Tf2 is probably my most played game of all time, and to be honest? I hate it. I used to absolutely adore this game, I've got ten thousand hours and STILL play, partially because of sunk cost fallacy but mostly because the core game is actually really good. The problem lies in the fact that it's so hard to get to that fun part when you're constantly dealing with cheaters, bots, generally obnoxious players and small but surmountable balance issues.
Years of dealing with the frankly horrendous community and the afformentioned balance issues have piled up and have progressively become more noticeable and annoying as time has gone on, and there's no sign of them ever being resolved. Bots go without vac bans for months, and while there has been a noticeable decrease of their prominence, they're still not fully taken care of, and some of the recessions made to stop their disruptiveness have negatively impacted parts of the playerbase; F2Ps no longer being able to talk in casual servers being a big example. I'm yet to see if there are any consequences for being toxic or unecessarily hostile towards other players in a lobby, or, y'know, cheating.
I'm someone who doesn't really like community servers all that much - I'm generally looking for a vanilla experience, and community servers that do offer that are often full or scarce. Queuing up for a casual match is usually actually faster and more convenient, though there are many things I'd give to just get quickplay back and be able to hop into any vanilla server with 0 queue times. Casual is its own can of worms. Not being able to spectate, scramble teams or swap teams mid-match creates a remakably dull experience, for one, but I find myself put into a casual match that, way more often than not, goes something like this;
I queue for around 1-5 minutes. Get put in a match. The match is basically seconds from ending or literally ends as soon as I join. The majority of players leave. The map changes. The server becomes empty. I requeue for another 1-5 minutes in hopes of being put into a match with players. Most of the time, casual matches I'm put into go as low as 4 players per team. Maps feels especially empty when you're playing 6v6 as opposed to 12v12, and it means that a lot of the time, there's very little of that frantic, fun chaos that tf2 is known for.
I shouldn't have to constantly kill bind and cycle to the player I want to spectate every 12-20 seconds just so I can look out for a potential cheater. Matches are often abysmally unbalanced, and with teams not being scrambled after successive wins, you're stuck steamrolling or being steamrolled, and neither circumstances are particularly fun. So your best option is to requeue...several times. All of this being part of a push to make tf2 more competitive. Y'know, the game with random critical hits that were implemented with the sole intention of making the game hectic, breaking stalemates, and above all, making tf2 less of a competitive shooter.
Remember when you could get penalised with a ban that could last several months when Meet your Match initially dropped? Just for leaving a casual match? Yeah. Stop trying to make this game competitive, I cannot stress this enough. I remember when faceit dropped and it was basically just casual, without bots mind you, but even more competitively driven. I'm genuinely on my knees here, please just bring back quickplay, for the love of God. It's not even just valve trying to push a more competitive agenda, but vocal parts of the community too. Casual has driven people to play more seriously and competitively in an innately non-serious, non-competitive shooter. I just want to be able to screw around on turbine, or something, and not have to deal with the etf2l aussie sniper with 80k kills on the enemy team, but I so rarely get that opportunity anymore.
Weapons have gone years basically being objective improvements or downgrades over stock contrary to their intended status as sidegrades, thanks to the lack of updates. Stuff like the Bazaar Bargain, Ubersaw, Iron Bomber (until recently, actually), Tomislav (debateably), Jag, Wrangler (also debateably), Diamondback, Crusader's Crossbow, etc are just straight up being better than stock, while other weapons like the Bison (which was never even that good to begin with, but valve nerfed anyway and STILL didn't fully revert to its former self with the...recent...buff? God, it's been so long, I forget how long ago that even was), the Caber, Baby Face's Blaster, Loch n Load, Ambassador etc are either inversely near useless and/or have been nerfed into the ground. Jungle Inferno made Pyro both worse to play as and against, my main example being changing the airblast's hitbox from a cone to a fucking massive cube that extends behind them??? for some reason???? which makes airblasting projectiles piss easy but inversely makes airblasting players away really janky and with seemingly random effectiveness.
And oh my god, the community. I'm sorry. Tf2 players will be like "ooooh we're such a wholesome community of passionate players who welcome everyone and we're so starved of updates please support us we can't deal with all these bots uwu" and then you join a casual match and there's basically a 40% chance you run into a literal neo nazi parading around, constantly throwing transphobic and racial slurs at every opportunity with swastikas on their objector. There's also an 80% chance of said person being a cheater. I genuinely run into more cheaters than bots these days, it's actually insane. I know the "oooh the game's good but oooh the community the so community's bad" bit is a really shitty argument, but in the case of tf2, a game that is purely multiplayer and reliant on you interacting with the community, I think it's a very valid knock against the game experience.
I started playing not too long after Love and War. I still have fond memories of the time spent on quickplay, slowly getting good at the game, messing around and experimenting with loadouts, eventually becoming obsessed with hats, getting in on the memes and community jokes.
I want that to come back, but it likely never will. There's another childhood game of mine that's devolved over the years that I ought to get to reviewing, come to think of it. Maybe some other day.
