I'm excited! I'll be keeping track of how this goes. I'm willing to give feedback and contribute if you guys hit a snag.

The biggest problem will probably be getting enough people using the site to make the (apparent?) matchmaking work well.

Hopefully this works out well.

If this happens and is done right it would be super awesome! Thank you for taking this up.

Have you had a look at the code Pubcomp got together and are now leaving open for everyone?

Will have a think about good features... Make sure it caters equally for 6's and HL. Get the URL "tf2centre" as well for us Brits.

Way down the road, if you'd like in game medals for tournaments, give me a shout :)

Can we please have something to encourage people to actually try to contribute, and not just be useless on purpose? Half of games on tf2lobby completely consist of trolling.

"No more high-ping players ruining your lobby..."
what would this mean?

i know that feel, it might be bad news for us.

That would be so awesome. Something a bit more serious than lobbies because, well, SOMETHING hangs in the balance even though it's just metal. Hmm. Would this new site also host highlander games?

This will be great
No more terrible medics that don't know how to play or people readying up as pyro

please don't use the tf2 font everywhere

As teamfortress.tv is supposed to be the new hub for all things competitive tf2 there have been suggestions that it should host a lobby page similar to tf2lobby

Please consider this when developing your site as it is easier to grow the scene when you only have to a point a person to one site instead of several.

If you speak to enigma then i'm sure he will work with you to integrate the site into this one or at least host a link at the top navigation bar.

A great feature would be to only allow players to add up as the 2 scouts, 2 soliders, demo and medic on 6s lobbies. It's really frustrating to have to explain to newer players why they can't pick pyro or spy when it's an available option.

I don't mind lobbies with new players just ones that won't play the classes they're suppose to.

This stuff comes up every few months.
I hope you really know what you're doing. TF2Lobby is the largest recognizable pug system TF2 has ever had. It's simple design and ease attracts new players and welcomes old ones. It provides a entry level system for users who consider IRC too difficult and two-folds as a 'filter' for more skilled pug systems.

There are only two honest flaws that I see with TF2Lobby (aside from a few minor tweaks, some have been mentioned in above posts):

1. skill-categorized pugs are not supported by TF2lobby automatically. However, I would argue tf2mix and tf2.pug.na cover is. Unless you plan to attract the entire competitive community from pub to invite... this is a non-issue.

2. a functioning karma system is a mild issue. Having a fully automated system would be welcomed by most but this would be difficult to implement fairly.

But as always, any time spent on advancing competitive TF2 as a developer/mapper/caster/mentor/etc is appreciated by everyone! So thank you and good look!

I'd love to chat with you more =)

<3 elo rankings

ive never played a lobby in my life, but id give this a try for sure

Without Mumble and some kind of captain system any lobbies will quickly devolve into the angry messes you see on tf2lobby. The problem with tf2lobby isn't the "buggy and slow site", which is actually better than any other PUG software, as the size of its regular userbase demonstrates, but rather the lack of psychological structure imposed on the players (who are new or random and can't be expected to adopt useful team roles themselves). Tf2lobby failed because it's just technology.

thought this thread was going to be about tf2mingle

very disappointing click

You need to add some sort of mumble integration to this or something. Like a mumble server (or several) dedicated to the site, maybe a one time alert telling people to install mumble, and then open a mumble://server.com/ link when the game starts.

Lol looks like floor_master is either going to be jealous or step it up. I think its going to be pretty hard for players who often play at tf2lobby, transition themselves to tf2center, because most of them don't even know that much about the community, for example: knowing the website, tf.tv. However, IMO it might end up being lobbies but with higher level people, so for now tf2lobby might be the biggest place for people to play 6v6/hl compared to tf2center, for now...

How will it handle:
Admin abuse/server modding? Unless this will be done completely by your own servers, there are many easy ways to cheat without detection. Plenty of sourcemod plugins exist/can be made to be silent.
International players? You said high ping management (I honestly don't care too much about high ping, and high ping players don't necessarily ruin pugs).

It's a good idea, but takes a lot of work to make and manage. Good luck.

This is good, but I was a bit disappointed when I visited the site just to see a list of features and nothing running yet. It's always good to have at least a working alpha before you start publicly talking about something in order to keep the hype up.

I'll still be looking forward to this none the less. Keep up the good work.

Is there a reason effort wouldn't be put towards working with the creator of tf2 lobby to help with improvements rather than trying to make a completely new site? Not to be a downer but this is a pretty large undertaking to build up from scratch, and what tf2lobby currently does it does reasonably well. I don't think you give it enough credit.

I don't think this is that important. Game chat works just fine for lobbies. Obviously Mumble is super nice to have but not necessarily mandatory since it'll add cost.

Floor_Master is incredibly inactive.

cuz floor_master

gotf2.com is available - you should pick it up and make things easier to get to. tf2center.com is cool and all, but when you want to go play tf2, gotf2.com. Just sayin'

Sounds interesting, would definitely check it out. Good luck.

Yeah thats a better URL but to echo what #11 said there is a drive to center everything on this site to try and grow the community and TF2 as an esport so yano if it integrates with teamfortress.tv properly the URL wouldn't matter too much.

On that note rkmarty would you not consider at least talking to people before you go off doing this. While this all sounds awesome and I'm all for improving TF2 Lobby (as awesome of a system that it is it could definitely do with some improvements) I think co-operation is vital to competitive TF2's success. Talk to floor_master, talk to enigma, talk to tf.tv. We all want to make comp TF2 better and we can do so more effectively if we work together. IMO at least.

I think TF2 is on the verge of really taking off as an esport, I think if we get viewer numbers up sponsors will be more interested and if you get sponsors interested Valve gets interested and we get more money to grow the sport. Easy to use cheap tournament systems like you are talking about are precisely what we need right now to get more people interested.

Anyways whatever you decide this sounds really cool and I wish you the best of luck with it. Keep us posted!

This might be a little over the top but making it so that it forces you to prove that you have a mic when you register would be nice.

Unless there is some way to change this there is no reason for me, or many others like me that actually want to learn the game, to use lobby or any alternative site.

This sounds really interesting. An interesting implementation would be to have a captain system. There would be 2 captains which pick from a pool in a lobby. Maybe have a choice between making regular lobbies and captain picked teams so people could avoid playing with trolls.

Keep it up!