Valve is the corpse of it's former self. They released a few games in the 2000s, got a bunch of modders to feed them ideas and made bank on their players just to turn on them in the past few years... Cherish the old valve, it is long-gone. The valve that release HL2, TF2, Portal and L4D would never have released a fake sequel like CSGO2, tired of zoomers who missed the golden age trying to pretend it's still going on.
@@BrandonPoirierBlair Valve shifted their focus, and while I love what they did in the Linux space(Honestly making Linux a viable gaming OS was something I really only see them having had the capability to do in any reasonable timeframe), I really wish it didn't come at the cost of their incredible game studios.
I agree, the game was better with quickplay back then, I was able to just join koth_harvest or koth_viaduct whenever I wanted and it would never end. One of the main reasons that kept me playing this game was saxton hale mode.
Quickplay wasn't that great many times, just sounds like rose tinted nostalgia. It would take forever to find servers and put players in empty one that would just summon bot players Only thing I miss is being able to change teams on will. Still prefer it to what we got. Anyways, I ended up learning the server browser because of it relatively fast
Same bro, Saxton Hale and Freak Fortress are so damn fun to play but I can barely find active Hale servers in my own region anymore. Before MyM, although I didn't rely on quickplay I remember being able to find many variety of servers and that included a lot of VSH or FF servers. Oh and not the new community VSH mode Valve officially added, I kind of hate that one but appreciate what its trying to do.
@@bigsnake3130which region are you from? If you're EU there's necgaming and panda community. If you're NA you can hop on blackwonder or skial. The people on these servers are usually really nice 👍
The difference between 2013 and 2023 tf2 is night and day. Aside from the variety of cherished community servers, from the vanilla standard to whacky meme maps, it was the general feel. You touched up on it quite well with the "never ending session" that you'd just hop into. One of my favorite parts was being able to open into my friends list, click the arrow next to his name, join mid match out of nowhere, and try to score a domination. Nowadays you have to ask them to leave matchmaking, party up with them, and hope you get auto-balanced to the other team. Where's the fun in that?
This game REALLY REALLY needs a real update, thousand of people still play it everyday and the only updates we get are cosmetics and sometimes maps. It deserves way more.
I play this game EVERY SINGLE DAY, and I agree with every word you said, Valve just wants money, and TF2 doesn't even make that much money as I did make back in the day, why are they milking every single drop of money from this game?
@lowtf2 If valve took the time to fix the bot problem that alone would drive dome people to return to it. The #savetf2 movement earlier this year proved that there is still a substantial and dedicated community that loves this game and wants to see it thrive again.
@@johnfarlio1830 I still have to go out of my way to get there (just like casual now) Also you should be mad at Valve for making retarded decisions, not the people who hate the new system
@@beaviewatching Okay, so the UI changed...that's the big problem? Look, I'm not defending the MYM update at all, it fucked up what originally had worked fine. But nearly every comment here is about how the game is unplayable and broken, which is completely fictional. Your comment is the first one I've seen about the UI, and even then, the current UI is perfectly playable and not a big deal.
Well said Chet, when an online game stays alive for 15+ years it would practically become a shell of what it once was in it's early days for better or for worse.
tf2 has only been getting more and more popular this idea that "its a shell of what it once was" is clearly to me nostalgia and a "good old days" mentality that isnt actually based in anything but emotion.
@@ozone_auThis is something I mentioned on another comment. Every single thing that everyone is having a nostalgic flashback about STILL EXISTS IN THE GAME. Sure, half of the matchmaking servers are shit bc of the bots, but there are dozens of very active community servers that are completely bot free and have regulars who you can befriend and have fun matches with.
From a 2007 old-head, I resonate heavy with the feelings you have about the game currently Chet. I rocked this game for such a large portion of my life and I said the exact same thing, “I’ll never stop playing this game! The day I stop is the day I die.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. I’ve been able to enjoy the game through its niche sourcemodding community, but live TF2 will just never be the same for me with matchmaking taking the core way to enjoy the game casually.
Oh my God, this is literally what I've been telling everyone since the competitive update; Valve never needed to chase after Overwatch (it was never a threat). Instead, the update ruined many community servers (and introduced a ton of bugs). I would always come back to playing on \TG/ server because I knew almost everyone there and if my friends were playing on other servers I would join their servers and make friends with their group. Now I log in once a season just to play MvM (I also wish Valve would add more official maps or waves to that mode). I also wish SFM wasn't abandoned; it gave people a way to animate in 3D without needing to pay for Maya or Premiere Pro and to this day it's still the best free option available. tl;dr I miss TF2.
TF2 was always this hypercasual game. Balance and competitiveness was never the focus like in games like Overwatch or Dota 2 but that wasn't the point. The TF2 team messed up trying to chase after making it a real competitive game, partly because it never had an Icefrog type figure dedicated towards constant and evolving competitive balance, and partly because TF2 was always a very casual game to begin with. A mistake for that community.
@@ChevalierSilver Blender's UI is not optimized for 3D animating. SFM is better than Blender in that regard since it used Maya's button layout (SFM's 2 biggest weak points are the shaders and rig controls (unless there's an addon that improves the default that I don't know)). Fortunately or unfortunately, Unreal has gotten more serious about animation (and modeling, rigging, etc.). So that may become the standard soon.
@@basicmudkip5985 Yes, but it doesn't have the huge library of workshop items as SFM. The closest one would be SFM in HL:A but you have to buy it. CS2 is free and does have SFM but it's workshop items are even fewer than HL:A.
Honestly you're 100% on the money, Chet. The matchmaking style system that was introduced was a terrible idea, I really don't know who's idea it was to do this, but I think it really did fuck up the casual experience.
I don't understand what would be a better alternative. The server browser? Well, for one, it's still there. It's also horrendously outdated and barebones, even for a 2007 game (basically the same interface as like, counter strike 1.6 iirc). Sure you could make the interface better, but then what? What dramatic effect would that have on the game? Most people would sort servers by playercount and join the most full servers, which is nearly identical to how the queue currently works (except the queue doesn't include community servers, which you have to join via the aforementioned server browser)
Agreed. Trying to push competitiveness into games really kills the casual feel. Not only in how you join servers, but it's also how weapon balances turned a lot of fun weapons into things that "had to work for competitive play".
There is a grand total of 1 weapon that got neutered for comp: the base Jumper. Every other weapon was either not a problem in comp, or cancerous at all levels of play
Yes and since the game will never get a real update again we are stuck with this terrible balance. Just give us back the old ambassador to make gunspy viable again, it is the weakest class in the game, who cares.
@@nitothefunkybunch6938 I'm pretty sure it's just two, the other being the caber. I do think that the Caber being neutered was a result of Valve overnerfing it instead of just making it so it can't one-shot medics but still consistently one-shot light classes.
@@tangerinepaint3643 Seeing as the damage nerf brought the theoretical max damage to 131, I think letting the caber still one-shot light classes was the developer intent. It just got screwed due mechanical jank (I think the issue has to do with the origin point of the explosion and how splash damage falloff is calculated) edit: checked the tf2 wiki and it looks like the max is actually 138. I guess I remembered it wrong
Casual TF2 is such a different experience now in terms of player interactions. On community servers you used to encounter a bunch of the same people, the "regulars" and you felt like a part of this little community. With the addition of matchmaking this all went out the window, but community servers were already dying at that point. The Unreal Tournament reboot seemed to have interesting ideas in terms of server browsing, they apparently planned so that you could create little hubs and even if the server were not necessarily hosted by the players, you could still build those communities.
A large sect of the community has hated the Meet your Match matchmaking update since it came out. It was broken on launch, and the day they fixed it so you could actually play it, it was instantly inundated with spinbots that haven't left since. Unfortunately, this was nowhere near the first or only misstep this game has taken. It's just slowly become the one that's most acceptable to talk about.
Honestly there is a certain section of TF2 fans (many of whom are in this comment section) who I doubt even play the game anymore yet still bitch about a years old ancient update. If everyone here just took the effort to click "community servers" instead of "casual", then nearly everybody would shut up about how dead or broken the game is.
Dude I feel you. I chimed in years later during Jungle Inferno so I didn't get to experience the good times like other people did, yet I still yearn for such a time. I've played on community servers. Often times tight knit groups of people, regulars visiting the servers. It sometimes really is heart breaking when you queue up for a casual match, actually manage to find a game where all 24 players enjoy themselves in comradery and have a blast chatting - to then never see again any of them after the match ended. Unless you go out of your way to add them on steam, which isn't always a guarantee. The best you get nowadays is somebody you know seeing you in-game in a match by accident.
True... I believe this is cause of the "Rank" System that they added.. Because of the Rank system the game tries to put you with other players who are at the closest level with you... But yet you never see the ones that... Were especially "Good" players.. By Good, I mean they are respectful, they are friendly and you get a laugh out with them... I was on steam for 12 years.. (My first game was Left 4 dead) And I metten Alot of people.. My first guy who I joined was straight up a Dick... bloody killed me when I joined.. But I met alot of.. friends who I knew and... well Never got back on 9 years later or.. 5 years later... But it still is good that.. TF2 has SOME friendly players..
Yeah, I really miss TF2 too, it's like I want to let it go but it always comes back for some reason. It's a game made with so much love and passion and it shows, but it was left out, because love and passion isn't the same as before, people are so much stressed these days and can't just... relax... And it is perfect like it is, maybe except with those changes, but the core, soul and heart of the game? It is still there and nobody can't change it, because like I said, is perfect like it is... I always played TF2 because of the beautiful atmosphere, writing, and characters; but I really think I played TF2 for a long time because I enjoy it, I enjoy playing in that world, I enjoy having fun with the gameplay and those amazing characters, but what really matters and the most important fun I've ever had is the community, playing with people just enjoying the game and sharing good moments, having a good time laughing, sharing emotions, experiences and anecdotes... Heartwarming and wholesome
Agreed 100%, the MyM/casual update was by far one of the worst things to happen to the game. It's always worth remembering how woefully inferior it was to the old quickplay at the start: Queue times were stupidly long, no autobalance/scramble meant that one sided games would keep snowballing, ect. It's bad enough without the context but the fact that it had to be updated to even TRY to catch up with the system that it replaced is unforgivabley incompetent. All of that just to chase after Overwatch's success, which is doubly embarrassing now that the test of time has shown that TF2 could survive - Demonstrating that all the game had to do was be itself, not twist itself into something it's not. Arguably worse was how community servers were decimated by the update. The old quickplay allowed certain servers to be linked to it so long as they followed certain rules to stay in line with standard settings, this meant that custom servers could naturally grow their players by having their more vanilla servers and more custom ones like old VSH if the Quickplay queuers were enjoying their stay. Post MyM Valve and community servers are completely cut off from one another and what was once a thriving server list has shrunk to a shadow of what it once was.
