it's really not a pretentious comment. i'm just stating a fact that players who plateau at that level are the only players to have something to say (it's not a coincidence), but in all honesty that comment is more or less just a comment to prove me wrong. and no, i was not bullied in school

I personally dont really give a shit when it happens to me (i think most ppl who have played/spoken with me would agree, and i also spent a whole season getting shat on by invite players) but I thought these players deserved to be called out for what I still think is them being dicks. Anyways this was a reminder that any tftv or any online forum argument is just a waste of time and I was foolish to believe I would get the last word or get the community's support (lol).

p.s. i admit that personal insult to corsa was uncalled for and for what it's worth im sorry for that but according to him, he is unfazed by it so that's cool i guess

also sorry to derail the thread when the real issue is that FACEIT ADVANCED SUCKS

legitimate solution: delete mm system for advanced/invite and make it like every other pug website, except on faceit (if that's not an option, just pugchamp again without the easy-to-fix issues), use faceit for amatuer and beginner

One thing b4nny is right about though is the invite players can get invite pugs going. Issue is nobody wants to take the lead. See who's added up in advance, tell them to add to invite instead so you can ditch the Advanced players you don't want to be stuck with, see who's grinding a DM server, PM them on steam to add up

I've lead in house pug groups before. I know it's not fun to be the one who has to organize 12 players, but if there's like 5 people added in advanced that have access to Invite div you basically have half the work done for you already.
PM some friends, write in the text channel for Invite Div in discord, write in the text channel for advanced on faceit that you're trying to get invite pugs going so people who might look for advanced pugs in the next few minutes will go to Invite Div instead. If others try to Pm some friends they know pug frequently you'll get 12 in no time

If you want to revive pugchamp for invite pugs you'd have to do exact same thing except you'd only be able to PM through steam or spam invite player twitch chats. At least faceit also gives you some options to reach out to people through discord/faceit site

EDIT: fixed with participation data
Some interesting numbers

https://i.imgur.com/3k0dv43.png

NA has a lot more people in the lower tiers while the numbers for Advanced and invite are pretty similar across regions.
A big factor is that NA players are used to mumble lobbies, while European lobbies are barely ever mumble-required and when they are, only 2 or 3 people actually speak. The language factor could also be a thing for a lot of casual 6s players in Europe that might not put much faith in their English.
Percentages for raw sign-ups

Granted I am nowhere near an Invite player but it seems pretty obvious to me that Invite is an extremely small division and due to a variety of issues (skill disparity + players quitting + small division) there's a small number of players that would actually fit Invite only PUGs.

Then you factor in school, work, players trying relationships, players playing in Europe/multiple leagues, players playing other games compounded with the small insular division and getting decent Invite PUGs going seems pretty stupid hard.

All that stuff is kinda true for low level PUGs, but there's also way way way way way way more players that can play in those so grabbing 12 people to play for hours on end is comparatively easy.

to add on to this, getting quality invite pugs is much harder than you'd think. there just aren't 12 players that are at the same skill level online most of the time, and this is coming from someone who's setup numerous inhouse pugs and constantly tells people to add to pugs.

also, i personally think if you need to take the effort to tell people to add to a matchmaking system, it shouldn't be a mm system, but rather a system like pugme/pugchamp where an infinite amount of players can add, because when you look at mm and infinite adding system on a pro/con weighting you have

mm: more efficient (pro), lower quality (con)
infinite adding: infinite amount of quality (pro), less efficient

the reason the quality of mm pugs are lower is because there's always a much larger skill disparity throughout the players in the server.

given the amount of invite players, invite pugs do not need to be efficient and that has never been an issue, as quality is much more important to invite pugs; since pugchamp, i've played a singular quality invite pug

DOES that mean i can called someone the N word and they are just being too sensitive if they get upset???

In EU lobbies are still pretty popular. Numbers are down from a while ago but there's still demand. The mic thing is partially language but I remember when I was a lobby player I didn't wanna mic partially because of anxiety and partially that I thought it was unnecessary and sweaty. I played na lobbies sometimes and they were noisy, people commed everything and a few vocal but bad people used it to flame

this is completely irrelevant and blown out of proportion, we're talking about things that have to do with the game and things that go wrong in pugs

https://cdn.frankerfacez.com/emoticon/204717/4

what if i call someone the n word in a game or pug when something goes wrong?

as someone who actually enjoys captaining, my biggest annoyance with the faceit system is having no idea what classes the people I pick are gonna be on before the game starts- obviously this is most noticeable with medic, but it's true throughout

for instance, here are some scenarios that come up a lot

1) there's a pretty good medic main added. I am dubious that he is actually going to be willing to play medic, and he's mediocre on other classes, but I feel like I have to pick him because a) if I don't I'll have literally 0 medic and b) if the other guy picks him and he IS willing to play medic we basically autolose. I pick him like 3rd or something, he refuses to med, my 1st pick and/or the random amateur player who got moved up is forced to medic, and we lose.

