Nightbox

Points: 1,482, Level: 22

Activity: 99.0%

Team Fortress 2 Matchmaking is a brand new project for competitive players.

Features ?

Steam OpenID signup. (steam id verification safer and easier)
Ranks (based on divisions and other factors)
Ratings
Auto mumble joining.
Dedicated servers sponsored.
Friends-only lobbies.
Mix games.
PCW searching.


Is this not just a TF2Lobby clone?
No, the only similarity of TF2MM and TF2LB is that both have lobby matchmaking (which is as old as the earth).

Can i help ?
Yes, our main coder quit so we need coders. Contact me on steam or irc.


When is this gonna be done ?
As soon as we finish it :)
We are gonna do an alpha stage (closed) and one beta (one stage closed and the final open).

PIC: http://i49.tinypic.com/o6a5p5.png

Staff:
Nightbox
Hawkeye

Old staff:
punct - designer
dotfloat - coder
Cake - designer
Hobbybash0r - designer and coder

PS: This topic existed on ETF2L For some time, project was put on hold because we had no coder. Now me and and Hawkeye will resurrect it.

ymmud

Points: 1,791, Level: 25

Activity: 25.0%

people discussed this on ETF2L, between friends and groups a lot, and really, i don't mean to sound negative but it IS just a tf2lobby clone made easier.
the differences:
PCW MAKING
Clans prefer IRC for the sole reason that it was first - unless some big initiative to help explain how the transfer is worth the trouble for them is taken, few will use this system over irc

auto-mumble joining
while a good concept, if its a random game theres a big chance someone will not have mumble installed/can't connect due to the many issues Mumble presents, and if it is a friends-only mumble people are usually on the mumble beforehand/prefer their own mumble.

Mix games
Only issue i don't really understand. if it is randomly mixing 12 people, well, if their classes aren't specified beforehand you know what will happen , and if they're, then it'll be tf2lobby except with a longer wait for medics since they dont know who they'll end up with.

also, ending on a personal note - while i never worked with Night personally, i know a person who did and deems Night slightly immature.
sorry for being so critical.
edit: also, the screen looks like tf2lobby with a background slapped on.

Nightbox

Points: 1,482, Level: 22

Activity: 99.0%

edit: also, the screen looks like tf2lobby with a background slapped on.

That's because it's a concept

Answer the following question:

You want to play a quality game, on tf2 lobby you can do 2 thigns:
1. public game -> a lot of noobs will join
2. password -> than whats the purpose if you need to give password to anybody to have players ?

Everyone said it's a good things except trolls, are you one of them ?

MileHighMilitia

Points: 1,544, Level: 23

Activity: 0%

Its a good thing. too bad it didnt come before tf2 lobby :( ... Please continue to work on this, because even if in the end this system is not used over tf2lobby, maybe it will help things like this be implemented into it.

ymmud

Points: 1,791, Level: 25

Activity: 25.0%

quality game - if i want THAT, i will either mix with friends, play a pixel pickup, or play a pcw with my team.
also, please answer my own points about your system - don't post a smart ass question after I explained it in my post without even answering my points.
oh, and how everybody who disagrees with you is a troll? how mature. I cannot judge you over a forum post, though, but please answer my points instead of annoyingly asking me what i've already explained.

Hawkeye

Points: 5,566, Level: 51

Activity: 8.3%

There are a TON of initiatives like this out, I am patiently playing a wait and see game to see where everyone is going, but from a technical standpoint..

Mumble Join, the plugins we use to use to join Ventrilo/TS/Mumble all broke at the Mac Update when Steam switched of IE and to WebKit. Since the internal steam browser to date doesn't know how to handle mumble:// or ts:// or ventrilo:// all these in-game plugins broke at one.

Radio still works since it is using http:// based protocols, so your good in those cases.

tf_teamtalk 1 is likely all anyone would ever realistically require.

ymmud

Points: 1,791, Level: 25

Activity: 25.0%

The last line perfectly conveys some of the stuff I mean, hawkeye - if people want to play games that *require* mumble, et cetera they'll go to (in EU) pixel pugs or in NA i dont know, tf2pugna or something. thats because of the casual(er) form of this compared to the pugs, but also because of some of the points i've made (people will not have mumble, especially tf2lobby players coming from there to here thinkings its similar but higher skill level)