Holy crap. I've never seen a dev talk so much as a relatable player themself. Loading up the game used to be fun. Now if I open the game, I'm greeted with all this busy work.
This is great to hear from someone who has actually worked on TF2. The update that swapped to matchmaking from quickplay genuinely took a great deal of fun out of TF2. You have worded problems I've been having with this game for years in a fantastic way.
I first started playing TF2 in 2020 and it quickly became my favorite game largely because of the community rather than the gameplay itself (although that came in time). And I will say while it's a very social game there's a sub-culture of players who interact silently and I've always found it highly endearing. It's really been bizzare being part of a community that is always yearning for the past, whether it be for no bots, removed features, updates, or even lore, because I've never really had a taste of that? The #SaveTF2 event would be the biggest event I participated in, but I've recently stepped back and just appreciate what I have now. It's a hot mess definitely but I just love the community so much. The creativity in the SFM community is especially wonderful, with projects like Emesis Blue legitimately being among my favorite films. I can't fully express how much I appreciate your work, and the positive impact it's had on me. God bless you man.
2012 - 2014 was the peak for me. Although 2010 and 2011 were pretty fun to be playing too. Lots of good memories on old Surf servers or those weird fever-dream achievement idle maps.
I wish they added the competitive mode without touching quickplay, I have nothing against offering a competitive experience but there was no need to ruin the quickplay mode and how it functioned, I also LOVED how quickplay helped you discover community servers.
Really happy you're still thinking about TF2 Chet, and the response of the community with memories we still can remember fondly. No matter the direction of the game, you've still got something to think about when you visualize way-back-then. Hope you had a good Christmas & New Years!
Amazing to see your input on this, as someone as reputable as yourself-- and thank you for your efforts on TF2. Every voice counts!! Congrats on 1000 Subs too. Every game these days, Halo, OW, GTA, Warframe, get big December updates that revamp things and keep it entertaining. We only got hats, and too many maps imo. Krampus is good, so are a few others. TF2 Dev communication from Valve is all I ever wanted. "We can't fix the bots, we're going to go Source 2" or something.
I agree with you. Quickplay was the correct way for TF2. All this matchmaking and whatnot just took the game in the wrong direction. I havent been able to put my finger on what made the pre-meat your match era TF2 so good, but now that i heard 'chat room with guns' i whole heartedly agree. It was essentially VRchat without VR, and with guns, and you know what? It was *GLORIOUS!* Everything has to end eventually, i suppose, but i dont like it it was forced to end. If it had ended on its own thats fine i guess, but it didnt die of old age, it was murdered.
As someone who was involved in modding/hosting servers/etc this is very much true. Back in the day you could just put up a server with a bunch of wacky maps and mods and people would join it from the server browser, have a good time, add it to favorites and come back again later. This entire culture died as soon as quickplay and later matchmaking tried to "streamline" the process of joining a game. All the amazing servers from back in the day are gone because the game actively discourages people from playing on them.
Sadly i joined tf2 post quickplay so i didnt get to see all those fun moments quickplay allowed, the whole competive structure thing is really a push in the wrong direction.
One of the best things was finding a community server and then playing with those same people for hours, then days, weeks and even months and getting to know all of the regulars who came in and out of that specific server. The sense of community and fun that developed and just how intense and insane the matches became were unlike anything else. The one server I played on had some of the best people in the entire game who would come and play it and those matches were the toughest and most down to the wire matches of TF2 you will ever experience and I miss it dearly. You can't get what that experience was in Valve servers
Big agree with everything said here, although unfortunately it's unlikely that TF2 will return to its previous non-competitive system(s), let alone get a new major update that isn't just a contractor-skeleton-crew's mandatory seasonal patch. A few people mentioned this already but you'd love community projects like the TF2Classic sourcemod, the player base is small but always active with emphasis on community & modding, you will always be able to recognize recurring players and voice chat is much more active than you'd think (way more than current TF2). Team Fortress 2 isn't going back to its glory days, so the next best thing is to try out community projects which replicate that old experience and I never hesitate to recommend TF2C for that reason, although there's other notable mods out there such as Pre Fortress and Open Fortress with their own goals & themes. With that said thanks for the video! You've really put into words the concerns & wishes that almost everyone has with this game nowadays, couldn't have put it any better myself.
god what I'd do to go back to 2012 Scream Fortress and the manniversary update I feel so vindicated when I hear devs really regret making MyM because that update truly killed what made the game so special to me
I will always agree that Valve royally screwed up by trying to appeal to the esports/competitive audiences. Diluting what makes TF2 special will ruin it for the fans, and (as we've all seen) causes serious damage, including but not limited to the Meet Your Match update. I've been playing since launch. TF2 is casual by nature and design, where anyone of any skill level and desired degree of engagement can hop in, find something to do, and have a good time. "Competitive" TF2 strips that away, both in mentality and function. Only existing as homebrew, modded versions of the game that transform it into something it isn't- with different rules, pacing, and restrictions. Its players have always represented a tiny minority of the playerbase. If you enjoy playing those modded versions, all the power to you, but Valve should have never tried to mold the game to appease that tiny sphere. It's a shame valve didn't lean harder into what made TF2 fun and special, opting to instead transform it into something it was never meant to be, to appease people who were not interested in engaging with it in the first place.
My favorite thing about TF2 was that you could enjoy the game both ways, competitively and casually. That said, tournament players were a minority audience that relied on 3rd parties to organize competitive play. MYM had the goal to offer 1st party competitive matchmaking so more people could experience it, the problem was that MYM heavily interfered with how the majority of players played TF2. In my mind, “competitive mode” would have used the queue system, “casual mode” would offer the same queue, but you could still use the server browser to select a server. And casual gameplay would be identical to pre-MYM without the HUD changes, set number of rounds, or 2 minute waiting period. Casual attempting to be comp-lite was the mistake, not the competitive mode. There are some debatable upsides to the MYM we got, but the new system felt extremely out of touch with the core playerbase to the point of alienating them. It would have been received far differently if TF2 didn’t force bridging the gap between the two audiences, I still remember launch week Hightower being played seriously because people were confused thinking something was on the line. 3rd party competitive will always beat 1st party, but one glance at TF2 should have been enough to determine 1st party would be unfeasible. TF2 has much more nuance than Counter-Strike or Dota that without severely altering the gameplay and map list (both of which will upset players), a middle ground of comp and casual would appease nobody. And you’d lose what makes Team Fortress special to begin with.
I haven’t played casual in about a year but have been having an extremely fun time on serious community servers like “Uncletopia” and other servers. Good players and no bots is the main reason I play there. Casual feels underdeveloped and not particularly conducive to good Tf2 matches. Especially when everyone leaves after the match.
You're going to make me cry man, absolutely agree. So many great memories chilling with random people on the internet. Nobody cared if you won or lost, it was just fun talking to random people and playing. That update ruined TF2. And the worst part is there was no way TF2 was going to compete with Overwatch anyway on the competitive scene. So sad
Meat Your Match made me quit the game for years. I ended up coming back because of nostalgia and still play it from time to time but always with this feeling that it will never be the same.
For me it was Jungle Inferno. Meet your Match disappointed me, but I distracted myself with the Heavy vs Pyro thing long enough to keep playing. But then when JI came around and I had my favourite Scout loadouts nerfed because of competitive reasons despite the game being CASUAL in nature, while cheese weapons like the scorch shot and natascha were borderline buffed, I got pissed and left the game for about 2 - 3 years until 2020 where I played once again out of respect for Rick May.
Great video and definitely a sentiment I've seen floating around a lot. I think the competitive aspect is interesting because TF2, for a long time, had a pretty thriving competitive community as well. I know there still is one, but I'm not sure if it's as active as when I was a part of it. I bring it up because there was often talk about how to grow the community and get more "casuals" involved, and while sometimes we wished the game had more promotion for the scene (the blogs posts were a welcome, if late, addition), most people didn't want the "pubs" (public servers) to change. In fact, it was common occurrence that after a night of scrims and practice, we'd all stay in voice and jump into a public server to mess around; people would change up classes from their mains, we'd play minigames like your "go until you die", it was always a blast and sometimes we'd even get into conversations about our 6v6 play. Anyway, I'm mostly reminiscing at this point, but my main thesis here is that I think it's possible to do both: have a casual, social, public server environment and also a healthy competitive scene. It's honestly a bit disheartening to play modern matchmade games with friends because they often get frustrated from losing because the game puts so much emphasis on that, when really we should be able to just have fun playing the game regardless of outcome. I know a public server list has its own design issues, but I wish we could move away from hypercompetitive design as well.
Fully agree. Meet Your Match killed the enthusiasm I had for the game since I first picked it up around late 2009. Nowadays I only go back to it occasionally, and even when I do, I actively avoid the matchmaking system and try to look for community servers, of which there are precious few these days (that don't have pay-to-win bullshit attached).
@@johnfarlio1830 Many servers, namely "Skial" and "Saigns", give players the option to donate money to the server in exchange for things like guaranteed crits and ubercharge.
@@davidsmh Never seen it in my life after playing on dozens of community servers, which tells me that it is uncommon to the point that those kinds of servers are easily avoidable.
@@johnfarlio1830 Some servers will auto-kick players when full to make space for donators who are whitelisted from having the same happen to them. More like pay to play, pay to win shit like !premium hasn't been popular since tf2's prime.
i used to play on a server that was just cp_orange. no crits or low grav. and the map never changed. i would spend hours trying to rocket/sticky jump across the map, sniping people from the tower or jumping into enemy spawn as spy to get free backstabs on afks. people were either talking or arguing or micspamming, sometimes all of the above. it felt like home whenever i would join it. i miss that feeling and server so much.
I miss being able to see myself improve against other players. When I was younger, I'd join a match and play with that group of people till I hopped out (or they hopped out, whichever's first). In that time I'd get several games on several maps all with the same people, and I'd notice myself actively doing better against certain people, and learn how to avoid others. Eventually, I'd notice myself winning more and more fights and it felt fantastic. Now every match is a single event, no learning how others played, no personality for the enemy team. There simply isn't enough time to see it. sometimes playing casual feels no different than playing solo against bots, it feels empty.
