Spectating: When a leader creates a lobby, s/he should be able to specify how many spectators his/her server can support. This number should default to 0, when the create a lobby window pops up. However, probably most people will ignore this feature. As for the selection process, there should be a way to flag yourself as wanting to spectate because not everyone in "spectate" (section of the lobby page) wants to spectate. You could do this by having "spectator spots" underneath the player slots section. Above the new section for people who wish to spectate, there should be the number the owner of the lobby said s/he can support of spectators. The people who join these spec slots, have to be forced to join spec, otherwise this could be an exploitable feature (have !rep spec 1). After a player has been repped and they are waiting for a sub, the spec should be allowed to play until the sub joins, this would serve as an incentive to lobby leaders to allow specs (more guarantee of a good lobby). The specs could be perma-muted but still join mumble
Mentors: I have over 450 lobbies and main medic. I notice a large quantity of medics who do not know how to play the class. If there is a way to put these two things together, the website would benefit by having people who understand HL, 6's, 4's, bball, ultiduo, and whatever other gamemodes there are. Even if it is done over the forum, I would sign up to be a mentor. However, I think doing this over a forum would lead to lack of people understanding how to get/be a mentors. So put a link to it above the chat box on the index page.
Solution to mumble crisis:
Introduction: The only way to fix the mumble crisis is by implementing all of bellow. There is no "easy fix" for a cultural issue.
Awareness: New players may not be aware, so there should be forced tutorials on how to work the site along with mumble help such as raising your mic volume, installing mumble, setting up your mic, push to talk, and volume activated mic (I am willing to make the tutorials for all of which, for windows and maybe ubuntu).*
*I have no idea if this is already implemented. I have been lobbying for a while, so I don't remember the registration process.
Verification: I have heard there are mumble plugins that allow you to see who is in a mumble. I was thinking that maybe there could be a mumble verification process. The users are given a key when they first join tf2center and a "join mumble" button. When they join the mumble verifying subsection of your mumble server, they enter the key in chat, and it is cross referenced with the key in database. if it is correct, the user is "mumble enabled." Prior to being "mumble enabled," users should not be allowed to use mumble in lobbies. Possibly, users with more than 80 lobbies, won't have to go through this process. However, the benefit of having them go through the process is having experienced users that can teach others how to verify mumble (I am willing to write/record a tutorial for this).
70% practice: As I stated earlier, there are mumble plugins that exist to tell who is in mumble. There needs to be an auto MUMBLE reporting system. Mumble reputation should be separate from regular rep, that way users don't feel intimidating into not reporting, in fear of a lobby not starting. If you want to, there could be a way to manually mumble report in game, but that isn't required to fix the problem. Users with 70% mumble participation or more, should be allowed to join mumble required lobbies, otherwise they shouldn't. Every time a user is not in mumble it is counted against the user's mumble reliability, the same way rage-quits count against the user's lobby reliability. The user should start at 0% reliability, and then after 10 lobbies that aren't mumble required, then lobby will create percentage based on how many times the user was in mumble. After the initial 10, the user's mumble reliability is not determined by non-mumble required lobbies. However, users need to be notified of the update, otherwise it could lead to issues both when signing up, down the road. All current users should start at 100% reliability.
Or the mix's way: Just make everyone be in mumble, and if they don't join, ban them.
Trolls: The !rep system is broken. Trolls join the hardest, most important classes like medic, heavy, engineer (on pl), and/or demo. The players that use tf2center recognize the difficulty of finding those classes, and in fear of the lobby not starting, they don't rep them. Joining a sub slot is viewed as a gamble because you can join a minute from the end or be auto-reported when it says "bad password", this lessens the pool of candidates that can join sub slots. Also, we need to restrict medic to 50+/25+ lobbies because the class requires a lot of game sense and can easily ruin lobbies.
There could also be a post lobby, troll report. But I fear that, if this was a feature, people would confuse trolls with new players.
If you need any clarification, add me on steam, http://steamcommunity.com/id/Schemex/, to set up a mumble meeting.
Edited by TheMattgician, 01 June 2014 - 12:56 PM.
Edited title in terms of what's scheduled