hey so uuuhhhhh teensy little correction you can disregard the final chapter because as it turns out, TF2's player counts have remained stagnant since 2018 and the "player growth" was pretty much entirely bots. i'd thought that was only part of it and didn't know of the truly absurd scale of these bot farms, but zesty jesus' "TF2: Nobody's Home" video (watch that if you haven't already) proves pretty conclusively that every new peak player count was 100% from new bots with that being said i still am glad to see that TF2's real player counts haven't decreased despite years of no major updates, but this is still a certified oof moment
and you used to be able to connect your friend from steam and don't worry about pointless xp and badge. the servers used to never truly die the moment match end. half the server leave the moment you lose in casual and you keep getting steam rolled, then the server die cuz the winner team get bored of one sided match. team scramble spectator team switching were removed stupid balancing and other many bad things MYM did to tf2. MYM is why we here today.
And I'm still chilling on community where I don't have bots. So idk what everyone else's masochistic obsession with staying on casual is about. If we abandoned valve servers that would send the message
Engi: heavy we are travelling for Mannhattan, now if you can give me tha- Arriving at ctf_turbine and the blu are stomping. Heavy: engi, why they are robots with unlocks at our spawn Door spinning. Engi: heavy, where the fuck we are now?
Call me a kook but in my mind it seems like a very easy way to divert blowback. Get people upset about something other than glaring issues; it also makes them look better in hindsight because they were "responsive" and "communicative" enough to "fix" that "problem." I only say this because they did it like 3 fucking times. They should've known after removing it the first time that ctf is not a competitive gamemode. Maybe the second time was just a mistake. The third time though? It was either a joke, a way to divert blowback/score brownie points upon its removal, or complete and utter confusion and cluelessness.
As someone who joined after JI, I wish I could've used quickplay.......(also, is MYM the reason Smash Fortress died? cause if so screw that update even harder.)
They really do, in part because new players don't even what it is, there's a good chunk that joined during jungle inferno if not after It's honestly sad how reverting to it would fix a lot of the issues i have with playing current casual
well, i was a quickplay user but that was the first step that estranged people from the server browser. i remember playing in community too but it was difficult to find vanilla server and sometimes, even if i love modded servers, you just want to play the base game but it was probably me that never learn the tag to filter the servers even if more or less i played the game since 2007 and own it since 2010
I find it amazing that people underestimate the remaining value of the damned server browser. Worked back in the late '90s for Quake, still works today. Matchmaking and Quickplay are functionally the same thing: "Push button, play game."
As someone that quit after MYM but started playing again recently and is having a blast, TF2 will truly never die. The community won't let it. I think TF2 is mostly a victim of valve's company structure, which isn't well suited for supporting a game long term. This is unlikely to change, but I hope valve realizes how much life TF2 still has. The best outcome in my opinion would be for them to pass it on to a dedicated third party team.
Tbh... valves company structure isn't really good for anything, in general. Not good for the current TF2, not good for the theoretical future Portal 3, not good for prett much anything except DotA, CS, and the steam storefront.
Valve aren't really all that concerned about their games anymore tbh, steam brings in enough revenue as it is. I also highly doubt they'd let go of their egos enough to give TF2 to someone that would actually care for the game
why pass it to a third party team when the community itself is what keeps the game alive (summer and scream fortress 2023 brought in official modes from community ideas)
@@icecube9765that's, basically what's being suggested here. Rather than having the single Valve dev pick and choose what community stuff comes in, have it be a group of trusted community members, maybe including the dev, who both make and review content and balance suggestions to be put in.
@@lunalesombras1150 I wouldn't be so quick to trust, "Community Members," because it will be abused. Valve doesn't want cliques, or a, "Cool Kids Club," to call the shots with gameplay. As with all good intentions; it will only lead to Hell very fast. V-script gamemodes is as best as they can get; not the norm of TF2 as a whole. You'd need Causal, Competitive, and MVM members; all these groups are rife with biases that have a chance to force their ideal default state of the game. For example, the MVM Community Members will just remove Gas Passer Explode on Ignite, Infinite Refunds, and whatever else they don't find fun. This leads to an Hell where normal players have no say in the matter, whatsoever. Instead, you just gave a select few power that's going to be forced upon others.