I miss a server that ran a map named dm_superstore and the people who also frequented it. There was a guy named steve who had no cosmetics and no steam profile picture, and he was an absolute pubstomper. I remember slowly getting better against him. That server is probably the one that made me improve in the game the most. Fun times. This was around 2013-2016.
back in quickplay days you would come home from work/school/whatever, open tf2, jump on a valve server running you favorite map, often with some of your friends already there. and then you just play for a few hours and had fun. matchmaking made all that so much harder or even impossible. grouping up before matches, constant map votes and server restats, warmup times, not letting people join the other team.. none of this made the game better and if anyone at valve actually played they game they would have removed matchmaking a long time ago.
It truly is a shame that its stuck in its current state. I don’t know what Valve is planning to do with the future of Team Fortress 2, but I feel like my only way of coping with this is to make content for it, and then eventually move onto original works.
they're planning on useful idiots making content for them FOR FREE that they then sell for a profit and do nothing else for the game. And you consoomers lap it up and do paid work for free for mega corporations to profit off of you.
I 100% agree! I started playing TF2 in like 2008 - 2009 (I think it was before any class updates came out but I'm not 100% sure). One of the best things the game had going for it was just being able to get into a match and stay in a match so quickly. Back when it was all about joining servers for a map you enjoyed, finding people that you genuinely enjoyed playing with (shoutout Ellie's Nun House) and having that sense of community that was thriving and you could just hop on any time. The casual match queue system loses all of that charm. It's slow to find a game, it's slow to finish a game, and often times there is pretty much zero sense of community. I definitely miss that aspect a lot.
First video ive seen of you. Great thoughts and cool to hear it from a former Valve dude. I just want to say you arent alone! I think a LARGE portion of people who played before Meet Your Match (myself included) agree that this update was detrimental. I still play casual but I agree, quick play was special. You should check out the video called, "The Day TF2 (almost) Died," by Lister. They do a great job of analyzing why it was such a bummer and do include some of your thoughts (Overwatch, competitive, etc.) The idea of matchmaking in TF2 isn't horrible to me, but their execution absolutely was. Thanks for the video!
This exact thing happened with Call Of Duty. Cod 1 through 4 had a lively modding and "server" community, people would host servers with mods, as you play you'd get to know the regulars, custom maps, custom gamemodes, etc. With Modern Warfare 2 and the matchmaking-only play, that whole *thing* I loved about call of duty died over night, and has never come back as far as I can see.
Quickplay was so much better than the queue system of today... Quickplay even had community servers in the mix, it didn't just used to be valve servers. I miss those days. Now its uncletopia, skial or bust.
If Mr. Faliszek happens to see this comment, I from the bottom of my heart can recommend Team Fortress 2 Classic. For the past 3 years of my life it's provided me with the joy Team Fortress 2 use to bring.
i joined tf2 some time just after gun metal, and i was very young back then so i had no concept of what live game updates were back then, the menu background was just "different for some reason", the first ever update i think i ever consciously experienced as an update was meet your match, the same update that removed quickplay and added the, then barebones, casual and competitive system. i feel like i never got to properly experience quickplay, or tf2 at its peak in general for that matter, and that makes me really sad. still, designing maps for this game is the most fun thing ive ever done, and i dont see myself stopping any time soon, maybe for as long as this game is online, i just wish things could be better...
I stopped playing Overwatch shortly after they added a queue/set teams (i.e. two of each DPS, tanks, healers) to quickplay. I was already sort of the on the fence about quitting, but that really killed it for me. It sucks waiting 5-10 minutes to join a game and half the time you'd get thrown into the last 30 seconds of a game. Quickplay became nearly identical to competitive at that point.
I think the matchmaking system is a cool idea especially if you want to play a competetive match. I like the concept of Highlander where there's only one of each class on the team and I played it once a long time ago with some fellow members of our TF2 server community. But I also liked to **drop in** to a Valve official server to see what was going on and shoot some peeps. It was nice to be able to see which of your friends was on an open server and to be able to join them. You would see some names of some other casual players you'd played against previously and sometimes you would stay on the server through map changes. To my mind the matchmaking thing sort of makes it easy to be impersonal and reclusive. You're asked if you'd like to have a rematch and it makes you think "I don't want to commit to that so no, I will leave." On an open server with a map session time and rotation you don't feel under pressure to commit to a time, and I think as a consequence you are more likely to stay on the server anyway! I don't actually *play* TF2 anymore. I work on maps and stuff and help people with theirs (deathrun mostly). Unusual effects put me off a bit too partly because of how simply garish and interfering I find them and because it makes me feel like I'm not a true TF2 player anymore. But perhaps my experiences are skewed as I have mostly played on community servers since I stopped playing quickplay.
There are communities that enjoy each others company on TF2 servers. It's mostly via the server browser. One of my favorites is the Lazyday map/server. People talk on this and do not take it terribly serious, which makes the really long matches all the funnier.
I still play TF2 with my bro and our favorite thing is the CTF tug of war matches where nobody can seem to win. It's fun trying to figure out strategies to get past the opponent, ensuring there's enough defense, etc. We always have voice chat disabled due to annoying people. The in game way of making your character taunt and choose from a variety of dialogue lines is really cool - makes the characters feel alive. I really wish valve would charge money so bot makers wouldn't find it worth it to keep creating accounts. The fact that they support a store where people spend real money, yet they allow bots to run rampant and ruin the game is nuts to me. I keep hoping they'll update TF2 or make a TF3. It may not be the most competitive multiplayer fps, but it's definitely the most fun.
'Staying true to who you are and what you are' hit me hard. As often as you hear those words, sometimes it's easy to lose track. As much as TF2 has strayed from where it began, I still thing those feelings are obtainable. Glad community servers will continue on.
See I totally agree with what you're saying here, although I do think that tf2 does happen to ALSO be an awesome game when played competitively. I think what they need to do (if they haven't already, i don't know what the situation is) would be to have the casual pubs and competitive matchmaking be separate but both coexist peacefully!
At this point I just prefer to play using the Bot Overhaul mod. I can play whatever map with whatever class whenever I want to without worrying about the competitive nonsense, or about bots (the bad kind, of course), or even just toxic games. I used to love the old TF2 matchmaking (I started playing in 2013), and how chill it was as well as all of the awesome community stuff like Saxton Hale mode (played it for hours back in the day). The last time I tried official matchmaking (I think 2017/2018, whenever the competitive stuff was added), I just kept getting thrown into sweaty matches where I got steamrolled constantly and it just wasn’t fun anymore.
My partner agrees, my friends agree, The Competitive Update soiled TF2. When they felt like they had to compete with Overwatch, and to "bring it up to standard" with CS:GO. Though one of my friends says that adding additional weapons to the game ruined it for them too, and that was a LONG time ago now. Looking back I think the queuing system isn't as bad as I once thought it was, but it really did kill a lot of community servers. I ended up going to PAX a few years ago with a bunch of my friends from this one community server. That was one of the best trips I've ever been on. But after that update, it was one of those to fade away. We still keep in contact though, which is rad.
Ever since End Of The Line update back in 2014 the game always became more and more ''off''. I guess Robin leaving back in 2013 it did some damage to the tf2 team.
back when i was 13-15 there was this server that was 2fort classic 24/7, i played it so much that i started remembering all of the players that frequented it, i rememeber this guy ''charloune the otaku'' was a riot in voice chat. That servers was so dear to me, its even the server where i recorded my steam badge video for the community achievement.
I agree when it comes to the actual interface ingame. I think they should always have kept the main way of finding servers as it always was, but also have a competitive mode (if it wasn't awful) rather than converting everything to the same kind of thing and giving you the option to find community servers yourself. I played a lot of competitive TF2 which was NOT what you see in their version of it ingame at all and didn't mess with anything. It was just another mod, effectively.
Do you remember QuickPlay? I think that's the feature they removed that you're talking about where it would scan for available community servers and toss you into one that fits your selection the most.
I agree with you 100% on what you're saying when it comes to adding "casual" and "comp" with the Meet Your Match update. I do blame modern FPS game styles for wanting to promote this idea that "If you didn't win you didn't have fun" mentality. Where everything must be taken seriously, and if you don't you should just leave because how dare you not take a 3 hour game of 2Fort seriously.
I have been saying this about the matchmaking system for years, I'm at sort of a loss for words at hearing my exact thoughts and feelings expressed here by you. Every single one of my old buddies I met on TF2 over 10 years ago all stopped playing FOREVER after the matchmaking system was implemented. The game is technically still there in my steam library but almost everything about it that made it "the most fun you can have online" is just gone, the transition into a "structured" default play experience destroyed TF2. Thanks for sharing this video, I miss TF2 so much.
I feel you there, so many multiplayer games are like that now, I was playing Call of Duty's infected mode recently and it feels so weird to be playing this goofy fun more social mode when every single game ends with you being pushed back to the main menu to match with completely different players.
While I wasnt on tf2 before the addition of the queue system, I believe that the community is still around, just a version that adapted. Twofort is the map where even in casual matches where the lack of competition is still present. Matches can go on perpetually, and everyone is occupied by farting around on the server. Many of the community aspects you described are still present, they just may be a bit difficult to find at first.
@@chetfaliszekBrother, I implore you to look at the list of community servers. There are tons of 24 hour 2fort servers with very active player bases. Once you start playing on comm servs, you won't even know about the bot crisis
I think it's in the same update, but you also can't change teams anymore. For me that's the biggest misstep, since it directly affects actually playing a match, while the matchmaking is just something around it
absolutely. just as you start to get comfy on a server everything resets and you have to go through the slow loading screen again and half the people leave. i miss the days of voting to extend the map over and over and getting hundreds of points on ctf. just to make it worse they added a timer to powerhouse too so you cant stalemate it forever and keep the server going.
100% with you on the matchmaking. Quickplay is good for people that like it, but hiding the community server browser behind all these menus is such an oversight. I used to hang out on a 24/7 Hightower server, literally just as a chatroom with gameplay. I made a lot of friends from that server, most I still keep in touch with today. It's such a shame that the game ended up chasing a trend, instead of keeping what had kept it alive for so long. It's still a huge game for its age, don't get me wrong, but it could be so much more.
I do miss the good ol days before contracts, casual/competitive ranking, showing the kills/deaths at the end which is what made me love TF2 in the first place. I hated how other shooters were just showing off how many kills you could get in 10 minutes, TF2 made you focus on working with your team and without that I wouldn't have had all those good memories. I started in 2013 and still play (somewhat) often today but yea it's a shell of it's former glory :(
100% agree. Being able to just come and go is what made TF2 fun for me. Some people want to win, some people want to have fun, some people only tryhard if their team's losing, and if people aren't playing the way you want, just find a different server, no big deal. But I quit for several years because I heard they added "matchmaking" and that was just a total buzzkill for me. I still play today because I realized it's not real matchmaking (anymore), but the UI still makes it look that way. I've seen several people try to play TF2 for the first time and the UI intimidates them because they didn't think it was such a serious game and people have to spam them, "It's not! Just click this button and pick some maps," and so on. It's really frustrating.
