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Quoted from Kaneco

I have talked to lamqta about the possibility of adding a different queue in tf2pickup by invite only or for high / prem players but he said the playerpool is too small atm to divide by skill in tf2pickup

It wouldn’t be hard to add this now that we have new devs tho but assuming we did it, everyone in that skill range would play those pickups instead and the normal queue times would suffer because a lot high level players play normal pickups already

As you can see from this thread, it’s not up to lamqta or tf2pickup whether or not a higher-level pickup exists. There is demand for it and alternative services are offering a solution. You yourself state that having two open pickups would be a bad thing for the community, so why would you not be in favor of keeping everything within tf2pickup at least (with an open and a restricted queue)? High-tier pickups have existed before, and only don’t at the moment because IRC is a thing of the past and someone has yet to create a modern solution. With Dango’s offer, it seems like that may soon change regardless of tf2pickup.net and its developers desires. Wouldn’t you prefer that pickups in Europe were at least still centralized to one location?

Quoted from lexs

is pug2 is really only dead because of IRC or because prem/div1/2 just doesn’t have enough players to support a pickup system?

it was alive when the top players always idled in IRC but that doesnt really happen anymore
it wouldnt be as active as tf2pickup.net but i think it would be pretty active

Quoted from Sideshow

I honestly don’t think this is a great idea. You’d be splitting the playerbase between tf2pugme and tf2pickup.

Even if you tried to exploit the niche that pug2 left open, doublemixes were the reason pug2 died anyway. People don’t enjoy having to wait for pickups to fill with a tiny playerbase that are all class-restricted when they can just get 12 people in a mumble and do it themselves.

If you want to do this even so, restricting it to only letting you add up if you’re on a High or Prem team would be the easiest way to do it automatically. Without class restrictions imo, but with captain mode.

Pu2 died because of several reasons:

– Shitty multiplay server located in fucking England, which is literally the worst place to have a server in Europe. I mean even the brits had 60+ ping to that server, lol.
– IRC-based, with fucking auth and having to link steam accounts through a bot etc. which made playing a pickup too complicated. Nobody wants to have to remember the auth command and pw etc. Just a pain in the ass to get new people into pu2 and keep the old players as well.
– Byte as the dictator of skill, the limits for individual classes were too high. Too hard to find people to play the missing classes.

Then doublemixes came, which was just a faster and more chill way to play the game. Gradually, doublemixes became more casual, and now it’s at the point where everyone is just using weird strats/trolling all the time (sideshow permapyro etc.). So doublemixes are not a good replacement for skilled pickups anymore.

Basically, for good player it’s like this:
– Nobody takes doublemixes seriously anymore.
– Way too many bad players on TF2Pickup.
– No other form of skilled games going on, except pcws, which requires you to commit to a team, otherwise you will just occasionally play a mix or merc for a team.

Please fill the void and bring us a relatively high skilled pickup system to Europe

Something that is also important to note.. In the latter days of pickup2 there was not a decent open pickup running alongside it. This made it very difficult to invite upcoming players to pu2 because there was no place where prem players/pu2 admins and the upcoming players mingled. If a relatively unknown player from division two asked for an invite, there was absolutely no way of verifying if he was good enough. Keep in mind that you cannot just accept everyone on a trial basis, because before you know it every game is filled with 50% trial players which will always give a negative impression even if some are definitely good enough). Anyway, the point I am making is that having a properly functioning open pickup running alongside pu2 would also help pu2’s success dramatically, as well as the fact it is no longer on IRC.

Quoted from kaidus

Something that is also important to note.. In the latter days of pickup2 there was not a decent open pickup running alongside it. This made it very difficult to invite upcoming players to pu2 because there was no place where prem players/pu2 admins and the upcoming players mingled. If a relatively unknown player from division two asked for an invite, there was absolutely no way of verifying if he was good enough. Keep in mind that you cannot just accept everyone on a trial basis, because before you know it every game is filled with 50% trial players which will always give a negative impression even if some are definitely good enough). Anyway, the point I am making is that having a properly functioning open pickup running alongside pu2 would also help pu2’s success dramatically, as well as the fact it is no longer on IRC.

