Why I Stopped Playing TF2

[Uncuepa]

It's been a little over a year since I regularly played TF2, and I wanted to cover why. I still love TF2, and I'm hopefully going to be finishing Hangar one day soon (as well as helping Lain with Sierra) but I think the simplest change could save the awful Casual system.

 

[Vel0city]

Hey, same reason here. Who doesn't love a bit of enforced fun on near-empty servers, meanwhile hundreds of empty Valve servers just sit there doing jack shit.

Switched to PUBG lately. I recommend you do the same. It's amazeballs.

 

[squ1rrel]

Don't play casual much either anymore. Used to attend commentaries regularly by this guy called TF2PublicFerret which was fun but kinda lost interest in it. Tired of playing on servers half empty all the time. If i wanted to play with teams of 6, I would have queued in crappy Valve 6v6... 12v12 pls
Hey at least map testing sessions are great!

 

[Da Spud Lord]

I'm on 3G so I can't watch the full video (because I don't feel like sitting through 20 sec buffering waits between 3 secs of video), but I have to agree that TF2 is a sinking ship. Casual is full of unbalanced matches where your team is either rolling or getting rolled (there is no inbetween). The game doesn't even try to balance for skill in Casual- you'll get people who probably just installed the game going up against people who are basically gods at the game. Rematches always contain low player counts and it takes the matchmaker ages to fill up these matches. (I'll literally play 3 or 5 matches with a total player count of 5 and about halfway through setup time in a random round suddenly the server fills up in 2 secs.) Autobalance isn't mandatory, autoscramble never happens, and because the matchmaker rarely matches players into ongoing games, unbalanced teams never get balanced. The server doesn't even try to substitute missing players with bots- At least Comp is nice enough to give you that. Speaking of Comp, it's even worse. Almost all of my experiences were full of hackers, abandoning players, and/or unbelievably unbalanced teams. Bots could be improved greatly with only minor tweaks, such as bots preferring high ground and not trying to minigun down a sniper across the map. In fact, sometimes I'll just play with bots on a listen server because I don't feel like dealing with Casual or Comp, and finding a good, populated community server is difficult.

The upcoming Pyro/Jungle update will likely decide TF2's fate- if TF2 will just casually stroll forward as it has in past years, if it will explode back into relevancy, or if it will simply die out. For TF2's sake, I have high hopes for the TFTeam, but the possibility of the update failing genuinely worries me.

 

[Uncuepa]

TF2 is a sinking ship

I don't think TF2 is dying, or will ever die. It is declining though. With there being many other fast paced shooter options out there its easy to see the issues with TF2 with clarity. People are gaining a greater perspective in what they like in a shooter. But TF2 is unique and a classic. No matter what, TF2 remains one of my favourite games of all time.

 

[Kreg]

This is interesting because it's basically why I stopped playing regularly. I actually stopped "playing" tf2 probably about a year or two ago. I say "playing" because I really only open up the game to test maps of my own or to play on the servers hosted by this community. I played roughly two hours of the competitive/casual update with great disappointment.

I just hope the game might get an update that puts the game in a healthier state instead of packing cosmetics and new items into the game. Not to say that I don't enjoy new items, but I feel maybe they added too many items before balancing them all properly.

 

[HashtagMC]

I only got back into TF2 after the "Meet your Match" update and hadn't played for two years or so in between, so... can somebody explain to me what's so bad about the Casual/Comp system?

 

[Uncuepa]

I only got back into TF2 after the "Meet your Match" update and hadn't played for two years or so in between, so... can somebody explain to me what's so bad about the Casual/Comp system?

If only there was a video in this thread that answered that very question

 

[HashtagMC]

If only there was a video in this thread that answered that very question

I don't like watching videos for explanations, makes me nervous ^^ I was hoping the explanation was simple enough to fit one or two sentences. Video, I might watch that later.

 

[Viemärirotta]

Same. I remember fun moments from fall 2015, flooding a valve server with like 20 people from your friends list or play with buddies that aren't located in Europe, although I am.

Now you can only queue with like 6 players max? But what's even better is how well the matchmaking handles parties with players from different continents. Before you could pick a eu/us server, friends would join from you with Steam. Well now I can't do that anymore, playing in a party with some of my friends end up having us wait like 20 mins to join a game.

 

[Da Spud Lord]

I don't like watching videos for explanations, makes me nervous ^^ I was hoping the explanation was simple enough to fit one or two sentences. Video, I might watch that later.

I'm on 3G so I can't watch the full video (because I don't feel like sitting through 20 sec buffering waits between 3 secs of video), but I have to agree that TF2 is a sinking ship. Casual is full of unbalanced matches where your team is either rolling or getting rolled (there is no inbetween). The game doesn't even try to balance for skill in Casual- you'll get people who probably just installed the game going up against people who are basically gods at the game. Rematches always contain low player counts and it takes the matchmaker ages to fill up these matches. (I'll literally play 3 or 5 matches with a total player count of 5 and about halfway through setup time in a random round suddenly the server fills up in 2 secs.) Autobalance isn't mandatory, autoscramble never happens, and because the matchmaker rarely matches players into ongoing games, unbalanced teams never get balanced. The server doesn't even try to substitute missing players with bots- At least Comp is nice enough to give you that. Speaking of Comp, it's even worse. Almost all of my experiences were full of hackers, abandoning players, and/or unbelievably unbalanced teams. Bots could be improved greatly with only minor tweaks, such as bots preferring high ground and not trying to minigun down a sniper across the map. In fact, sometimes I'll just play with bots on a listen server because I don't feel like dealing with Casual or Comp, and finding a good, populated community server is difficult.