While I disliked the matchmaking queue system when it launched, I've come around to it and much prefer it to looking through a server browser. I don't have many issues with bots these days, so I just join a lobby with a few buddies and hit queue, and we're in for a night of fun. It's not super visible, but at least the server browser is still present, and there are communities around them. It is a far cry from what it used to be but the 24 hour doublecross servers are a joy to screw around on.
Thanks for sharing. I've been playing for 10+ years but have only really "paid attention" to what TF2 is for about the past 3, so I missed all that stuff.
I exclusively play on a community server for both these reasons. We play to hang out with friends. The mods are active so there are very few problems with bots, and occasionally some edgelord does something stupid and the mods take care of that too. It's pretty great, and I would have given up on TF2 many years ago if I hadn't found that server.
Thanks for giving your thoughts on TF2 Chet! It really is so depressing and frustrating to see where the game's at these days. The fact that, despite all of the problems that have been introduced over the years, there's such a massively dedicated fanbase for the game speaks volumes about its quality. I really wish things would turn around for TF2.
Everything you've said is 100% true. Focusing on competitive and removing quickplay killed most of the community servers and in part a crucial part of tf2. Compared to say 2013 tf2, modern day tf2 is a husk only kept up by a passionate community that can't let go and the fact that it's free. I miss it.
Yeah, the source code leak was unforgivable. I still can't believe Valve let that happen. If only that hadn't happened, then hacking in TF2 probably would have been much more manageable than it is now.
It was a huge catalyst to the bot invasion. Even though it was possible beforehand and there were actually instances of bots before it happened, they were far less effective and based off of far older source code. Hence it never became a huge thing until it happened.
back in the time when you simply could drop in / drop out of matches by the click of a button and just simple game invites your friends could join the same server, just like that. Now; you have to wait an extended amount of time to connect into a _Random_ match. friend invites are replaced with "party invites" where you have to wait until map change or server change until they can join.
You're part of the problem. One look at the cosmetics you've made tells me all I need to know. Do you really believe the Splitting Headache or Hollowed Helm would be good fits for the game? Nobody wears the terrible hats you've made because they're ugly. Thank you for ruining TF2 by adding more visual clutter, garbage, and bloat while also taking up crate cosmetic slots that actually talented people could have used. Eric Smith must be smoking something good or you're giving him the best head of his life for these to get in the game.
@@AlphaGarg well well. this is the same guy who made a hat called S.L.O.P . mocking the increased amount of criticism towards him and his workshop band of easy quick rich scheme enjoyers. it not like he can't make good 3d models and stuff. the issue. they treat tf2 like fortnite... enough said. also would love to add that they normally never release their hats until before halloween and christmas (to maximize the chances of them getting aded)
managed to rack up around 1.2k hours in tf2 getting into it fairly later on around the time of gun mettle the queue system absolutely destroyed any interest I had in the game and meet your match was the absolute worst update they could of ever made, was heartbroken when it was released I thought the queue system was for the comp mode only so seeing quickplay just completely eradicated made me not really play it at all since
Yeah, the more memorable parts of tf2 for me were the long discussions of varying random topics with strangers on the internet in voice chat while also blowing each other up on a community Dustbowl server. That whole bar/pub like feeling on certain tf2 servers is something truly special. I think the old quick play should make a comeback as a counter to the bot problem. It used to factor in community servers to the search. With community run servers having better tools to deal with bots and hacking in general, it would at least give new players the chance of having a playable game.
I must admit I've never thought WHY I stopped playing TF2. I always thought it was just one of those, where you just move on and leave the game and the memories of playing it in your head. But alas this deeply resonated with me, my all TF2 memories are just goofing around, do your first actual plays, have that heartbeat racing when the game is really really close, but right after that you just do some deathrun or Saxton Hale and it's just all of these memories also are under the whole "happiest part of your life" category, it's just joy to remember
ive been playing tf2 for the longest time, it was my childhood and it means so much to me, i can't express anything else better more than you have you are 100% right on the dot and i miss everything about the server browser, i still to this day hold the opinion that the meet your match update is the worst update to have ever happened to the game and it's painful knowing it will probably never be able to go back to its former glory again i dearly miss what tf2 used to mean and be
I kind of disagree with the queue part. I love getting able to party up with people. Other aspects? like needing to pay to talk or the bots? absolutely agree with you.
I've been playing TF2 religiously since 2010 and while I agree with a lot of what you're saying about how different the game used to be, I think a lot of people are forgetting just how bad quickplay actually was, often times you'd be placed in empty servers only populated by bots (not that different from what we had for while there recently, glad that's finally been fixed) or it would just fail to find a match after waiting several minutes even though you'd just be able to take one look at the server browser to find a good one yourself in seconds. Basically what I'm saying is quickplay wasn't good, just using the server browser like Gaben intended was always the best way to find games. I do miss how these casual servers used to be though. With the way it is now, most people only care about winning, and when people leave because their team is losing or whatever, the game is forced to try to find new players who hopefully don't mind joining a losing game, or do auto-balance, which everyone hates. Many times I've been playing with friends and be having a good time playing on the same team only for the auto-balance system to split us up and ruin our fun. In the time before matchmaking, I often would join a game, see which team needed help, and pick that one. Now everyone is just automatically assigned and there's this expectation that you'll get a balanced game, which isn't always the case. Before players could swap teams or even call a vote to scramble everyone and reset the match if things were too one-sided, which helped a lot and kept things fair, and most importantly it didn't keep you from playing on the same team as your buddies. I used to play on some servers for hours with the same people just on different maps, either trying to win or just messing around. It didn't matter because there weren't any stakes, we were all just playing for fun and I think that has been lost and I would like to see that come back.
Recently TF2 got an update that added 100 player servers to the game and that was the first time in 7+ years that I've actually been able to play TF2 as a "chat room" again. I love TF2 but its appeal to me back in like 2011 was talking to random strangers while you aimlessly shoot people in the background. Log into a regular match today and there's radio silence. You can't hear the enemy team for gameplay reasons but it means that nobody sparks up conversation, and on the off-chance someone talks you'll be forced to leave the match in 15 minutes anyway to never hear from them again.
For real. I miss all-talk being the norm. Trash talking the enemy team playfully, hearing some guy go on about his weed addiction, listening to some guy raging on the enemy team after you killed them. It all fit together to make one of the funniest online community experiences ever. That was a large part of the appeal for me too. Not just the gameplay, but feeling involved in the community.
TF2 is my favorite game of all time, it was 99% of my play time in 2023 steam year in review. I really really wish valve would stop neglecting the game, its quite sad.
At this point, we'd all just play Team Fortress 2 Classic as it stays true to the older TF2 experience, with Community Servers and the artstyle, even cut concept weapons. Edit: That prediction aside I believe that even Valve sees that the matchmaking and comp features were a flunk. Because it did not meet up to standards players have as they were competing against other modern shooters. But that's what Valve failed to see, TF2 is not a modern shooter.
hey, chet! it's really refreshing to see you talk about TF2. i was planning on making a video essay about pretty much the exact thing you are talking about in this video; I think Meet Your Match was pretty much what sealed TF2's fate. I don't know for sure but i think it was a bit of a test to gauge people's interest in the game and when it entirely bombed, so did TF2's support.
As a 6s and HL player, I agree with valve fucking up casual to make it their version of comp - but nobody wanted the casual and valve comp that they implemented. It shows valve doesn't know what the average player wants from each sub-community, but from the comp side - they wanted to re-invent the wheel for some reason.
I started playing TF2 during the beta (still playing almost daily for a few mins at least) and I came to it directly from CS:S. Honestly the community around servers was pretty much the same there, very healthy and just like you're describing here (coincidentally the sniper rifle initially felt IDENTICAL to the scout because you could quick switch and rescope quicker than you can now). When CSGO came along it's community servers suffered just like ours. I hate to admit it but I basically only queue casual now, I don't want to wait for a slot to open up on one of the handful of private servers I sometimes visit.
You used to have servers with little communities that'd have their own map rotation and rules like some servers were standard and some were whacky maps with weird physics or surf maps or some servers were 24/7 micspam.
valve developers and former developers missing projects as much as the community does is such a valve thing
It’s honestly quite sad
Valve is the corpse of it's former self. They released a few games in the 2000s, got a bunch of modders to feed them ideas and made bank on their players just to turn on them in the past few years... Cherish the old valve, it is long-gone. The valve that release HL2, TF2, Portal and L4D would never have released a fake sequel like CSGO2, tired of zoomers who missed the golden age trying to pretend it's still going on.
you can say that about every company its inevitable to happen it was only a matter of time@@BrandonPoirierBlair
Holy shit its big dick Joe, in the wild
@@BrandonPoirierBlair Valve shifted their focus, and while I love what they did in the Linux space(Honestly making Linux a viable gaming OS was something I really only see them having had the capability to do in any reasonable timeframe), I really wish it didn't come at the cost of their incredible game studios.
I agree, the game was better with quickplay back then, I was able to just join koth_harvest or koth_viaduct whenever I wanted and it would never end.
One of the main reasons that kept me playing this game was saxton hale mode.
Truly, community content is the only thing left carrying this game. Its just a shame how limited we are in some aspects
Quickplay wasn't that great many times, just sounds like rose tinted nostalgia. It would take forever to find servers and put players in empty one that would just summon bot players
Only thing I miss is being able to change teams on will. Still prefer it to what we got.
Anyways, I ended up learning the server browser because of it relatively fast
Same bro, Saxton Hale and Freak Fortress are so damn fun to play but I can barely find active Hale servers in my own region anymore. Before MyM, although I didn't rely on quickplay I remember being able to find many variety of servers and that included a lot of VSH or FF servers. Oh and not the new community VSH mode Valve officially added, I kind of hate that one but appreciate what its trying to do.
