Sad!

Better to provide the definitive answer than let a bunch of random people that know nothing about me speculate.

I would not play TF2 with someone I am romantically interested in. Those two worlds should not overlap. I made that mistake before and would never repeat it.

I have "grounds" to express my opinion just the same as you do to express yours. Seems you have a fine time deciding whether you want to agree or not. Everyone else does the same. That said, I try to speak only things that I believe to be correct, and those things are informed by many years of experience and careful consideration so if someone does decide to trust what I say, they should be pretty alright. I will admit, however, there are a couple extremely rare instances where the line is blurred between what is correct and what is instead useful. But in general, I don't spread misinformation, so you can't blame me if someone misunderstands me and that is the cause of them being incorrect. At the very least I'd always encourage people to ask for clarification.

The main reason I see for these discussion not progressing is because everyone is having a conversation I have no interest in. I treat TF2 as a competitive environment, and in such an environment politeness isn't really a top concern. I don't have a horse in that race. Rather, I prioritize victory and truth. Undeniably this has proven to be a very effective method. Every time a topic sprouts up about something that has a right or wrong answer and people try to shift it into emotional outpourings I can no longer take it seriously. Either present a relevant argument or enjoy spinning in circles (though I know how much you guys like your circle jerks so this might be difficult). If you're not satisfied with that, I implore you to become the next great TF2 champion, but do so while being the nicest most polite person at all times. Once that happens I'll naturally fade into obscurity in your carebear fantasyland kingdom.

What we need is a respectful discussion on the merits of throwing games, super underrated post guys! :3

The thing is, not everything is up for debate. Some things have an objective nature to them, that's just the way it is whether that hurts your feelings or not. Among those things would be "Is feeding when there's 30 seconds left a good idea?" or "Does having 5 ping give you a huge advantage?" There is a right answer and there is a wrong answer and I sincerely hope you don't need to be nearly as good as me at TF2 to know what that is. When someone proposes something that's so far out of bounds of what is correct, you don't pat them on the back and encourage them as an equal, you shut that down as quickly as possible so as not to legitimize their claims. I challenge you to provide an actual example of a subjective topic that I have refused to consider or a topic I didn't fully understand that I spoke with confidence on. If you can't do that, you're just making vague baseless accusations and propagating this echo chamber lie that funnily enough is exhibited nowhere better than right here in this forum.

I will never cease to be upset at people who throw games. And I will happily argue about it every day for the rest of my competitive gaming career. I call out idiots on a daily basis, so unless you plan on chronicling my every move this is hardly thread worthy (but do make sure you follow me on twitter and twitch so you don’t miss it!). If you really want to defend and justify when a supposed top Invite player throws games, be my guest, just don’t pretend that’s not what you’re doing and don’t be surprised when I vehemently disagree with you.

Further, I hope you do realize that conversation is with yight. As far as TF2 players go he’s among what I consider the scum of the community, but most importantly, that has become somewhat of a running joke between him and I. So it’s taken completely of context, that being: that’s just what my relationship is with yight, a sort of playful disdain. In the last 24 hours alone, this isn’t even the most entertaining conversation I’ve had with him.

Sure, in the moment I let frustrations fly but before long I too find some sort of humor in it and move on. I always find it quite ridiculous that people that aren’t even involved in these situations dwell on them the most.

There will be reporting/appeal systems in place and I'm sure the other people in the game can testify to whether you had a valid or invalid reason for leaving. It's not that complicated and it doesn't happen that often.

There could easily be a guideline for matches being cancelled only if someone leaves at a certain point in the match, but I figured people would be upset regardless of what time people leave. Perhaps we could start with cancelling matches if people leave in the first 5 minutes and then adjust from there.

As for people colluding to kill pugs and take the fall for their friends, that would be grounds for indefinite removal from the Hub so I don't really see people risking that. If they do, it's not going to happen more than once obviously. Punishment for legitimate leaving wouldn't be as severe as unjustified abandons, but there would have to be something otherwise people would do it all the time.

An important aspect of this is that the rules will be enforced regardless of who breaks them. I'm tired of unqualified admins giving special treatment to their friends or caving to peer pressure, so if you get a justified ban save your "bro it's just a pug" line, it's not going to work.

As expected most people seem very concerned about the lack of a substitute system. I wouldn't count on a substitute system coming to FACEIT any time soon, but I genuinely think there are still ways to work around this. Yes, all of them involve cancelling the match in some form, but they all also aim to change the culture around players needing a substitute constantly. The mentality should be that if you sign up to play a pug, you have a responsibility to anticipate things that would prevent you from showing up or completing the game and will be expected to play that pug with no reliance on a sub system to bail you out. It could be argued that a substitute system actually encourages people to leave with no concern over what happens, especially when the consequences of doing so are so relaxed. This is something that we must test ourselves. Let's look at all of the situations where people traditionally would be subbed out, and ways we can currently handle them without a sub system.

