cco

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But Slin, wouldn't that hurt the chances of newbies getting in. What kind of clearance is required to get in? Say I'm being mentored by somebody in the system, can he let me in? Or does he need Mod approval.

Hawkeye

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That could work, or we could link it to the skill divisions of one of the leagues. and have say entire teams able to play PuGs within their division, but not sure how practical it could be if it's made in isolation outside of a league. THe management of the old warez channels on IRC where you basically got sponsored up to the next level might work out pretty well also but again, this is entirely subjective.

cco

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What about a KDR ranking system? People play with similar percentage KDRs, the problem there is that medics would then be placed lower, so it could be assists to kills for medics, or Ubers to kills. Not perfect, but eh =\

Graham

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I'm liking where this discussion is going. Hit me up on Steam, Hawkeye.

Sway

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I'll have some resources to donate shortly if needed. Feel free to add me.. MjrNut has also supplied a temporary (?) solution in terms of server usage as well. But basically I'd be more than happy to help out in terms of supplying a large-slot Mumble as well as put in some time to help organize things. Holla @ me if you'd like, jinn/Hawkeye.

Hawkeye

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CommFt has a mumble floating around here somewhere, lemme find the IP..

64.120.126.120:64842

Sway

Points: 2,514, Level: 32

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Oh, nice. :D I was going to purchase a Mumble server for the sake of this, but if CommFT is willing to lend its Mumble for it, cool beans. But yeah, it'd be cool to get a CommFT PUG group off the ground. Lemme know what I can do.

jiggawhat

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There's certainly a way to rank players based on their in-game performance relative to other players. Surely your typical computer science major tackles problems far more complicated than this one?

I'm not saying you can't get 12 people in a game to play a good PUG, mrslin. I'm saying that while you may be able to, there are more than a few people in this community who aren't able to with what the community currently offers.

Making it invite only is counter to the goal of a centralized lobby system. To give everyone access to similarly skilled PUGs.

The big downfall of this community is the fact that we are so split up among this league, that league, commft, gotfrag, mygamingedge forums, this PUG system, that PUG system, etc etc etc etc. This community is small, and the quality of all these facets of the community would go up if they were consolidated.

That's the main reason I don't think steam groups suffices as the transition between lobby and pug.na. On top of that, lobby has some really bad players, some slightly bad players, and then even some decent players, it's all mixed up randomly, terrible quality PUG.

So......whoever is creating a real PUG system that does attempt to quantify players' skill and match them up is onto something.

Now you might so OK let them do that but why do we all need to be in one place. Take Quake Live for example, you know why Quake Live pubs suck? Cause there are so few players that I get matched up with noobs that I can wreck in some games and by good players who can wreck me in other games. As the amount of players participating in a system increase, the better the skill matching will be.

When I used to play Quake Live, I'd tend to play at odd times (really late at night or whatnot) and there were usually only a couple active servers in my area. Of those there would typically be one FFA server where I could topfrag with my eyes closed, and one CTF server where all the l33t clanf4gs would congregate and teamstack to own my ass.

So....more players = better chance for me to find someone on my skill level. That's why it needs to be centralized for everyone.

Nightbox

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http://i54.tinypic.com/16hm3xy.png

Progress: User info box is dynamic (coded) so when you login, it displays your data.


This is something i have thought from begining.

Hawkeye

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jigga,

To be honest, if Valve dropped a pseudo lobby native into the interface, but also allowed pubbing.. So a Start Now, then a Pick-Up game option.. That would basically answer all the questions with population and everything else.

From there we can simply lick things down with lobby passwords and steam groups and be on our way.

mrslin

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yes that is precisely the point. to keep newbies from getting in and creating a higher level pug. making the pug group invite only solves all of these problems. whether or not you get in is dependent on your skill level, and if the person recommending you thinks you are good enough, then you can get an invite.



Yes but that requires time and effort. A steam group is something we can quickly make and grow into a pug group. On top of that, it has a nifty paging system so that players in the group know that it is time to pug.

You're saying there are people in this community who can't get 12 people into a pug? I think that's fairly obvious. Then again, those people probably aren't high enough of a skill level to qualify for this pug anyway.

Yes but at what cost? Making it centralized and giving everyone acces it brings down the skill level of the pug. While everyone will play a similarly skilled pug, the overall skill level of the pug becomes low. We're not trying to create a lobby system. We're trying to create a way to have higher level pugs.

