Walrexedit: sorry i had to collect my thoughts but let me justify the middleman thing. the AC ticket system is one of those ideas that seems great on paper but just doesn't mesh with the psychology of players. someone cheats against me in a game? i grab their demo and watch it with some friends. we laugh about it, say "i cant believe this guy!", and move on. by the time the watch party is over, the bad blood has been dealt with. i no longer care enough to open up the rgl ticket system and fill out a form, especially because i have no confidence anything will come of up given prior experiences. does it make me a bad person? maybe. but i know im not alone in this behaviour.
my point is that cheater demos get thrown around in steam DMs like trading cards, even if a lot of them never make it to the ticket system. so just have someone who has their steam DMs open that people know and can trust. that person can then pass those demos onto the AC team, and could even keep track of tips. i know it sounds completely redundant, but i think you would be surprised how much information such a person could pick up between playing pugs, scrims, and matches. and i have become increasingly convinced that nobody on AC has touched 6s maybe ever in their lives.
I don't have much to really add to the larger debate aside from the fact that AC usually is a lot more complicated than people on TFTV make it out to be, and that the same people complaining will never put their names forward to actually being an AC admin and making the 'clearly obvious' changes that can be made to the process of AC.
I'm mainly wanting to point out that this suggestion is incredibly dumb. Like, what is the point of having someones Steam DMs 'open' for people to send evidence to and to act as a middleman? The logistics of that don't even make sense, is someone supposed to friend every team leader for every division each season on the off chance that they send 'evidence' that could just be sent in a ticket? Who organises and gets people to send steam IDs, or are they supposed to just accept any friend request? Or to create a steam group and do stuff there which at that point is just another forum and adds complexity.
Its really not hard. If you have evidence or suspicions that someone is cheating, make a ticket. If you "no longer care enough to open up the rgl ticket system", TF do you expect the Admins to do? There are legitimate criticisms you can weigh against the AC team and this response, but presenting a solution when you can't even be bothered to do the bare minimum is ridiculous.