Casual Mode Update

[Pocket]

official community server support would be neato

clean up the server browser, make it more intuitive and look nicer, get people to actually consider community servers again and pubs as people knew them will be back in no time.
people are just scared of community servers and the server browser is all

Also, we need servers that don't have ridiculous mods to be easy to find. This might require a radical retooling of the official server software so that mods have to do the equivalent of enabling cheats in order to deviate too far from vanilla, and have an option to filter those out. The tag system we have now isn't cutting it, in a number of ways.

It should also be easier for a 100% vanilla server to be viable; right now the game is still missing features that Sourcemod has popularized so much that most players — at least most people who play on community servers — consider them essential. Players should be able to nominate maps and call for an early switch. Heck, with the full power of the game's GUI at their disposal, nomination could be done with a big point-and-click menu instead of Sourcemod's clunky ten-key overlay. I'd even favor beefing the map vote menu up to a rank-in-order-of-preference system (aka Australian ballot), just to one-up Sourcemod even more.

 

[Pocket]

Fourth, Casual Mode levels. Levels are a cosmetic feature that show how much you've played. They can never be lost, and they do not affect matchmaking. We did a poor job of communicating that Casual Mode Levels are in no way similar to Competitive Mode Ranks (which do affect matchmaking, and can be lost).

Purely-cosmetic levels were a bad idea when they added them to items, and they're a bad idea now for the same reason. A game with this much legitimately-significant information to learn should not be bogging itself down with information that tricks you into thinking it's important.

 

[Hyperion]

Remember this?

Now only thing Valve has to do is to add "official maps" only button there

 

[Yrr]

Please don't make Valve stifle community servers again.

 

[Another Bad Pun]

Now only thing Valve has to do is to add "official maps" only button there

but my custom maps

 

[Crash]

Remember this?

Now only thing Valve has to do is to add "official maps" only button there

As a custom map community, this would put us right back to where we were with quick play killing off any chance of servers running our stuff. This is bad.

 

[Yrr]

Community Quickplay with filters for Vanilla, Vanilla + Custom Maps, Mod-heavy and Community Gamemodes would be the ideal fix imo

I'd love to get people rallying behind this but Reddit hates community servers.

 

[dryerlint]

Perhaps Valve could give out "endorsements" of some sort if a community server fulfills certain requirements? For example: no ads, no obtrusive plugins, and no excessive premium benefits. Then you could filter out "unapproved" servers.

However, I have no idea how Valve would organize this, considering there are thousands of community servers out there. Maybe a community voting system?

 

[leprecan]

I'd love to get people rallying behind this but Reddit hates community servers.

Yeah, its kind of funny how hard many people on reddit go against Community servers when back in the day they had at least one server on both the East and West Coast that were pretty good. Its been so long since Community servers were popular and filled almost 24/7 that people don't think its possible anymore.

To replace Valve servers does mean that every region needs enough Community Vanilla servers that any map can be jumped onto with players at any time, and thats a tall order to fill.

 

[Yrr]

I think we really need more vocal people rallying behind the idea, spreading it to the people asking for pubs, and nudging valve for some kind of community quickplay

 

[GroundCode_]

I'm kinda really getting sick of these heavily-modded community servers with admin abuse, ads, etc. I can't play anything else besides training mode because the GC won't match me with anything. Since the update I haven't been able to play on an official Valve server, not a single one... this is ridiculous. There's not a need for Casual Mode, it's just a more competitive pub, and the GC won't match players if they aren't the "optimal" players for the match because their ping is high (this is what's happening to myself). The servers are also not hosted in the most optimal places, so a lot of players have a lower priority to those that are closer to where the servers are hosted (or maybe I'm just a dumbass and you're not paired based on ping). Anyway, just bring Quickplay back, "The best solution to a problem is usually the easiest one."
Quickplay fixes the:
-Long wait-times because players choose the server, not the GC
-Inability to choose the map you want to play on
-Inability to kick cheaters and others
-(List other stuff here, I'm lazy)...
Point is you restore the "Casual" aspects of TF2. Sure, Quickplay has it's downsides, but it's better than Casual. There's no reason Casual and Quickplay can't co-exist, but replacing Quickplay with Casual will never work, mostly because you can't choose your own match.

 

[zahndah]

or maybe I'm just a dumbass and you're not paired based on ping

I have played 2 games of casual each with just a two minute search, and i had over two hunred ping in both. Despite this i found casual much, much, much better than i ever found pubs because the slight level of competetivity means everyone is trying usually meaning i can be a good team player and have more fun.

 

[leprecan]

I'm kinda really getting sick of these heavily-modded community servers with admin abuse, ads, etc. I can't play anything else besides training mode because the GC won't match me with anything. Since the update I haven't been able to play on an official Valve server, not a single one... this is ridiculous. There's not a need for Casual Mode, it's just a more competitive pub, and the GC won't match players if they aren't the "optimal" players for the match because their ping is high (this is what's happening to myself). The servers are also not hosted in the most optimal places, so a lot of players have a lower priority to those that are closer to where the servers are hosted (or maybe I'm just a dumbass and you're not paired based on ping). Anyway, just bring Quickplay back, "The best solution to a problem is usually the easiest one."
Quickplay fixes the:
-Long wait-times because players choose the server, not the GC
-Inability to choose the map you want to play on
-Inability to kick cheaters and others
-(List other stuff here, I'm lazy)...
Point is you restore the "Casual" aspects of TF2. Sure, Quickplay has it's downsides, but it's better than Casual. There's no reason Casual and Quickplay can't co-exist, but replacing Quickplay with Casual will never work, mostly because you can't choose your own match.