AFK/No-show
Unlike other pug systems, there is no "pre-ready" that could allow people to get picked in a pug they are unaware of. FACEIT asks to accept a match at the very last 45 seconds before the pug begins picking and the pug only starts picking if every single player accepts. Players that don't accept are unqueued until they manually queue again, and then must accept their next match again. There is an option to put cooldowns on people who don't accept matches if this becomes a problem. If they do accept the match, get picked, but then don't show up to the pug within the 5 minutes given, the match is cancelled and the AFK player receives a queue cooldown. Everyone else can simply requeue immediately. Unlike other current pug systems where people easily wait 15+ minutes for everyone to show up, then wait a couple more minutes for your sub to show up, it could actually be much more efficient to just get a new match where a sub is not required at all. Cooldown durations for no-showing can be made to be quite severe to emphasize punctuality. For example, if you don't show up for a pug you readied, I could set it so that you get a 1 day auto ban right off the bat. If you serially no-show to pugs, you can be indefinitely removed from the Hub.

For all other situations that need a sub, here's what you need to know: When a player disconnects from the server they have 5 minutes to rejoin the game. If they do not rejoin the game in those 5 minutes they will automatically get an abandoner cooldown (which again can be made to be extremely severe). Once those 5 minutes have passed, the remaining players on team that had the abandoner can initiate a vote to surrender the match by typing !gg into the chat. If the surrender vote passes, the match will end and the they will be issued a FFL. FACEIT Hub admins (myself and anyone I appoint) have leaderboard editing power so that if you were forced to play out a match down in players or had to !gg and take a FFL, an admin can at the very least undo the effects of that to your scoreboard position and perhaps even compensate you with a bonus in scoreboard points for having to deal with that. We will also have the ability to cancel any matches that are live if you can report the situation while it is happening and an admin can investigate and handle it. Admins will also have control over removing bans and cooldowns, but that would only happen on a case-by-case basis on appealed bans.

Underperforming/No comms/Trolling
Far enough down the line, if the Level and division system works properly, there should not be a situation where players are able to be in games far outside of their level, so needing to remove a player for underperforming shouldn't be necessary. In general, people shouldn't be punished for having bad games anyways. However if people are trolling, or deliberately throwing, or refusing to comm, they should be reported and they can be removed from the Hub indefinitely.

Lag out/Legitimate Reason
Leavers with a legitimate reason can appeal their ban to have the punishment be reduced.

Ragequit/Illegitimate reason
Leavers who ragequit or offer no legitimate reason for leaving can receive an indefinite removal from the Hub.

If we create an orderly system where each player takes their responsibility to show up and play seriously, I really don't think we NEED a substitute system for this to succeed. What do you guys think?

It’s been a long time coming, but FACEIT Hubs for competitive TF2 are almost ready for a full launch. The end goals of the FACEIT Hubs are to consolidate all of competitive TF2 pugging into one place for beginners up to pro level players, to create a natural progression for players into higher skill divisions, and to offer prizes to reward the most active and successful players. FACEIT have had a ton of success in using Hubs in other games to help develop their niche scenes, so I really think this could be similarly beneficial for us.

For those unfamiliar, FACEIT Hubs are a different format than the existing FACEIT matchmaking. So that we can all get on the same page about what to expect from FACEIT Hubs, here is an overview how it basically works:

1. Separate queue divisions can be restricted by your FACEIT level - Beginner (1-3?), Amateur (4-6?), Advanced (7-10?), Professional (Invite only)
   
2. Matches begin picking when 12 players are queued up within the division. There are no class assignments. All 12 people get into the match room, no “fatkids.”
   
3. Captains are selected either randomly or based on priority captain roles which can be assigned.
   
4. Captains take turns picking teams and then banning maps. Pick/ban orders can be adjusted, but are currently 1-2-2-2-2-1 for players and 1-1-1-1-1-1 for maps.
   
5. Everyone will have 5 minutes to join the match, sort their team’s classes, and to join their voice channels in the designated voice server. If people don’t join the server in time they will get an AFK cooldown.
   
6. Matches are played with a 30 minute timelimit and 5 round winlimit. Ties go to overtime.
   
7. There is no substitute system. Abandoners are automatically issued cooldowns.
   
8. Post-match statistics are available on the scoreboard in the matchroom.
   
9. Wins/losses affect your position in the leaderboards. High placing players within each division receive prizes at the end of the season.

The most contentious aspects of this seem to be the lack of forced medics, class selection and substitutions. Another issue that needs to be tackled is preventing trolls/griefers from ruining games. It would also likely take some time for people to advance their level to their appropriate division. How can we work around these things?

Some possible approaches for classes:

• Let things play out, people will join the classes they need to in order to win. People will need to get more used to playing medic and other non-main classes more often compared to current pug systems.
  
