This would need to be piss easy and work flawlessly to get people to play it, I'd also suggest giving out prizes as some incentive when it's available to all, maybe something like highest win % at the end of the month or something. That way you will have people playing and actually trying to win as well.

Either way, I'm in.

Ayylmao
I wish >:(

ESEA pugs work lol

idk if ur retarded or what (probably lol (since u cant read at aLLL lmaoooo))

ESEA is super fucking popular in CS for a reason, but those reasons aren't applicable to TF2. People pay for ESEA in CS for those reasons, but why would anyone pay for something when there's a free alternative that is better?

"ESEA also has the disadvantage of being the same client that matches are played on"

ur retarded if you dont understand how that isn't a disad for a service tbh. Like no one uses ESEA pugs for TF2 because of it because ESEA tf2 servers suck, but CS ESEA servers are fine and being able to practice how you play your matches is a good thing tbh.

"with actual ranking features "

a ranking system is super pointless if not enough people are ranked though. If there's only 100 American HL players, there's gonna be MAYBE 3 of them who want to play engineer, and like what's the point of ranking 3 people? What's the point of a ranking system that doesn't have enough players to actually set up games in a ranked way? Like im probably a fucking retard or smthn but I really dont understand how or why you'd need a ranking system for the tf2c community when everyone who plays there knows each other AND even if you managed to rank them, there's not enough concurrent players to manage to get a good MM system working?

The reasons a paid service like this works for CSGO are

1.) Better servers than the alternative
2.) Better Anticheat
3.) Better players

but like none of those apply to this service, so why would anyone pay for it?

(im arguing so 6 months from now when ALs are empty I can say I told u so )

ESEA had prizes every month for puggers, Highest # ubercharges, Highest # caps, Highest # points. Would probably work out well here too, though, at 1€/month there may not be a lot to give out.

Whether they add or detract from the experience is another discussion though.

People already bait the shit out of their teams to get their stats up, how much worse could it get?

See, what you're trying to defend is <5% of the user base.

It's definitely no small feat that dango has done, and by no means should it leave solely because another service exists. pugme is a great service for those that are normally used to play pugna/tf2mix etc but it definitely is something more exclusive. Here's my point: http://puu.sh/ilqxv/69dbdeed42.png
Compared to: http://puu.sh/ilqwe/fedc577fd3.png (which, i don't think all of them were added up either.)

Sheer numbers (even if half of all the users are actually added up). Afaik Dango doesn't have the infrastructure to support 600 people over multiple continents, nor would that be specifically simplistic (regional adding etc). But a premium service can potentially pay for a level of play equivalent to pugme (likely never invite pug level) while sorting out the rabble. That is the hope and (eventually) the result.

While yeah, I agree 100% that pugme isnt the future, I dont think that ALs are either. They don't seem to scale too well imo, as well as not having a particularly well explained system of balancing and like if you're trying to scale up the system, limiting it to a certain skillset isn't useful. It really should be all players are always being judged, but only get matched up in ranked lobbies, and leave normal lobbies as they are.

im being pessimistic af obv and i really am sorry but I just dont like this system and I really dont like how every time i say it doesnt work well imo people get super defensive over smthn :\\\

right, so my point that ESEA TF2 servers suck stands

1. off-client scrim > on-client pug. pugs are for fun not really practice
2. not everyone plays matches on ESEA

which is why i'm saying stop telling people not to play ALs

saying everyone knows eachother on TF2C is laughably untrue

literally 1 dollar and 12 cents. even if you're fucking 12 years old you should be able to pay $1 a month

you're saying this project will fail due to lack of support but you're also telling people to not support it. like i said, if you don't want to play these, just don't play. no reason to be so publicly negative and critical of something that doesn't affect you or anyone else negatively in any way

EDIT: your comment above is good constructive criticism, and i do agree that the ranking system could easily be poorly implemented, especially because of the variety of classes

wait so how do i play them? i have like 10 keys ready to give u guys if u let me tryhard in lobbies.

"right, so my point that ESEA TF2 servers suck stands"

ok, but that's not the point :\
paying for another thing to play video games on is certainly going to drive people away. If it was on ESEA, or had a connection to ESEA monetarily, people might be less apprehensive about paying, imo

"1. off-client scrim > on-client pug. pugs are for fun not really practice
2. not everyone plays matches on ESEA"
1. ok, if you're not learning anything when you're playing pugs, you're either WAY better than me at this game, or really dumb, regardless, this isnt a thing for TF2 because tf2 pub/lobby/match servers are all the same, compared to CS where 64/128 tick thng
2. ok

"which is why i'm saying stop telling people not to play ALs"

im not telling people not to play? I'm telling them that its stupid, and that it really looks like the devs aren't really thinking it through imo

