1 key is for 2 months I believe which is reasonable

1€ = $1.12USD

A key is roughly 2.40-2.50 USD at this time.
Since a key is payment for 2 months thenn you'd be paying 1.20 to 1.25 a month. Which is roughly the price of a kingsize candy bar. I'm sure all that sugar is bad for you anyways.

Honestly I don't see the issue, set it up on auto pay and move on; Alternatively if I could drop em 13.44 bucks and be payed up for the whole year that would be great.

(or 1 key per 2 months)

I need to refresh before posting

The problem isn't the price.

The problem is that it's annoying as hell to pay such a tiny fee every fucking month.

In that case maybe they should charge $5-10 a month, then you wouldn't forget to pay it 8)

i asked a month ago why I'd want to play this instead of tf2pug.me and I never got a response

someone please help explain?

Eyyyy, If TF2C wants to send a team to my next Florida Lan I would be super delighted.

Doesn't TF2PlayerRankings award ELO or whatever it is based on the skill level of the people you're playing against?

How are newer players going to get into the top 20% if they can't play against better players because those ones are already playing advanced lobbies? Plus that 20% would be a sliding scale wouldn't it? And people who make it to the top 20% and play advanced lobbies will only further cement their position there.

Depends on where you buy it. It's hard to sell it for more than 1.85$-2$ on PayPal even with rep.
Also to get 2.00 euro on Steam from selling a key you need to set a price as 2.30 euro.

This coming from the richest TF2 player in existence.

But I do agree, 1 dollar a month isn't the worst if advanced lobbies become a popular thing. My concern is towards needing to pay at all, but it's not like he's charging 13 dollars a month so your trades bump every half hour

This idea is absolutely unheard of...

https://www.patreon.com/eXtv

It means I have to give up a meal once a year. Ridiculous.

maybe because theres no point to pay to play with people above steel when you can just use the rest of the free site and just have a good time by muting whoever has a problem and whatnot? not to mention your not guaranteed a good serious lobby with this paywall on, since its pretty much just going to be the same thing with trolls and whatnot about, with a sour fucking taste in your mouth knowing your paying to have a sniper to mid lobby or some shit

There's no guarantee a tf2pug.me is going to balanced. Captains mostly just pick the best team they can from the people they know/see, it could be that 1 captain is simply better than another at picking.

One of the goals of advanced lobbies is a balancing system. Also depending on how it works you're not going to get fatkidded (maybe the advanced lobby queues up more than 12, in which case i'm wrong).

I'd rather enter an advanced lobby, be guaranteed to play the class I want with a balanced group of players who really want to play than wait around in tf2pug.me for it to start and MAYBE get picked. Also if tf2pug.me is mostly esea open/+ crowd, and advanced lobbies are ugc and esea open- than it's simply another place for a subset of the tf2 community to play. Sometimes you'd rather UGC try-hard than ESEA try-hard in a lobby.

Idk what u on about, Setlet has played in Prem before and is pretty decent. Granted the ranking is never perfect but he isn't that really out of place, maybe he just plays more lobbies than players at that level do.

I'm looking forward to this, honestly 1 key is accessible for anyone who plays tf2 enough to be playing competitive. (just trade items up). This will be a good place for the people who are sick of clowns who think running stuff like huntsman 24/7 or spy the whole game to play a decent low level tf2 game. It will also let the people who enjoy fucking around because 'it's just a lobby' to have fun and play the way they like to. Much like the mumble required lobbies, this will only benefit both groups of players.

Anecdotal data from existing lobbies suggests otherwise.

there's no guarantee that ALs are balanced either? Like the biggest problem with balancing a game like Tf2 is the small community size meaning if there's only 2 engineers, it doesnt matter if one is better than the other :\

You won't get shit on by showstopper.
There are significantly fewer fraggers.

alright, so just gonna do a quick pros cons as I see them for pug.me

+free
+better players
+site doesn't run like shit

-good players
-being shit means you might not get to play
-site is ugly

as far as i can see, there's no real reason to play ALs if you're interested in getting better :\
like if they're captain based, the best players are always going to get picked anyway, if they are algorithmic or whatev, then they'll run into problems of player size OR player class selection (200 people across 3 continents isn't enough to make an MM system that works)

pros for adv lobbies
+ you can choose who you want to play with
+ no fatkidding (maybe not applicable for many, but for others it's a very limiting factor)

cons for adv lobbies
- it's with the general tf2c community (maybe not a con)
- overall lower skill level (probably)
- looser community

Basically adv lobbies are a more reliable system with a much broader audience than tf2pug.me, but it's really up to you which site to play on

I always found it funny that the admins will just yell at you if you complain about this. You would think they would know that their site was broken by the insane number of Mumble bans people were getting when the autoban was implemented, but instead they just deny it

Don't worry, most of the "better players" will just continue playing inhouses and pugme

To clarify, being picked does not mean good in Pugme. It means you're known and the person can tolerate you, or you've played a high div before (which could be completely irrelevant now). It's simply an alternative. You're acting under the assumption that there's some asinine ranking system to playing pugs barring invite pugs. If people added up to Pugme in the numbers that were added to tf2center you'd see the same garbage all day. Exclusivity, in this instance, is solely due to the inconvenience of not being able to use your own server for the pug.

from what i can tell, you pretty much play open pugs, centers and some pugmes. So, I'm not sure if you're bringing this up because you're attempting to play devil's advocate or whatever. But it seems like you have no issues playing centers at all.

we found a correlation between answering online surveys and joining mumble req lobbies so there's that

For me, it's not about getting better at TF2 it's just about playing a fun game. I don't have time to devote to joining a team, scrimming etc because I'm older and try to play other games and do other things in the world. I usually enjoy playing TF2 in 6v6 format because it can be a tense and competitive experience when people generally know what they're doing and the teams are relatively balanced. But rolls and playing around complete newbies isn't fun, nor is trying to play anything other than medic vs. people in ESEA high open or above.

