RGL HL 2023: Expanding the Prizepool
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Hey everybody,
Heading into 2023, the RGL Highlander Admin team has been workshopping some ideas proposed to expand and invigorate the Highlander scene. One of these, proposed for a long time, is to expand the prize pool, so that divisions lower than Invite pay into and play for a pool of prize money.
In the Season 9 post-season survey, this idea was polled with the following question: “Would you be interested in playing for a total prizepool of $14k-$17k, if your division becomes a paid division in future seasons?” 70% of respondents who answered the question, from IM to Invite, indicated that yes, they would be interested in playing for a prize pool if their division became paid in the future. As this was a while ago, we are looking to gain more current perspectives on your opinions regarding expanding the prize pool.
Running the numbers, if we were to match 6s’ player fees, our launching prize pool could be over $10,000, with potentially more coming from ringer fees and more than 9 players paying up per team. Even with relatively lower fees, with the Invite player fee being $25 compared to the team fee split 9 ways being $17 as of right now, we would be able to sustain a total prize pool of over $6,000.
Would you be interested in a system where you pay in to play Highlander for prize pool money? What fee structure do you think is ideal? Please let us know in this forum thread as it’s how we’d really like to have a direct conversation with those from all divisions affected. Please encourage others to comment as well so we may have the most diverse conversation possible!
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ill let adv-im speak on if they want to pay or not so i have no comments on that
i dont really wanna spend 25 dollars to play invite. especially when 5 of the 8 teams are not gonna see any return. either make the fee the usual 17 (ik im splitting hairs over 8 dollars but still) or make the prizepool more spread out so maybe the top 4 or maybe top 5 teams would receive SOME kind of compensation
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pickelz I love HL so much, and the main reason I play HL more then 6s is because it’s free. I can make a team, goof around and have fun, and it won’t effect me monetarily. I believe making it P2P will make it a lot more competitive like 6s is. I know this is competitive and as the name sake it should be. However HL has always been a lot more relaxed and chill compared to 6s and I know making it P2P will effect the overall atmosphere negatively. On the other hand I do like 6s, it’s fun but I can’t mess around because money is on the line.
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I’d gladly pay to play main but I think divisions outside invite generally skew younger so I’d be surprised if I wasn’t in the minority.
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pickelz in 6s their fees are laid out so that last place Invite should have a better RoI than 1st place Adv, to incentivize teams to play Invite rather than sandbag Adv for purely monetary reasons. While that would be difficult to do without other divs heavily subsidizing Invite under smaller fees, some of the possible structures we’ve been working on mean that Invite starters on teams that live the season make their payment in back - I think that’s totally doable, especially if the revenue into the prize pool from subs paying up, ringers, etc. is as high as it is in 6s.
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prizepools would be amazing, however, are we gonna have the same problem but worse where 6s players dont get their payouts for seasons on end? i think you need to fix that problem before you try and introduce it on a different scale with highlander. i dont mind paying for myself or teammates to play and i think it could possibly revitalize the competition in advanced because the current season skill is bone dry.
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i think overall its a good idea for like main+ cause at that point people are a little more committed to the game as compared to IM and below where most players are just starting and they’re are still in the youth of their tf2 competitive journey.
but then there are problems where players like me, want to sometimes play both highlander and sixes. advanced sixes fees this season were 40 dollars i think? if highlander went and matched the sixes fees id be paying 40 dollars to play adv sixes and then whatever the invite fees would be. id pay like 100 something dollars to play tf2 for 3 months.
i think its ok if highlander doesnt have any prizepools outside of invite.
prizepools for highlander could also sort of revive it at the higher levels of adv and invite where teams like hood would just play every season instead of taking breaks to farm the rgl check and make other teams want to keep up (or make other teams care less like in sixes and would rather just play advanced).
