part of the reason why i think the tournament section is a mess, and this goes into the fundamental reason why i think gtm has a problem, is because forums are archaic, obsolete, and a pain in the ass to use now. people need to realize that gtm now is more the discord than the forum and imo its been that way for the past 6 months or so. and i think this is a huge reason why people bail on tournaments is because whats the ****ing point of going on the forum now. another reason is because now theres no penalty for peaceing out of a tournament that youre running like you used to. i think a way to solve this would just be completely divorcing the discord from the forum and making gtm the discord and just let the forum die because the way i see it that's going to happen eventually. or i guess you could open a gtm subreddit just like every other dying forum has, but i wont go on it because i ****ing hate reddit and im an old man stuck in my ways but maybe others and new talented people will so i guess theres some hope there.
the challenge section is such a ****ing mess its honestly kind of captivating how you could take something that seemed to work the last time i was on gtm (before i came back around december of 2016) and turn it into such a cluster**** of spectacular proportions i think should be commended. When you now have a system set up where, from the way ive come to understand it, makes it to where no one can enter because of how ****ing retarded it is setup i think it causes it to be daunting for people who want to enter a challenge. idk if this is entirely dragonfires fault so i wont put too much blame on him, and honestly kudos to him for taking up that burden because you all know someoen like me is too lazy to but holy **** man its kind of amazing how you can take something that was going ok and then dropping a nuke on it calling that an improvement. how i would fix this is going back to the old system, where any two people can hold a challenge to terms they agree to, and finding a host who will film the match/matches accordingly. and then i guess have a leaderboard that iirc, sage used to have of all the matches and peoples overall record in challenges, which to me, seemd to go fine. i could be completely wrong on this and im sure someone will let me know since i dont have much expereience in challenges admittedly, outside of hosting a couple but the old system seemed to work perfectly fine from the cursory glance that i'd give it.
the image system to me is the same as the challenge board, taking something that was easy and made sense, and drop an atomic nuke on it and making it a complicated mess to where now i just use imgur for everything, so to me, fixing this would be just doing away with it entirely and just have people use imgur/whatever image/file host they prefer.
i think the 4th point is entirely valid, moving people to retired roles when they dont do sh** makes sense and just be done with that and moving in new people who you think will contribute and seeing that to your discretion as an admin.
in closing, i'd say that ra2, somehow, still has an audience and imo isnt dying and if you say that i think youre being shortsighted or just reactionary. when you look over at ahog/ahol or whatever its called now seems to be thriving from what people are saying, i havent personally looked at it but i'll believe what the people ive talked to have told me. honestly, idk how gtm could compete with them or what gtm can offer that ahol doesnt, and that reputation that gtm has of being toxic which i think is beyond retarded, is really hard to shake and it's left alot of people with a bad taste in their mouth although matt and other people's efforts to snuff out that reputation is commendable, that's something thats really hard to get over. so idk man, maybe im just a rambling old man and maybe what im saying doesnt mean anything but i've seen this happen with other forums that ive been apart of just dying as things like reddit, and discord have become more popular and are usurping that role that forums used to have. to me it really is adapt or die at this point. but ill leave again eventually going quietly into the night, it could be tomorrow it could be 3 motnhs from now idk but even though im pessimistic, it would be a nice surprise to see something radical done.