@@bigsnake3130which region are you from? If you're EU there's necgaming and panda community. If you're NA you can hop on blackwonder or skial. The people on these servers are usually really nice 👍
@@bigsnake3130Nothing beats the OG saxton hale model and his old voice 😂 He looked mexican back then and was terrifying with his angry voice lines
The difference between 2013 and 2023 tf2 is night and day. Aside from the variety of cherished community servers, from the vanilla standard to whacky meme maps, it was the general feel. You touched up on it quite well with the "never ending session" that you'd just hop into. One of my favorite parts was being able to open into my friends list, click the arrow next to his name, join mid match out of nowhere, and try to score a domination. Nowadays you have to ask them to leave matchmaking, party up with them, and hope you get auto-balanced to the other team. Where's the fun in that?
Modern valve absolutely cannot do matchmaking. Dota has the same issue.
snowflake@@Drunde
@@Drunde I do believe that is a lesser "problem" than the game being unplayable, touch grass
go on and make your cringe tf2 videos snowflake@@Drunde
@@Drundesounds like you're a getting a bit triggered
This game REALLY REALLY needs a real update, thousand of people still play it everyday and the only updates we get are cosmetics and sometimes maps. It deserves way more.
I play this game EVERY SINGLE DAY, and I agree with every word you said, Valve just wants money, and TF2 doesn't even make that much money as I did make back in the day, why are they milking every single drop of money from this game?
Did you forget the summer update that added saxton fucking hale?
there's 100k people playing it right now
@@xFluingcommunity made gimmick updates don't really count, especially since the game still has many glaring issues.
@lowtf2 If valve took the time to fix the bot problem that alone would drive dome people to return to it. The #savetf2 movement earlier this year proved that there is still a substantial and dedicated community that loves this game and wants to see it thrive again.
I miss the days when you could just launch the game, hit quickplay, then get in a game instantly and have fun for as long as you want
COMMUNITY SERVERS. I'm going to lose my mind with these "good ol days" comments
@@johnfarlio1830 I still have to go out of my way to get there (just like casual now)
Also you should be mad at Valve for making retarded decisions, not the people who hate the new system
@@johnfarlio1830have you actually played during the good ol' days you'd know how intuitive the UI for quickplay was.
@@beaviewatching Okay, so the UI changed...that's the big problem? Look, I'm not defending the MYM update at all, it fucked up what originally had worked fine. But nearly every comment here is about how the game is unplayable and broken, which is completely fictional. Your comment is the first one I've seen about the UI, and even then, the current UI is perfectly playable and not a big deal.
@@johnfarlio1830 I agree.
I've actually been finding matches real quick.
Well said Chet, when an online game stays alive for 15+ years it would practically become a shell of what it once was in it's early days for better or for worse.
tf2 has only been getting more and more popular this idea that "its a shell of what it once was" is clearly to me nostalgia and a "good old days" mentality that isnt actually based in anything but emotion.
@@ozone_auThis is something I mentioned on another comment. Every single thing that everyone is having a nostalgic flashback about STILL EXISTS IN THE GAME.
Sure, half of the matchmaking servers are shit bc of the bots, but there are dozens of very active community servers that are completely bot free and have regulars who you can befriend and have fun matches with.
From a 2007 old-head, I resonate heavy with the feelings you have about the game currently Chet.
I rocked this game for such a large portion of my life and I said the exact same thing, “I’ll never stop playing this game! The day I stop is the day I die.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. I’ve been able to enjoy the game through its niche sourcemodding community, but live TF2 will just never be the same for me with matchmaking taking the core way to enjoy the game casually.
Oh my God, this is literally what I've been telling everyone since the competitive update; Valve never needed to chase after Overwatch (it was never a threat). Instead, the update ruined many community servers (and introduced a ton of bugs). I would always come back to playing on \TG/ server because I knew almost everyone there and if my friends were playing on other servers I would join their servers and make friends with their group.
Now I log in once a season just to play MvM (I also wish Valve would add more official maps or waves to that mode).
I also wish SFM wasn't abandoned; it gave people a way to animate in 3D without needing to pay for Maya or Premiere Pro and to this day it's still the best free option available.
tl;dr
I miss TF2.
TF2 was always this hypercasual game. Balance and competitiveness was never the focus like in games like Overwatch or Dota 2 but that wasn't the point.
The TF2 team messed up trying to chase after making it a real competitive game, partly because it never had an Icefrog type figure dedicated towards constant and evolving competitive balance, and partly because TF2 was always a very casual game to begin with. A mistake for that community.
didn't s2fm come out?
there is other options like blender if you really dont want to pay for anything
@@ChevalierSilver Blender's UI is not optimized for 3D animating. SFM is better than Blender in that regard since it used Maya's button layout (SFM's 2 biggest weak points are the shaders and rig controls (unless there's an addon that improves the default that I don't know)).
Fortunately or unfortunately, Unreal has gotten more serious about animation (and modeling, rigging, etc.). So that may become the standard soon.
@@basicmudkip5985 Yes, but it doesn't have the huge library of workshop items as SFM. The closest one would be SFM in HL:A but you have to buy it. CS2 is free and does have SFM but it's workshop items are even fewer than HL:A.
Honestly you're 100% on the money, Chet. The matchmaking style system that was introduced was a terrible idea, I really don't know who's idea it was to do this, but I think it really did fuck up the casual experience.
trying to copy Overwatch made TF2 worse. PC games having matchmaking is cancer
Because Valve had the bright idea of trying to appeal to comp players in an extremely casual game
valve could reverse it no problem. Plus maybe put out a few job roles for moderators to play the game to manually ban bots and cheaters???
I don't understand what would be a better alternative. The server browser? Well, for one, it's still there. It's also horrendously outdated and barebones, even for a 2007 game (basically the same interface as like, counter strike 1.6 iirc). Sure you could make the interface better, but then what? What dramatic effect would that have on the game? Most people would sort servers by playercount and join the most full servers, which is nearly identical to how the queue currently works (except the queue doesn't include community servers, which you have to join via the aforementioned server browser)
I think things like preventing F2Ps from communicating have had a much greater impact in terms of smothering the game's community (on Valve servers)
Agreed. Trying to push competitiveness into games really kills the casual feel. Not only in how you join servers, but it's also how weapon balances turned a lot of fun weapons into things that "had to work for competitive play".
There is a grand total of 1 weapon that got neutered for comp: the base Jumper.
Every other weapon was either not a problem in comp, or cancerous at all levels of play
Yes and since the game will never get a real update again we are stuck with this terrible balance. Just give us back the old ambassador to make gunspy viable again, it is the weakest class in the game, who cares.
Exactly, I want the old sandman + gilliotine combo back. That shit was super fun.
@@nitothefunkybunch6938 I'm pretty sure it's just two, the other being the caber. I do think that the Caber being neutered was a result of Valve overnerfing it instead of just making it so it can't one-shot medics but still consistently one-shot light classes.
@@tangerinepaint3643 Seeing as the damage nerf brought the theoretical max damage to 131, I think letting the caber still one-shot light classes was the developer intent. It just got screwed due mechanical jank (I think the issue has to do with the origin point of the explosion and how splash damage falloff is calculated)
edit: checked the tf2 wiki and it looks like the max is actually 138. I guess I remembered it wrong
Casual TF2 is such a different experience now in terms of player interactions. On community servers you used to encounter a bunch of the same people, the "regulars" and you felt like a part of this little community. With the addition of matchmaking this all went out the window, but community servers were already dying at that point.
The Unreal Tournament reboot seemed to have interesting ideas in terms of server browsing, they apparently planned so that you could create little hubs and even if the server were not necessarily hosted by the players, you could still build those communities.
A large sect of the community has hated the Meet your Match matchmaking update since it came out. It was broken on launch, and the day they fixed it so you could actually play it, it was instantly inundated with spinbots that haven't left since.
Unfortunately, this was nowhere near the first or only misstep this game has taken. It's just slowly become the one that's most acceptable to talk about.
IT'S OVER
Honestly there is a certain section of TF2 fans (many of whom are in this comment section) who I doubt even play the game anymore yet still bitch about a years old ancient update. If everyone here just took the effort to click "community servers" instead of "casual", then nearly everybody would shut up about how dead or broken the game is.
when im in an intentional fearmongering competition and my opponent is richter overtime:
Dude I feel you. I chimed in years later during Jungle Inferno so I didn't get to experience the good times like other people did, yet I still yearn for such a time.
I've played on community servers. Often times tight knit groups of people, regulars visiting the servers.
It sometimes really is heart breaking when you queue up for a casual match, actually manage to find a game where all 24 players enjoy themselves in comradery and have a blast chatting - to then never see again any of them after the match ended. Unless you go out of your way to add them on steam, which isn't always a guarantee.
The best you get nowadays is somebody you know seeing you in-game in a match by accident.
True... I believe this is cause of the "Rank" System that they added..
Because of the Rank system the game tries to put you with other players who are at the closest level with you...
But yet you never see the ones that... Were especially "Good" players..
By Good, I mean they are respectful, they are friendly and you get a laugh out with them...
I was on steam for 12 years..
(My first game was Left 4 dead)
And I metten Alot of people..
My first guy who I joined was straight up a Dick... bloody killed me when I joined..
But I met alot of.. friends who I knew and... well Never got back on 9 years later or.. 5 years later...
But it still is good that.. TF2 has SOME friendly players..
Yeah, I really miss TF2 too, it's like I want to let it go but it always comes back for some reason.
It's a game made with so much love and passion and it shows, but it was left out, because love and passion isn't the same as before, people are so much stressed these days and can't just... relax... And it is perfect like it is, maybe except with those changes, but the core, soul and heart of the game? It is still there and nobody can't change it, because like I said, is perfect like it is...
I always played TF2 because of the beautiful atmosphere, writing, and characters; but I really think I played TF2 for a long time because I enjoy it, I enjoy playing in that world, I enjoy having fun with the gameplay and those amazing characters, but what really matters and the most important fun I've ever had is the community, playing with people just enjoying the game and sharing good moments, having a good time laughing, sharing emotions, experiences and anecdotes... Heartwarming and wholesome
Agreed 100%, the MyM/casual update was by far one of the worst things to happen to the game. It's always worth remembering how woefully inferior it was to the old quickplay at the start: Queue times were stupidly long, no autobalance/scramble meant that one sided games would keep snowballing, ect. It's bad enough without the context but the fact that it had to be updated to even TRY to catch up with the system that it replaced is unforgivabley incompetent. All of that just to chase after Overwatch's success, which is doubly embarrassing now that the test of time has shown that TF2 could survive - Demonstrating that all the game had to do was be itself, not twist itself into something it's not.