no way to know unless you try. me personally, i dont want to pay 100+ dollars to play tf2
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i played invite for four seasons and the only money i got was $15.20 in mannco.store mickey mouse dollars
but it’s okay cuz i’m gonna keep playing this game regardless bahahaha -
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minty i’m not the best person to answer this question since i didn’t handle it or have any involvement
but going off information posted in public before, the recent delay was a one-time thing for one reason:
new US Tax rules meant that if prize money were distributed to captains and then from them to the team, they would be obligated to report it to the IRS if it totalled >$600 in a year (>$200 per team in a season), meaning it’d be taxable to them as well as to the final recipient, and so players would lose out on prize money
and so a new system had to be worked out, i believe, where payments would be distributed straight to players
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ethanf — Today at 10:48 AM
Yeah I’ll pay
And have no problems cutting players who don’t want to**
For years I’ve been willing to pay for hl, any real activity would cost me way more in equipment or membership fee or smth
That said idk how you guys plan to take away the free service from those who don’t want to without enraging them like middleaged moms in the kroger
vorboyvo — Today at 10:49 AM
voice that in the forum thread! it helps us gauge how people think
ethanf — Today at 10:49 AM
I know I’m not smart enough to figure that one out lol
ShoreSHOUTOUT TO VIBEISVERYO FOR BEING THE ONLY PERSON IN MONTHS TO ENCOURAGE ME TO POST ON THE FORUMS. Now that I reread it though that fact may be rather telling about my post quality
I really don’t know how rgl plans to take away a free service from its players without kicking the hornet’s nest though, I know it would piss me off if I hadn’t already thought about it + have means to pay off the bat. I like tf2 a lot and since it’s an activity I can still get fun out of after years of milking it I don’t have a problem paying for the optional Highlander part of my favorite video game. If i chose to play literally any real life game/sport with the time instead it would probably cost me hundreds a year some way or other, I can’t think of any activity of personal value that wouldn’t. Like I can sit on my phone 830 930 sat-mon and that’s free but that shit sucks. I’d rather spend my resources on d&d figures or new cookware or something else I get some fun out of than stick to the free stuff
I would be interested to hear from someone that doesn’t agree and feels that the video game service should stay free even if the player is willing to invest a lot of time and energy into enjoying the service
I don’t understand the perspective behind locking it to adv+ because I feel like that just implies that the divisions below aren’t worth investing into, I get maybe if you’re a beginner and nc/am are free that’s a nice selling point but if you’re like me and care too much despite being terrible then I still don’t see a reason that you would be offput by the cost
**Rereading this I realize that it sounds cold and oppositional to my own ass teammates which is not a good tf2 mindset, it is far more likely that I would just pay up for those that were unable + that I liked enough to keep around despite it. Then cut ppl that I don’t like as much + are too entitled to pay for themselves
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i would pay more for hl for literally any other reason than to support a prizepool.
but there does seem to be some indication that a paid structure could be good for growth, which i wouldnt oppose.
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I personally would like to see the money instead of going into a prize pool, maybe go into paying for a website that would be dedicated to sixes and highlander pugs at all skill levels with skill divides. I don’t personally mind the idea of an extra 8 dollar fee if a percentage of that was possibly going towards maintaining a website or pug system from im - invite.
Discord pug groups are created a lot of times by the players and I feel like every week I see a new highlander pug group die and pop up with the exception of sixes now with Pughub.
I’m just going to state the obvious … there isn’t a consistent group to play serious competitive highlander
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pickelz said in RGL HL 2023: Expanding the Prizepool:
i dont really wanna spend 25 dollars to play invite. especially when 5 of the 8 teams are not gonna see any return.
This is actually a real concern for 36 people every season, that they’re gonna just lose 25 bucks because the team with 7+ seasonal winners on it is just gonna take it. Nothin wrong with that but it seems demotivating
What if seeds 5-8 in invite specifically got $225 from the prizepool after the season to subsidize the teams that play and lose? We have to have losers, no one wants to lose their money, and it seems prudent to offer invite teams specifically a “reward” for sticking together til the season end. That division should be the most stable of them all I feel
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ethanf Yep, and there is a payment structure we can work with where every invite team that lives through to the end has its starters make their money back. It would mean other divs slightly subsidize Invite, but definitely not totally.
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i don’t want to particularly pay more for hl in the service of a bigger prizepool, but i could live with it. however, making subs and ringers pay up whenever they need to be used is something i am strongly against. somebody help had to use ringers/subs 5 times last season and i feel like requiring a fee to allow them to play would really limit the amount of people that are available to play or just make someone on the team pay for them, and both of those don’t really sound that great
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I think paying for subs and ringers is a very bad idea. In hl, I’m pretty certain that most are unlikely to pay for themselves, and I as a leader am not willing to pay for them either. Additionally, ringers and subs are frequently needed in HL probably more than 6s.
I also think expanding the prize pool or increasing the invite player fee is unnecessary but I’m mostly indifferent.
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If it expands the player base and is used to advertise RGL in some way then yeah, id pay an extra few dollars to make my favorite dead game slightly less dead.
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Make ringer fees $4 in invite and you’ll make so much money
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AY YO uhh I’m going to just post my thoughts here, not really looking at the rest of the conversation in the thread just throwing my opinion into the sea of opinions here because I care about this a lot. PLEASE, I WANT PRIZEPOOLS GOD DAMNIT. I think that especially if we want to make hl look more like a serious gamemode and encourage newer players to join the scene, then the random like 45 bucks each that the winning invite team gets isn’t anything at all. The contrast of 6s to HL when it comes to the general atmosphere of “everyone wants to win” is staggering. I want the teams that try as hard as they can to win in a season to be rewarded more than getting a 1st place medal next year. It definitely helps that with more people on a team hl fees probably can be lower than 6s for there to be at least some comparison in the total prize pool figure that everyone pays attention too. I think it’ll be extremely beneficial for the long term viability for this game. Idk man it’ll be cool and epic!!! Yes!!