Nightbox

Points: 1,482, Level: 22

Activity: 99.0%

pixel pug is not public, and remember this started before pixel

Hawkeye

Points: 5,566, Level: 51

Activity: 8.3%

Actually Cinq's IRC bot he uses for tf2.pug.na is open and available, I am surprised no one over in EU hasn't talked with Cinq and created a tf2.pug.eu on Quakenet.. (Hint Hint)

Nightbox

Points: 1,482, Level: 22

Activity: 99.0%

Maybe because IRC is too old and has some limitations ?

jiggawhat

Points: 1,641, Level: 24

Activity: 18.2%

That's probably the best point I heard in this thread. Lobby is intended for new players, the people who don't have much technical knowledge and need an easy way to get into the game. But for the experience players channels like #tf2.pug.na exist so you don't have to play with noobs.

So I'm not sure if this TF2MM effort is addressing a real need

ymmud

Points: 1,791, Level: 25

Activity: 25.0%

Hawkeye - pixel pugs is for us what tf2.pug.na is for you, same concept and almost same way of working (you guys have captains, we have random teams for example)
@night box, pixel pugs were created before this though. If you could provide some more screenshots it would get more feedback and perhaps encourage coders to work with you.
For myself, i agree with jiggawhat - basics of economy (amidoingitright?), if you create a product, first see if there's a gap in the market to fill in. right now, again imo, there is not much need for an intermediate of "real" competitive tf2 and "beginner" competitive tf2 (or if there's, thats kind of pixel pugs.)
IRC is indeed old and has limitations - but look at the attendance in pixel pugs, its quite big! not sure what it is for tf2.pug.na, but I believe it would be similar

Hawkeye

Points: 5,566, Level: 51

Activity: 8.3%

But it does work and is quite popular, given the mibbit ActiveX and Java applets, it can be done from within game also.

Nightbox

Points: 1,482, Level: 22

Activity: 99.0%

ymmud: pixel is quite big because it's the only, it's called monopoly, it don't say it's bad but it's not perfect
Nope, this was before, trust me. Check ETF2L Topic date.

ymmud

Points: 1,791, Level: 25

Activity: 25.0%

night, i meant completion date. i.e pixel pug came out in public while MM didn't so in launch dates pixel pugs earlier.
im not arguing vs MM but saying that people wont switch from the products holding the monopoly unless MM has something to offer more than them whic atm doesnt seem enough for your avg. div 6/5 player

fluffyanimals

Points: 313, Level: 6

Activity: 21.2%

There's some potential in this idea overall, namely in that it could be updated to surpass TF2Lobby in features because as far as I can tell TF2Lobby sure isn't receiving any updates. Basically, it'd be nice for Lobby to be updated, include more countries, and if possible instead of needing something mandatory like Mumble make it an option, put in options for scrims/matchmaking, that kind of stuff.

If those options were present and worked on and being updated then it could be a better version of TF2Lobby and go far above and beyond TF2Lobby.

If this goes through and we see some real development then so much the better, just need to see what kind of feature sets we'd actually be looking at and it'd need some constant-development unlike TF2Lobby which, while a very good resource, no longer seems to get worked on.

Hawkeye

Points: 5,566, Level: 51

Activity: 8.3%

What I have been toying with is a simple back-end for players to register (OpenID Steam Login), create teams, publish their teams servers and so forth, and then use that as the backend for MatchMod to authenticate players.

Phase 2 will be to build the API for existing leagues to pull the teams into their sites and some type of recruiting/free-agent implementation to allows players to easily post that they are looking and teams can quickly get a list of all the available sollys or demomen out there to look at with a brief history of teams and leagues they played.

Phase 3 is the API to allow matches scheduled for a given league to work back into the system complete with the expected IP and password, this will then tie into MatchMod were right now it's !match cevo <password> we can just do a !matchid 123456 and it will get you to the correct map, set the password, execute configs and authenticate players and report results.

Final step is the stats package and do uploading, I have about 60 gig available right now for demo storage, I can pull another LUN off the SAN when I need to, plus extra space on the database cluster for stats and so forth.

Again, this is mainly to use as a back-end and not directly run a league (AKA CEVO, UGC or anyone could use it)

The last step is making sure the league configs exist online and are pulled from the back-end as opposed to storing on every server, so leagues can ensure the correct configs, player authentication and match reporting happen in a automated fashion.

Fundamentally, all I am looking at is player/team authentication based off of Steam, Which has APIs availabel to league to pull the teams into their sites and so forth. Simply trying to keep things simpler for all the teams/players.