• Give verified medic mains priority captain role so that each team is more likely to have a medic.
  
• Offer prizes specifically to people that regularly play medic.
  
• Give each person a role corresponding to their preferred classes and the captains have to manually check each person’s preferred role in the member list. (Currently extremely burdensome, but eventually if these roles could be displayed on the hover-over stats that appear in the match rooms this could actually be the most ideal solution)

Some possible approaches for voice comms:

• Use in-game voice codec. Everyone is automatically joined, but many people use voice_enable 0 making it less than ideal.
  
• Enforce use of a voice server, most likely a Discord, where each person must manually join the appropriate voice channels or else be reported and temporarily banned. Could potentially have a plugin developed that could automatically move people to voice channels.

Some possible approaches for trolls:

• Ban trolls from the Hub so that the only way they could come back is if they make a new steam account, new FACEIT account and have 200 hours of TF2 in order to register TF2 and start over at Level 1.
  
• Instead of an “open” system that anyone can join, adopt a “closed” system where access to each division is through invite only, but everyone would have to apply and be screened and placed into their appropriate divisions. The closed method requires much more effort to organize and manage, and would be extremely inhibiting to introducing new players.

Some possible approaches for level indexing:

• Create all 4 divisions and just let people naturally climb through the levels until they reach their appropriate level. There are Elo placement matches that correspond to your FACEIT Level so hopefully it wouldn’t last too long.
  
• Start by adding a single (private?) division that allows Levels 1-10, targeted to TFTV/ESEA level players first so that they can accelerate their levels. After a couple weeks make the ESEA division only allow Levels 6-10, but also add a second division targeted to UGC level players that would allow Levels 1-5. Then finally, after a couple more weeks add the Hub that's targeted to beginner players and shuffle the division level requirements to be 1-3, 4-6, 7-10 (or whatever seems appropriate).
  
• Make the beginner Hub private and only accessible by people that apply or receive an invite from Newbie Mixes, keep only two public divisions for Levels 1-5 and 6-10.

Please share any thoughts and feedback you have, especially if you have a good idea for a solution to some of the foreseen issues above. FACEIT admins have been eager to get these Hubs up and running for TF2, so recently the developers have been extremely reliable in fixing many of the TF2 specific issues that I brought to their attention. Hopefully any feedback we come up with can also result in more improvements. Of course, there are almost certainly going to have to be some compromises made on our part as well, but I strongly believe we can all work together to do something great for the TF2 competitive scene with FACEIT Hubs.

Everyone's main concern should be further fracturing of the competitive scene. Unless you can consolidate every single paying player and team into your league, you will be doing more damage than good. It's the CEVO situation all over again, and Lange had way more credibility with that project than TFCL does and it still failed. It's not just a risk of weakening ESEA, but there is a very real risk of killing ESEA TF2 entirely. In the current state of ESEA, we need every single team we can get. We were so close to getting 3 divisions back so literally every single team counts. If even a small handful of teams decide to play TFCL over ESEA you've effectively killed the 3 division dream of ESEA, and also made it more likely that the entire league continues on a decline. Killing open means you kill invite, which instantly drops TF2 prizes by $14k per season. All that risk for a proposed $1k a season is a hard sell hence why I and others will remain skeptical.

Based on the information provided, here's a look at some numbers surrounding this project as it stands:
12 paying teams in A Rank would equate to the baseline prizing of $1,000.
25 teams would be needed to match ESEA-O's prizes at $2,250.
45 teams would be needed to meet the division's maximum prize ceiling of $4,000.
156 teams would be needed to match ESEA-I's prizes of $14,000.
181 teams would be needed to match ESEA's total prize pool of $16,250.
240 teams would be needed to cover the travel expenses of 12 Rank S teams to LAN (assuming $300 average travel cost, and no remaining revenue going to prizes whatsoever) at $21,600.
1200 teams would be needed to meet the S Rank division's maximum prize ceiling of $100,000.

Personally, I find TFCL meeting these numbers pretty far-fetched. Instead I think they should focus on building their league to replace UGC as the premier free league and then expand into paid divisions once they've established TFCL more. There is far less risk and damage done to the pro scene if they exclusively deal with the casual/free side of things.

https://youtu.be/51oPKLSuyQY

Follow up: Teespring has asked for the order numbers from anyone that feels their design was incorrect. You can send me your order number and I can forward it to the teespring production team, or you can contact them directly at support@teespring.com. Hopefully they can provide some sort of resolution.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, that's definitely not how they should look. I will also contact teespring about this and hopefully we can set things straight.

We have currently raised $628 towards the LAN fund, which unlocks the third milestone for IRL streams from our roadtrips to LAN. Those will be streamed on Friday and Monday over on my channel twitch.tv/b4nny.

We also just launched the AMA this morning, bring your questions: https://redd.it/79gx39