On the contrary, it would go down. There are more lower level players than higher level players. Thus by combining you bring the skill level down. By fragmenting you bring the skill level up. That's why #tf2.pug.na was so successful. They broke off and created their own higher level pug. There would be no higher level pugs if there was no #tf2.pug.na and everyone decided to only use TF2 Lobby.

What you're saying makes no sense. You don't think a steam group suffices because it splits everyone else up, but you want everyone to come together in Lobby to have a "terrible quality PUG"?


Probably. But I'm not willing to wait and find out. Nightbox could take another year to develop this PUG system. We could make a steam group RIGHT NOW.

I can't quite understand what you said, but I think what you said is that if you had a ranking system, the more players you got into the system, but better the matchmaking would be? But you're assuming we had enough people in this community to even have a ranking system. Also, you're assuming that the program exists, which it currently doesn't. In the meantime, let's use a Steam Group until it is developed (if it is developed).

You'll find someone on your skill level. Unfortunately, in TF2 you need 11 of those people. You won't get 11 of those people if you end up with bad quality pugs and people decide to not use the system anymore. Oh wait that's TF2 Lobby.


Jigga your arguments are flawed and have given no real counterargument for why a steam group would be a bad idea. In addition, you don't even play TF2 anymore so I feel that you personal experience in the matter is limited. All you are talking about is bringing players together, but as I mentioned before that is a bad idea as it brings the skill level of the PUG down. I feel like I'm beating a dead horse but the reason why a centralized system sucks is because players have different skill levels and when you bring them all together you're playing at the same level as the lowest player. Thus if you were to create an invite-only steam group then the level of the lowest player is brought up and there are higher level pugs. The only possible reason I can think of for not having this steam group is that players won't be allowed in. But that's the point that everyone is missing. The whole point is to not allow players in and get a higher level, higher quality PUG. Yes at first there will be only a few people and it will be hard to get a PUG started, but there's enough people in this community to invite that are of the necessary skill level to get good pugs going.

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Nightbox

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Nightbox could take another year to develop

Not really, i think in 1 month max is up

Dee

Points: 1,540, Level: 23

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Wait so why make a higher level play when pug.na is already there?
If your a noob chances are you dont know shit about IRC and what channels to join
IF your expereinced around the tf2 community yull know what channels is for what
AND you have to be Autherized

and TF2Lobby is for anyone, mainly newer people
so wich level of play is this being made for?

Nightbox

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This project is not made exclusivly for americans, in europe, high-level pickups don't tend to exists.

jiggawhat

Points: 1,641, Level: 24

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Ok. You can get the job done with steam groups but in the long run splitting this small community isn't the right idea IMO.

As far as I can tell, Nightbox is trying to make TF2MM a tf2lobby with skill matchmaking. If tf2lobby had that feature (and it worked well), would it not make all other PUG systems redundant because it has by far the best interface and largest player base?

Lutraphobia

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Question for the people who are advocating invite only steam groups and pug.NA etc. over some sort of advanced match making system.

How, hypothetically, would I go about proving I was suitably skilled. If you're all abandoning TF2 lobby for your awesome new network of groups you're not going to be playing with people outside the groups. If you don't see people play how are you going to get new blood in. Are you really going to have the group admins review hours of PoV demo from hopefuls. Are you going to rely entirely on league results (excluding skilled players who can't commit to a regular team) or are you going to recruit new players by slumming it on TF2 lobby. Of course you could rely on word of mouth with but with low skill players dominating tf2lobby a player who beasts there isn't necessarily highly skilled enough for your group, they're just playing against weak teams.

I can see groups forming based around known skilled players in the existing community slowly withering and dying as they stagnate and people start to move on.

----

RE. Medic matchmaking there's not really an easy way to quantify a medics skill. Someone mentioned using assists earlier but that really won't work. For one thing assists rely on the skill of another player, if he doesn't get the kill you don't get the assist, holding a medigun on someone while they fire their weapon is easy, the question is should you be pointing it somewhere else. Also I'm going to get a lot more assists focus healing the demo and running kritzkrieg than if I'm playing conservative and spending most of my time further back giving players buffs so they can jump / flank.

