Team Fortress 2 Update Released

[AsG_Alligator]

Casual was made to appeal to newer players, who just want to click play and be put into a server rather than have to learn how to join a server. Also if you want to play in a community server, there is the teamwork.tf community quickplay option to find a server, as well as the usual server browser.

Personally I don't mind casual, and it's relatively easy to queue with your friends, and you can now queue for games that your friends are in, which is nice. It also means that no one has to be on a server that is virtually empty for an extended period of time, as (at least in my experience) the game often places you in a server that (once everyone has joined) is at least half full, and generally around the 18-24 players mark.

It is semi-full untill the matchmaker gets an aneurysm and forgets how to fill empty slots. Quickplay didnt have such issues. If you joined a semi-full server it would usually remain full throughout your playsession.

With casual quite often matchmaker forgets how to do its job and you are left with 2-4 player teams for multiple rounds untill it regains its sanity.

Quickplay was superior to casual, period.

 

[Moonrat]

Casual was made to appeal to newer players, who just want to click play and be put into a server rather than have to learn how to join a server. Also if you want to play in a community server, there is the teamwork.tf community quickplay option to find a server, as well as the usual server browser.

Personally I don't mind casual, and it's relatively easy to queue with your friends, and you can now queue for games that your friends are in, which is nice. It also means that no one has to be on a server that is virtually empty for an extended period of time, as (at least in my experience) the game often places you in a server that (once everyone has joined) is at least half full, and generally around the 18-24 players mark.

But when Quickplay was around that's all you had to do as well. Just look for a gamemode you want to play, then click play. And it put you in a server in seconds. a FARCRY from all the damn waiting casual forces you through.

Casual was really implemented to attempt to bridge the divide between the pub community and the competitive community. But of course it only really managed to displease both parties. Comp players don't want to play Casual because it's filled with unbalanced 12v12s and maps you don't play in competitive. Meanwhile Casual players don't want to play competitive because the restrictions in map pool and team size. And of course we don't even need to mention the state in-game competitive is in, with no weapon/class bans and just NOBODY playing it.

So all the lobbying and matchmaking and other shit MYM brought about really didn't help anyone. With the grand canyon sized divide between comp and pubs in TF2, I don't honestly think there is a way to bridge the gap, and I don't really see the point of trying if you only end up with everyone disappointed.

 

[Idolon]

Don't forget that matchmaking was also meant to make the game more appealing to incoming players, which is a big part of what keeps the game alive.

There's also an argument for how the lack of ad-hoc connections makes it difficult for harassers to track down players, since they can't just join any server willy-nilly. This is only beneficial to a select group of people, but I figure it's worth mentioning.

My main problem with matchmaking at the moment, beyond just efficiency issues (which have been pretty steadily improving), is map selection. I can queue for payload with every map marked except Goldrush, get matched into a game, and then the server decides to switch map to Goldrush. I like that servers rotate maps between matches, but there's some maps that I just don't want to play, and maybe it would make more sense to match players together based on what maps they don't want to play rather than the ones they do. Servers that also just stick on the same map 24/7 would be nice.

 

[Mikroscopic]

I think I prefer casual's approach to joining servers, at least in design. Being able to choose which specific maps you want to play is nice, I just wish they could fix the issues with wait times and filling slots. And of course, I'd like to play more than two rounds on each map. Other than that though, I can't really recall any other differences that quick play actually had from casual.

 

[Zed]

Casual, at the very least, connects me to servers that are actually nearby instead of matching me to servers halfway around the world, no matter what I set my max ping to.

 

[Empyre]

I liked how it was before Quickplay. You would join one of your favorite user-made servers and play TF2 with friends. Quickplay killed all the user-made servers.