Gentlemen,
To some of you I have already spoken, this post basically sums up everything we have discussed already. There are some details that needs implementation, so let’s debate that here.
By the time I write this, we have almost reached 55.000 players in our database. Although this is a big achievement, this will also pose some “challenges” for us. I’m sure I’m not the only one noticing: the quality of Lobbies has become increasingly more low, especially over the last few months. The stuff I have seen was never my intention when we first started our open beta, 9 months ago. Although we had many bugs, I was surprised to see how many people would show up in Mumble and play good games. But ever since TF2Lobby shut down, things have become worse. There is one particular line that really makes me angry: “It’s just a Lobby”, as a reply when players confront them screwing up.
It turns out our community is divided into two: those who like to play “just Lobbies” and those who take things more serious and want to get better at the game. Mixing these have been the root cause of all the pain I stated above, so it’s time to change things. Therefore, I’m happy to announce:
“Advanced Lobbies”: this will be our new brand for those who take playing at TF2C more serious; it will require everyone to be in Mumble and there will be penalties when one gets reported, not shows up in Mumble or just trolls. It’s not so much about skill level, but we value things like commitment more. Of course, there needs to be some minimum skill level, since a player got to have a clue as to what he’s doing; this will be ~ div6, meaning that if you’re in one of the various leagues, you can participate in Advanced Lobbies.
To make it very clear that there is a big difference between this new Advanced Lobbies, there will be a Steam group, analogous to the Easy Mixes. This group will be community managed and invite-only. This means that existing players may invite friends, but they are also responsible for them at the same time, so if those friends fuck up, they will be held responsible as well. This group will be pre-populated with every known league player in our database, along with a bunch of players who always show up in Mumble. We have been monitoring our Mumble server for the last five months, which enables us to perform extensive analysis on various aspects.
Advanced Lobbies will still remain in the overview of Lobbies, but indicated with different colors. Every player is allowed to open one, but they will not be able to join, analogous to slots where one does not meet the requirements. There will be a dedicated page explaining what we mean by Advanced Lobbies, and how does one get into that.
To answer that last question, there are several ways to do that. First of all, there will be the community moderators who will decide if you fit into the whole thing. Next to that, there could be transition Lobbies where we allow 2 non-advanced players to try it, and see how they do. Another way would be allow them to try out AL’s when they have x Lobbies played, y hours and less than z RQ’s or whatever. All details to be implemented later.
The first important thing is to actually get a separation between the two and see if the quality of the game improves. If that turns out as expected, it’s time to start thinking of the transition of non-AL.
A few other things that has been discussed but not stated in the above:
- We will introduce an immediate cool-down of one hour after a (manual) report or not showing up in Mumble (or be deafened, which we consider absent anyway)
- There will be incremental punishments for those who those above; eg. 2 days join ban, etc..
- There will be warnings before a player is to get punished, so it will be very clear that certain behaviors will not be tolerated and result into consequences
- The threshold for manual reporting for HL will be increased from 4 to 6 to make sure a manual report is fully supported by all Lobby players
- Advanced Lobbies will appear at the top of the overview and shall be limited to 2 per region and game type at the time
- The Lobby filter will be adjusted so that one can filter Advanced Lobbies
- Advanced Players will get the ability to create Advanced Lobbies through a checkbox, while non-Advanced Players will only be able to create non-AL’s.
- A non-Advanced Lobby shall be known as a “Casual Lobby”, which in itself indicates that there is more and matches perfectly with the attitude “it’s just a Lobby”
That's all for now; let’s debate!
MN
I know quite a few people who would want to be involved in these, since normal lobbies are very quickly degrading in quality.
