Yeah, frkshw and I literally copy-pasted the source code for PugChamp from GitHub and threw it up on a free Heroku instance lol. No programming knowledge required; shout-out to HANK for providing solid TF2 servers. Our goal was to make a place for UGC and low open players to pug since there was almost no way many of them would get picked on PugChamp. People seemed to really enjoy it overall, but it turns out that tsc did not like what we did (which was understandable), so he added an explicit "copyright notice" in July 2017 to restrict people from making clones: https://github.com/fwdcp/pugchamp-legacy/commit/2298c51d70c35abf71e5fe8a31979e0d834f378e

Brief history lesson aside, making a TF2 pug/mix site is very difficult when you realize that the relatively small size of the competitive scene means that you have to seriously consider the tradeoff between getting pugs running "quickly" and keeping pugs fun and evenly matched. People don't want to wait forever to play a pug, but they also don't want to finally get picked for a pug only to get rolled 5-0 in 15 minutes.

In my opinion, the "ideal" mix site would keep 4 skill ratings for each player (corresponding to skill on scout, soldier, demo, and medic) and disallow switching classes with teammates through plugins. Creating a good team balancing algorithm that takes these ratings into account is challenging if you are set on restricting the pool to 12 players for each pug, and it becomes even more challenging if you decide to implement a system where medics can choose a particular player to play with. You can simplify things by keeping only 1 rating per player, but the underlying issue remains.

In general, any mix system will produce lower quality pugs than a captain draft system due to the fact that it is very hard to establish accurate skill ratings for all players in the pool. Therefore, it's better to have trusted captains make the teams, but if you are targeting your site towards people in "low divs," they probably won't know people very well and will just pick their friends even if this would make the pug noticeably imbalanced.

I'm not trying to discourage you from working on this project, but I wanted to make sure you understand what you're getting into. Setting up a mix site worth using will take a lot of effort, and much of it may go unappreciated unless you knock it out of the ballpark from the get-go. Best of luck.

https://i.imgur.com/1Hyhrum.jpg

If your ESEA division displayed by PugChamp-Helper is incorrect, please fill out this very short form (asks for ESEA profile URL and Steam ID) to request an update for your division data: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe-zoEpMKVywsR19zqDCt5NROa5EinnamDRVGLWuAWCNZfv6A/viewform.

---

Some users may have incorrect ESEA divisions displayed. This is because the initial data were collected at the beginning of the month. Players may have changed rosters since then in preparation for Season 30. Additionally, there is a bug with ESEA's search that blocks data from being retrieved for certain users.

Example of the bug:
b4nny's Steam ID is 76561197970669109. This converts to [U:1:10403381]. We can search for the corresponding ESEA profile with this link: https://play.esea.net/index.php?s=search&query=%5BU%3A1%3A10403381%5D. Here, the search is working correctly, as we receive one ESEA profile result.

In contrast, tojo's Steam ID is 76561198045772168, which converts to [U:1:85506440]. The ESEA query URL for this ID is https://play.esea.net/index.php?s=search&query=%5BU%3A1%3A85506440%5D. Note that this does not return any results, indicating that ESEA user search by Steam ID is bugged, and tojo will be displayed as a "NERD" by default with the extension active.

EDIT for clarification: Some people have been filling out the form when their divisions are already correct. Do not fill out the form if your division is already displayed correctly. If you are not currently playing on a team, the division used is the last division you played a match in according to ESEA. After your division has been corrected (check https://github.com/minicircle/esea_tf2_data/commits/master for correction history), restart your browser and your division should be fixed.

Nice work, kodeeey. It's very cool that the extension shows how many people are added up in a selected region without the user having to open up a PugChamp tab to check. I'm looking forward to seeing what other ideas you and the community come up with.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a few possibilities for features like custom sounds/page backgrounds, cleaner-looking pie charts/tables, an option to auto-embed linked images in chat (note: potentially dangerous), or an option to hide messages by default from certain users (sort of like how Discord lets you click to reveal/hide messages from users that you have blocked). The effort to implement those features may not be worth it, however, given their minor impact.

I bought a Dell XPS 15 (i5-7300HQ, 8 GB RAM, 3840x2160, GTX 1050, 256 GB SSD) for grad school when it was on sale and really like it. The performance for typical tasks is great, and text looks really sharp. I read a lot and also program, so I really value the screen. I wouldn't recommend playing games like TF2 on this laptop, but in my experience the XPS 15 is capable of running TF2 between 40-80 FPS at 1920x1080. If I had my desktop and 144 Hz monitor here with me, I wouldn't really have bothered to try playing scrims on the XPS 15. It's not worth it, and, as you mentioned, it's best to keep your laptop focused on productive applications. Nevertheless, many people have chosen to repaste and/or undervolt their XPS 15s for better gaming performance.

