nobody wants this.

In my opinion the decline of HL is just stagnation in the last 10 seasons. RGL used to be hosting HL & PL map cups multiple times a year, now it's rare to see a 6s cup once a year. They haven't put anywhere close to the same amount of effort getting new players like they did from 2018-2021. There are just less players now, and it has been hurting the league with bigger skill gaps with less teams in each div.

The killing blow to HL has been the removal of IM this season, and whatever adv-1 / adv-2 was last season. AM teams are now moved up to main, which has been argued is the same skill level as the old main (with IM). You can't remove a step in the ladder and expect people to not fall off.

At the same time HL admins are making last minute changes/decisions that are impacting the whole league negatively. There isn't an easy solution for the skill gap & sandbagging in Advanced / Invite, but delaying the season a week to force teams up without doing any qualifiers, then cancelling Highlander Experimental Cup #7 is very disappointing to your lower div players as well. Highlander cups used to be yearly, now they are bi-yearly, so are we not getting one until 2028? All because of what? You moved up some teams last minute, which seems like it could of been easily avoided by communicating with those teams earlier.

It's on RGL to remedy the situation, if they have a few repeat seasons of this one, be ready to see another div removed to cater to 8 team round robins.

I have a lot of problems with how the RGL staff functions in general, and also on a division basis. That being said, I just cannot understand the rationale behind being upset about being last-minute moved up based on your team's experience or the higher div needing another team. Highlander teams usually scrim 5 times a week, the only thing changing for you is that 1 hour of that 5 hours of practice is probably going to be a loss. Someone has to lose the match, and there's always gonna be a team at the bottom of the leaderboard. Sure you have that season, but its barely taking up any of your time, and you can choose who you scrim. And if you care that much about winning, if you work hard, any moveup can get better and take a couple hard-earned wins in a higher div, or get asked to play on a better team if you out-improve your team. Only the ones that truly give up will go 0-7 every time. Like, it is a competitive league and if you just wanted to stay in a division lower than where the admins decided you belong, then you should expect to not be allowed to do so.

my main and only gripe with the current state of RGL HL (really because it is the only one that directly affects me) is the lack of/doing away with the intermediate division.

currently the next step up from amateur is main. last season the main div was treated like an intermediate div with adv-2 taking the place of a true main. this season however, adv-2 was removed and main is being treated as a true main div once again. if the div structure continues to reflect this going forward, i can see only problems and an unwillingness for lower div teams to want to continue to play and move up in divisions.

the gap in skill between amateur to main is too big. the gap in skill between intermediate and main is apparent as well. my own team is playing main this season after taking a break from playing together. last we played, we placed 6th in intermediate, and only because teams had died. coming back, we are now playing against teams with invite and advanced off-classers, and actual main players. there is even a team that had won main last season, were moved into advanced, and then were allowed to drop back down with 0 restrictions (when we asked about this in a ticket, we were told that because main last season was IM and main this season is closer to a true main, there was no issues with this).

this div structure makes it very frustrating for teams who aren't at the skill level to compete in main but can't play in amateur. like my team for example. our poor placement in IM back when it was a div shows we are not ready to compete against main teams, yet we can't play amateur due to placing in it. if we wish to continue to play together, main is our only option. if it is frustrating for us, i can't imagine trying to move up directly from amateur into this division, and i can imagine that this deters new or returning teams from wanting to play who might also have our same issue of not being able to play AM but also not being ready for main.

the main point i'm trying to get across is that intermediate, or a division with equivalent skill, is very much necessary in the league. the current poor skill division just makes it feel like in order to be able to succeed you must either get sandbaggers on your roster to be able to give your team enough edge to compete or sandbag yourself so that you can at least have fun.

I kind of wonder if the only way to really bring people back is to make big changes and make the format feel fresh. Unfortunately all you can really do is try new maps or do some crazy rule change. I will say if you change the rules and just ban sniper I will be back. For me the reason I don't play HL is its just less fun.