I realize I'm posting to the watering hole of the best of TF2 but just trying to give you a perspective from a casual player who enjoys watching and mostly enjoys playing 6v6 but doesn't have time to be part of a team. I'm looking forward to Advanced Lobbies if the balance system works and provides a more enjoyable atmosphere. Casual 6v6 is very fun--that's why MM may finally happen--it doesn't need to be the highest quality TF2 to be enjoyable.

Honestly speaking as a TF2C Mod I think tf2pug.me will be pulling a significant amount of higher leveled 6s players away from AL-6s. But really, that's perfectly fine. Many higher leveled 6s pug alternatives already exist in both NA and EU, and it'd be foolish to assume that AL would upset that balance. TF2C has always been a majority HL lobby site, since there are no feasible alternatives. It's relatively quick (most of the time), easy to fill up 18 slots, not a total clusterfuck for people trying to make pugs, etc...

AL is a big improvement from the flaws found in regular lobbies, which can only help the mid-level players. I say mid-level because it's the demographic that AL should cater to - not a beginner, wants to improve, but also not good enough to hang with the HL Gold+/6s High Open+ crowd. It's a good middle ground for the people who want to play something more serious, yet lack the connections to do so in other settings. The way I see it, more options for an improved standard of competitive play can only be beneficial.

We need to do a better job with our Patreon. That's something I want to spend time on, although I still unfortunately have a lot going on.

There are a lot of possibilities of what this community could fund, either through eXtv or TF2Center, with just a few bucks a month. If eXtv had ~3,000 of our subscribers paying $2.50 a month I could probably go full time (or other major patreon achievements).

TF2Center is eXpressing a desire to utilize these funds to further build their framework and the stability of the community. Besides paying for their own server fees (no ads btw) they want these funds to go towards community events. This is fantastic for the long term health of the scene. 2 keys for 2 months is nothing. It would definitely make me drop $5 into TF2. Would much rather use those keys for Advanced Lobbies than opening two crates.

i mean

looking at my stats

you'd see that i do well in every tf2c i play

to the point where I'd be the kind of person who'd be a part of the AL system easily

as some one eligible for that system, I don't see the reason for it to exist. I made several nerd essays on the tf2c forums explaining why its not something that's likely to appeal to high level players, and how trying to skill balance through math a system of ~70 players isn't a good idea either, but they all got shut down by saying im a 6s elitist or on a silver HL team, w/o anyone actually addressing why
1.) this needs to exist
2.) how its better than pug.me/pickup

How many people are soloplaying lobbies? Me and my friends rarely do, so a team balance system would discourage us. Afaik, most open players are similar, even in how they play HL lobbies. Even UGC 6s and presumably HL players (i dont know any of them since I haven't played HL in a year but sorry) often play w/ their friends. They wouldn't be interested in ALs because of this presumably.

How many people would be willing to soloq every single lobby? How many would be willing to pay to soloq?

idk maybe im an asshole but I dont see the appeal :\

Its better than tf2pug.me because tf2pug.me will never go anywhere. It will forever stay a small pug system for you and your ESEA friends to play in all day. TF2 Center is aiming to be the PUG system for everyone that plays this game, not your little circle of friends.

This could easily become our own community ESEA PUG system if you stop running your mouths and start giving back to the people that keep this community alive and moving forward. If you don't want to help these people advance our community then continue playing in your stagnant pugs run by your little circle of friends and stop complaining when people try to actually get things done

i didnt know analyzing the system meant i was stagnating the game lol

sorry everyone

(im not actually sorry)

esea pugs work for several reasons, namely a large community and a spectacular anticheat. Neither of which are possessed by TF2c afaik. ESEA also has the advantage of being the same client that all matches are played on :\

Instead of saying it'll build the community and calling people negative for asking how, try explaining how this will actually be better than the alternative ????

like if you dont want to play it bro just dont, but arguing against the existence of the feature is really pointless

like if you dont want to play it bro just dont, but arguing against the existence of the feature is really pointless

ESEA pugs dont work for several reasons, namely a small community (esea premium owners only) and a largely pointless anticheat (not a lot of cheaters in pugs anyway, and TF2C AC staff have been stepping up their game). I can 100% guarantee you that the "TF2C community" is much larger than the TF2-playing ESEA-Premium-owning pug-playing community. ESEA also has the disadvantage of being the same client that matches are played on. On top of that, ESEA has 0 support for HL.

So TF2C AL is a cheaper, hassle-free, broader-scoped PUG system with actual ranking features and better servers

It's also a thing that's already happening, so idk why you're even arguing against its existence