CommunityFortress

YYoooo! eXtine here, proud to present another interview, this time with the fine folks behind TF2 Lobby. If you haven't been there yet, CHECK IT OUT. It's the easiest place to find a 6v6 competitive game and utilizes servers from all regions. Get in, get some game on, and help out those newbs!

eXtine: Hey guys! Why don't we start things off with some introductions. Who are you? And why are you so cool?

Mangy: I'm a custom mapper… some of my maps may be familiar (frontier, aurora, yukon, atrophy, seaside, wildfire…) I know floor through our community 2fort2furious.

FloorMaster: I run the 2fort2furious community. Outside of that, I've been heavily involved in promoting custom maps and have released a number of SourceMod plugins.

eXtine: What role is each of you responsible for in the development of and continued work on TF2 Lobby?

FloorMaster: Mangy's been one of the primary sources of development ideas, distilling feedback from the users into what features would best suit the broadest range of people. Flame and Mangy are more connected to the competitive community than I and use their contacts to keep that community's interests in mind as we make design decisions for the site. Mangy also leads our PR efforts, answering questions on forums or in chat.

Flame and Nineaxis deserve credit for creating the original mockups of what a lobby might look like, though their role in the actual development of the site has been limited.

Mangy: Floor's coded the whole thing, which consists of some ungodly number of lines of code.

eXtine: How long did development of TF2Lobby take before it was opened to the public (~Jan 19)?

FloorMaster: I think work started on a prototype of the actual lobby page on Jan 1. We had a simple system implemented that day where people could switch teams, change match settings, and have those changes seen by everyone else viewing the page. A few days later, we demoed the system to Robin Walker and got a lot of great feedback which we've since incorporated into the site. The development from Jan 10 onward is mostly documented in the site's change log, viewable on the News page.

Mangy: I don't think days are a good metric of actual development time- floor's sunk an enormous amount of time into this in terms of density. Watching him code through a full day is quite humbling!

eXtine: The success of TF2Lobby has been pretty explosive, with it suddenly being jam packed with players after public postings were made. What are the craziest statistics you got for me concerning player counts, server usage, and games played?

FloorMaster: We're seeing an average of 250 matches started per day. It's an incredible figure - an order of magnitude greater than the number of matches arranged through traditional methods. Over 8,500 players have registered on unique Steam accounts that own TF2. I don't have any numbers handy on players' overall usage, but the most active player has participated in well over 250 matches. We're all very happy with the site's growth, especially considering the minimal amount of PR we've done for it (which amounts to a handful of forum threads).

eXtine: Valve has given you a very commendable amount of support with donated servers, adjusting cvars and network code to facilitate TF2Lobby. How did this come about and what does the future of your relationship with Valve look like?

FloorMaster: There's nothing really special about our relationship with Valve; they've always given a tremendous amount of support to all facets of the community. However, there's absolutely no way TF2Lobby would have thrived the way it has so far without Valve's help.

Mangy: Valve's already added features into both steam and tf2 to help the lobby system work. They've sponsored etf2l and tf2m both with prizes in the past… without actually asking for that, perhaps it's something they would find worthwhile in the future.

eXtine: The TF2Lobby Stat system is unique and pretty damn awesome. What has been most difficult to implement, and what are some improvements we can look forward to?

FloorMaster: Processing the raw log data accurately was the most difficult part of the stats system, given that some game events aren't reported or some data is missing. As a result, we've sent a few requests to Valve to improve the output of the logfiles.

We recently released a comprehensive Cumulative Stats system which users can see on their TF2Lobby profile. We have a lot of major ideas in the pipeline, but some incremental improvements that may come sooner include larger match timelines for "long" maps like Granary and being able to specify filters for the timeline so that the timeline is annotated with markers indicating events of interest (e.g., times when you made a shovel kill).

Mangy: One thing that is overlooked is exactly HOW unique this system is; all stats are the summations  of discretely recorded events, timemarked, rather than the strict compilation methods of packages like hlstatsx or psychostats.

eXtine: Will Karma ratings be visible soon?

