inb4 new matchmaking update is one-on-one heavy fistfights

No I understood but worded my response poorly. Only starting games every 35 minutes is a very clunky solution and very far from optimal user experience. There are no matchmaking systems I know that work like this apart from players at the extreme end of a ranking system in a game like LoL where top players can wait for ages because they're at the long tail of the ranking curve.

That's not a license, all you have is their description:

"understand how things work and even contribute to our code on GitHub"

So that's what you can do. You can't "rip it", you can't make a derivative work, you can look at it and contribute to their code on github. Anything in addition to that reverts to normal copyright.

e: I understand you might think "fully open source" is a meaningful phrase, but it just isn't. It's like any marketing phrase - there are hundreds if not thousands of ways in which software authors can classify their work as "fully open source" and almost all of them have significant restrictions. They have clarified exactly what they mean in the same sentence.

No it was

Trying your best means regularly using them apparently.

With that reliability, I'd 100% commit to this guy's patronage as the foundation of my service's promotion, particularly as he has said before he will try his best to kill it off. I can't see any problems with this plan at all.

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/

You should have asked your co-worker about the legalities, it's not polite to ask, it's legally required. The code is unlicensed and subject to all normal copyright laws. Just because you can see it, it doesn't mean you can take it or make derivative works from it.

Your proposed sources of help are several places that you already point out won't help you, or intellectual property theft if you don't feel like being polite. Nice.

This all seems a bit silly when the only arguments you actually have are the queue organisation and the number of servers available, although you did make the thread without understanding how the sites even work. You can solve one of those by donating servers or finding people who will. The suggestion for the queueing problem could use some work, one game every 35 minutes is pretty clunky.

This is the banny that told everyone to stop using those sites and switch to faceit permanently like him (a move that involved some minor private backstabbing but you wouldn't know about that), and because he is in no way a hypocrite was back playing on them within a week.

Disregarding any anomie that may exist, it would be madness to build anything that relied on the patronage of someone that is so demonstrably capricious in their behaviour and public pronouncements. You need a marketing plan beyond banny.

Best suggestion in the thread

Thanks I hadn't noticed

Well... I don't work at Faceit so obviously this isn't based on first hand knowledge but unless their TF2 queueing and ranking system is completely separate to their other systems for their other games then you will be asking them to rewrite something that has very wide ranging effects for their entire service. And assuming their software development isn't arranged in a totally chaotic manner (and that their public pronouncements on their ranking algos, etc, don't give a totally misleading impression) then TF2 queueing and ranking won't be separate to their other systems. I wouldn't fancy your chances with them unless your suggestions miraculously match what they're doing anyway.

And it seems like PugChamp already listen to community feedback and their sites and services have been moulded at least in part by that community feedback. The community that is of existing competitive players.

I feel like the requirements being put forward addresses being able to point new players to something other than TF2 Center, and you're going to be asking people to put in a lot of time and effort to service a group that may still prefer Center anyway. And if the hope is to change PugChamp, you'll be asking everyone in the community that likes it to have that service moved away from how their feedback has formed it into something that might be less optimal for them.

I understand the desire for something better integrated into the wider community to recommend to new players than the pariah Center has apparently become, but at the same time PugChamp serves a highly specialised set of requirements that don't apply to newer players.

tldr you need something new, not to mess around with pugchamp

So this is just a wishlist from two people who have no ability to contribute or deliver beyond that right?

If you've been holding off from buying your tickets go get 'em now. The future of TF2 at I-series always depends on attendance at the last one.

So will be you be checking every person who starts a conversation with you one at a time, or putting up a survey and assuming that non-respondents make the blacklist?

A guy gets a little bit of admin power and look at what happens

EU has had several leagues (including ESEA), they all fell to ETF2L for the main reason that ETF2L doesn't have a buggy shit client that fucks with your PC (sometimes in merely annoying ways, sometimes in illegal ways) and it's free. There have been various schisms, unlocks arguments, etc and they've spread across competing leagues. ETF2L's unchallenged dominance is a relatively recent development.

ETF2L was also started very, very quickly after TF2 came out, founded by TFC players. They weren't late to market, they were first to market ahead of commercial competition.

Money has never been able to dislodge it permanently. There was some momentum behind the ESEA expansion but... they mined bitcoins and that was that.

Yeah it's down to there being a decent set of people willing and able to admin really.

ETF2L has a solid tradition of bringing admins through for years now, as has Oz Fortress, things get handed on to trusted apprentices that have come up through the system. I'm not sure who from NA would step into those roles.

You might also find other community leagues have software that hard codes their rules and you wouldn't be able to bring ESEA's setup with you - first to 5 might be a problem.

I'm not sure the ESEA fees have made much sense for the majority of people since they cut lan really, there's just so much less left to aspire to. Either way as you say without that community admin tradition maybe paying however much a month makes sense for these things to be someone else's problem.

They might do really soon....