Edit:

Forgot to paste the rest..

From there, a PuG/lobby/scrim system can be built for CEVO or UGC or any other participating league and you can filter players/teams within your skill levels fairly easily, plus allow match schedules and so forth that CommFt or wherever can pull.

Sway

Points: 2,514, Level: 32

Activity: 16.7%

I'll tell you what. If this comes to fruition, it should be pretty boss. Compared to TF2Lobby this version is looking far more robust.. I like the concept.

Hawkeye

Points: 5,566, Level: 51

Activity: 8.3%

Major issue right now is the Steam OpenID implementation is broken, so I either have to right a Steam Only applet, or wait for Valve to correct it to give the proper responses.. (Security issues could be there so I am more leaning on avoiding it for the time being.)

Cash50

Points: 2,238, Level: 30

Activity: 25.0%

I'd like to see better players on TF2Lobby. Maybe matchmaking will do this. I think having scrims on the site is a bad Idea because IRC is so simple. Why make something complex when teams have servers and mumbles and just post

6s skill CP_W/e. and give connection info rather then registering everyone, getting in a server and mumble and playing. Which is easier?

but as far as PUGs go, I think it'd be a good idea to get better players in PUGS that are for better then noob players mid- probably.

Hawkeye

Points: 5,566, Level: 51

Activity: 8.3%

Lobby was decent at the beginning, but as more people got into it, it went down hill and many play in lobbies only for the lol's. I just had a decent lobby with good players where they went Double Engy, Double sniper and a demo. Skilled players isn't the answer but serious games.

As far as IRC being easy, I would disagree since for those that never used it before or downloaded MIRC, getting yourself into IRC is a task, then actually getting picked to join a team is another hurdle. It will happen when they are patient, but that issue needs to be addressed in some way to ensure godo players and developing players show up and are taking it seriously.

The other aspect is having multiple rating systems for skill, one of which for pubbers, then a comp player. (A good pubber != good in comp) which adds to the issues at play. Rarely would any mid-high players in TF2 want to join a lobby and be told what they are doing wrong by players that only casually play TF2.

The concept of merging the scrims/pugs with league in some way appears to be the most likely to solve the issues, ESEA kinda has this done and it's a good thing. But being able to drop in for scrims on a site and being able to filter by league/divisions would be a great way to keep the scrims generally the same or playing up much more easily.

Which is why the focus of everything above should solely be an a fairly open API to get teams registered and so forth for other apps to build off of. From there you can then work on all the other aspects and get things done a lot easier.

Zigzter

Points: 2,563, Level: 32

Activity: 0%

After I got on a team I found that lobbies got immensly boring, and as others have said, I only played them to mess around.
(Triple heavies...we got this.)

I think they should somehow mix #tf2scrim and TF2Lobby, so that teams can create team lobbies with their skill level in the description, then other teams can join them.

__________________
Player coL.PYYYOUR left the game (Kicked by Console)
coL.carnage : just kicked him from col
coL.carnage : hate that guy

Nightbox

Points: 1,482, Level: 22

Activity: 99.0%

Still looking, progress: finished registration process

zephyr

Points: 1,989, Level: 27

Activity: 0%

Personally I hate tf2lobby now, 90% of the time I dont enjoy it and the servers are terrible (even external servers are generally terrible). I think this would be a good alternative for the experienced players and could be quite successful.

mrslin

Points: 9,629, Level: 67

Activity: 0%

This whole thread can be summed up in one sentence: bring back #tf2.gather.us

Lol on a more serious note, about a year ago I got more serious about competitive tf2 and that's where I went. Gathers was the place to be. It was a little annoying that we had to have an admin to start every game, but in hindsight that is what kept the games serious which is the main issue that lobbies have.


Issue: #tf2.pug.na seems to be for mid/high players, and due to the captain system the lower level players will not get a chance to play. TF2Lobby is supposed to be the fix for that, but the barrier to entry is so low that you get very low level players in there or higher level players that end up trolling as engineer, etc.

Note that the TF2Lobby system isn't bad, the issue is that it's too accessible.

Fix: Create a TF2Lobby for higher level players, or bring back #tf2.pug, or "Plan B"

I believe Nightbox is trying to accomplish that 1st part, but as everyone is pointing out, it is just a lot of unnecessary work when the infrastructure is already in place with TF2Lobby. So why not bring back #tf2.pug? It was a good system, and I think if people talked to Cinq about it he might be willing to put it back up.

