https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z47xwzYGop8

Does anyone actually mind the new casual system? I'd like to see auto-balance make a return + being able to join off a friend in the middle of a game, but other than those two gripes I enjoy this new system much more.

I made the majority of my long-lasting friendships playing on the same dedicated servers. When you start noticing another person's (frag) interest in you, and you end up seeing the same regulars every now again, it's easier to set your eyes on the best while trying to improve, and also making friends.

Now you got a semi-bugged experience bar promoting trying your hardest, leveling up instead of fucking about with a shit weapon. That's not to say anyone actually plays on dedicated servers with the old quickplay in place, but it's still sad to see it go. Matchmaking is already making gaming far less social if you're not already circlejerking with a same premade.

Hell, most of us probably got into competitive TF2 from exposure to pro regulars on a fav'd server. It's honestly no wonder there's 'game dating' websites popping up left and right when every popular game is 15 min matchmaking games with even scrubs busting their backs.

the games feel far more empty and slower than quickplay (which is even slower than the instant respawn dm servers i prefer), not to mention there's a 5 minute gap inbetween each game. plus there's also the issues pendji mentioned of not actually knowing anyone on the server you're playing since they're gone in 10 minutes. personally i detest playing it.

-frags for justified opinion, ok

+1 for auto-balance. Although with how buggy the game is I can see why the devs wanted to give people a chance to reconnect.

Also, what was the reason behind removing spectator capability?

I can't stand casual matchmaking. Honestly it's my last resort if I wanna pub some tf2. It's totally sad to see these awesome community servers that have been around for years slowly dying because no one uses the server browser anymore. It takes the community aspect out of the game which, in my opinion, is the one of the best parts of tf2 besides the core gamplay. It's the reason I have still played tf2 since release and it's so sad to see casual tf2 in this state.

Yeah, community servers are what kept me interested in tf2 and the people I met there are the ones that taught me how to play properly, told me about trading, mge and jumping, custom huds/cfgs and eventually got me interested in 6s. The fact that they've been dying ever since valve added quickplay makes me really sad for all the newer players that'll miss out on the sense of community and all the valuable info that comes with it

They basically crashed their own ship with "we need to control the player experience". Its so stupid that you cant join friends midgame, you cant have a larger party than 6, you cant join which team you want to make it more fair, but most importantly the personality completely disappears when you run a matchmaking system.

As for minding the "new" casual system, I like it less than I liked the old casual system and that wasnt great either. There was no need for this in the first place. Its sad that they used this kind of system to deal with the influx of players that were anticipated (and came) from the F2P patch in 2011. What they should have done is dedicated "valve servers" that you can access from the server browser to make sure there are at least some kind of not-modded experience and make sure there is always a leftover of servers for the players.

Obviously I understand the dev teams fear of what if someone joins a modded server or gamemode and get a skewered first impression but come on really? That wasnt a problem back in 2007-2010 where everything was ran by the community.

What pendji said has made me avoid solo pubs completely, I enjoyed it back in 2012-2013 but nowdays it is so life-less. Players have no reason to get to know eachother, no reason to feel that they want to improve or join a "quickplay community" (lol) because in the end it'll only be limited to the system. And the system is so bad it has effectively killed interest in public tf2 for me, personally. There is no fun or excitement in pulling off a master disguise, going for crazy sniper/rocket shots on players or trying ninja engineer shenanigans. 99% of the players are around the skill level where they cant even control their mouse let alone react to something happening 10 meters in front of them. Its like bullying bots.

Playing around a community would give you much more room to receive help, see what other players are doing, have more fun (the game gets more fun the better you get) and get to meet the good and bad guys. Instead of harvesting the future of tf2 pubs, we got quickplay. You reap what you sow.

every single pub i swear like 3/4 of the players are at rank 5 or below, every pub is just decided by how many dark blue and purple dudes you have on your team

either it's a roll because the enemy team is braindead or a roll cause your team is braindead. 10% of the matches are fun and evenly matched but then no one ever rematches

Even sticking to Valve servers, before casual you would sometimes spend hours on the same server with the same people, playing various maps.

Now it's only ever temporary. You might get an occasional rematch, but it's not the same thing and it rarely lasts. You shit out the matches. I do like the increased focus on competitiveness, but the rest of the changes are pretty dubious. I still enjoy it, but being rolled through a multi stage map with half the players the other team has, is also not fun.

The ability to join the other team and more continuity (automatically keeps the teams if they are evenish) would be nice.

I don't mind Casual because I like the concept, but I do agree it needs a lot of improvement.

I'd be OK with casual matchmaking if they had implemented it before they killed all the community servers with quickplay and valve servers

What made quickplay so appealing is that you could literally jump into a server in no time at all, and you could keep playing it round after round, or during map rotations.

Nowadays I have to wait for every goddamn thing and it's really annoying.

Waiting for the game to MAYBE find me a server that is near me
Waiting for the round to start
Waiting for people to rematch after the round ends in like 5 minutes
Waiting to re-queue if there is no rematch
Waiting to fucking re-queue or rematch upon joining a server with a finished game

There's so much unnecessary waiting. I could understand waiting for matchmaking, but pubs didn't need this sort of change. It's a total buzzkill.

Making the pub system into matchmaking lite to ease new players into mm was a failure. They failed to realize that easing players into the game mode doesn't mean anything when the game mode itself is a mess. Now we just have some unnecessary add-on that wastes an extra 5 to 30 minutes of your time depending on certain factors.

I think this is the biggest thing for me. I could join a payload valve server and spend like 5 hours on it, playing badwater, upward, thundermountain, and goldrush. Some people would stay, some would join. You never had to wait and it was always fun. Now I get matched into one map, and half the time the game is almost over. Such a bad system imo.

ty for summing up my thoughts

community pubs were what kept me interested in this game for years

anyone else not able to queue for halloween maps even though the contracts are still there? rip my book pages xd

Scream Fortress ended prematurely apparently

I honestly enjoy pubbing TF2 much more with the introduction of casual and competitive. All of my favorite pub servers from way back where I met most of the people I enjoy playing TF2 with are dead anyway. (rip gblad badwater never forgetti). I enjoy how you usually start a game from the beginning instead of being thrown in the middle of one, usually on the losing team, to then get autobalanced anyway if you managed to turn that around. But yeah, it does still need improvement, not being able to invite friends being my primary concern

I Wouldn't dislike matchmaking as much if there were central servers. Queuing up late night on the west coast is almost a guarantee to get sent to a virginia server with 90+ ping for me.