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[miauw62]

the worst part about this update is that with all these awful fucking pub changes, there isnt actually ANYTHING ELSE that could give me a reason to play TF2. valve nerfed weak weapons and buffed weapons that were already borderline op while leaving actually OP weapons alone. apparently b4nny had to dissuade valve from buffing the reserve shooter

[PTTG??]

Maybe Valv^e is trying to kill TF2 off. It is pretty old.

[JoshuaFH]

The game is still profitable. Very profitable actually. It might be an old cow but it still produces milk.

I have internet again, if Miauw or anybody wants to hit me up for a game sometime.

[MagmaMcFry]

How would you guys react if they changed casual to just be a new frontend to the old pubs?

Effects:

- You can get matched by casual rank, but you can join via the server browser too
- Pubs would be running continuously again, people could continue playing on a server for as long as they want
- Autobalance and team scramble would be active, but preserving parties, so abandoning and imbalance is fixed again
- Waiting time would be greatly reduced, since the competitive ruleset is disabled and you don't need to victory/requeue after every match
- Payload and A/D maps can get played to last again

[TheBiggerFish]

YISSSS

Alternatively have actual casual casual that is literally old pubs.

[MagmaMcFry]

This variant would keep the (few) benefits from matchmaking though, such as being able to rank up, match by rank, and keep your buddies around to requeue quickly. Okay, those are small benefits really, but it's not like there were more in the first place. Except, of course, the tryhard atmosphere. But it's not like that's gone. People who liked that can play comp instead.

[TheBiggerFish]

Someone please send this to Valve.

[WealthyRadish]

How would you guys react if they changed casual to just be a new frontend to the old pubs?

Effects:

- You can get matched by casual rank, but you can join via the server browser too
- Pubs would be running continuously again, people could continue playing on a server for as long as they want
- Autobalance and team scramble would be active, but preserving parties, so abandoning and imbalance is fixed again
- Waiting time would be greatly reduced, since the competitive ruleset is disabled and you don't need to victory/requeue after every match
- Payload and A/D maps can get played to last again

Sounds exactly like what quickplay was, which I'd say did much more damage than benefit. Before quickplay, when everyone had to use the server browser, community servers got the traffic they needed not just to survive, but maintain a real community of regulars, often with events and forums. The community servers were where the competitive scene, modding scene, and mapmaking scene were all born, and I'm willing to speculate that their death following the introduction of quickplay was the single biggest thing that exacerbated the decline in dedicated player interest, and certainly the decline in new players joining the competitive scene.

A huge part of it was down to quickplay's excessive sv_pure requirements, loosening that or adding a player toggle for whether sv_pure is required would have been enough to mitigate some of the biggest problems. In my opinion the best would be competitive matchmaking and nothing else (besides the browser), but some people really like the slight convenience of quickplay, so I guess we need to have casual matchmaking. But I actually like Valve's direction here of making casual matchmaking more competitive and distinct from pubs, so hopefully we do still see an uptick in through-the-browser traffic.

[miauw62]

Valve has said that they would roll out new server features only for servers with registered accounts. This seems like it would have been a great opportunity to include community servers in quickplay again.

The problem is that in 2013, valve implemented a bullshit quickplay system that killed all good community servers. And now they've literally removed the only good servers that were left, now only accessible through a broken and unfinished matchmaking system which still has teams that are just as bad except with no builtin mechanics to fix this, and with much, MUCH more pressure to perform than old pubs, where you could do whatever and relax.

Combined with the total number of exciting balance changes in this update being 2, plus some bullshit nerfs to underused weapons and buffs to already OP weapons, it sort of kills any desire I had to play TF2.

[EnigmaticHat]

I never liked community servers.  It was a minefield of VIP features, intrusive ads, and PTW cheats.  And then when you finally did get a "good" one you got to deal with obnoxious sound effects ripped from other games and stat track spam in the chatbox.

There was the occasional randomizer or cp_degroot server that was redeemable because they offered something actually different than normal gameplay.  But on the whole it was a lot of crap with no good way to filter it.  And like randomizer was cool, but it was also weighed down by admin stupidity like all melee rounds and non-random rounds.  Most of the time I just wanted to play some damn TF2, and quickplay was significantly better at offering that than community servers were.

[Leafsnail]

Casual has actually been OK for me other than the ridiculously unbalanced team problems that emerge sometimes. There needs to be an incentive for continuing to play after a teammate has left or something.

[hops]

Here in Thailand, this current update had resulted in new mature community servers playing. It feels really good being able to play in a friendly competitive setting with 90% people speaking the same language as you. (The 10% are some random confused Philipinos)

So weirdly enough, it seems that in Thailand the shift to community had eliminated most of the cancerous mod servers.

[hops]

Wow, TF2 is a lot easier when your computer isn't a piece of crap. It's nice being able to airshot someone by aiming, rather than using pure prediction and hoping your shitty computer doesn't lag as you click.

Also scouts are now a lot easier to deal with. I am the god of shotgun.

[MagmaMcFry]

They are fixing all the things

[Xeron]

Except not really, the performance will still be piss poor, quickplay is still gone, and you still have to rely on cancerous community servers with ads and other dumb crap.