TF2 Pubs have "Met Their Match"

[Davekillerish]

-Valve removed the public servers, and are relying on non-existant community servers to take their place, so their servers can be used to support a 12v12 standard "casual" play that logs how you play and uses a progression system TF2 never needed.

-TF2 never held itself to a higher standard of other games, it simply was it was, a game of 9 over the top classes fighting over useless stuff and blowing up holes in the desert, but this game has changed so much…

-The TF2 fun is being sucked out, and very slowly youll see what I mean, as this new casual play comes into full view, and also not taking litterally 3 hours to join a game, youll see a decline in players playing how THEY want to play, pootis heavies, rancho engineers, taunt killers, youtubers wanting a fun time will now be voted off the game or just flat out HATED in-game for not contributing to the fight.

-TF2 never reacted to another games success by mimicking what makes that game good, or successful, until now.

-Valve is completing overlooking the TF2 pub experience, which is, or was, my main draw to TF2, The matches weren't important, winning or losing, having FUN was the priority.

-I used to be able to join game and not have to worry about my Experience level, or what level the game thinks im at, TF2 worked perfectly fine without a progression system, and now its enforced with a competitive TF2 in mind.

-Valve is now essentially scarfing the Comp community down our throats, and im not going to swallow it.

Spoiler: Angry Customers

there's this atmosphere of 'Igottawin' in Casual mode. And it also punishes people for leaving.
What I want is an environment which I can chillex the stupid but relaxed and not too serious tf2 atmosphere and its gone now.
Of course, anyone can argue that there are community servers but as a matter of fact, there aren't in this area where I am living.

Before I lauded TF2 as the online multiplayer game for people, like myself, who hate online multiplayer games. No stats were saved between games, nobody cared about other's performances, nothing was stopping you from quitting mid-match, it didn't matter who won or lost. It was just nine larger-than-life characters blowing each other up in the desert

This may prove to be an emotion fueled jump-to-conclusion, but all that seems to be fucking gone
*Update*
Yeah, I guess I could go to community servers but here’s the thing, I don’t want to.
Taking away options can only only weaken the game as a whole. Maybe I hate The Pub Experience now, but when I was starting out it was the best! If I installed the game for the first time today and saw the only consistent way to play tracked your scores and shit, I would have gone back to Civ V

I can't even enjoy playing on Community Servers now because of my weapon view models being stuck at 70. (I normally play at 85-90.) While I completely support the idea of the new minimal view models, the change of having to play with the weapon either right up in my face or only kinda being able to see it with it still being too close to my face is personally the worst part of this update and the worst update so far.

I'm convinced they did this to try and bring life back to TF2 by appealing to competitive. But all they did was alienate the non-comp players. They could have at least kept some old quickplay servers for those who want to drop in and drop out.

This whole update was based on the views of a minority in Tf2: The competitive players.
They got the update they wanted with the changes they wanted, while the (let's say) 90% of other players got worse than nothing. Worse than nothing because it took away the thing we all used to use: Quickplay servers.
I was hopeful for this update because it would allow the minority of players to get the thing that they were missing and had to make themselves (ESEA, UGC) for 9 years.
But instead they forced the majority to move over to a system that they have never used and have never wanted.

At this point, I've just given up. There's no point in playing this game when it fails to maintain a connection to the TF coordinator which is the only way to get the stock TF2 experience of no-nonsense, stock maps gameplay and when it finally DOES connect you're stuck for 20 minutes while the game is stuck in an endless searching loop.

Fucking hell, so many negative changes to MvM.

RIP Soda Popper, RIP Brass Beast, RIP boots. Also Shortstop lost its healing so it isn't viable either.

Overall pretty random update. Definitely Valve has listened top tier comp players because I don't understand most of the changes at all. Even tho medic is one of my favourite classes, I don't like the medigun change either. IMO medigun balance was fine with the exception of Vaccinator overheal penalty

Can't get into competitive match so I can be owned by the pros

Can't get into a pub so I can be punished for leaving a casual game

Can't check out the new items on a community server because item server is down

 

[Strandedpasta]

I feel valve just made a mini-competitive version instead of the pubs we used to love. And I can see why. People play casually more then competitively. So I guess its there for balancing players skill levels in that category.

But the problem is that they complement the Competitive aspect too much into pubs. So pubs are just a watered down version of competitive. Which is not a good idea when most of the people, who play this game, don't care about competitive.

So I agree, rather valve fixes the time for loading and allow to chose whatever map you want, or just change casual back to pubs. But until then, we will raise our pitch forks and annoy valve with our opinion.

#bringbackpubs

 

[puxorb]

I haven't played in a while but I checked out the game a few days ago. Its like everything that made this game unique to me is missing now. There are changes to weapons I never would have considered needing them. I hate the new hud. I hate that all the color correction is gone from every map. 2fort looks horrible, the map that I thought had some of the best detailing now looks washed out and has a drab atmosphere. For some reason, even maps that didn't use it look ugly. I hate how textures and weapon models fade in when you first see them. This game definitely had its flaws but it always seemed so clean and simple to me. Everyone's weapons are shiny and there are distracting particle effects everywhere.