Jun 2023 addendum:
Yeah it's still terrible lmao. Cheaters and transphobes are even more commonplace than before. Unfortunate. This community will never change and does not deserve an update. Let it go.
Years of dealing with the frankly horrendous community and the afformentioned balance issues have piled up and have progressively become more noticeable and annoying as time has gone on, and there's no sign of them ever being resolved. Bots go without vac bans for months, and while there has been a noticeable decrease of their prominence, they're still not fully taken care of, and some of the recessions made to stop their disruptiveness have negatively impacted parts of the playerbase; F2Ps no longer being able to talk in casual servers being a big example. I'm yet to see if there are any consequences for being toxic or unecessarily hostile towards other players in a lobby, or, y'know, cheating.
I'm someone who doesn't really like community servers all that much - I'm generally looking for a vanilla experience, and community servers that do offer that are often full or scarce. Queuing up for a casual match is usually actually faster and more convenient, though there are many things I'd give to just get quickplay back and be able to hop into any vanilla server with 0 queue times. Casual is its own can of worms. Not being able to spectate, scramble teams or swap teams mid-match creates a remakably dull experience, for one, but I find myself put into a casual match that, way more often than not, goes something like this;
I queue for around 1-5 minutes. Get put in a match. The match is basically seconds from ending or literally ends as soon as I join. The majority of players leave. The map changes. The server becomes empty. I requeue for another 1-5 minutes in hopes of being put into a match with players. Most of the time, casual matches I'm put into go as low as 4 players per team. Maps feels especially empty when you're playing 6v6 as opposed to 12v12, and it means that a lot of the time, there's very little of that frantic, fun chaos that tf2 is known for.
I shouldn't have to constantly kill bind and cycle to the player I want to spectate every 12-20 seconds just so I can look out for a potential cheater. Matches are often abysmally unbalanced, and with teams not being scrambled after successive wins, you're stuck steamrolling or being steamrolled, and neither circumstances are particularly fun. So your best option is to requeue...several times. All of this being part of a push to make tf2 more competitive. Y'know, the game with random critical hits that were implemented with the sole intention of making the game hectic, breaking stalemates, and above all, making tf2 less of a competitive shooter.
Remember when you could get penalised with a ban that could last several months when Meet your Match initially dropped? Just for leaving a casual match? Yeah. Stop trying to make this game competitive, I cannot stress this enough. I remember when faceit dropped and it was basically just casual, without bots mind you, but even more competitively driven. I'm genuinely on my knees here, please just bring back quickplay, for the love of God. It's not even just valve trying to push a more competitive agenda, but vocal parts of the community too. Casual has driven people to play more seriously and competitively in an innately non-serious, non-competitive shooter. I just want to be able to screw around on turbine, or something, and not have to deal with the etf2l aussie sniper with 80k kills on the enemy team, but I so rarely get that opportunity anymore.
Weapons have gone years basically being objective improvements or downgrades over stock contrary to their intended status as sidegrades, thanks to the lack of updates. Stuff like the Bazaar Bargain, Ubersaw, Iron Bomber (until recently, actually), Tomislav (debateably), Jag, Wrangler (also debateably), Diamondback, Crusader's Crossbow, etc are just straight up being better than stock, while other weapons like the Bison (which was never even that good to begin with, but valve nerfed anyway and STILL didn't fully revert to its former self with the...recent...buff? God, it's been so long, I forget how long ago that even was), the Caber, Baby Face's Blaster, Loch n Load, Ambassador etc are either inversely near useless and/or have been nerfed into the ground. Jungle Inferno made Pyro both worse to play as and against, my main example being changing the airblast's hitbox from a cone to a fucking massive cube that extends behind them??? for some reason???? which makes airblasting projectiles piss easy but inversely makes airblasting players away really janky and with seemingly random effectiveness.
And oh my god, the community. I'm sorry. Tf2 players will be like "ooooh we're such a wholesome community of passionate players who welcome everyone and we're so starved of updates please support us we can't deal with all these bots uwu" and then you join a casual match and there's basically a 40% chance you run into a literal neo nazi parading around, constantly throwing transphobic and racial slurs at every opportunity with swastikas on their objector. There's also an 80% chance of said person being a cheater. I genuinely run into more cheaters than bots these days, it's actually insane. I know the "oooh the game's good but oooh the community the so community's bad" bit is a really shitty argument, but in the case of tf2, a game that is purely multiplayer and reliant on you interacting with the community, I think it's a very valid knock against the game experience.
I started playing not too long after Love and War. I still have fond memories of the time spent on quickplay, slowly getting good at the game, messing around and experimenting with loadouts, eventually becoming obsessed with hats, getting in on the memes and community jokes.
I want that to come back, but it likely never will. There's another childhood game of mine that's devolved over the years that I ought to get to reviewing, come to think of it. Maybe some other day.
Jun 2023 addendum:
Yeah it's still terrible lmao. Cheaters and transphobes are even more commonplace than before. Unfortunate. This community will never change and does not deserve an update. Let it go.
SnowTangerine
22 days ago