Arguably worse was how community servers were decimated by the update. The old quickplay allowed certain servers to be linked to it so long as they followed certain rules to stay in line with standard settings, this meant that custom servers could naturally grow their players by having their more vanilla servers and more custom ones like old VSH if the Quickplay queuers were enjoying their stay. Post MyM Valve and community servers are completely cut off from one another and what was once a thriving server list has shrunk to a shadow of what it once was.
Holy crap. I've never seen a dev talk so much as a relatable player themself. Loading up the game used to be fun. Now if I open the game, I'm greeted with all this busy work.
This is great to hear from someone who has actually worked on TF2. The update that swapped to matchmaking from quickplay genuinely took a great deal of fun out of TF2. You have worded problems I've been having with this game for years in a fantastic way.
I first started playing TF2 in 2020 and it quickly became my favorite game largely because of the community rather than the gameplay itself (although that came in time). And I will say while it's a very social game there's a sub-culture of players who interact silently and I've always found it highly endearing. It's really been bizzare being part of a community that is always yearning for the past, whether it be for no bots, removed features, updates, or even lore, because I've never really had a taste of that? The #SaveTF2 event would be the biggest event I participated in, but I've recently stepped back and just appreciate what I have now. It's a hot mess definitely but I just love the community so much. The creativity in the SFM community is especially wonderful, with projects like Emesis Blue legitimately being among my favorite films. I can't fully express how much I appreciate your work, and the positive impact it's had on me. God bless you man.
If only there was a way to return back to when TF2 was not so messy. Pre-2016 was the peak for me.
2012 - 2014 was the peak for me. Although 2010 and 2011 were pretty fun to be playing too. Lots of good memories on old Surf servers or those weird fever-dream achievement idle maps.
I wish they added the competitive mode without touching quickplay, I have nothing against offering a competitive experience but there was no need to ruin the quickplay mode and how it functioned, I also LOVED how quickplay helped you discover community servers.
Really happy you're still thinking about TF2 Chet, and the response of the community with memories we still can remember fondly. No matter the direction of the game, you've still got something to think about when you visualize way-back-then. Hope you had a good Christmas & New Years!
That's exactly what I felt when "Meet your Match" came out. This monologue made me shed a tear...
Amazing to see your input on this, as someone as reputable as yourself-- and thank you for your efforts on TF2. Every voice counts!! Congrats on 1000 Subs too.
Every game these days, Halo, OW, GTA, Warframe, get big December updates that revamp things and keep it entertaining. We only got hats, and too many maps imo. Krampus is good, so are a few others. TF2 Dev communication from Valve is all I ever wanted. "We can't fix the bots, we're going to go Source 2" or something.
Yep. Felt exactly the same. The queueing killed so much of the fun, which was feeling a sense of familiarity with the other players on ‘your’ server
I think you summed it up perfectly. It's interesting to hear from a developer and what he thinks about the game now.
I agree with you.
Quickplay was the correct way for TF2.
All this matchmaking and whatnot just took the game in the wrong direction.
I havent been able to put my finger on what made the pre-meat your match era TF2 so good, but now that i heard 'chat room with guns' i whole heartedly agree.
It was essentially VRchat without VR, and with guns, and you know what? It was *GLORIOUS!*
Everything has to end eventually, i suppose, but i dont like it it was forced to end. If it had ended on its own thats fine i guess, but it didnt die of old age, it was murdered.
As someone who was involved in modding/hosting servers/etc this is very much true. Back in the day you could just put up a server with a bunch of wacky maps and mods and people would join it from the server browser, have a good time, add it to favorites and come back again later. This entire culture died as soon as quickplay and later matchmaking tried to "streamline" the process of joining a game. All the amazing servers from back in the day are gone because the game actively discourages people from playing on them.
Sadly i joined tf2 post quickplay so i didnt get to see all those fun moments quickplay allowed, the whole competive structure thing is really a push in the wrong direction.
One of the best things was finding a community server and then playing with those same people for hours, then days, weeks and even months and getting to know all of the regulars who came in and out of that specific server. The sense of community and fun that developed and just how intense and insane the matches became were unlike anything else. The one server I played on had some of the best people in the entire game who would come and play it and those matches were the toughest and most down to the wire matches of TF2 you will ever experience and I miss it dearly. You can't get what that experience was in Valve servers
Big agree with everything said here, although unfortunately it's unlikely that TF2 will return to its previous non-competitive system(s), let alone get a new major update that isn't just a contractor-skeleton-crew's mandatory seasonal patch.
A few people mentioned this already but you'd love community projects like the TF2Classic sourcemod, the player base is small but always active with emphasis on community & modding, you will always be able to recognize recurring players and voice chat is much more active than you'd think (way more than current TF2). Team Fortress 2 isn't going back to its glory days, so the next best thing is to try out community projects which replicate that old experience and I never hesitate to recommend TF2C for that reason, although there's other notable mods out there such as Pre Fortress and Open Fortress with their own goals & themes.
With that said thanks for the video! You've really put into words the concerns & wishes that almost everyone has with this game nowadays, couldn't have put it any better myself.
god what I'd do to go back to 2012 Scream Fortress and the manniversary update I feel so vindicated when I hear devs really regret making MyM because that update truly killed what made the game so special to me
Man this brought back memories, everything you said is so true.
I will always agree that Valve royally screwed up by trying to appeal to the esports/competitive audiences. Diluting what makes TF2 special will ruin it for the fans, and (as we've all seen) causes serious damage, including but not limited to the Meet Your Match update.
I've been playing since launch. TF2 is casual by nature and design, where anyone of any skill level and desired degree of engagement can hop in, find something to do, and have a good time. "Competitive" TF2 strips that away, both in mentality and function. Only existing as homebrew, modded versions of the game that transform it into something it isn't- with different rules, pacing, and restrictions. Its players have always represented a tiny minority of the playerbase. If you enjoy playing those modded versions, all the power to you, but Valve should have never tried to mold the game to appease that tiny sphere.
It's a shame valve didn't lean harder into what made TF2 fun and special, opting to instead transform it into something it was never meant to be, to appease people who were not interested in engaging with it in the first place.
Very true. Off-topic, but I never understood why you don't like dance taunts tho
Competitive Team Fortress has been around since the Quake mod dropped in 1997. We've been here longer than you.
My favorite thing about TF2 was that you could enjoy the game both ways, competitively and casually. That said, tournament players were a minority audience that relied on 3rd parties to organize competitive play. MYM had the goal to offer 1st party competitive matchmaking so more people could experience it, the problem was that MYM heavily interfered with how the majority of players played TF2.
In my mind, “competitive mode” would have used the queue system, “casual mode” would offer the same queue, but you could still use the server browser to select a server. And casual gameplay would be identical to pre-MYM without the HUD changes, set number of rounds, or 2 minute waiting period. Casual attempting to be comp-lite was the mistake, not the competitive mode.
There are some debatable upsides to the MYM we got, but the new system felt extremely out of touch with the core playerbase to the point of alienating them. It would have been received far differently if TF2 didn’t force bridging the gap between the two audiences, I still remember launch week Hightower being played seriously because people were confused thinking something was on the line. 3rd party competitive will always beat 1st party, but one glance at TF2 should have been enough to determine 1st party would be unfeasible. TF2 has much more nuance than Counter-Strike or Dota that without severely altering the gameplay and map list (both of which will upset players), a middle ground of comp and casual would appease nobody. And you’d lose what makes Team Fortress special to begin with.
tf2 is tfc for noobs
@@shadow50011 you've only ever made up 5% of tf2's playerbase. We never needed you.
I haven’t played casual in about a year but have been having an extremely fun time on serious community servers like “Uncletopia” and other servers. Good players and no bots is the main reason I play there.
Casual feels underdeveloped and not particularly conducive to good Tf2 matches. Especially when everyone leaves after the match.
TF2 would be an addiction again if quickplay came back
You're going to make me cry man, absolutely agree. So many great memories chilling with random people on the internet. Nobody cared if you won or lost, it was just fun talking to random people and playing. That update ruined TF2. And the worst part is there was no way TF2 was going to compete with Overwatch anyway on the competitive scene. So sad
Meat Your Match made me quit the game for years. I ended up coming back because of nostalgia and still play it from time to time but always with this feeling that it will never be the same.
For me it was Jungle Inferno. Meet your Match disappointed me, but I distracted myself with the Heavy vs Pyro thing long enough to keep playing. But then when JI came around and I had my favourite Scout loadouts nerfed because of competitive reasons despite the game being CASUAL in nature, while cheese weapons like the scorch shot and natascha were borderline buffed, I got pissed and left the game for about 2 - 3 years until 2020 where I played once again out of respect for Rick May.
Great video and definitely a sentiment I've seen floating around a lot. I think the competitive aspect is interesting because TF2, for a long time, had a pretty thriving competitive community as well. I know there still is one, but I'm not sure if it's as active as when I was a part of it. I bring it up because there was often talk about how to grow the community and get more "casuals" involved, and while sometimes we wished the game had more promotion for the scene (the blogs posts were a welcome, if late, addition), most people didn't want the "pubs" (public servers) to change. In fact, it was common occurrence that after a night of scrims and practice, we'd all stay in voice and jump into a public server to mess around; people would change up classes from their mains, we'd play minigames like your "go until you die", it was always a blast and sometimes we'd even get into conversations about our 6v6 play.
Anyway, I'm mostly reminiscing at this point, but my main thesis here is that I think it's possible to do both: have a casual, social, public server environment and also a healthy competitive scene. It's honestly a bit disheartening to play modern matchmade games with friends because they often get frustrated from losing because the game puts so much emphasis on that, when really we should be able to just have fun playing the game regardless of outcome. I know a public server list has its own design issues, but I wish we could move away from hypercompetitive design as well.
Fully agree. Meet Your Match killed the enthusiasm I had for the game since I first picked it up around late 2009. Nowadays I only go back to it occasionally, and even when I do, I actively avoid the matchmaking system and try to look for community servers, of which there are precious few these days (that don't have pay-to-win bullshit attached).
Wtf? What "pay to win" are you even talking about? There aren't even features in TF2 that make pay to win possible.
@@johnfarlio1830 Many servers, namely "Skial" and "Saigns", give players the option to donate money to the server in exchange for things like guaranteed crits and ubercharge.
@@johnfarlio1830 He's talking about p2w in community servers. Some servers give you features that normal players don't have if you pay
@@davidsmh Never seen it in my life after playing on dozens of community servers, which tells me that it is uncommon to the point that those kinds of servers are easily avoidable.