Pros:
- great display
- fingerprint sensor has been surprisingly convenient, especially with 1Password
- good performance
- good battery life
- solid design
- keyboard backlight if you want it (I keep it off)

Cons:
- webcam position is suboptimal (note: I don't think I've ever used the webcam on this laptop)
- GTX 1050 isn't really necessary for standard use

I've heard great things about the MateBook X Pro as well. A Chromebook may be sufficient for your needs, but I personally wouldn't want to use one as my main computer.

https://clips.twitch.tv/RoundNaiveEggBudBlast

I think it would be helpful if people not only shared their resolutions, but also shared what they're planning to do to achieve them. That way, people reading this thread who have similar resolutions might have an easier time sticking with them.

For example, I liked Apt's resolution to "cut back on soda intake". Personally, this became easier for me in 2018 after I purchased a water filter pitcher for my fridge, as this encouraged me to primarily drink cold filtered water. You may also wish to blend your own beverages at home.
It helps to read more about the potential negative effects of soft drinks. Note that fruit juices may be a deceptively unhealthy soda replacement: "one 12-ounce glass of orange juice contains 10 teaspoons of sugar, which is roughly what’s in a can of Coke".

mopsy's resolution to "Maintain current friendships and build new ones" is also good. I regret not talking to my friends more last year, especially now that I'm out of undergrad and in grad school. Often, it's easy to feel that you might be bothering them or that your friendship has become too weak to make it worth it to send a message. The main thing to remember is that maintaining a friendship requires effort from both parties, and if they aren't yet reaching out to contact you, you might as well make the first move and ask them how things are going. I wouldn't say I'm particularly good at keeping in touch yet, but it's something for me to work on this year.

This sounds like a solid team to try out for. taiga is a chill guy who happens to be really good at both TF2 and Ratz Instagib (he's even on the first page of the FFA leaderboard).

Check out his Twitch stream (https://www.twitch.tv/yaihga) and make sure to smash that follow button.

https://clips.twitch.tv/MagnificentApatheticDotterelKappaWealth

Yes, hopefully NA support will come soon.

Actually, I've uploaded a better file to use that takes ESEA history into account: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/minicircle/esea_tf2_data/master/esea_data_full.json

In this file, "Invite (current)" means that the player is currently on an Invite team, while "Invite (historical)" means that the player is not currently on an ESEA team but was last rostered on an Invite team.

Here is a screenshot of what my local fork of the extension looks like for NA PugChamp using this data:

https://i.imgur.com/09SkfJT.png

I wrote a basic Node application to match Steam IDs found on NA PugChamp to current ESEA league status. At the moment, this application does not take a player's previous ESEA history into account. If you would like to add PugChamp-Helper support for ESEA/NA PugChamp, or if you're just interested in the results, you can access the data here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/minicircle/esea_tf2_data/master/esea_data.json.

Thank you to san antonio 1998 green mustang for the help with Cloudflare issues. Thank you to ESEA for nothing. PM me if you have questions.

From the list of NA PugChamp players, the following ESEA users were detected:
- 73 Invite players
- 161 Intermediate players
- 125 Open players
- 1455 PugChamp players that have an ESEA profile but are currently inactive in ESEA

The rest of the players did not have a valid ESEA profile. Note that it may make sense to recompile the data after ESEA Season 30 starts and players have settled into their teams.

(edit: corrected numbers)

Looks great! I saw this extension in action in a stream highlight ages ago but had no idea what it was called. Based on the Citadel docs, I'm pretty sure adding basic ozfortress/AU PugChamp support would be really straightforward if you can ask for and obtain an API key.

This might be inaccurate, but I think after you get a key, you can make a single request to https://warzone.ozfortress.com/api/v1/leagues/15/ (i.e., Season 23, the latest completed season) and collect all of the rosters. Each roster object provides a division string (Premier, Intermediate, etc.) and a list of players. Each player object provides a Steam ID, making it easy to map Steam IDs to divisions. You can then have your extension cache this map by using the `chrome.storage` API.

Additionally, you may wish to use a linter to automatically fix some of the minor inconsistent indentation/brace usage in your source code.

Last time Scratchh was LFT, I posted the following:

Nothing has really changed in the past 5 months. In terms of DM, he's definitely IM-capable. He needs to stop associating with racist morons and acting like them -- until then, he'll keep embarrassing himself. I really want to believe that Scratchh saying "no more toxic" actually means something, but I'm doubtful. Hope he proves me wrong; give him a shot if you have patience to spare.

yep

You can get Steam notifications about free games by subscribing to this thread from the "Free Game Finders" Steam group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/freegamesfinders/discussions/0/648814845208555516/?tscn=999999999999

You don't have to join the group to subscribe to the notification thread. They have posted about non-Steam games too, such as Destiny 2 (when it was free).

squidie is the real deal. as I've posted before, "you should have no hesitation in trying him out". his combination of gamesense and humor make him a great player to pick up. there's no doubt that he'll improve at roamer if given the chance on a serious team - he's already proven that he can play the game well on other classes.