reminds me of this
http://twchapman.com/tf2recruiter/openid/

Looks cool though, good luck with it.

Thanks for mentioning that. I searched for a while without finding anything like that. I think there should be enough differentiation between the sites to make it work, though.

Can't wait to bust out my 360 noscope videos.

Seriously though, it's a nice idea, but I think it has too much side information. Like the youtube videos. Recruiter has its own problems (+frag system, no statements) so I guess it's still a wip field.

If the youtube videos are extraneous, they can always be removed from the submission process. Did you see any other information that was unnecessary or missing?

I'd like to see past experience fleshed out more. Make it like you have the class choice. A spot for stv/pov demos would be nice also.

Also, idk if you're going to let people comment on applications, but a 'references' section would be good too. 2 or 3 people who really know the applicant. Not the actual reference, just the people's steam.

Comments are on my todo list. Thanks for the idea.
The purpose of the youtube video spots was for POV videos (not 360 no scope stuff, although they may be used like that occasionally). Are you talking about a way to link the videos to a specific class?

Thanks for the feedback so far.

I think a section for POVs/demos would be better then a youtube video section. They can be directly uploaded, are much smaller, and give the viewer more flexibility (for demos at least).

I think it's a great idea though. It can be really hard to build a team or find one if you don't already know a bunch of people.

Also speaking of POVs, was there ever a fix for PREC?

No, the actual .dem that #8 talks about. It is a million times easier for someone to record their own POV or get an stv from a scrim/pug/match than it is to upload something to youtube.

Also, on PREC, there is a fix in the works. "Record demoname" still works like a charm though.

i thought the dude who worked on prec abandoned it?

Orange has updated PREC it just needs to be officially signed in by Valve so it will work ingame

Ah, the actual .dem files. Those would be easier to deal with than youtube videos, but that would increase the space requirement on the server by a few orders of magnitude. I'll add look into that in hopes of swapping the youtube feature with an attached demos feature (I'm assuming they shouldn't coexist unless some users want to upload voice commentaries or something). Thanks!

this looks very promising,good luck getting this thing all ironed out! :)

a way to verify/comment or even just +/-frag on an application might be a good idea

some people are modest about their skill level and deserve more attention whereas some people can flat out lie

however, you could argue that it would turn applications in a popularity contest especially with the skill level your site will attract. Usually you can tell who is serious about a comment though

This is a great idea and it looks like it might work fine with comp tf2. Here's my feedback to you:

Add applicants available weekdays and hours to do team stuff, this is important in many ways, for instance, to figure out how often you can expect the player to be online and if its a player that wants to practice many times a week or just looking for a chill team.

Let the applicants expand on past experience, hopefully in what teams they played before, including team league and division with links to the league's team profile page.

Comments and references are important if it's an experienced player.

You don't have to go through trouble on server space for demos, make ppl upload their demos somewhere else and post the link to it.

As for the youtube videos, I don't think they're important at all (at least I wouldn't look at them very seriously). Unless its a full POV making amazing plays through a whole pug/scrim/match, youtube videos usually show a very cool killstreak of someone playing well, but we've all had one of those moments and it doesn't really mean that you're good, it might have been luck or shitty enemys or w/e. So I would let the youtube videos as a thing that the applicants can put on their applications as an extra, but I'd remove the "Search Only Applications Containing Youtube Videos" option on the search page.

"Include Free to Play": this is just unnecesary, if someone really thinks that everybody who joined the game after Jun 2011 is automatically bad, then you shouldn't be forming a team in the first place.

Thank you so much for the feedback so far! This is some really valuable stuff. I'm going to implement some of these suggestions tonight and see how things work out.

I don't know much about web design but if that was an issue couldn't you just make a section to put links to demos in? (Same idea as linking youtube vids but instead you'd just link a mediafire/dropbox/etc. which contains the demo).

edit: oops didn't realize this was mentioned already

Yes, I can allow just links to demos (which I will probably end up doing to save space), but that can get a little hairy. It allows the potential for spam links, complete survey/view ad to download links, and expired links since the content becomes out of my control. I may end up using that option for the short term, though. I have to do some testing and calculations to see if I can apply any sort of rdbms backed compression algorithm on the demo files to make it manageable.

As a side note, do demos recorded with prec or "record demo" have the same trouble that the default replay system has with updates/models/etc that break them? If not, then I'll get rid of youtube integration entirely and swap in demo upload/linking. A user can always put a youtube link in the description if they really want.

I think I'll add in the demo integration first, then commenting, and then a new idea I have for a team organizer to help people who are looking to fill more than just a single spot. Something that allows associating applications with certain primary/backup class slots in your team organizer view, aggregating a team schedule, and the like.

Yes, no matter how you record the demos they can potentially break from future updates. Honestly most of the issues you listed could happen with youtube videos too, videos will be removed, people might link stupid youtube videos in their profiles as jokes, etc.

As a result of some of the feedback I've received from you all, I've replaced the youtube embedded video feature with a pov demo linking feature. Youtube videos can still be added in the description, but they are no longer part of the standard application definition.

I received some interesting feedback through a friend from misterslin on hein's steam yesterday/this morning with regards to the search view. The general sentiment was it was too cumbersome to set all the search options and the resulting searches would be so specific that they would include only a few applications. While most of the parameters have a generic catch-all option, I am considering making a filterable application browsing view which shows all applications by default but allows for some filtering so that users who are used to browsing forum threads would still get a forum-esque experience but would still benefit from the efficiency of this site. The question then becomes whether the application browsing view replaces the existing search view or not. What do you guys think about all this?

Thanks again for your feedback so far. It's giving me the best opportunity I can get to deliver something that is useful to the TF2 community.

dont go overboard with features
integrate into tf.tv

Not sure if other people will have this problem, but I fairly regularly reset my stats so I have no idea how many hours I have on each class.

so many tabs open

This is an interesting idea. Would you care to elaborate a bit on what you think such an integration would look like so I have a better understanding of what you mean?

Ask enigma (or some other site admin) to link your site from the sidebar or something

In the worst case, you can always find your total hours played (Steam Library, pick the game, and it should display total time next to the play button).