Some method involving ubers dropped might work a little better but at the end of the day the number of ubers a medic drops is highly dependant on their teams comms as much as their reflexes and gamesense. You also don't want to be introducing a selection process that encourages medics to blow their ubers needlessly early to avoid ranking drops.

Would a set minimum amount of time required to have pugged as a medic work as a reasonable analogue. Sure you could have some fail medics coast through but if there was a blacklisting option the issues caused would hopefully be minimal.

Sway

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I can see an open PUG group working just fine. I don't see a need for it to become invite-only. If it becomes a problem with green-as-grass players joining PUGs, then you institute a draft process ala pug.na. But in all the PUG groups I used to play in, I never had a problem with consistently bad players. Sure there will be players that score on the low side, but that's part of why people PUG: to get better. It would still be superior (skill-wise) compared to an open format like TF2Lobby, as members would still come mostly from word-of-mouth. 99% of Steam groups fill up due to people inviting their friends, and I would trust friends of friends over some random joe schmoes that have never heard of 6v6.

Keep in mind that I don't think any logistics have been worked out in terms of team/class assignment. Previously in PUG groups it was generally "first come first serve" - which works on some level, however that may end up resulting in having to blacklist people that don't get to play their class and ragequit, etc. This is why an IRC client is great, IMO. But might not still be the best option for this particular PUG group we're talking about.. maybe figuring out some way to draft teams or classes within Mumble. I'm sure we can figure something out to keep the group legitimate for the "in-between" players.

Nightbox

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I may need someone with jQuery experience, add me on steam http://steamcommunity.com/id/nightbox

Cash50

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D, this is for people that don't know about PUGNA.


How are we going to rank medics?

Daystar

Points: 930, Level: 17

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Or, say, after every match the players can vote on the others' skill? Maybe only on their team?

The vulnerability with this is that you can't trust people not to just troll...

mrslin

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whatever let's just wait and see. apparently nightbox is making progress so...

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32tim32

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I was skimming through this, reading more heavily into some parts, less heavily into others. Initially with the whole skill problem on the table I thought of going with a post game voting system, in which players are rated by players. So in the beginning of this new lobby like system the players will be at mixed skill level, but then grow slowly refined over time. This idea seemed good in my head, but when I continued mulling it over I found that it would be easy to troll. The tf2 comp community is a mixed bag bunch, and in that bunch we have quite the amount of trolls. This might lead to people not voting on skill, but out of spite.
My makeshift solution for this is when a player has a generally good rating, and someones suddenly gives them a bad one, said player will be watched by the admins. If the trend continues he will go on a a blacklist losing the voting privilege, which can be given back after an amount of time. Then again it would make it hard as hell for the admins to constantly check up on players not abiding the rules of fair voting. So can anyone think of a possible way to make this work?

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mrslin

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well the problem with that is you need to start with a good rating. unfortunately, that probably won't happen. it's sort of like the karma system in lobby. nobody uses it. and even if you do use it, it's usually to rate people badly not favorably.

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Dee

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True people end up raging at others for getting raped
and will most likely rate them down

Nightbox

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I repeat, rating and skill are diffirent things. Rating defines you ask quality player in GENERAL. nowshows or rqs will automaticaly give you minus, also players will give you too.

32tim32

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My idea won't really work unless this thing has a positive atmosphere, and trolls would go to the end of the earth (or attention span) to ruin that.

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Nightbox

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Don't worry about that, some people are already on the ban list :)

jiggawhat

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Karma system is a piece of crap. I'm thinking a rating system could be based on who you frag etc.

If you dominate a person who is on a higher skill level, your skill level goes up. If you get dominated by someone worse than you, your skill level goes down. Obviously K/D isn't what skill is all about but...if you take into account all statistics including how many rounds you win etc. then you could probably come up with some kind of formula to make it work. Statistics (KILLS, deaths assists, capture point captures, ubercharges, capture point blocks, medic picks, headshots, backstabs, etc.) are on average a good indicator of skill (especially in a pick-up game where teamwork is very superficial).

mrslin

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well the problem is if you do the ratings by points or frags it actually ruins the game. people will be focused on getting cap points or whatever it is. basically it turns a team game into an individual free for all to see who gets the most points.

IMO the best way to do it is just by wins and losses. if your team wins you go up, loses you go down. if a certain player fits a certain number of parameters then his rank will change less/more than that of the other teammates (bottom fraggers, carries, etc.)

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Nightbox

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rating != skill