RGL has been, to be honest, stagnating in terms of player growth over the past couple of years. After the boost from covid, we have seen the “number of teams” for both HL and 6s consistently drop after each season. HL for instance, reached the lowest point for HL last season that has been seen in 4 years. For 6s, the past 3 seasons have seen player numbers akin to when RGL first launched 6s in 2019. I care a lot about this community and the growth behind it, even though there has been a lot of setbacks I feel like genuinely with enough effort we can grow this community into something bigger than what we have ever seen before. While I may be insane for thinking that, I at least want to try and bring some awareness to the issue. Case in point, the current mishandling of what could be the biggest boost in player/team numbers for RGL that the league has ever seen. For those who do not want to read a 1000-word essay, my point is this: RGL is mishandling the most recent cup that has the biggest potential to bring in new players, and as a community, we should push for RGL to correct these mistakes so they do not happen in the future. There is still time to at least salvage the cup, and I want my voice to be heard.
For those who are unaware, RGL is currently teaming up with YouTubers to try and promote competitive tf2. Those youtuber’s subscriber counts combined are equal to a little under 1 million people, which is very impressive. It seems that this is a huge opportunity to benefit us a lot as a community, right?
I have absolutely 0 clue on why we decided to use NR6s as the format to get new players into the scene. I understand the whole “valve comp” argument, but using a dead format within RGL that has been proven to be the least enjoyable out of any of the formats in terms of its staying power within RGL. Even during the second season of NR6s, invite did not exist due to teams just not wanting to play the format. I also want to mention that those who do happen to enjoy the NR6s cup, particularly casual players who are not interested in normal comp formats, including those who want to be able to run whatever they want for fun, for example running 2 heavies, will find themselves to be disappointed that the format is not being run in regular seasons. Also, the choice to run NR6s in the cup seems motivated to pander to the kinds of people up in arms in Reddit threads about comp and “unfair” weapon bans, not people who would actually be interested in joining our community anyway.
Second off, the planning for this cup seems very shoddy from an outside perspective to put it lightly. For example, you can’t even find the cup on the front page of RGL.
Maybe it’s just me but I don’t seem to see any cup there, just highlander and 6s.
What happened during the planning of this cup that actually accessing the cup was overlooked? I shouldn’t even have to explain why that’s bad. On top of that, there are now only less than 2 weeks left for new team registration, but there has been 0 social “plugs” or promotion from any of the YouTubers mentioned that I have seen as of posting this “essay”. For a cup that is supposed to be a direct tie in with these Youtubers to boost numbers and appeal to their communities, there is a lack of anything on their end to suggest so. Looking at the current numbers, there are only 33 teams that have been made, and of these 33 teams, approximately 5 of them are made up of players that could be considered new or inexperienced, and another 10 of these registered “teams” have 2 or less players (although it is still possible to fill before the cup, but that is 4-5 slots to be filled in 2 weeks), leaving the majority of teams to be already established by active players in the scene. To give an example of why that is bad, the NR6s first season (not during covid btw) was mainly promoted by b4nny + the funny Uncle Dane appearance on Froyo which amounted to 84 teams. The number of teams now is over 50 less teams than what happened back during the first season of NR6s, and while I do know that comparing a cup to a season is a little bit of a reach, in my opinion cups are easier to commit to than an entire season AND it’s 50 less teams for what is meant to be a “bigger and better” cup.
I have rambled on for a while so the final point I wanted to say was how we could possibly correct the mistakes that have happened with the cup to still try and have it work. In my opinion, if we can delay the cup we turn it into 2 cups, one for HL and one for 6s, having the YouTubers split and be a part of both cups, which would be running at the same time or back-to-back in terms of weekends. If we do not delay the cup, we need the content creators to actually tell people that the cup is happening, and for RGL to at least make the cup accessible through the main page, with more streamlined ways for newer players to participate in the cup.
Thank you for reading if you have gotten to this point, have a great day