PuG Ladder Spring 2025: Final Week

April 28, 2025

PuG Ladder Spring 2025 is coming to an end with the upcoming Week 8. The final EU and NA (&SA) pick-up games of Week 8 will be played on Friday May 2 and Saturday May 3, respectively. Let us use this opportunity to talk about the ladder, and invite everyone to our Discord server for the final opportunity to impact it.

A Brief History of Ladders

The ladder format was used by ETF2L more than a decade ago. It was a way to officially record the PCWs (private clan wars, or “scrims” as it is more commonly called today) played between teams outside of a tournament or league setting.

It is still possible today to find the records of ladder matches played on individual team or player pages; as well as the pages of the ladder matches themselves on ETF2L’s web site (see the example). However, the ladder season pages are not in public archives of ETF2L anymore, and web archives are the only way to see them as much as they are available. No team is granted honors in their page for a ladder season win either. This makes us rely mostly on our memories in our statements here.

Ladders provided official grounds to schedule, play and report matches pre-season. For the newcomers, it eased up onboarding an official setting. For the newly-formed teams with seasoned players, ladder results could be used as proof of higher skill to start the next season from a higher division than “Open” (“Division 6” at the time). After ETF2L announced the Valve-supported Highlander Community Challenge (possibly the most attended TF2 tournament to have ever been organized), Highlander Ladder was the way for masses to try out this “new”, 9v9 competitive game mode.

CompTF2C PUG Ladder

As CompTF2C is in its “pre-breakthrough” period, we wanted to see where we are standing in terms of playerbase, its commitment and future potential. We wanted to amplify these by spicing things up. A ladder came up as the answer, and immediately resonated with everyone in the team. With a difference though. Since there were no competitive TF2C teams formed yet, it was going to be a player-based, “PuG Ladder”. Due to this, it is more of a simplified “ELO” system. Note that pugBot, which could make ELO tracking possible, is actually introduced to our Discord server by our admin sage (host of live TF2 EU Newbie pugs). However, without compatibility of TF2C with logs.tf and other utilities, it is not possible to make use of these features. Yet another reason to look forward to the Steam release of TF2C in 2025.

We have been aware that while it does spice things up, the ladder system is far from being the perfect evaluation criteria of one’s true performance. In this sense, we have transparently communicated what it is, and what it should not be perceived as. Please see the Rules & FAQ tab in the PUG Ladder sheet.

So far we really appreciate the interest you showed to the Ladder. Some of you have been ruining your F5 buttons refreshing the ladder page, chasing us to update it after the games, and generously warning us of the mistakes in the data entered. On the other hand, we were hoping to see more team formations. Apparently, that still has some time.

Final Week

Approaching the final week, f is leading the Ladder board, with Geemo and Core2Duo following from behind. The highest scoring North American, 4th-place holder bub is in a more difficult position to contest the title, but nothing is impossible.

In terms of the number of matches played as Medic, Core2Duo is the closest to be the doctor of our community, followed by f, sandwich, aceknow and сирёжа.

On Friday, May 2, at 20:30 CET (18:30 UTC), EU PuGs will start. On Saturday, May 3, at 19:00 EST (23:00 UTC), NA (SA) PuGs. As per usual, players are invited to join any game regardless of their region, regardless of their skill level.

Do not miss the final chance of getting your name up there!