"saying everyone knows eachother on TF2C is laughably untrue"

I've got ~300 lobbies, and I know most of the big TF2c Players at this point. NA 6s lobbies might have 500 players in total over a week, its not hard to learn the 30 or so good ones; the ones you'd pick in a pug for example :\

"literally 1 dollar and 12 cents. even if you're fucking 12 years old you should be able to pay $1 a month"

its not the cost :( its just silly that there's a paywall on something that should probably be free. All it does is exclude 14 year olds w/o credit cards

"you're saying this project will fail due to lack of support but you're also telling people to not support it. like i said, if you don't want to play these, just don't play. no reason to be so publicly negative and critical of something that doesn't affect you or anyone else negatively in any way"

no reason to vehemently defend something if its so good. If the system is flawless and im wrong, then all these posts are for nothing ":

Those rankings don't often take into consideration players who don't lobby a lot, and prefer to focus on their scrims and other team commitments.

I'd be willing to throw some keys into this every so often, especially if it makes playing lobbies worth it. For the time being, entering a lobby to find people more interested in goofing off when you want to play isn't that much fun.

Yeah this wasn't necessarily pointed at you. I was just making the point at how stupid it is to get upset by a system already implemented within our community. This patreon thing was actually my exact recommendation when I took the survey.

if ppl will sponsor young boys without credit cards for ESEA-IM they will sponsor them for ALs

A question about the TPR integration, if I'm in the top 20% of soldier but not on a class like spy, could I play spy in the lobbies?

.

It will be clear when you're in the system how it actually works.
You'll be given a regular player rank and a per-class rank. You can only play the classes you've got a decent historic ranking / league performance on.

So if you're trying to play an advanced highlander lobby, and there isn't a heavy or engie in the top 20% the lobby can't start, ever?

Exactly, which raises the question of how long people will have to wait for 11 like minded people to fill up the lobbies.

Does the 20% ranking apply to each class or as a whole. Like can a top 20% med add up as a different class?

If these are reviewed on an individual basis, how efficient will that be, can people just donate their way in (traders)?

Edit: thanks for the effort, it's just such a complex thing to implement I don't think people will be satisfied regardless.

Edit 2: why not take a page from pug.me and have captain lobbies for highlander and 6s and call them the advanced lobbies.

From the AL page:

If 'nobody will pay 2 keys to tryhard in a lobby' then why were the poll results good enough for the TF2C admins to go ahead and try it?

Professional pollsters get general election results spectacularly wrong, how much can you expect from a web survey about video games?

Maybe AL are just not aimed at the pros, rather at those who want to become better, by playing in low/mid serious competitive environment so they receive much better feedback in TF2C forums and elsewhere. Just maybe.

i already donate to tf2c, so i wouldn't mind playing in these as long as they actually started within 30 minutes of adding

So they're dividing up TF2center's very small playerbase into three groups? I don't know anything about how these ALs work behind the scenes but I understand the basic problems of match-making when you don't have many players. If the pros are playing tf2pickup, and the unwashed masses are in normal lobbies, that doesn't leave many players left to play ALs, especially when it's the only one with a paywall. If the pros are all playing pickup then they won't be there to give feedback to the low/mid anyway.

There are around 300 EU players on tf2center right now. Let's assume all of the eligible top 20% pay up and join an AL. That gives you 60 players, let's say two third of them want to play highlander. You have enough players for two lobbies, what are the odds that you will have four eligible and willing to play every class?

A captain lobby for randoms is pretty much the worst idea ever. You think somehow that is better than an algorithm with a bunch of stats?

You under-estimate how many people play tf2center, it is 9:30am US East Coast and there are 500 people listed on the website. There are 4 UK Highlander lobbies that are not started just waiting for players. A queue system for Advanced Lobbies may limit the herpy-derpy lobbies that spend 15-30 minutes waiting for 1 medic or other random class because it will combine the multiple lobby queues into 1.

I've seen 6v6 tf2center lobbies fill up in 2 minutes--it's way more popular than you seem to think.

TF2C is incredibly active at mid/late afternoon

I've seen a Highlander lobby fill up in SECONDS if none other exist

Makes you wonder how much better/more popular TF2center would be if they hadn't gone with the 'multiple lobbies at once' system.

That's kind of the idea behind AL, obviously there is more but after closing numerous lobbies that mess up the general flow we already knew we had to find another solution.

Hmm. If these lazy nerds would get a job, then literally two hours of minimum wage pay would pay for their entire year of Advanced Lobbies.

The logistics of spending money on anything other than shiny hats in a game is unfathomable to some of you children, isn't it?

i really hope u dont think that was a good or clever post

at all