@@johnfarlio1830 Some servers will auto-kick players when full to make space for donators who are whitelisted from having the same happen to them. More like pay to play, pay to win shit like !premium hasn't been popular since tf2's prime.
i used to play on a server that was just cp_orange. no crits or low grav. and the map never changed. i would spend hours trying to rocket/sticky jump across the map, sniping people from the tower or jumping into enemy spawn as spy to get free backstabs on afks. people were either talking or arguing or micspamming, sometimes all of the above. it felt like home whenever i would join it. i miss that feeling and server so much.
I miss being able to see myself improve against other players. When I was younger, I'd join a match and play with that group of people till I hopped out (or they hopped out, whichever's first). In that time I'd get several games on several maps all with the same people, and I'd notice myself actively doing better against certain people, and learn how to avoid others. Eventually, I'd notice myself winning more and more fights and it felt fantastic. Now every match is a single event, no learning how others played, no personality for the enemy team. There simply isn't enough time to see it. sometimes playing casual feels no different than playing solo against bots, it feels empty.
I miss a server that ran a map named dm_superstore and the people who also frequented it. There was a guy named steve who had no cosmetics and no steam profile picture, and he was an absolute pubstomper. I remember slowly getting better against him. That server is probably the one that made me improve in the game the most. Fun times. This was around 2013-2016.
back in quickplay days you would come home from work/school/whatever, open tf2, jump on a valve server running you favorite map, often with some of your friends already there. and then you just play for a few hours and had fun.
matchmaking made all that so much harder or even impossible.
grouping up before matches, constant map votes and server restats, warmup times, not letting people join the other team.. none of this made the game better and if anyone at valve actually played they game they would have removed matchmaking a long time ago.
It truly is a shame that its stuck in its current state. I don’t know what Valve is planning to do with the future of Team Fortress 2, but I feel like my only way of coping with this is to make content for it, and then eventually move onto original works.
i know what valve is planning for the future of tf2
milk it for money
probably nothing because a majority of the developers are currently stuck with CS2.
they're planning on useful idiots making content for them FOR FREE that they then sell for a profit and do nothing else for the game. And you consoomers lap it up and do paid work for free for mega corporations to profit off of you.
I 100% agree! I started playing TF2 in like 2008 - 2009 (I think it was before any class updates came out but I'm not 100% sure). One of the best things the game had going for it was just being able to get into a match and stay in a match so quickly. Back when it was all about joining servers for a map you enjoyed, finding people that you genuinely enjoyed playing with (shoutout Ellie's Nun House) and having that sense of community that was thriving and you could just hop on any time. The casual match queue system loses all of that charm. It's slow to find a game, it's slow to finish a game, and often times there is pretty much zero sense of community. I definitely miss that aspect a lot.
First video ive seen of you. Great thoughts and cool to hear it from a former Valve dude. I just want to say you arent alone! I think a LARGE portion of people who played before Meet Your Match (myself included) agree that this update was detrimental. I still play casual but I agree, quick play was special. You should check out the video called, "The Day TF2 (almost) Died," by Lister. They do a great job of analyzing why it was such a bummer and do include some of your thoughts (Overwatch, competitive, etc.) The idea of matchmaking in TF2 isn't horrible to me, but their execution absolutely was.
Thanks for the video!
This exact thing happened with Call Of Duty. Cod 1 through 4 had a lively modding and "server" community, people would host servers with mods, as you play you'd get to know the regulars, custom maps, custom gamemodes, etc. With Modern Warfare 2 and the matchmaking-only play, that whole *thing* I loved about call of duty died over night, and has never come back as far as I can see.
Crazy to think that Valve wanted their shooter to be a competitive success like Counter-Strike, when they already have Counter-Strike.
Quickplay was so much better than the queue system of today... Quickplay even had community servers in the mix, it didn't just used to be valve servers.
I miss those days. Now its uncletopia, skial or bust.
If Mr. Faliszek happens to see this comment, I from the bottom of my heart can recommend Team Fortress 2 Classic. For the past 3 years of my life it's provided me with the joy Team Fortress 2 use to bring.
i joined tf2 some time just after gun metal, and i was very young back then so i had no concept of what live game updates were back then, the menu background was just "different for some reason", the first ever update i think i ever consciously experienced as an update was meet your match, the same update that removed quickplay and added the, then barebones, casual and competitive system. i feel like i never got to properly experience quickplay, or tf2 at its peak in general for that matter, and that makes me really sad.
still, designing maps for this game is the most fun thing ive ever done, and i dont see myself stopping any time soon, maybe for as long as this game is online, i just wish things could be better...
I stopped playing Overwatch shortly after they added a queue/set teams (i.e. two of each DPS, tanks, healers) to quickplay. I was already sort of the on the fence about quitting, but that really killed it for me. It sucks waiting 5-10 minutes to join a game and half the time you'd get thrown into the last 30 seconds of a game. Quickplay became nearly identical to competitive at that point.
I think the matchmaking system is a cool idea especially if you want to play a competetive match. I like the concept of Highlander where there's only one of each class on the team and I played it once a long time ago with some fellow members of our TF2 server community.
But I also liked to **drop in** to a Valve official server to see what was going on and shoot some peeps. It was nice to be able to see which of your friends was on an open server and to be able to join them. You would see some names of some other casual players you'd played against previously and sometimes you would stay on the server through map changes.
To my mind the matchmaking thing sort of makes it easy to be impersonal and reclusive. You're asked if you'd like to have a rematch and it makes you think "I don't want to commit to that so no, I will leave." On an open server with a map session time and rotation you don't feel under pressure to commit to a time, and I think as a consequence you are more likely to stay on the server anyway!
I don't actually *play* TF2 anymore. I work on maps and stuff and help people with theirs (deathrun mostly). Unusual effects put me off a bit too partly because of how simply garish and interfering I find them and because it makes me feel like I'm not a true TF2 player anymore. But perhaps my experiences are skewed as I have mostly played on community servers since I stopped playing quickplay.
meet your match was a mistake
There are communities that enjoy each others company on TF2 servers. It's mostly via the server browser. One of my favorites is the Lazyday map/server. People talk on this and do not take it terribly serious, which makes the really long matches all the funnier.
Me too, I started playing in 2013 and immediately fell in love with it, it's a shame that it's been abandoned
I still play TF2 with my bro and our favorite thing is the CTF tug of war matches where nobody can seem to win. It's fun trying to figure out strategies to get past the opponent, ensuring there's enough defense, etc. We always have voice chat disabled due to annoying people. The in game way of making your character taunt and choose from a variety of dialogue lines is really cool - makes the characters feel alive.
I really wish valve would charge money so bot makers wouldn't find it worth it to keep creating accounts. The fact that they support a store where people spend real money, yet they allow bots to run rampant and ruin the game is nuts to me. I keep hoping they'll update TF2 or make a TF3. It may not be the most competitive multiplayer fps, but it's definitely the most fun.
'Staying true to who you are and what you are' hit me hard. As often as you hear those words, sometimes it's easy to lose track.
As much as TF2 has strayed from where it began, I still thing those feelings are obtainable. Glad community servers will continue on.
See I totally agree with what you're saying here, although I do think that tf2 does happen to ALSO be an awesome game when played competitively. I think what they need to do (if they haven't already, i don't know what the situation is) would be to have the casual pubs and competitive matchmaking be separate but both coexist peacefully!
At this point I just prefer to play using the Bot Overhaul mod. I can play whatever map with whatever class whenever I want to without worrying about the competitive nonsense, or about bots (the bad kind, of course), or even just toxic games.
I used to love the old TF2 matchmaking (I started playing in 2013), and how chill it was as well as all of the awesome community stuff like Saxton Hale mode (played it for hours back in the day). The last time I tried official matchmaking (I think 2017/2018, whenever the competitive stuff was added), I just kept getting thrown into sweaty matches where I got steamrolled constantly and it just wasn’t fun anymore.
My partner agrees, my friends agree, The Competitive Update soiled TF2. When they felt like they had to compete with Overwatch, and to "bring it up to standard" with CS:GO. Though one of my friends says that adding additional weapons to the game ruined it for them too, and that was a LONG time ago now.
Looking back I think the queuing system isn't as bad as I once thought it was, but it really did kill a lot of community servers. I ended up going to PAX a few years ago with a bunch of my friends from this one community server. That was one of the best trips I've ever been on. But after that update, it was one of those to fade away. We still keep in contact though, which is rad.
Ever since End Of The Line update back in 2014 the game always became more and more ''off''. I guess Robin leaving back in 2013 it did some damage to the tf2 team.
back when i was 13-15 there was this server that was 2fort classic 24/7, i played it so much that i started remembering all of the players that frequented it, i rememeber this guy ''charloune the otaku'' was a riot in voice chat. That servers was so dear to me, its even the server where i recorded my steam badge video for the community achievement.
I will say its still fun to play and unique in its own way.
I agree when it comes to the actual interface ingame. I think they should always have kept the main way of finding servers as it always was, but also have a competitive mode (if it wasn't awful) rather than converting everything to the same kind of thing and giving you the option to find community servers yourself. I played a lot of competitive TF2 which was NOT what you see in their version of it ingame at all and didn't mess with anything. It was just another mod, effectively.
Do you remember QuickPlay?
I think that's the feature they removed that you're talking about where it would scan for available community servers and toss you into one that fits your selection the most.
I agree with you 100% on what you're saying when it comes to adding "casual" and "comp" with the Meet Your Match update. I do blame modern FPS game styles for wanting to promote this idea that "If you didn't win you didn't have fun" mentality. Where everything must be taken seriously, and if you don't you should just leave because how dare you not take a 3 hour game of 2Fort seriously.
I have been saying this about the matchmaking system for years, I'm at sort of a loss for words at hearing my exact thoughts and feelings expressed here by you. Every single one of my old buddies I met on TF2 over 10 years ago all stopped playing FOREVER after the matchmaking system was implemented. The game is technically still there in my steam library but almost everything about it that made it "the most fun you can have online" is just gone, the transition into a "structured" default play experience destroyed TF2.
Thanks for sharing this video, I miss TF2 so much.
I feel you there, so many multiplayer games are like that now, I was playing Call of Duty's infected mode recently and it feels so weird to be playing this goofy fun more social mode when every single game ends with you being pushed back to the main menu to match with completely different players.
While I wasnt on tf2 before the addition of the queue system, I believe that the community is still around, just a version that adapted. Twofort is the map where even in casual matches where the lack of competition is still present. Matches can go on perpetually, and everyone is occupied by farting around on the server.
Many of the community aspects you described are still present, they just may be a bit difficult to find at first.
Yeah true. It just used to be front and center. I remember 2fort matches going for hours.