The upcoming Pyro/Jungle update will likely decide TF2's fate- if TF2 will just casually stroll forward as it has in past years, if it will explode back into relevancy, or if it will simply die out. For TF2's sake, I have high hopes for the TFTeam, but the possibility of the update failing genuinely worries me.

 

[Vel0city]

I only got back into TF2 after the "Meet your Match" update and hadn't played for two years or so in between, so... can somebody explain to me what's so bad about the Casual/Comp system?

That downgr... I mean update took away the servers that about 80% of the people played on, replaced it with a to this day absolute garbage matchmaker to cater to a very small group of very vocal people (aka the comp guys) then forced "fun" upon everybody. The statement by Valve that "the server browser will have community servers for non-casual mm gaming" is true but in completely the wrong way. Yes, we have community servers but they are the same shithole Skial-esque servers that were there before the MyM downgr... I mean update only now there's 10x as many of them. THAT is what's bad and what hasn't been fixed to this day. And lets not start about the questionable to downright amazingly trash weapon changes (say bye-bye to Pyro's entire usefulness, Demo's swords being useful, etc).

 

[Kreg]

That downgr... I mean update took away the servers that about 80% of the people played on, replaced it with a to this day absolute garbage matchmaker to cater to a very small group of very vocal people

The statement by Valve that "the server browser will have community servers for non-casual mm gaming" is true but in completely the wrong way. Yes, we have community servers but they are the same shithole Skial-esque servers that were there before

This is my biggest issue with the update. It's really hard to find a good community server for playing the game without some sort of gimic, such as zombie mod or something. I've only really been able to find the No-Heroes' servers and this community's, but the servers are usually too full or empty because there are only a couple of them. It's just so easy for new players/returning players to jump into the matchmaker and make their decision of the entire game based solely on that.

 

[[Rx.] Christian Troy]

This is my biggest issue with the update. It's really hard to find a good community server for playing the game without some sort of gimic, such as zombie mod or something. I've only really been able to find the No-Heroes' servers and this community's, but the servers are usually too full or empty because there are only a couple of them. It's just so easy for new players/returning players to jump into the matchmaker and make their decision of the entire game based solely on that.

Don't forget the almighty king of community servers running achievement_idle_awesomebox_8 and the all famous x10 plugin. The f2p eat that shit up!

 

[Crash]

Don't forget the almighty king of community servers running achievement_idle_awesomebox_8 and the all famous x10 plugin. The f2p eat that shit up!

Yeah, those darn free to play kids, AMIRITE GUYS.

Ruining our game with their PLAYING and adding more chances of potential support towards game we all enjoy.

 

[Pocket]

I don't ever remember a time when the vast majority of dedicated servers were actually good for just jumping in and playing with randos. From the very beginning I was looking for specific community-run ones like the Cafe of Broken Dreams and 2fort2furious, and sticking to those almost exclusively. But then, I also lost interest in playing casually on official maps altogether around 2012 or so. It's hard to beat the variety you get from playing on new, untested maps every week. The reason those good dedicated servers disappeared is probably that, after five years or so, people just lost interest in running them. Asking why an online game died out is like asking why a movie is no longer playing in theaters. Because eventually everyone who wanted to see it already did, and now they're looking for something new.

 

[[Rx.] Christian Troy]

Yeah, those darn free to play kids, AMIRITE GUYS.

Ruining our game with their PLAYING and adding more chances of potential support towards game we all enjoy.

As you can read (Well, I guess not. You usually never actually do that) I didn't say anything bad there about them. So what is one to do when so called "Staff" is looking to start shit?

Either way, like it or not they pretty much dictate where the server traffic goes.

 

[MaccyF]

As you can read (Well, I guess not. You usually never actually do that) I didn't say anything bad there about them. So what is one to do when so called "Staff" is looking to start shit?

Either way, like it or not they pretty much dictate where the server traffic goes.

man sure would be nice if you weren't a massive cockwomble

you could have just said you didn't necessarily mean it in a bad way

 

[Another Bad Pun]

Don't forget the almighty king of community servers running achievement_idle_awesomebox_8 and the all famous x10 plugin. The f2p eat that shit up!

idk dude that seems pretty sarcastic to me
maybe work on your phrasing or something

 

[Crash]

As you can read (Well, I guess not. You usually never actually do that) I didn't say anything bad there about them. So what is one to do when so called "Staff" is looking to start shit?

Either way, like it or not they pretty much dictate where the server traffic goes.

Well with the exaggerated usage of "almighty king," "all famous," "eat that shit up," and a winking face at the end of it, it's hard not to take it as condescending.

Or it could just be your usual condescension tainted my perception of it.