PokemonAdventureYeah but tf2 wouldn't be fun if it wasn't a casual, trollish joke game. Imagine how lame it would be if it had the same olive drab military visuals of every other team fps out there (and how the original design iterations had planned).
Nah. It doesn't have to be the next CoD to have a more serious feel to it. Quake graphics are not realistic in the slightest, but the company supported the game as a competitive FPS and not just a cash cow for cosmetic items. I think the graphics itself in TF2 are fine, but as the comment you replied to stated, Valve did not intend this game to be a game like Quake. Not that it isn't possible to play it competitively, as we all can see, but rather that you have to overcome a lot more to get the same feeling. And as an earlier comment stated as well, the game definitely is "slow" if you compare it to other Quake-esque games, including Quake itself. There seems to be a polarity for a lot of FPS gamers in that they either enjoy Counter Strike or Quake. There have been a lot of players who played both at one point, but most people like to stick to certain styles. For players who loved the Quake games, going from those to TF2 (the logical choice considering TF2 is most like Quake compared to the other shooters out there) must have been strange. The game is much slower in that there are classes like Heavy that move like a slug, with absolutely no way to increase movement speed, other than a 10% speed increase from bhopping perfectly. It's just a different game. You'd see a lot of TF2-cons and clout surrounding top players of this game if it were respected by the players and past sponsors/partners of games like Quake.
For the game to be respected and seen as a rival of games like Quake, Valve needs to step up and shine a light over the competitive community. But for them to support the game competitively, a lot of things could be made less random, and would hurt the current pub mindset of the game. Simple things, like each pipe having differential rotation, where each pipe can have its own distinct rotation and thus roll differently and hit boxes or objects when other pipes fly right past, is an easy thing to change. Will that ever be something that's changed? Of course not. The competitive community has been in an eternal struggle with Valve for a reason -- every update, save the ones that added crosshairs and standardized damage/spread, is counter-intuitive to competitive play. Breaking HUDs, affecting players' frames, adding cosmetic items that cement the game further into its roots of pubsmanship.
That being said, it's not impossible for the game to be a really competitive shooter with a lot of money. The only problem is we're the only ones who know that. Look at shootmania. The game is the most shallow, hilariously simplistic game I've ever played. It has probably the most apt title of all time. ALL you do is shoot. Within less than a month of playing the game competitively, only scrimming by ringing for phelon's team, I was able to take a map off of SK with whaz and dummy in a scrim. That's like a few Quake players or CS players coming over to TF2 and in less than a month, practicing only like 10 scrims in total, taking a map off of Mixup. Never going to happen. But it's possible in shootmania, because there's so few things you need to keep track of. And yet it's heavily supported with LANs in Vegas for a 100K prize pot. The sponsors and, most importantly, Valve, need to support the game if you want to see something like that with this game. Or ESEA could somehow work magic.