@@chetfaliszekBrother, I implore you to look at the list of community servers. There are tons of 24 hour 2fort servers with very active player bases. Once you start playing on comm servs, you won't even know about the bot crisis
God, me too man. I feel like it doesn’t function the way it’s supposed to.
I think it's in the same update, but you also can't change teams anymore. For me that's the biggest misstep, since it directly affects actually playing a match, while the matchmaking is just something around it
absolutely. just as you start to get comfy on a server everything resets and you have to go through the slow loading screen again and half the people leave. i miss the days of voting to extend the map over and over and getting hundreds of points on ctf. just to make it worse they added a timer to powerhouse too so you cant stalemate it forever and keep the server going.
Would you ever try to step back into the ring and try to take on developing for tf2 again?
100% with you on the matchmaking. Quickplay is good for people that like it, but hiding the community server browser behind all these menus is such an oversight. I used to hang out on a 24/7 Hightower server, literally just as a chatroom with gameplay. I made a lot of friends from that server, most I still keep in touch with today. It's such a shame that the game ended up chasing a trend, instead of keeping what had kept it alive for so long.
It's still a huge game for its age, don't get me wrong, but it could be so much more.
I do miss the good ol days before contracts, casual/competitive ranking, showing the kills/deaths at the end which is what made me love TF2 in the first place. I hated how other shooters were just showing off how many kills you could get in 10 minutes, TF2 made you focus on working with your team and without that I wouldn't have had all those good memories. I started in 2013 and still play (somewhat) often today but yea it's a shell of it's former glory :(
100% agree. Being able to just come and go is what made TF2 fun for me. Some people want to win, some people want to have fun, some people only tryhard if their team's losing, and if people aren't playing the way you want, just find a different server, no big deal. But I quit for several years because I heard they added "matchmaking" and that was just a total buzzkill for me. I still play today because I realized it's not real matchmaking (anymore), but the UI still makes it look that way. I've seen several people try to play TF2 for the first time and the UI intimidates them because they didn't think it was such a serious game and people have to spam them, "It's not! Just click this button and pick some maps," and so on. It's really frustrating.
While I disliked the matchmaking queue system when it launched, I've come around to it and much prefer it to looking through a server browser. I don't have many issues with bots these days, so I just join a lobby with a few buddies and hit queue, and we're in for a night of fun. It's not super visible, but at least the server browser is still present, and there are communities around them. It is a far cry from what it used to be but the 24 hour doublecross servers are a joy to screw around on.
Thanks for sharing. I've been playing for 10+ years but have only really "paid attention" to what TF2 is for about the past 3, so I missed all that stuff.
Man I rememeber my first encounter with bots when I was still new to tf2, then it started to get worse overtime..
I exclusively play on a community server for both these reasons. We play to hang out with friends. The mods are active so there are very few problems with bots, and occasionally some edgelord does something stupid and the mods take care of that too. It's pretty great, and I would have given up on TF2 many years ago if I hadn't found that server.
Thanks for giving your thoughts on TF2 Chet! It really is so depressing and frustrating to see where the game's at these days. The fact that, despite all of the problems that have been introduced over the years, there's such a massively dedicated fanbase for the game speaks volumes about its quality. I really wish things would turn around for TF2.
Everything you've said is 100% true. Focusing on competitive and removing quickplay killed most of the community servers and in part a crucial part of tf2. Compared to say 2013 tf2, modern day tf2 is a husk only kept up by a passionate community that can't let go and the fact that it's free.
I miss it.
Yeah, the source code leak was unforgivable. I still can't believe Valve let that happen. If only that hadn't happened, then hacking in TF2 probably would have been much more manageable than it is now.
It was a huge catalyst to the bot invasion. Even though it was possible beforehand and there were actually instances of bots before it happened, they were far less effective and based off of far older source code. Hence it never became a huge thing until it happened.
back in the time when you simply could drop in / drop out of matches by the click of a button
and just simple game invites your friends could join the same server, just like that.
Now; you have to wait an extended amount of time to connect into a _Random_ match.
friend invites are replaced with "party invites" where you have to wait until map change or server change until they can join.
I have been making workshop content for a few years now and I gotta agree I miss how tf2 was
You're part of the problem. One look at the cosmetics you've made tells me all I need to know. Do you really believe the Splitting Headache or Hollowed Helm would be good fits for the game? Nobody wears the terrible hats you've made because they're ugly. Thank you for ruining TF2 by adding more visual clutter, garbage, and bloat while also taking up crate cosmetic slots that actually talented people could have used. Eric Smith must be smoking something good or you're giving him the best head of his life for these to get in the game.
@@meteorbot9005 jesus christ who hurt you
@@AlphaGargmaybe he was a little harsh but he's spitting facts
@@AlphaGarg well well. this is the same guy who made a hat called S.L.O.P . mocking the increased amount of criticism towards him and his workshop band of easy quick rich scheme enjoyers.
it not like he can't make good 3d models and stuff. the issue. they treat tf2 like fortnite... enough said. also would love to add that they normally never release their hats until before halloween and christmas (to maximize the chances of them getting aded)
managed to rack up around 1.2k hours in tf2 getting into it fairly later on around the time of gun mettle
the queue system absolutely destroyed any interest I had in the game and meet your match was the absolute worst update they could of ever made, was heartbroken when it was released I thought the queue system was for the comp mode only so seeing quickplay just completely eradicated made me not really play it at all since
Yeah, the more memorable parts of tf2 for me were the long discussions of varying random topics with strangers on the internet in voice chat while also blowing each other up on a community Dustbowl server. That whole bar/pub like feeling on certain tf2 servers is something truly special. I think the old quick play should make a comeback as a counter to the bot problem. It used to factor in community servers to the search. With community run servers having better tools to deal with bots and hacking in general, it would at least give new players the chance of having a playable game.
I must admit I've never thought WHY I stopped playing TF2.
I always thought it was just one of those, where you just move on and leave the game and the memories of playing it in your head.
But alas this deeply resonated with me, my all TF2 memories are just goofing around, do your first actual plays, have that heartbeat racing when the game is really really close, but right after that you just do some deathrun or Saxton Hale and it's just all of these memories also are under the whole "happiest part of your life" category, it's just joy to remember
God I wish we had quick play back
ive been playing tf2 for the longest time, it was my childhood and it means so much to me, i can't express anything else better more than you have
you are 100% right on the dot and i miss everything about the server browser, i still to this day hold the opinion that the meet your match update is the worst update to have ever happened to the game and it's painful knowing it will probably never be able to go back to its former glory again
i dearly miss what tf2 used to mean and be
I kind of disagree with the queue part. I love getting able to party up with people. Other aspects? like needing to pay to talk or the bots? absolutely agree with you.
I've been playing TF2 religiously since 2010 and while I agree with a lot of what you're saying about how different the game used to be, I think a lot of people are forgetting just how bad quickplay actually was, often times you'd be placed in empty servers only populated by bots (not that different from what we had for while there recently, glad that's finally been fixed) or it would just fail to find a match after waiting several minutes even though you'd just be able to take one look at the server browser to find a good one yourself in seconds. Basically what I'm saying is quickplay wasn't good, just using the server browser like Gaben intended was always the best way to find games.
I do miss how these casual servers used to be though. With the way it is now, most people only care about winning, and when people leave because their team is losing or whatever, the game is forced to try to find new players who hopefully don't mind joining a losing game, or do auto-balance, which everyone hates. Many times I've been playing with friends and be having a good time playing on the same team only for the auto-balance system to split us up and ruin our fun.
In the time before matchmaking, I often would join a game, see which team needed help, and pick that one. Now everyone is just automatically assigned and there's this expectation that you'll get a balanced game, which isn't always the case. Before players could swap teams or even call a vote to scramble everyone and reset the match if things were too one-sided, which helped a lot and kept things fair, and most importantly it didn't keep you from playing on the same team as your buddies. I used to play on some servers for hours with the same people just on different maps, either trying to win or just messing around. It didn't matter because there weren't any stakes, we were all just playing for fun and I think that has been lost and I would like to see that come back.
Recently TF2 got an update that added 100 player servers to the game and that was the first time in 7+ years that I've actually been able to play TF2 as a "chat room" again. I love TF2 but its appeal to me back in like 2011 was talking to random strangers while you aimlessly shoot people in the background. Log into a regular match today and there's radio silence. You can't hear the enemy team for gameplay reasons but it means that nobody sparks up conversation, and on the off-chance someone talks you'll be forced to leave the match in 15 minutes anyway to never hear from them again.
For real. I miss all-talk being the norm. Trash talking the enemy team playfully, hearing some guy go on about his weed addiction, listening to some guy raging on the enemy team after you killed them. It all fit together to make one of the funniest online community experiences ever. That was a large part of the appeal for me too. Not just the gameplay, but feeling involved in the community.
TF2 is my favorite game of all time, it was 99% of my play time in 2023 steam year in review. I really really wish valve would stop neglecting the game, its quite sad.
At this point, we'd all just play Team Fortress 2 Classic as it stays true to the older TF2 experience, with Community Servers and the artstyle, even cut concept weapons.
Edit: That prediction aside I believe that even Valve sees that the matchmaking and comp features were a flunk. Because it did not meet up to standards players have as they were competing against other modern shooters. But that's what Valve failed to see, TF2 is not a modern shooter.
hey, chet!
it's really refreshing to see you talk about TF2. i was planning on making a video essay about pretty much the exact thing you are talking about in this video; I think Meet Your Match was pretty much what sealed TF2's fate. I don't know for sure but i think it was a bit of a test to gauge people's interest in the game and when it entirely bombed, so did TF2's support.
As a 6s and HL player, I agree with valve fucking up casual to make it their version of comp - but nobody wanted the casual and valve comp that they implemented. It shows valve doesn't know what the average player wants from each sub-community, but from the comp side - they wanted to re-invent the wheel for some reason.
I started playing TF2 during the beta (still playing almost daily for a few mins at least) and I came to it directly from CS:S. Honestly the community around servers was pretty much the same there, very healthy and just like you're describing here (coincidentally the sniper rifle initially felt IDENTICAL to the scout because you could quick switch and rescope quicker than you can now). When CSGO came along it's community servers suffered just like ours. I hate to admit it but I basically only queue casual now, I don't want to wait for a slot to open up on one of the handful of private servers I sometimes visit.
Dane's seething at the thought of people enjoying tf2 casually.
You used to have servers with little communities that'd have their own map rotation and rules like some servers were standard and some were whacky maps with weird physics or surf maps or some servers were 24/7 micspam.