Team Fortress 2 Update Released

[tf2.com]

An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Team Fortress 2. The major changes include:
Matchmaking

• Players can now form rematches at the end of a Casual match
  • At the end of a Casual match, players will have 30 seconds to opt-in to a rematch
  • If at least 6 players from BLU and 6 players from RED have chosen to rematch, then a rematch will begin
  • A rematch will use the same teams, map and server
• Players can now re-queue into Casual Matchmaking during the end of a match
  • Players who decline a rematch or simply don't vote in the rematch voting period will automatically be re-queued
• Updated the way XP is earned in Casual matches
  • Players will now be awarded more XP based on their team's performance at the end of a match
  • XP is no longer lost for leaving a Casual match early
  • A breakdown of XP sources is now shown when your XP bar fills up
• Casual matches now more strongly prefer to distribute players to teams based on experience, in order to better avoid creating one-sided matches
• Casual matches are now more likely to start with fewer than 24 players in lower population game-modes or regions, wherein the wait time for a full match would become excessive
  • The current minimum allowable match size in such situations is twelve players
  • The matchmaker will still attempt to place late-joiners into these matches as they become available
• Competitive matches no longer terminate when any player abandons the match
  • Bots will now fill in for players who have abandoned, or temporarily disconnected from, Competitive matches
  • Matches that finish at an advantage or disadvantage (e.g. 6v5 or 5v6, not counting any bots) will now result in smaller or larger skill rating adjustments for advantaged wins or disadvantaged losses, respectively
  • Competitive matches that lose more than one player per team will keep the current behavior of ending the match
  • Players who abandon Competitive matches still receive a large skill rating penalty and Competitive matchmaking cooldown, regardless of whether a bot was allowed to take their place
• Greatly improved the reliability of client ping estimates when placing users into matchmaking servers
  • The game client now periodically checks in with the matchmaking server network to estimate ping to each region, and feeds the information back to the matchmaking system
  • This should greatly reduce cases of players being placed in regions to which they have poor ping, even when said regions are geographically nearby
• The scoreboard now shows the connection status for missing and connecting players

• General
  • Added tournament medals for ozfortress Season 16 and Season 17
  • Fixed an exploit related to the Eureka Effect and carrying buildings
  • Fixed Live Streams menu not displaying the list of streams
  • Fixed the flamethrower not drawing the Halloween Spell: Spectral Flame effect during Halloween and Full Moon events
  • Updated the localization files

Read on the TF2 Blog...

 

[Davekillerish]

layers can now form rematches at the end of a Casual match

YES YES YES YES YES

 

[TyeZenneth]

Updated the localization files

FUCKING FINALLY

 

[Diva Dan]

The bots taking place of abandoners is actually incredible! CS:GO uses a similar system. (cs also lets you take over the bot, but that doesn't really have a place in tf2 with respawning and all). I'm also glad that you earn MORE xp for having an abandoner on your team because you are at a disadvantage, super cool.

 

[Kube]

I think the Meet Your Match update was one of the best to come to TF2, it just needed a little while.

 

[theatreTECHIE]

I'm still waiting for there to be map votes at the end of a casual match

 

[Hi5TBone]

I think the Meet Your Match update was one of the best to come to TF2, it just needed a little while.

Yeah, at a glance (the update pages) It's a really good update. It was just executed poorly. I think by now most of the problems are resolved (?)
For my tastings at least.

 

[Yrr]

I'm still waiting for there to be map votes at the end of a casual match

tbh i dont think that'd work cause not everyone in the match has the same map choices

anyways i just played and rematch votes are pretty cool

 

[theatreTECHIE]

tbh i dont think that'd work cause not everyone in the match has the same map choices

True, although they might be able to have nominations or something, similar to the sourcemod plugin. Or it could have a look at everyone's map choices that they used to queue into casual in the first place, and pick the most popular out of those.

 

[Yrr]

True, although they might be able to have nominations or something, similar to the sourcemod plugin. Or it could have a look at everyone's map choices that they used to queue into casual in the first place, and pick the most popular out of those.

still gonna have most people leave and requeue when the winning map is selected

+ this is at odds w/ the rematch system, people wanna marathon maps for a while

 

[Bakscratch]

I'm still waiting for there to be map votes at the end of a casual match

They have that in csgo, so you only play dust 2

 

[Pocket]

If they really want this to be a completely different experience from playing on a community server, they should just make it like other casual multiplayer games nowadays — decouple it from the server system entirely, spin up virtual servers on the fly, and kick everyone back to the matchmaking menu when the map ends. Even during the Quickplay era, it was dumb to pull up my history tab and see all these random Valve servers, half of which weren't even running the same gamemode that they were the week before.

 

[nickybakes]

They have that in csgo, so you only play dust 2

They changed the way the voting works a couple months ago. Now you can't vote for the map that was just played. So now you only ever play dust 2 and mirage, but I have seen a huge increase in the other maps that aren't dust 2 being played when they changed this.

 

[Moonrat]

They changed the way the voting works a couple months ago. Now you can't vote for the map that was just played. So now you only ever play dust 2 and mirage, but I have seen a huge increase in the other maps that aren't dust 2 being played when they changed this.

I haven't played anything besides Comp in months, but thank god for that.

 

[EArkham]

I haven't actually played TF2 since before the MyM update.

Not by choice, just because matchmaking delays everything tremendously. I go in, pick some map I like such as pl_borneo, wait...and wait...and wait... and wait...and finally give up. Even after that long wait was supposedly fixed.

It bugs me that it'll say something like "14 eligible matches" and I'm thinking "well, that's 7 to a team, that's fine, put me in that." But no. You have to wait until a full server is ready. And if you do manage to make it through all that, the next question is "why is my ping freaking 200?"

Hopefully this update will change that. Looking forward to giving it a try.

• Casual matches are now more likely to start with fewer than 24 players in lower population game-modes or regions, wherein the wait time for a full match would become excessive

I'm definitely not in a lower population region, and I would not expect payload to be a lower population game mode, but maybe this fixes one of my big problems.

I mean, yanno... it's casual. Years and years of quickly and easily bouncing around servers on a whim may have spoiled me, but there's really no reason that carefree convenience should be gone.

 

[Yrr]

It's never taken that long to queue for me, I've always had a big list of maps I'm willing to play tho, I never went into quickplay with a specific map in mind.

 

[Diva Dan]

Same here, I usually turn on PL and AD and remove maybe swiftwater and I get in a game almost instantly. I guess some maps are less popular than others (which you can see using the green bar behind the map name). I just keep my map choices in mind when thinking of queue times.

I do agree that I wouldn't mind being placed in matches with fewer players, though- those can even end up being more fun!

 

[Davekillerish]

This update broke my hud. At least I hope its a broken hud, I played an MM game and constantly froze with only 50 ping, simular to lag spikes. I was also missing text info from the hud, ammo reserve, health number, etc. Also certain sounds were missing, explosions, firing sounds of certain weapons, ambient map sounds, walking sounds, it wasnt muted but alot was missing... it was a very odd game to lose to.

 

[Yrr]

This update broke my hud. At least I hope its a broken hud, I played an MM game and constantly froze with only 50 ping, simular to lag spikes. I was also missing text info from the hud, ammo reserve, health number, etc. Also certain sounds were missing, explosions, firing sounds of certain weapons, ambient map sounds, walking sounds, it wasnt muted but alot was missing... it was a very odd game to lose to.

verify your game cache, that sounds like a botched update install not a hud error

 

[DrLambda]

Wait, if bots take the place of leavers, what about Hightower... or rather any map where bots weren't working on before this update?