UGC HL S19 - Any changes you want to see?

Aight I'll be a bit blunt coz I don't play this game much nowadays, but I don't really like making these kind of gloomy posts. Nothing I said I was wrong and is in fact actually the ideal (and, having been there when it happened, is the entire reason Gold as a division exists), and it's not like having a few invite players in Gold magically single handedly killed the division when that's been the case every single season of Gold (seriously, there isn't a season of Gold where zero Invite players played in it). When Highlander was at its peak, this system did turn out a bunch of great Highlander teams that actually took it serious and didn't sit there complaining about their competition like Dunning-Kruger Effect who, because of their mentality and desire to improve, climbed divisions fast, going Steel -> Silver -> Gold -> Plat in exactly 4 seasons. Gold as an IDEAL THING is perfectly correct, after all it really is supposed to be the "IM" of Highlander and you have Invite caliber players in IM all the same, and this kind of thing happens in every division based system. What I'm about to discuss is a separate point that if it was relevant I would have mentioned here instead of elsewhere.

The reason Gold is dead is because of this. Keep in mind I did the most recent season mid season and all values for it in those graphs are actually lower than in those graphs by the end of it. There's literally less teams that make it into 6 weeks now than there was in Season 7, which is almost 100 teams less than there was when Gold was even implemented. That's bare minimum 900 players, and more realistically (since most teams don't just roster 9 players) it's about ~1500 players that just don't exist or don't even finish to the end of the season which massively hurts the skill of the divisions. The player base just doesn't exist right now (and to be completely honest with you looking at the graphs, hasn't for 3 seasons) to support any of this. NAHL is dying and has been for awhile now, in all honestly if competitive MM doesn't boost NAHL (which I can't imagine it will since it's a completely different format, unless if the competitive Highlander community takes initiative but they probably won't for a variety of reasons I'm not going to write a novel on here), in a few seasons at current player loss trends (again if nothing changes because of Valve) UGC is going to have to go back to UGC was in Season 6 practically - remove Iron and merge it into Steel, remove Silver and merge that into Steel/Platinum, and then they'll have to either remove the Platinum round robin and make Silver/Gold/Plutonium/etc playoff divisions of Platinum again or keep it and make them Playoff Divisions of Steel.

I even kind of hinted as much in that thread's comment section, so I'm not really surprised by the loss of Gold - I am just surprised that they chose Gold and not Iron to be honest since it wouldn't hurt the skill climb as much since this is going to harm Platinum in the long term if they don't treat Silver like the new Gold (which they most likely won't), and Plat has already been struggling for a variety of reasons so this does not bode well for Highlander as a format in the long term if Valve does not support it. I think people should probably be taking this as an impetus to try and grab more people who have been enjoying competitive matchmaking or looking forward to it and get them into Highlander as much as they can, but I don't have much faith in that after being around for so long in the community, tbh.

/r/truetf2 Thread Parent