@grok can you make tdlr about this thread

genius #357 that thinks the issue with RGL is simply that no one's written a detailed enough callout post and after someone oh-so-helpfully identifies all the problems the admins will facepalm saying "why didn't I think of that?!" and then it's all sunshine and rainbows

I don't mean to defend admin decisions necessarily, but everything detailed in the OP and this thread and often from geniuses #1-356 in the discord are all symptoms of bigger problems that won't go away unless you address the underlying root causes. those problems are:

1) nearly 20/yo game without active developer support means you're severely handicapped in just about every possible metric esp when it comes to player attraction and retention
2) volunteer staff means people in positions of power aren't the best qualified but instead the only ones willing to show up AND not abuse the position, and that's ignoring the fact that by working out of the tf2 playerbase you're self-selecting a demographic that's probably worse at organizational management than the average

the comp tf2 scene as a whole is a sinking ship in the first place, and when your only options are triage it means there's always a negative somewhere along the line. people either don't realize that or ignore it, saying "admins did X and we lost Y" not realizing that a different choice would've meant you were losing Z instead. again, not to say I think rgl's always made the best decisions, but the amount of rancor and malice directed at a volunteer staff doing the best they can out of passion is insane. I don't think OP is particularly mean-spirited but for someone in the medical field I'd expect better than mistaking the symptoms for the problem.

I have a lot of friends on the staff but I legitimately believe that if RGL staff roles were paid like part-time jobs at ~$10/hr almost everyone on it would find themselves replaced by people more competent within a year and the league would be a lot more stable as a result. but that's just a hypothetical, that money would need to come from somewhere and unless someone in this thread is willing to put that up then you're stuck with the current staff's best efforts, which I think have been good enough to keep this league afloat even if its not as great as it could be.

tl;dr - 90+% of the issues that people highlight with RGL, while valid, are issues of either manpower, technical skill, or expertise/judgment. Fact of the matter is that all of those are personnel issues resulting from who's on staff rather than what the staff is doing, but you also can't just fire people when there aren't suitable replacements available (and the community being so ungrateful to its volunteer staff isn't helping the recruitment drive). Any conversation of this nature that doesn't propose solutions to the underlying issue of a well-meaning but likely overworked, underqualified, and underappreciated staff is only going to widen the divide rather than do anything to bridge it.

not going to say that rgl should be trying to recruit new players given that they are operating under a volunteer basis. i'm not saying either that they are doing a good or a bad job with current decisions as i'm not well informed enough to make a judgement on that.

though it is very polarizing to see, what i could say, lack of initiative from the highlander community to create their own endeavors or initiatives for trying to lower the barrier of entry into highlander--it seems you guys instead expect rgl to try to do everything on a volunteer basis which is logistically infeasible as it seems they already have enough on their hands trying to run a league with a dying playerbase

not tooting my horn as most of my knowledge is within 6s but considering there is a place called "tf2 coaching central" that has managed to churn out a steady flow of new competitive players into rgl 6s over the course of a few years, it begs the question of how much are people willing to help rgl out given there is a literal ongoing example of a community initiative outside of rgl that has proven successful. of course highlander is a logistical nightmare given it's a 9v9 format, but you can't give and take if all you're really doing is taking.

that being said i tried doing hl production on fireside but there's a lack of volunteers versus 6s when it comes to casting and all that so i've seen only part of the struggle with trying to gather community volunteers from hl lol

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.

Oh I do agree on this though, rgl definitely suffers from a too many chefs in the kitchen sort of problem. Or it's people having too much power in places they shouldn't have given their league title/position

its okay to lose to kot theyre a very high level team

TL;DR: HL things. Staff responses to bad start to season, RC case that took too long, and reasons that rulings can be inconsistent.

