bearodactylstacking makes the site pretty awful a lot of the time but i do like that lobbies start up before scrim times usually and you can play *some* tf2 even if its not very high level
have to say tho, RGL open pugs seems strictly better (tf2mix/mixchamp basically, because of the auto picking, and actively developed even if still having flaws) and i feel like trying to get people to play there or in captain pugs is a better idea -- you can't all of the sudden change the culture for tf2center that's existed for like 10 years, the toxicity/stacking/people not comming/perma offclassing stuff will be pretty difficult to get rid of
people also have a bad taste of it in their mouths so avoid it, im sure tons of casual players tried it, had a bad experience and said nope not trying comp anymore
I agree with the stacking and culture point of view, and I'm not disillusioned to those things. It's something that I'm gearing towards mitigating actively. I only posted about Center because I happen to be an admin on the site as of the last year and some change, but played on it since 2013 so for the majority of time on site I've been on the side of the players dealing with all the problems we all know about, this post was more of an olive branch to show that the site's nature has changed from the top and I'm hoping it trickles down to the bottom as well. Better and active leadership with more transparency and availability to get issues resolved within minutes of it happening in just the last 6 months is such a stark difference in a tf2center experience compared to say the last 10 years of it. In no way am I trying to have some competition with the RGL pugs. If you're speaking on the culture of things; there's a lot of people who are afraid of even showing their name in a rgl pug because they feel like they're not good enough and at a moments notice they'll just get yelled at and made to feel absolutely out of place because the culture of RGL is more intense. It's the same reason why people don't associate tf2center as pugs even though they technically are. You hear pug you think of an in house group or now rgl pugs, you hear center and you get that its a different element. There's a market for both, but I can only speak to center as its own entity. There are things like the pick/ban system that I think we should also implement because its just a good idea in general, I think that any ideas pitched should be taken into consideration. I am trying to get more pressure on actually implementing things for the site like that, hopefully soon there will by some dynamic changes about it. As for now most of the toxic things get snuffed out pretty quickly because honestly people tattletale on others at a moments notice, you'd be surprised at how many tickets there are(that get handled quickly at that), the stacking is something that can be mitigated with advanced lobbies or other wise by an influx of more players causing the average skill ceiling to raise, and the offclassing thing is essentially gone from centers now, outside of last holds and quick forward spawn type plays. I'm not sure how long it's been since you've actually played on the site, but you should give it a shot and see what I mean next time you're just kicking around waiting on a scrim to start or something, I think you'd probably be pleasantly surprised at how most games end up being compared to what I'm sure was a shit show like most of center's lifetime has been.