Tf2pickup started back in early 2013, in early 2014 when pu2 died out tf2pickup already had its current site released iirc and was a pretty active pickup site so I dont think thats a valid excuse

Also I’m not saying we don’t need this, I was the one who just bumped the pu2 thread so Im definitely interested. But with the current numbers it would divide the playerpool too much to have 2 different queues, however the interest is there and it’s definitely in the to-do list, after the complete site overhaul

I don’t know what you could ask more but tf2pickup currently offers the most advanced pickup system in the entire tf2 community, in EU or elsewhere.
We have:
– Automatic mumble and server linking
– Separate queues for each gamemode
– Complete report and sub system with automated subbing
– Pickup balancing system using Jon’s algorithms (although I think it’s not the most updated version, not sure on this)
– Player profile with pickup history, past pickups, bans and warnings on record
complete backend admin system to handle reports, bans and warnings
– Each pickup has a page with automatic logs, stv, reports etc…
– Complete donator / perk system with dm server integration, etc…

This is miles ahead of any pickup system, pugme included, but we have other priorities atm, the current site is buggy and crashes sometimes, we’re overhauling it and the future site will have a much more seamless navigation, better response times, support new scenes (australia, etc) and eventually invite only pickups.

My point is, and with all respect to dango and appreciating everything he has done for na pickups, what pugme currently offers we offer as well but even better, their current system is not even invite/skill based (apart from using captains) so I dont know what would make you think it would work better than tf2pickup

Quoted from Samsa

[…]

you forgot:
– amazing servers
– a really nice admin team
–

Quoted from Kaneco

[…]

Tf2pickup started back in early 2013, in early 2014 when pu2 died out tf2pickup already had its current site released iirc and was a pretty active pickup site so I dont think thats a valid excuse

Also I’m not saying we don’t need this, I was the one who just bumped the pu2 thread so Im definitely interested. But with the current numbers it would divide the playerpool too much to have 2 different queues, however the interest is there and it’s definitely in the to-do list, after the complete site overhaul

I don’t know what you could ask more but tf2pickup currently offers the most advanced pickup system in the entire tf2 community, in EU or elsewhere.
We have:
– Automatic mumble and server linking
– Separate queues for each gamemode
– Complete report and sub system with automated subbing
– Pickup balancing system using Jon’s algorithms (although I think it’s not the most updated version, not sure on this)
– Player profile with pickup history, past pickups, bans and warnings on record
complete backend admin system to handle reports, bans and warnings
– Each pickup has a page with automatic logs, stv, reports etc…
– Complete donator / perk system with dm server integration, etc…

This is miles ahead of any pickup system, pugme included, but we have other priorities atm, the current site is buggy and crashes sometimes, we’re overhauling it and the future site will have a much more seamless navigation, better response times, support new scenes (australia, etc) and eventually invite only pickups.

My point is, and with all respect to dango and appreciating everything he has done for na pickups, what pugme currently offers we offer as well but even better, their current system is not even invite/skill based (apart from using captains) so I dont know what would make you think it would work better than tf2pickup

That post wasn’t aimed at you, pickup.net or anything even remotely combative. I was just expressing that as well as IRC being a reason for it’s inactivity, it was an easier initiative to manage in the past for other reasons besides IRC being more used. You also have no idea about the timeline of pu2 because it was very much a fluctuating life span that went from completely dead to very healthy on a monthly basis, and the point at which the developers and admins ceased their efforts is not particularly in line with when the service stopped being used.

Don’t turn this topic into TF2Pickup.net one please. If anyone is having problems with servers/admins(lol butthurt) should contact me or any of the other admins and not flame here like a little baby. Thanks.

The idea for private pickups is great but only if its worth the work and the time. It should be restricted to High-Prem players in my opinion.