Hello. I'd like to address a few things from the discussion you posted both here and in our discord. I'll be breaking down a lot of this, it'll likely be a few posts. I'll also be addressing a few key points I read throughout the conversation from the discord, or reaffirming points made by other RGL Staff. Sorry in advanced if the formatting isn't the best, I typically do not post here.

The post was followed by individuals reaffirming their concerns on these points who have been vocal in the past about their concerns with RGL's direction.

Point 1 was about the team count decline, and how the HL staff's promotion of sandbagging and last-minute team placement is the main contributing factor.

When we last had a discussion about this, I noted that this season and last season have been particularly rough for player numbers. I also spoke about how our staff turnover has exacerbated this issue, with both Pibble (Adv staff + Discord Staff) and DusterDan (Main + AM Staff) having to pull double duty just to get things done. I think they've both done an incredible job given their circumstances, and should anyone like to join and help, you are welcome to apply here.

While I understand the frustration of losing IM, if we had continued with having Intermediate and having the same team count we have now, the middle 3 divisions (AM - Main) would have so few teams per division that running a playoffs bracket with competitive integrity would get difficult. The absolute minimum we try to run with is 6 teams per division, with 8 teams being the preferred smallest division. This is to account for a competitive playoffs and 1 or 2 teams dying.

Alongside this, there were many that mentioned not liking having to pay to play above AM at this point. While this is standard in 6s land, HL is used to only paying at the very top. There's a lot of internal discussion about that now, and there will be even more in the future especially once survey results come in around playoffs time. I can't promise anything here, I don't have the bank account information, but we'll work with what we have and see if we can bring back a higher skill free option for players.

As for "promoting sandbagging", I 100% disagree. Every pre-season without fail there are a minimum of 10 tickets opened asking about player restrictions, discussions on current restrictions, and questioning restriction decisions from the past to see if they still hold up. We actively encourage players to open a format ticket and write to us about your team's restrictions because it helps us make the division more competitive.

Point 2 was about moderation problems, mostly related to the recent case involving Thicc's ban taking much too long to be processed.

This was also discussed publicly, and agreed that this case took too long. I cannot share details about the report, but know we spent roughly 3 months on this case alone, which is entirely unacceptable. This case had the misfortune of being very public making it much more difficult for the Report Committee (RC), on top of multiple RC members leaving staff entirely, 2 large national holidays, and a season wrap up to boot. These issues do not in any way excuse the amount of time spent on this case. They are the circumstances we were dealt, and are circumstances we need to be prepared to deal with to ensure every RGL RC case can be dealt with quickly and discreetly. We're actively working on the quickly part, with new RC members being brought on soon, but we need the community to work with us a little on the discreetly part.

We want those who make a report to feel like they don't have to worry about an entire community reading their diary, and as soon as a report hits RC, we do not discuss that information with anyone. There have been incidents in the past, and those users involved with that user have been removed from staff and barred from returning for over 2 years now.

Point 3 is about inconsistent decision making.

RGL runs off a revolving door of volunteers. If I had to wager a guess, most staff members across both formats stick around for maybe 2-3 seasons on average, with new staff being brought in nearly constantly (hah) season to season. This means that we need to be constantly teaching people the way to deal with situations, especially across divisions and formats. This point will likely turn into an action item for me, and I can certainly put something together to help onboard staff, but the effects of that won't be seen for a while.

1/?

TL;DR: Arcadia's the one with the checkbook, no one else. Options for live feedback from players. How do we prevent teams from blowing up? Why keep monetizing HL?

There were some extra questions posed and brought up as well. A large quantity of them involving costs/money which I can answer upfront with:

I don't know RGLs financials at all. The staff does not touch money outside of occasionally asking for a PayPal email. All of the money goes thru Arcadia, not anyone else. edit: Also, RGL is not a non-profit. RGL is not a registered 501c organization, nor have we ever been. There was a joke for a while that RGL was so broke that we were a non-profit, but we never were registered as one.

