please require people to have a mic/mumble

I didn't mention that because I thought it was obvious :P

Yes a working mic is/will be a requirement for playing pickups.

But PLEASE require mumble, no in-game crap so there is actually a small barrier to entry unlike tf2lobby.

I'd play BBall pickups, sounds like fun.

For the domain, why not pickup.tf/tv?

Yeah I meant mics and mumble are required.

As for the domain, pickup.tf is already registered, so is pug.tf.

I think tf2pug.tf or something around those lines would be cool.

Would you guys have a mumble server for all of these pugs, this sounds really awesome and something I'd definitely get into.

Have separate pug/irc channels for NA/EU
add a command to start a team/group with a pw, then a command to join that team/group so you can add up as a team to ultiduo/bball? Only suggesting that since a picking system when you only have 1 person to pick seems rather pointless. Maybe later on you can make the team function for 6s/hl, so people could also use the site to find scrims and know whos playing on the other team beforehand.

Would the 6s and hl pickup games be first come first serve like tf2lobby or would their be a picking/random teams system. If it was first come first serve the skill level of the pugs would be extremely varied and I'm not sure how well that would turn out.

Just some suggestions/ideas, sounds really great and looking forward to seeing more.

Just use a global skill rating. Having different skill ratings by division and class is ridiculous. Besides, how much worse is someone's medic vs. scout vs. soldier? ofc no one can play every class at the same level, but i think anyone who is decent at 1 class can play any other one well enough to justify their mmr.

Yeah, we'll have a server set up with all the needed channels.

We are planning on having EU/NA channels for after the beta if there is enough interest. The beta will be mainly aimed at EU because we tend to fix bugs and add features during the night (aka NA peak time).

We've also discussed private pickups/ladders/cups before but that would definitely be something for later versions, not the initial release.

6v6 and 9v9 will work like our current pickup website(+ a queue system): add as a class, when the pickup is full the website creates the two teams. UltiDuo and BBall on the other hand will work a bit different. Current idea is people adding up either solo or as a duo. Then everyone gets thrown into a pool of all the people and teams/matchups get generated. But the system is not finalized yet.

The team function for scrims is quite interesting. Again, not something for the initial release but it sounds like something we could do for a later version.

We do realize the skill level difference between people can be quite big, especially as this is going to be an open pickup, but that's why we're implementing the skill rating system to try to get the teams as fair as possible. There may or may not be restricted (eg. div2+ and whatever equivalent of that NA has) rooms/pickups coming in the future.

Just as an example: I can maybe play scout at a (low)div2 level on a (very)good day, but I am a horrendous demoman (div5 at best). That's quite a gap. And assuming I'm not the only incompetent person in the TF2 community we need to account for that somehow.

Is there some kind of report system and/or admins? Will there be rules in place against troll offclassing, people that leave early, people that don't join mumble, people that show up 15 minutes late, etc.

Yes. All those things are enforced under the rules and result in a warning or ban if broken. We'll have global admins and different mods for each pickup type.

No elo please. For stats, I think a simple wins/losses, class percentages, and total matches played would suffice. Maybe if you're willing to go the extra mile you could have player profiles with class/weapon stats. So long as it works like a classic pug, with captains picking, there should be no reason to need actual skill ratings.

Please give us the ability to report admins/leaders/whoever. Came across way too many lobbies that had afk leaders and shizz. =(

What do you mean by this? Reminders from the bot or PMs between players?

Separated by pickup type. Highlander isn't reflective of 6s ability and VV. Same with Ultiduo and BBall.

I want to have an obnoxiously large picture of Ainsley Harriot as my chat background. That or user's steam avatars alongside player names in the left sidebar.

- User ability to choose whether or not to receive a URL or a connect string for the server. I don't like the URLs #tf2mix uses.

- Easy STV access from the chatbox would rock too, but I'm not sure how easy or difficult that would be to implement

- A sub system that gets people to play. It doesn't happen that often, but when someone does end up dropping and there's no replacement for a good 10 minutes, it's really frustrating

- Post-game PM that redirects to stats would be convenient for the lazy

- Little flags by player names representing location would be cool, even if this ends up being separated between NA/EU

Links to STV demos and stats after each game would be awesome.

PM system between players. Communication between player and website is done mainly through popup-like notifications.

Right now you get redirected to a match page where you get all the necessary connect strings in plain text or you can click a button to get automatically connected.

STV connect info next to the server name sounds easy enough to implement. We'll do that.

For the sub system... We could (probably) send everyone currently added as the needed class a notification asking if they want to sub? However I'm not sure how annoying that would be, I guess we'd need to make it an option to turn that off then.

Post game stats sounds like a decent idea too.

Flags next to player names could be a bit tricky. Website uses steam login, and while we can get the country from players' steam profiles they are not necessarily always set correctly (or set at all). One alternative would be getting the flag based on your current IP, but I strongly dislike that idea. Another one would be to make it so you can set it on your profile page but then again I don't like forcing people to provide any information before they can start using the website, and if it's not mandatory a lot of people won't have their countries set. If you got any better solutions feel free to post them!