A pickup is basically a clan match (6v6) with mixed players but they get picked 1 by 1 by each team captain. Pickups are a good way to play together in a more organized way than compared to public servers, it teaches you more aspects of competitive gameplay.
TF2 Pickups Format
- ·Team format : 6v6
- ·Class restriction : 1 Medic, 1 Demoman, 1 Heavy and 2 of any other classes
- ·Server mods : *Crits disabled (No random crits for any class) *Deadtalk Enabled (Your can still talk with your team while dead)
- ·Maps : Push maps are used most the times.
Those “Push” maps are 5 control based capture points like: CP Badlands, CP Granary, CP Well, CP Freight and CP Yukon just to name some of the popular ones that we use at the moment.
The pickup game when played on push map will have a 30 minutes or 5 rounds limit to win the game, so if any of the teams don’t reach 5 round wins after the time limit of 30 minutes then the team with more rounds won will be the winner. But in case of a draw after time is up then will be played a “Golden Round” where the first team to win a single round will be winner of the game.
In order to facilitate with the transition from a casual TF2 player, to a competitive TF2 player, one must be familiar with the use of IRC.
While not a very complicated tool, IRC is a very versatile one. Allowing people to:
-Join #tf2, thus converse, ask questions, make friends, within the TF2 community.
-PM specific people in IRC, thus allowing you to ask for recruitment purposes, clan games, or simple conversation.
-Create new channels – be it for you and your friends, or for you and your clan, or for both. Private or public. Any type of channel you want, with whatever name you want, can be yours, provided it's not taken.
-Add to pickups, organize clan games, create new clans, get info about specific things, ask people anything.
It's pretty much a centralized chat service.
A big complaint people seem to have is using IRC, thus a while back, we created a setup pack that installed and launched directly into the #tf2 channel, the only input required by the user is your nickname to use this pack, download from here: http://www.quickshare.co.za/fi…..k.rar.html
To use this, do the following
1. Download
2. Extract
3. Launch Mirc.exe in the folder
4. Click continue
5. Input your nickname next to nickname
6. Click okay, and there you go. You're in IRC
It's suggested that you don't close IRC regularly, it's very beneficial to simply remain logged in, maybe some potential captain may recruit you, maybe some potential article writer may need to ask a question or two, may some potential new player might want to join your team, or perhaps you could get some info on the latest TF2 gossip.
Anyway, enjoy IRC – if you choose to use this mIRC pack. I hope to see you in #tf2 soon.
Registering your nick (Not necessary but recommended)
How to register and identify yourself in IRC:
Once you have downloaded, extracted and run IRC, change your name to your desired name and in your Shadowfire window (Not a necessity, but if you type it in another window and make a mistake, people will see your password) type: /ns register password email.
Enter in your own password and email address where necessary. Once you have done this check your email and follow the instructions.
Now that you have your nickname registered, you need to identify it everytime you open IRC. You do this by typing /msg nickserv identify password (Your own password replaces 'password' in the code)
An easier way to do this would be to go to Tools > Options, under Connect go to options then click on Perform. Tick the Enable on connect at the top of the window that comes up and type /msg nickserv identify password under 'Perform commands'
Here you can also add any other channels you would like to Join on Connect, just type /join #isgaming for example.
Click on Ok and the next time you open IRC, you should automatically be identified and join any channels you have selected to join on start up.
**Credits to _enemy and Whisp for the IRC guide**