As for other questions:

This is a great suggestion, and something we may be able to work towards in the future. The main stopping point here is availability between our camera operator/twitch channel operator/sea life specialist and our admin staff. I'm sure we could find some time in there to discuss those results live with players, and I agree that a "Socratic seminar" style discussion would generate some better outcomes for the league as a whole. I'll see what I can do with DolphiN and the other HA's about this.

Things were going pretty well until the last week of preseason, at least from my personal point of view. Xenagos (Invite Staff) is very involved in player contact, and was able to catch wind of this pretty fast thankfully. That didn't stop other issues from coming in and blowing everything up anyways, though. This caused us to rush out answers and pull resources together to get everything ready, which coincided with staff being out (I was out of town for the weekend, giant snowstorm caused issues as well).

There's a lot we could do here, and we're weighing the options out. If we lengthen the time between roster creation cutoff and season start, teams get antsy and die. If we hand out punishments/discouragements from team deaths, that just makes it riskier for the players and means less teams in general. We'd love to hear other options that the community has on this, as there's more out there that myself and the other staff may not be aware of.

This is a common opinion quoted at RGL, but I disagree with it somewhat. I agree that having free divisions brings in more players, but removing all monetization from HL isn't really a great option and I would argue worse than having paid divisions. The highest levels of play need that monetary incentive to keep things remotely competitive, and if you think they don't, go re-watch HL S4 S5 grands. (Thank you spring rolls for the correction)

There were a lot more quotes, but these points stuck out the hardest amongst the ones I was able to answer.

2/?

this comment angered me, so wanted to say something

RGL hosting both philly lans is by far their greatest contribution to competitive tf2, please do not say braindead statements like "nobody is asking for this" and "nobody wants this". the second wind these offline events gave to 6s is incredible, and as far as it goes for 6s, i will gladly pay any league fee or lan fee to make these events happen

shoutout RGL for the lans, fireside for PFD, supra for poland, and any other lans and TOs ive omitted. having offline events for Team Fortress 2 despite the decrepit state of this community and game genuinely means the world to me, and im sure they mean the world to everyone else who attends or watches from home. salute <3

Just want to point out that Jercer has been the HL head admin since September of 2023. Exa has been the RGL head admin for much longer. I'm sure turnover of HL staff has an effect on decision making, but is there really no clear vision from the people in leadership roles who have been in positions of power for years?

seconding loafe. you can suck my RealWeiner for that take. people have been asking for RGL lan ever since ESEA died, it would appear the "nobody" you're referring to in your message is yourself and 3 of your friends

I was venting about the accessibility of their events, it just feels a bit odd to host an open tournament that has an $80 buy in that isn't the main event. I've never actually been to an RGL LAN and I hope to in the future, and it's awesome that they're going out of their way to do this for the community. Sorry if I came off that way grape/loafe, not my intention at all to insinuate that they should stop hosting these events that have done so much good for the community.

let's be clear on the charging + prices to host a lan event

while pc cafe culture is prominent across the world, in the USA it is not because, well, why go to a pc cafe when you can just play from your gaming pc at home

it is a losing venture on top of being a financial and logistical nightmare to try to host an event. from an organizer's perspective, you will be guaranteeing yourself in the red by paying extra to rent PCs on top of already paying the rental venue fee. so you want to have a venue that already has the amount of pcs you need to host an event. well... not many venues will have the amount of pcs to host a 16 team 6s event or a 8 team highlander event. That's 72 pcs minimum for players. But what about production? they need PCs too!

okay, that's out of the way... now you want your players to be able to go to an event. Well being in the USA doesn't help in that regard either. So why Philly? It's very easy to get from the airport to the venue. Literally just take the bus or train (SEPTA). so RGL is actually doing a favor to players attending the event by not needing to worry about getting a rental car. yes, the airbnbs are expensive. but the venue is within walking distance and you also have many catering/food options within walking distance too

i actually made a thread a while back looking for lan venues with the following criteria:

- has enough pcs for 16 teams of 6 + organizer/production pcs. meaning, no need to spend extra to rent pcs
- near an international/major airport hub
- within north america

of that i only found 3. now as of that post there is a 4th one in texas but i haven't really explored further to see whether it's rentable to the public. but it's a cool venue to host a potential texas lan at. and there's now a 5th which is the hyperx arena in las vegas, but talks with the people there have kinda stallwarted so it's not really worth a mention

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8YoC473z9E

re: why an open event and not the main event

players don't want to get smashed by the invite teams + lower online viewing quality. better to pay $80 to play against a concentrated group similar to ur skill level than be rolled in 10 mins

imo rgl's pricing structure for lan fees seems generous but idk how much they gain from their league fees due to lack of transparency (which was promised a few months back...)

re: why charge so many fees?

rgl actually does a good job at sustaining themselves to be able to host lan with fees. slight insider info but fragadelphia 19, which despite sponsorships and a hefty $35k prize pool, still ended in the red. that's even despite charging team fees, having staff work on a volunteer basis, and allat. so if a valve/vrs event featuring tier 2-3 talent from across the world in cs2 couldn't turn a profit despite its prestige, think about how hard it is to host a lan in a game with no sponsors at all. pretty rough aye
___

sorry for derailing the thread just being clear on how costly lan is as an endeavor and why philly makes it easy to host rgl lan

something something jercer admin ٠●•۩۞۩[̲̅È̲̅p̲̅i̲̅c̲̲̅̅۰̲̅F̲̲̅̅a̲̅i̲̅l̲̲̲̅̅̅]۩۞۩•●٠.

Just chiming in here as someone who doesn't know much about the previous pricing of NA TF2 LANs nor its venues, but please be aware that a venue having their own PCs and monitors available and only having to spend $80 ($100 for the upcoming LAN I believe) to be able to just turn up and play is a very good deal. There have been many EU LANs where ~$80 would be the ticket entry cost and then you either travel and bring your own PC and monitor, or drop 200€ for PC and monitor rentals on top of it. And teams still turned up.
Don't take these venues for granted and make use of them while they are available; looking at RAM prices etc. rising I think it's only a matter of time until they prove to be unprofitable and close down their business, and the community has to go back to BYOC + rentals or small-scale LANs.

I think RGL should start utilizing their own Discord and TFTV more if that's the case. While a stream is better professionally, it's not necessary for the size of our community for mass engagement. Answer questions publicly and then they spread.

During the Newbie Cup, we would host seminars and classes using Discord's stage channel type. It let's you have speakers, share screens, people can raise hands and be brought up to the digital stage to ask questions or speak their mind. There is a chat attached to the channel as well that you can control. Hardly any production required, at worst someone just recording a VOD should be more than enough.

You can either in place of or additionally use TFTV threads. RGL admins only post to advertise but it can easily be used for feedback fishing expeditions. In-fact I find threads to be a significantly better reading experience for more in-depth discussions rather than the brainrot found in league discussions.

Your low number of volunteers comes from lack of faith in leadership. Nobody wants to volunteer under the current head of HL, sorry to be so blunt, but myself along many others refuse to work under Jercer. Not only that but RGL in the past has black listed players from admin team for personal reasons, that has been confirmed by ex-admins (and current ones).

There is a serious leadership issue at RGL, and it feels like there is no accountability from the higher ups about it. So much love and respect to the ones doing what they can, but having yogrtt be the face of other peoples mistakes is sad to see, and isn't giving us the answers the community wants.

Example of RGL failings coming down to the people at the highest level: I wanted to pay for all of main HL fees (which i paid and haven't see anything come of yet btw). It took them almost a month to get back to me, and then they wanted me to do over 100 3$ payments. Thankfully it didnt come to this, but if taking a donation is this much effort, then something is really wrong with the leadership.