i dont really care about getting good, i care about playing with my friends. playing competitive tf2 feels like something you have to do to have a sense of belonging playing tf2 in general.

what im referring to is quite different from having a bad performance or an off day. when im overwhelmed by tf2, i physically struggle to hold my arm straight and keep the mouse in my hand; my body twitching involuntarily. i cannot speak at all and my brain completely shuts down, usually i have some amnesia associated with this when i come out of it.

ironically enough i think you were one of the people that got me *hooked* into this abt a decade ago, lol.

im not really looking to get anything substantial out of tf2 other than a sense of closure/accomplishment out of it to justify to myself why i spent so much time in it. the game is something i do legitimately enjoy, even if those same dopamine/adrenal rushes that you laud do the exact opposite to me.

these are things i can easily do and execute when i'm in a flow state, but that never lasts more than about 30 minutes at a time. then i run out of mental bandwidth pretty quickly after playing any more than that to the point where, at the end, im unable to speak at all.

so, i have both flat textures on and in-game volume usually either very low or completely off for this reason. voice comms are, outside of the general pressure and increased tempo of the game, my biggest issue. everything i have done in that field seems to either work (but create other issues, like not being able to hear important things) or not be enough to be able to play tf2 in a consistent manner.

i think the overall pressure of organized play; the insistence of not wanting to fuck up, that people need you to perform, etc, is just a big of an issue to me, which is why i quit for a long time, but i doubt theres anything i can do about that other than to depersonalize and get high before playing.

hi, i like playing organized tf2 with friends :) but im having a somewhat large issue- i can't really process what's happening when i'm playing in a competitive scene- having to be in a voice chat, hearing more noises, having less time to process whats happening + regulating emotions. do you recommend anything for making the game and its environment less stimulating visually and auditory wise so i can enjoy the game? am i just fucked?

you're right that it was poor word choice, and i do hold valve more accountable for this than faceit; they're just seeing niche to exploit.

it really isn't. a ranked stopwatch payload match is entirely different and incentivizes the player to play in an entirely different way than just your run of the mill valve casual game.

i almost hope faceit tf2 fails completely. the culture shift and the complete attitude change that normal players have had about the game- and particularly about actually winning- over the past few days is fucking draining. it makes me not want to touch tf2 if every facet of the game now is competitive

this is not casual, it's not even well disguised as casual. it's meant to be competitive and to intentionally coax players for a competitive experience. faceit knows it has a captive audience and is using it to force competitive gaming down the throats of people who wish to not compete solely to enjoy tf2. everyone who has shilled it as the replacement for valve casual does so because they profit off the idea of the community becoming more competitive and therefore more involved (especially financially) in content.

everyone is now playing optimally, everyone is concerned about winning, everyone is concerned about trying their hardest, about ranking up, about competing. playing against good players isn't fun; most of us want to have something chill to do and not worry about our performance in a video game as we do in nearly every other aspect of our capitalist-driven life.

instead i get to see my dpm and my k/d easily accessible in their scoreboards as if they're logs.tf. i get to attempt to climb up the rankings so i can have even more of a soul sucking experience when i have to try even harder against better opponents.

i know everyone in tftv wants this game to be an esport. everything that makes tf2 a remotely good community comes from it not being a competitive game. i've never seen a non-toxic competitive gaming community.

to have what i and many of us have enjoyed about tf2 to be first stripped by the lack of support in the game (just to simply remove the fucking bots), and then to have that power vacuum hijacked by an esports organization and a minority culture who really, really wants this game to be as awful and competitive as all those other fancy games so that they can justify their mental power fantasies over mouse and keyboard is depressing.

I'm pretty sure someone else can answer this, but when admins start making rules for the sake of monopolizing their own league instead of enriching the community it automatically thinks that there has to be profit motive for ownership.

You can justify bans against a lot of controversial issues (like harassment even outside of league matches) as helping maintaining safety in the community but you can't justify this in any other light than capitalizing on the fucked-six-ways-to-sunday situation tf2 is in.

i know it's definitely not just a "video games" issue, it's just that video games (especially multiplayer ones) are so volatile that there's no good way you can effectively prime yourself for future stimulation- you never know what exactly will happen. it's like listening to a piece of music that you've never heard before and then someone screams midway through the song unexpectedly

i think you misread; that's the only time i *can* play tf2. otherwise the stimulation gets to me.

that's definitely possible and i really thank you for your advice /s

I find that I can only play tf2 without melting down 30 minutes in if i'm either inebriated, sleepy, or dissociated enough that i'm not really paying that much attention to the game. I already do things to help this like not playing with in-game sound or music on and taking a mental break after every other round or so, but those only really slow down the inevitable. This of course doesn't *just* happen in tf2, it's in every intensive game i play that has a lot going on at once without a way or time to filter out things.

Just wanted to see if there's anyone who else deals with this and if so how do you cope with it? I love gaming but I can't let it turn my into a nervous wreck where I'm unable to do anything else for the rest of the day.

what do you think stalking bullying, and doxxing queer people and poc starts as?

it actually isn't openly saying the racial slurs. it's rational both-sides-ism people defending others' "rights" to say those slurs. it doesn't start with othering people, it starts with "neutral" people making a "distinction" between what they falsely consider to and not to be racist. it starts with people not holding other people accountable and staying willfully ignorant of budding terrible prejudice and violence.

and it doesn't end with people doxxing others.