2) I recognize that the other team is gonna be on some main class tryhard shit, and I pick the best remaining scouts because that's the most important class for winning pugs in most instances. one or both of them decide to play diff classes and it turns out picking the low IM soldier with decent dm who got lastpicked would have actually been better, despite that being almost impossible to predict ahead of time.

3) I have a very strong idea of what class I want to play, either because it's the one I'm in the mood for or because it's my best class and I want to win. for me, that class is usually demoman. so, I deliberately don't pick any of the one-trick demo mains that advanced is filled with, ensuring that I can play it, or so I think. I join the server very fast, but there's one dude in it already- my teammate, the scout/soldier main, already on demo.

for control freaks who actually enjoy captaining, or at least enjoyed it on pugchamp, it's super frustrating when you're this subject to random luck (I haven't even gotten into the advantages of 1st pick when there's a really obvious fatkid, or being forced to play with people you just don't get along with on a personal level). you wanna believe that, other than your skill vs the skill of the other captain which is obviously a factor, and who gets first pick because someone has to, you actually have a ton of control over your own fate based on how well you captain. in faceit, you just don't.

There really aren’t enough tf2 players to justify three different hubs. Amateur pugs won’t start until prime time and I would imagine the problem is even more prevalent in advanced and invite

while pugs would q faster, the hubs would become so diluted and the skill gap would basically be like a tf2c all over again. assuming you mean a beginner-amateur merger, you'll never know if you'll get a competent team or not until you're in game, and newer players would get absolutely pounded, which sucks for everyone involved. I'd rather the distinction stay in place to maintain as quality pugs as possible

I was thinking more so adjusting the levels of the hubs, or even allowing advanced players to queue into amateur if they want

Instead of fully mergering amateur with beginner, you could merge the bottom half of amateur (levels 5 and below) with beginner and the upper half with advanced. I think the problems with player numbers is more pertinent in EU since there are about half the number of players compared to NA.

fair enough, that would allow people to experiment with classes theyre less experienced with as well

Make pugchamp the de facto site for advanced players who want to tryhard in pugs. Play in the advanced hub if you want to offclass etc.

why is the tf2 community so toxic? you cant even get an opinion out without being called names. like holy shit just cause somene voices an opinion doesn't mean theyre dumb or whatever. fucking try explaining your side to them and maybe help them out. and why do people act like someones division determines their ability to give their opinions?

hey fuck you shithead

I'd like to point out that people can be part of multiple hubs and that not qualifying to queue doesn't automatically kick them out.
The bigger number in NA Beginner probably comes from people waiting other regions to release and joining whatever they can.
Here are probably more accurate numbers, for each user, I've counted participation to the highest hub, starting with EU (if someone is in NA Beginner, EU Beginner and EU Amateur, EU Amateur will be counted). This doesn't count the South-Americans that can't play, but this is the best I can provide right now.

NA Beginner 2652
EU Beginner 1041
NA Amateur  648
EU Amateur  399
NA Advanced 193
EU Advanced 186
EU Invite   123
NA Invite   91

the pugchamp alliance or the faceit regime

its time to pick a side

the republic vs the empire

this system gets worse to use the further you advance in it. at some point that's gonna have to be addressed.

for me the only major thing that faceit improved over pugchamp is that you don't have to wait 15 minutes every pregame for the pug to start.

This actually annoys me so much... When I pick players, I'm picking them with the hope that they're just going to play the class that I know they main and are good at. But, of course they never actually play that class because they're "bored", "play too much of that class", etc. When my first pick has to play med because he was the last person to join the server and nobody else is willing to play med, the pug is already lost. When nobody is going medic and we rollout to mid without a med, I'm forced to go med, and the pug is lost.

Faceit would be 100% times better if you could pick people to play on a specific class that they're "added up" on or something of the sort. To touch on what mustard said, the skill level of your pug team is highly dependent on whether or not your teammates want to play the classes they're best at/if they're actually trying to win, NOT the picks you make.

this rings a bell

Obviously I'm just one person and everyone has different experiences, but faceit pugs have really been the opposite of enjoyable since their inception. I used to play a shitload of pugchamp (and get fatkidded a lot) and I actively enjoyed 90% of the pugs I played in. People only had to play classes they wanted to play and it was fun. Compared to faceit pugs I've played, and I've probably only enjoyed about 25% of them. Every game seems to have either: one person constantly tilted and bitching about the team, one person actively playing like a dumbass due to being forced onto a class they didn't want to play, or a skillgap so large it would make some classic sandbag teams blush. I know I'm not the best player by any means, and that people would sometimes rather not pick me for pugs, and that's fine. PugChamp allowed that. But now, faceit forces people to play with everyone regardless of skill levels, and this creates, what I think is, an unnecessary amount of tilt or toxic attitudes. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but faceit has really killed off a lot of my TF2 enjoyment lately.