FloorMaster: I can't give a firm timetable on when karma will be unveiled yet. It's something we're being very careful about in terms of how the data is displayed to players and how resilient the system is against unscrupulous karma feedback. Ultimately we want karma to be purely an informational tool that lobby leaders can use in conjunction with other factors to determine if they're willing to host a particular player or not. This is in contrast to automatically filtering players based on karma. For now, we've placed a greater emphasis on deterring ragequits by displaying ragequit data, viewable by percentage and by actual numbers on player mouseover within the lobbies.

eXtine: Considering that some of the game servers are donated and server quality can be inconsistent, are you guys planning on implementing a way to ping servers before game or a Kharma system for servers?

FloorMaster: This is one of many concerns on our radar. Because of various issues that complicate pinging servers through web browsers, we're focusing providing better data on where servers are located. We obviously want to give players as many decision making tools as possible and flip over the traditional top-down model of how matches are organized (where a lot of admin intervention is required). Towards that end, we recently added map images displaying where a Lobby's server is located. These images are displayed when you hover over a Lobby in the Lounge, and can be expanded by clicking on the map image.

eXtine: I was in a lobby where one of my teammates was accused of cheating and then not only was he repeatedly kicked from the game, but other teammates were also kicked for protesting his innocence. Are you guys working on anything to prevent Administrator Abuses?

Mangy: We're setting up infrastructure to detect rcon usage midgame, but until then we can easily review lobby logs to detect such abuses. Several bans have been enacted as a result. I don't know where the childish drive to do this kind of thing comes from...

eXtine: Does TF2 Lobby need to do anything to battle cheaters, or is a complex anti-cheat system not worth your time?

Mangy: “The most reliable cheat detection has been and will remain the scrutiny of one's peers.” Without concrete rewards to lobbying, as with cash prizes in tournaments, the relative impact of cheating is lowered; we can ban users based on consensus reporting and our own judgment. League-run methods of cheat detection have been obtuse and inconvenient (screenshots, external clients) and we wish to make the lobby experience as streamlined and consistent as possible.

eXtine: Is it possible for you guys to implement a microphone test to ensure that players know they need to be able to communicate?

FloorMaster: Yes, this is something we'd like to explore in the future. We wouldn't restrict players on the basis of mic usage, but we of course want to emphasize strong communication in-game.

Mangy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkqVjB2OGGQ Steam hardware survey says 70% of users have microphones connected. Just hardball your peers into actually using the damned thing in the meantime. As floor said, an official solution on our end would be towards providing mic usage information to peers rather than an automated process.

eXtine: In any lobby system, balancing teams can be difficult due to team stacking. Any possibility of random teams at start or a captain pick mode?

Mangy: Unlike previous analogs, the lobby system is a very user-oriented rather than top-down approach to organizing games. We allow players to sort themselves out into balanced teams at the moment; stats help leaders get a metric for experience by player. Nearly any skill metric will be imperfect and so an automated solution is unlikely, but randomizing teams as a leader option can be done in the near future. Captain pick mode is easily done through chat…. A more formal solution has a very low development : effect achieved ratio.

eXtine: The use of TF2 Lobby by teams looking for scrimmages has been encouraged by you guys, how are you looking to further facilitate this?

Mangy: Team support is a logical extension of the current system; however, it is one for which the implementation is prohibitively complicated. Until such a point as lobbyside teams can be supported, we can consider having a secondary chat window for scrim discussion, or adding PMing so that lobby pws may be shared between team leaders. The rest of the infrastructure is there, though, so it's a matter of growth: with more teams present in the lobby will come more chances to scrim.

eXtine: TF2 Lobby seems like it could be the premiere place to play some highlander. Do you see other game modes being available? 2v2 Basketball? Even though no one has made it yet, could TF2Lobby lead to the resurgence of Hunted?

Mangy: Remember that the smaller the game type, the smaller the ratio of players served : lobbies used becomes. I wouldn't say that completely rules out bball in the future. Hunted is supported through a variety of sourcemod plugins and custom maps; the gametype doesn't really work well and I believe invade CTF is the closest acceptable analogue.

eXtine: You guys have made a major contribution to the community with the TF2 Lobby website. What can we do for you?

Mangy: I would hope for as much word of mouth publicity as possible. If everyone invites even one or two players on their steam friends list we can grow exponentially. Really all I'd ask for is usage, especially at higher tiers of play. Another thing that might help is to petition Valve for better voice codecs…. Why are we all still mussing around in mumble and vent when we could have that quality within the game itself? If you agree, send a friendly email gabe's way.

Big thanks to Mangy Carface, Floor Master, Valve for their support, and everyone who has played a part in TF2 Lobby! Some exciting things to look forward to!