Maybe I'm speaking like a bitter old man, but ever since they started to appeal to competitive players the game has taken a turn for the worse. So much is different now. I wish I could aquire a build from 2011 or 2012, when the game was starting to get huge after the F2P update.

Man, I know how vanilla WoW players feel now.

 

[Beef Bucket]

Let it never be said that I am the type of twat to criticize a situation while offering no solutions so allow me to throw out

My Plan for Casual Matchmaking

Step One: Track Only Positive Stats
Track a wide range of performance analytics, but no losses or deaths
This is the best compromise I can think of to ensure the game remains casual while appealing to the crowd who care about shit

Step Two: Sort Players into Five Skill levels
Advance ranks by playing against players of equal or higher rank
The outcome of the match does not matter as long as you do well
Progress between levels is not affected by you dying or losing a match, leaving you free to abandon or high-five the opposing team

Step Three: Offer Options
Offer servers allowing a wide range of skill levels, such as servers open only to those ranked four or higher or closed to ranks three or lower

 

[Mikroscopic]

How about:

• Let players instantly connect to a specific server
• Allow players to leave or join the match at any time
• Allow servers to be sorted by gamemode, map, ping, etc
• Don't kick everyone off after two rounds have finished
• This is starting to sound a bit familiar...

 

[Potoroo84]

imo I think there wouldn't be a penalty since it's a casual mode, and people wouldn't be rewarded as much as competitive mode so there could be kind of a "fun" ambiance in the servers

 

[Lain]

Valve tried to make an update to meet the pub community and comp community halfway and neither likes it.

People who play pubs don't want to wait for 30 minutes to play on goldrush/hoodoo/barnblitz I literally only want to play on Upward because that's the only halfway decent payload map for me. I just want to go into the server browser, pick the best Upward server with the best ping and playerset and join.

People who play comp don't want to play with disgusting broken unlocks and no class limits 2 engis on Snakewater last bullshit. They want to play a nice, clean, quake-like team game on maps optimized for competitive play. Simple as that.

 

[Yrr]

everything is gonna be fine

 

[Davekillerish]

everything is gonna be fine

Hope isnt lost, yet.

 

[PMAvers]

Personally, I've had a lot of fun playing in the Casual queue. It's kind of nice to see people actually at least *trying* on maps for objectives. Especially with stopwatch payload, since actually putting up a decent defense gives you a advantage.

Will definitely be nice when they get the bugs on the coordinator fixed to fill spots when babies ragequit.

 

[EksCelle]

Casual is alright now, but I'm worried that in the future it'll go unchecked. If it's going to turn into anything like the CS:GO Casual community then we're pretty much doomed.

 

[Viemärirotta]

Casual is alright now, but I'm worried that in the future it'll go unchecked. If it's going to turn into anything like the CS:GO Casual community then we're pretty much doomed.

Nah, not now at least. It's still TF2 so people shouldn't care about casual stats. Plus would be hard to reach the level of CS:GO casual since here you can see relatively casual games where scouts try to rush and fail horribly.

 

[Hipster_Duck]

One thing I never thought about is Dominations, I think they should bring those back to casual. I thought they were a fun little gimmick.

 

[Davekillerish]

Bumping this thread even though the conversation kind of died down, I will be formatting my current oppinions into a video.
"omg so original" thanks I know.
To sort of give you context as to what im going to be talking about, aside from the points I made in the OP, here is the SFM I spent 4 hours asking, starting at midnight, that I will be using for said video.

Spoiler

I'm the medic off to the side, (not red one)

 

[Nuke]

Well, time to keep the flame war up.

1) It matters on a player.
For most people Quickplay was "oy m8 letz go fuk around coz we foken can in 2-4 clikz"
For small amount only it was indeed, "serious business". PLEASE, dont mistake me with tryhard. I didnt killed friendlies before, conga lines are totally normal and i might join for a second or so. But it still was game to win. Without getting genocidic or something. As engi main, i can't just go and fuck around excluding Rancho Relaxo'ing. Edgyneer is probably most "universal" class in theory, support with a small grain of power. While soldiers have Rocket Jumpers we dont have "things for fun".

2) From recent changes it became okay-ish.
I recently was in casual game with 2 hackers on opposing team. Guess what, we won. They got kicked, and we won 2-0. Yes, release was very rough, but can i ask you, what major release haven't fucked up Steam Coordinator due to major flow of players in a first days?

3) Balance changes.
Everything okay, except overbuff of Quickies. It's banned in most competitive leagues now. Like Crit-o-Cola which is still over-normal.

4) Competitive MM is fucked.
Yes. Everything which could have done better doesnt exist in TF2 Comp MM. But there's still Casual, MvM and Community.

5) Community servers.
LEARN. TO. USE. FREAKING. SERVER. BROWSER. Lazygineers. Yes, this thing is so 2004. There's still a lot of "vanilla" servers out here, especially since MYM. Go and do your stuff here.

 

[Davekillerish]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qaeSFpMRoM&feature=youtu.be