For those of you who don't know what #tf2.pug was, it was essentially #tf2.pug.na without a captain system which allowed lower level players to add up as a certain class and ensure that they would play games.



Now we could just do "Plan B" which is make lobbies like we always do, except put a keyword like "Serious" in the lobby name so people know it's serious and then just kick people who don't have a certain number of lobbies played....

__________________
MR SLIN
http://steamcommunity.com/id/slin
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Hawkeye

Points: 5,566, Level: 51

Activity: 8.3%

Actually, if you combine the systems to some degree, #tf2.pug bt instead of servers, it poitns to lobbies and sends out the lobby passwords to the channel for people to join. Might be a quick and dirty way to accomplish everything.

Cirno

Points: 1,468, Level: 22

Activity: 0%

I first got into TF2 competitive stuff in steam groups for pugs and gather.us. Everyone was coming up with great strategies, trying new maps, and much more.

Now we got TF2lobby and pug.na that does nothing but the same old badlands and granary. I think this is a mix of new players coming to the scene and it is a great map to start out on. Thing is, I don't feel myself improving until I finally scrim. Nobody plays yukon, coldfront, freight, well, viaduct, gravelpit, obscure, gullywash, prolane, etc. Sometimes you see a freight, yukon, or viaduct but not often.

People rarely use their mics now in lobbies and use the excuse that they are a "joke." Even though they are lower on the skill level and top low/mid players will top frag, I don't see how that is an excuse to not use your mic and generate solid teamwork. I use my mic all the time in lobbies but stop if I can tell my team isn't bothering to listen, which honestly does not happen that often. People enjoy listening to people calling out stuff and try to use it to their own advantage. It also motivates players just to hear the person being serious about the game.

THESE are the problems with pugs nowadays. Look back at the good times when gather.us was around, you were joining ventrilo for steam group pugs for West Coast Pugs, ACE vs Pug, and much more. Will this fix any of these problems? I highly doubt it. It just seems like you trying to gain some e-fame by accomplishing nothing.

This is a community problem that is not fixed until you join a solid team that scrims a lot. It won't be fixed with a new pug system.


The release of mumble killed some steam group pugs imo. That is roughly around the time I quit TF2 for a while and went back to Quake. I came back after watching fanom vs EMG on viaduct at lan. I really got into it after MGE started and lobbies really took off and I think many have done the same I have.

Please bring back gather.us if possible and start good pug groups!

Sway

Points: 2,514, Level: 32

Activity: 16.7%

It might be a good time to go back to Mumble/Steam PUG groups. Lobby has been going to shit lately, and pug.na can be brutal to people that aren't used to it. It's a lose/lose for both the Low/Mid players trying to start (people being harsh, doing poorly), as well as the Mid/High players (getting stuck with lower players, one team stomping the other). I kind of agree with SLIN.. tf2.gather.us was a happy medium between TF2Lobby and PUG.NA. Although both are good in their own right, for a lot of players (myself included) they find themselves somewhere between them and don't really know where to go.

Right now MGEMod + scrims are my mode of choice. But I play late-nights a lot, and back when the MGE crew used to run lobbies it was pretty much perfect. But they've since moved on to MGEMod and PUG.NA, so the quality of lobbies has gone down a lot as of late. So it's been MGEMod, or jump maps, or even pubs for me late-night. PUG.NA when I can, but usually I either don't get picked or it takes 45 minutes+ to fill.

I would say a year ago was the perfect time for PUGs. :D

Cirno

Points: 1,468, Level: 22

Activity: 0%

I agree with you. I think lobby just gives more access for trolls to be trolls and to end up never using your mic or being serious.

Pug.na is brutal because some of the trolls in there are too harsh towards newcomers and mistakes. If someone drops an uber, they don't try to recover from it and come up with a new plan, they make fun of the medic for dropping uber. It is also much more serious and hard to get used to and since they require medic to be the first class you play as, usually you are scared away from progressing in their pugs.

Every lobby I played this week required reporting at least 1 or 2 people, idiots offclassing/trolling, and team stacking.

We need pug steam groups again and to stay active!

Cash50

Points: 2,238, Level: 30

Activity: 25.0%

Cirno,

PUG.NA is for better players that can handle playing different classes. Why would you be authorized in PUGNA if you aren't going to do what is required by everyone. Playing medic is not hard, its common sense for PUGs. They won't get mad if you drop one uber... they only get mad if u don't heal people.