With this new information, I've decided to become a garry's mod caster

eh only takes two players to play the best tf2 competitive format

mge

a lot of tf2's playerbase were, for lack of a better descriptor, migratory. they only played it in spurts when updates came out.
the seasonal updates were a big part of people playing the game more, regardless of the quality of the update. considering that they have released much smaller seasonal updates, and also skipped some, it's no surprise that the people who play tf2 when it had updates have stopped playing, especially considering how much of a blunder jungle inferno was.

Shocking news!

i think 35k is still good tbh. I just wish there were more pub communities remaining. I miss the pre-casual matchmaking days where I'd just keep 5-6 servers in favorites and always run in the same players.

Sorry if I really sound like a negative nancy after this post, but I wanna post my thought now on this. And I wish I didn't have to think of this but...

This clearly shows that tf2 no longer has a new growing fan base now. All that it's mostly left potentially more trading bots. and veterans occasionally playing the game. And when an update comes. It's mostly people that wanna just try it for a bit and then leave a month or two after so. There is no actual growth coming from these updates. Maybe the game is too old or too difficult for new players to come play now. (and i hope i'm wrong) But these new numbers show that tf2 comp, or potentially tf2 itself will never rise up again yet alone just lose support fully if the number just keeps dwindling over the years man...

this game hasn't had a good update in years, don't act surprised

Not really surprised, just really have that feeling of true realization, also I guess I am somewhat surprised that 50% of the player base turned out to be bots, i was expecting 25% at most

I mean fortnite is free while pubg is 30$ and requires a better PC than fortnite.

haha, cya shit game

To be honest I expected even less people to be left after the bots were turned off.

It's not really surprising though.

Casual is absolute dogshit, Pyro is just so stupidly broken that even memeing about the class just makes me annoyed now, and between the obnoxious as fuck flame particles that I can't see through (or at the very least modify) and the dumbass skins they keep putting in the game, my fps has and will continue to drop until I'm playing a simulation of Microsoft Power-Point. It's ridiculous

Valve doubling down on their shitty mistakes instead of admitting that what they did was a bad decision and fixing it is the reason that we've got this mess of a game and why people are continuing to leave it.

Is it just me & my friend or has the audio engine broken with the jungle patch? I use snd_mixahead 0.05 and audio clips sometimes has a small chance to not play (pop kritz and don't hear the kritz sound, pyro does an airblast and you don't hear it for example). Its nothing new that they don't care about the game really but this is next level. Its apparently more important for them to push more garbage into the game than have working consistent audio that doesn't fuck you over.

Valve has kept ruining the game over time, caring more about "micro transaction profit" and selling "season passes" to whatever shitty contract campaign they have. And people suck it up and keep buying it giving the developer an incentive to keep pushing low effort cash bait content without even caring about basic bug fixing or features.

Most things have already been mentioned, casual queue is a joke from a user experience side... All the features that community servers had have been straight up deleted for no good reason; no team switching, no voting (the in-game voting menu is shit and has map/kick teammate vote only), cant join friends through steam and no way to find a game with crits disabled.

The user experience is just so bad with the whole "we need to control the user experience" mentality. And it doesn't even work properly - I love playing on NA servers as soon as we have one American queue with x amount of Europeans despite ping limiter saying differently... If this happened overnight (2011-2018) everybody would be up in flames but people have slowly been desensitized over time to accept this less-than-mediocre awful quickplay system - simply because its what excepted from games in 2017/18. I mean, looking for a server that appeals for you and is actually good is just too much work when you can press the shiny play button... And this is the only thing new players experience and know of so they're essentially trained to have this bad "leave-after-the-game/no-incentive-to-form-a-community" mentality, they cant help it as they don't know anything else.

But yep pubs are zzz now and have been for a while its sad this part of tf2 is so bad because it was great in its prime but ValVE = $$$ hungry and dont understand/play their own games as they live in their bubble of statistics and number analysis lol. Post is probably a bit off topic but the game has become so bloated and ruined so its not surprising there is no new blood and people lose interest.

not definite but i think op is talking about weapon spraypaint like the dragon's fury skin or smth

Take it out back and put the poor thing to sleep, it's suffered enough

Valve need to do a final update where they remove half the unlocks in the game and fix as many things as possible. It's apparebt that they aren't qualified to look after their own game. Tragic. Promod when?

When people here say the game is dead it's not meant to be taken literally dead. Lawbreakers still has players and you certainly wouldn't call it alive. DayZ has players and people still call it dead. The point is, 30% of our playerbase just turned out to be bots, Valve doesn't care about competitive and its community, they blatantly fucked up Pyro update and our game is overrun with bugs and shitty cosmetics that ruin fps. And so far we have ZERO reason to believe anything is going to change. I don't think calling it dead is that much of a stretch lol.

Another relevant steam chart

https://i.imgur.com/MEzi8PP.png

Some new RPG release has loads of players as well as the other stuff pointed out on the previous page. I wouldn't be surprised to see TF2's numbers bounce back at least partially in a week or two, unless there are more big releases or high profile promotions for other games around the corner.

This stuff will erode TF2's player base eventually. The other games taking it's place will be crammed with micro transactions from which Valve get a cut so I doubt they're shedding any tears.

this game keeps feeling more and more like a nexon game

Y'all are trippin

NAH man that is exactly what people said when MM was on its way and now look

I will Not be fooled on this occasion

when do we march on valve

never
people talk but do not act, they never will