You don't attract new members by raising the cost of entry. You do it by having a strong community that they want to be a part of. When I first got active on hwbot it was because of rog comp last year and I happened to have a platform that I could contribute for the r/oc team, which comes from an active community that I was a part of. I tried to do some solo competitions after that comp ended last year and what I found is that solo benching sucks. The only competitions that I have any fun in are the team competitions because of the community and working with my team to find the best hw and how to best take on a given bench. Most importantly I enjoy actually being able to contribute to a team, if the cost of entry was $5k in hw upfront I never would've gotten into this hobby. Ever. If the cost was $150 in hw that's actually fun to oc I wouldn't mind if it was worth "scrap" when I'm done because x299 would also be worth "scrap" when I'm done with it. "Renting" hw to bench is no fun and shouldn't be the requirement to be competive in a competition.
Making a single stage all out (DDR4 Stage 7) is fine because you can still be competive while absolutely losing that stage, but you shouldn't make it multiple stages that are lost. If someone like jpmboy only has fun benching new stuff that's fine, that's why there's a bunch of varying stages and it's a team comp. You work with your team to fill the stages you don't feel like benching or don't have the hw for so that you can fill all stages. Of course you can't have all the stages you want (I'd have loved have seen 1155 show up at all in this competition) but perhaps you'll see that the competition is about benching about 2-3 stages and relying on a team for the rest. If you complain about this being a disadvantage for "weaker" teams then maybe you don't understand the point of a team comp. Why do you think team au wins country cup every year when if you do the numbers of golden hw USA should never lose, ever? It's because they're a fucking team and they bench as one. Teams that don't bench as a team won't win team competitions.