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[Timon]

Basic Information:

    Real Name: Tom
    Steam Name: Timon
    SteamID: 0:0:20118097
    Age: 26
    Country: England

Personal Description:
 
http://etf2l.org/forum/user/7792/

I've got 59 officials, mostly 6s with a bit of highlander since 2010. I currently play in Cool Cats in div3B and we are looking to play div2 next season and have a stupid amount of hours on TF2 (7200?) in the 8 years that I have been playing it.

I just need to make it clear that I have no interest in, nor can I help with all the clever stuff as I don't program at all. I very much fit the: "We also accept people who simply spend a lot of time on the site and are always open to helping others" description. I've only just started playing TF2C recently as I've had a bit more free time. I have played over 50 lobbies now and I just came to the forum to see if you had a place to request features because my experience in those games has been incredibly varied. Then I saw this member bit and I'd like to get more involved in helping you guys out with features and requests.

In the last few days I've had many people add me after lobbies either for help, or just because they enjoyed playing with me. I think people are often amazed when someone who actually plays properly comes into mumble and uses their mic. The newer players recognise this when I play and want to know more about what they should be doing. The way I see it right now the lobbies are a mixture of people who just want to play because their team isn't about, people who wish to troll the shit out of lobbies and piss people off and people who are using this as a way to get into competitive TF2. I want to help with the latter two.

So far I have encountered numerous people who make me not want to play lobbies and are knowingly wasting everyone's time. Right now apart from the obvious there isn't anyway to instantly handle these members and it creates a poor experience for new people wanting to try competitive play. I've got lots of suggestions for how these players can be dealt with more easily. Currently I have to regret that lots of people that I have played with see this as another incarnation of tf2lobby and the words "FAIL LOBBY" are still uttered. I don't want that because I see this as a viable use of my time to have fun.

Then you have the newer people. One example today I told a guy who was in mumble that he was using FOV 70. He didn't have a clue what I was going on about so he added me, changed to FOV 90 and was happier knowing he was taking his first step towards prem.

Drdees: i gotta go
Drdees: thanks for your help
Timon | cats.tf: no problem
Timon | cats.tf:
Drdees: when i get better ping
Drdees: i'll show you my real skill

Now I don't mind doing this at all. IRL I am a teacher and I spend a fair bit of time mentoring new teams/demomen when not playing. I like to help, I enjoy it. I've spent a lot of time talking to people after lobbies who don't even know what ETF2L is or how to go about getting into a team. I want to help boost the competitive community with new, keen players and help the standard of lobbies improve with more people making proper use of mumble. I can see you have put a heck of a lot of work into this and it's way better and more functional than anything before but I think you need more people on there pointing newer players in the right direction.

Just a few things that I think I'd like to see on the site that would improve MY overall experience. If you don't make me a "member" then no biggy but please consider these as it would make me more likely to keep playing!

- Greater lobby leader control. I had some people troll a lobby competely. A group of about 4 people joined a lobby on red, it started. They all joined blu, joined the blu mumble then just shittalked over their mics. I asked them to join the right team, they refused taking pleasure in their trolling so I closed the lobby. I put another one up, they all join but I cannot ban them from playing in that lobby. Why?

- Mumble verification. Today I played a lobby where all 6 of my team came into mumble. Someone joked "OMG EVERYONE IN MUMBLE?!" It's rare in the 50 games that I have played but greatly improves the experience obviously. If I, or people whom you trust had the ability to tag someone with a mumble icon that suggests they use mumble properly, with a mic then it would let people make better use of the "you are expected to use mumble for this lobby" box. For example if I know 4 of my team don't tend to use mumble, I might opt to remove them for someone who does.

- Skill balance. Now there are LOTS of things that I am sure you consider for this already and you have other priorities but when you have a huge skill imbalance typically at 2-0 after 4 minutes someone on the losing team ragequits. This starts of a spiral of decline and the lobby finishes right there as everyone on that team leaves. Making lobbies balanced is practically impossible but if you had a way to mark on people some sort of skill level be it their current division then it would help lobby leaders recognise OBVIOUS skill imbalance. The other day I played a lobby with smzi on the other team on classing as well as a number of div2+ people. Now I spotted this and of course it ended really fast but most people wouldn't recognise very high skilled players.
 

[jayserp]

Thanks for applying. Welcome aboard