I know it doesn't answer your request for Quickplay to come back, but maybe this can help a bit. There was an r/tf2 thread that compiled a list of Vanilla TF2 Community servers per region a couple days ago, maybe you can have some better luck there?

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/4rut9x/some_good_community_servers_for_different_regions/

 

[GroundCode_]

I have played 2 games of casual each with just a two minute search, and i had over two hunred ping in both.

Well by crappy ping, I mean there are literally no servers in my crappy DSL 1mbps area, so I'm forced to connect over seas (and sometimes oceans) to play on a Casual Mode servers, which I still haven't been able to get on since the update was released even with literal hours of waiting.

Despite this i found casual much, much, much better than i ever found pubs because the slight level of competetivity means everyone is trying usually meaning i can be a good team player and have more fun.

Okay, but doesn't Competitive Mode let people who want to play competitively do so? I mean, it's what it was intended for. I get it, Casual Mode is like a lower ranked Competitive Mode, and I'm fine with that. However, that doesn't mean it can replace pubs or Quickplay because a lot of players don't want to always play competitively, like myself.

...butmostlyIdon'tlikeCasualModejustbecauseIcan'tactuallyjoinagameanditfuckingsucks. :/

 

[zahndah]

It doesnt really feel competetive though, its just like a really good pub.

It is really a shame that you have such drastic wait times, are you sure you dont have anything else enabled that would not allow you to connect? As it really does suck that you just can no longer play.

 

[UKCS-Alias]

Community Quickplay with filters for Vanilla, Vanilla + Custom Maps, Mod-heavy and Community Gamemodes would be the ideal fix imo

Some servers fake all this info anyway to gather as much players as possible, it barely will do anything to that. At most the custom maps filter should be possible, but with that it should allow custom maps by default.

 

[GroundCode_]

It doesnt really feel competetive though, its just like a really good pub.

It is really a shame that you have such drastic wait times, are you sure you dont have anything else enabled that would not allow you to connect? As it really does suck that you just can no longer play.

Yeah... I really am just stuck waiting, Oh well... back to the bots and community servers.

 

[PMAvers]

Perhaps Valve could give out "endorsements" of some sort if a community server fulfills certain requirements? For example: no ads, no obtrusive plugins, and no excessive premium benefits. Then you could filter out "unapproved" servers.

However, I have no idea how Valve would organize this, considering there are thousands of community servers out there. Maybe a community voting system?

They've been pushing something like this for a upcoming update, where they want people's servers to be tied to the owner's Steam account for verification purposes.

Back in May, on hlds_linux, they posted this.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to give a heads-up about some upcoming changes to the way
server accounts work in TF.

In an future update, we are going to be introducing features that will
only be available to game servers that have a registered game server
SteamID, via the Game Server Login Token (GSLT) system. This system has
existed for some time, but is currently only used in TF for persistent
favouriting in the server browser. It has also gained some more
restrictions recently that you should be aware of.

- Game server accounts are tied to an owning Steam user account
- This Steam account must not be currently community banned or locked.
- This Steam account must not be limited
<https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3330-IAGK-7663>.
- This Steam account must have a qualifying registered phone
<https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8625-WRAH-9030&l=english>.
- Game servers that violate the community guidelines for the game they
are hosting may have their access suspended or revoked.
- Game server account suspensions or bans also apply to *all* other game
servers tied to said Steam user

More info and management tools are here:
https://steamcommunity.com/dev/managegameservers

For TF specifically, being free-to-play, access to some upcoming
features may eventually depend on the qualifications the owning Steam
user account. So, while creating dedicated individual user accounts to
own individual game servers is possible, it may lead to an increased
burden in the future. We recommend game server accounts be registered
to the Steam account of the acting server owner -- GSPs should require
clients to provide their own tokens.

This change will allow us to have a greater level of confidence in game
servers, by making it easier to revoke access for bad actors and better
tying game servers to their owners. The increased persistence gives us
many more opportunities to assign trust to community servers, and to
provide them access to features that would otherwise be too open for
abuse. It also provides a much better mechanism for dealing with abuse
than the current IP-ban system that is both less effective and more
painful for server providers that share IPs between clients.

We will have more information once we are ready to begin rolling out
these features, but I wanted to send this heads up such that current
admins and server providers can look into integrating this support into
their setups.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns and I will try to
address them,
- Neph

 

[Davekillerish]

I havent bothered with casual mode, because its not casual, its watered down 6's and I dont like it.
I do, on the other hand, like the spike in community servers that arent garbage.
In fact I have even seen a game type (like were it says 10x,trade,mvm,minecraft,rtd) were it actually says Pub Server - Vanilla, and its like a valve server without sv_pure 1!!!!

 

[leprecan]

Some servers fake all this info anyway to gather as much players as possible, it barely will do anything to that. At most the custom maps filter should be possible, but with that it should allow custom maps by default.

Faking tags is grounds to be removed from Quickplay, at least under the old rules. Trouble would then be getting Valve to do more purges.

I havent bothered with casual mode, because its not casual, its watered down 6's and I dont like it.
I do, on the other hand, like the spike in community servers that arent garbage.
In fact I have even seen a game type (like were it says 10x,trade,mvm,minecraft,rtd) were it actually says Pub Server - Vanilla, and its like a valve server without sv_pure 1!!!!

Casual doesn't play anything like 6s, Valve's version or otherwise. I have seen a wide class variety, not just the 6s metaclasses. My 4 or 5 Casual games have been closer to a Highlander game with a few spares. That being said, you might want to hold off playing Casual until vote kick is introduced, a single hacker can really bring down a game when you can't even remove them. Also, waiting for map selection would be nice so you don't have to play 9 point stopwatch on goldrush for 45 minutes.