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most d1/prem and some d2 players playing pugs in mpuk2, the level is good but as animal mentioned before , na pugs are more active and organized (captain system).
It seems that in summer there were a lot more activity over there but in general it’s between one and three pickups a day.
About pixelpickup , i played there maybe once, it’s not fun playing with people you don’t know and have no clue about how to play this game properly (rollouts and stuff).
pixelpickup should be a close channel with invitations , but the players from the lower divs must show that they know the basics in order to play there.

Quoted from Enef

The captain system works in america because their top scene isnt filled with people who hate playing with people below their skill level.

There are many reasons for why there is no community Pickup channel (or why pixel fails)
I can just say the difference I see between Pixel and the Israeli Pickups, and why I think Israeli Pickups work:

1. Pixel has no balancing. So even if once in a full moon 12 players gather up, it ends in a 10 min 5-0 in many cases. I don’t know if pug2 has a balancing system, but it does not. But it doesn’t affect pug2 because the difference in Skill isn’t big enough that once team to roll the other. (most of the time, I’m sure pug2 also gets its 5-0’s here and there).
Meanwhile, pixel has its fair share of total newbies, morons, people who can’t speak English, and what not. I remember seeing 5 Prem players on one side, and 6 names that I can’t recognize on the other – and trust me, I think I can recognize almost any name in the community.

Meanwhile in Israel – our legendary motherfucker, Nirock, made a well-built pickup bot with Dynamic Player Rankings that has automatic balancing. It does a pretty darn good job for an Automatic system. Skyride once posted something about some Microsoft/Xbox ranking thing, I can’t remember the name – I’m pretty sure Nirock went by that way / algorithm.
The bot has different admin levels, and a simple online panel.

2. Pixel has semi-active admins. They are not there a lot of the time, TheSucker can’t be in every single pickup.
In the Israeli Pickups, there are plenty of admins, they are very active, and tbh its rare to come to the Channel/TS and not have an Admin online.
I don’t know how much of a problem this is, I think the bigger problem is:

3. Pixel has soft rules / no rules at all. In pixel, some guy doesn’t comm at all for a whole pug – he gets a warning. Takes like 3 warnings to get banned for a day.
In Israel, no comms for a whole gather would result in a 2-3 immediate ban.
Spy’s, Pyro’s are only allowed on last. On maps like Badlands, Granary, you are not allowed to take a sniper to Middle. (unless you are SorroW, the Israeli version for Flippy).

Sure, pickups are supposed to be fun, and less “SRS BSNS” than a PCW or w/e, but it doesn’t mean people should have the freedom to ruin the game for others. Some people like to play less/more serious at different times and with different players, so you have to set some rules to put a box over it – this crosses the line, but your allowed to do this for some jokes.

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I don’t know what this talk of servers crashing is all about, I never had a server crash during a pixel pickup.
Nothing more is poking my head ATM.

Because I can foresee all the white kids telling me “all you do is complain, why don’t you do something about it” or “something something Trath something something”, I will try to talk to Nirock today and see if he is willing to give his bot up, and if he is I’ll see if Skyride would be willing to cooperate with me and maybe something might actually come out of this long wall of text.

Trathed

Quoted from Enef

The captain system works in america because their top scene isnt filled with people who hate playing with people below their skill level.

Thanks Enef :D Would be may easier, if u see any top player playing offclass, just to have some fun. Some points of Trath are true as well.

Look, when rts mentioned high level skilled players , u authomatically referred to Prem level (Im pretty sure that in pug2 there’re not only prem players) . Wait, I already think that there’s a huge frontier between low skill and high skill, for u, low skill is…totally newbies, and already high skill would be prem. What happen with div1/div2/div3/div4/div5.

I think such a bot would help alot, to create new mix games. Currently I see some servers that run some sort of steam/etf2l identification plugin, that determine the division of the connecting player. If you could somehow manage to link that to the irc-bot, the bot can then seed players according to the appropriate skill level. Maybe using a threshold to allow a small percentage of lower skilled players joining a higher division pug. That way, the skill levels shouldn’t be too much out sync.

pfft you’re all wrong!

Nightbox is gonna come save the day with TF2 Matchmaking…….

Quoted from Squirry

Look, when rts mentioned high level skilled players , u authomatically referred to Prem level (Im pretty sure that in pug2 there’re not only prem players) . Wait, I already think that there’s a huge frontier between low skill and high skill, for u, low skill is…totally newbies, and already high skill would be prem. What happen with div1/div2/div3/div4/div5.

what?
Quoted from AnimaL

[…]stop beeing moron and blaming prem when there isnt any d2-3 players in pixel

bullshit.