@@Fatsaver i don't know man. maybe it's just me coping but the fact tf2 was not cancelled after 9 years of development hell and reworks and restarting development. maybe at one time. they did care... or because valve at the time was a AA or indie developer before steam and the loot boxes blow up and made them care about nothing that is not with a B (billion dollars) back then. they could not afford the luxury of sitting on their a$$ all day and canceling things left and right.
@@Fatsaver you are not lying. it was their attempt at encouraging cheap labor (aka community created updates) to run their own live service model for theme. even if i feel really sad for what happened at end of the line and i really sympathise for the one guy who been overworked to put Valve level update. the rumours of tf2 having "15" deves and Robin walker leaving tf2 for good in 2013 (one year before end of the line) is not coincident. Valve had dota dota csgo at that time. also i think the failure of those community updates made valve do their own for a time. until the disaster known as MYM was rushed because of the Overwatch beta (2014) rushed or not. comp doesn't work or belong in tf2. tf2 is "organic 12v12 chaotic attack defense class based shooter". the jungle inferno update was valve last attempt at tf2. but just after it tf2 hit it lowest player numbers. you know why ? because they didn't bring back tf2 that they killed with MYM. WE NEED quick playback. casual mode was a mistake. and this is coming from someone who joined tf2 in 2015. just before MYM (been following the game for years until i got pc to play it)
the thiung about tf2 is that it doesn't take itself seriously. you could argue that all the other valve games take themselves seriously (you don't see unicorn hats in half-life or left 4 dead) and tf2 is an outlier. i'm no exception to that way of thinking because i moved to csgo when all this was happening for a more "serious" gaming experience. so maybe valve doesn't see tf2 in the way it should be seen; they see it as another cash grab like csgo or dota. i would love to know what valve has thought about tf2 since the beginning; do they see it as the fun, quirky, doesn't-need-to-be-taken-seriously (but absolutely can be) hybrid movement shooter that it is or do they see it as a mod that they bought from the community to eventually turn into a serious cashgrab? i'm sure that at the beginning they thought the former; they DID create all the updates that made tf2 what it is, but i'm guessing capitalism corrupted them and they spent years turning tf2 into what it thrives on NOT being.
Ah, yes, the update that made me QUIT the game, infamous MYM. How could I forget it. For real, I LEFT TF2 for Overwatch wholeheartedly back then. The only time that I willingly uninstalled TF2. (I came back few months later when Valve cleaned up casual, due to how fast OW community became toxic because of comp, though) It's honestly mind blowing how TF2 survived it and started to flourish in the aftermath. Maybe, sometimes, trying to follow the hot trend like going competitive isn't an answer. Anyway, thank you so much for reminding me of it. Salute to your persistent of digital-mining those reference videos, too! Made me real nostalgic ngl
The problem wasn't TF2 appealing to competitive play, the problem was with how they executed it. They should've kept quickplay and just added a skill based or rank based matchmaking system for ranked play with a few weapon bans and class limits.
As someone that started playing during the backend of updates (August 2014), I lived through that decline but didn’t really know what was going on. This video shed light on that and it was incredibly well made, thank you!
I think a lot of the increased player counts are not only due to the pandemic, but more specifically because Overwatch fell off a cliff in terms of enjoyability and reputation. A lot of long-time TF2 players, including myself, moved to OW in 2016 and after how horrific MYM was there wasn't ever really a reason to go back. If the mistakes here seem egregious, you could make a 4 hour video analyzing just how badly Blizzard failed Overwatch in every conceivable way. I know I definitely was a player that came back during that 2021-ish period of time. It was refreshing! Great video, and really well put together. I'm glad this game did not die off completely.
its bad that most didnt experience it because now people blindly hate on the miniscule comp playerbase while also using casual as a scapegoat whenever they see fit
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413Even though i didn't experience it myself (joined 2 months after the blue moon update, but only started investing time into the game a year later), I completely disagree with casual players that claim that the comp playerbase "ruined" TF2. The MyM update was entirely Valve's fault imo, since they not only rushed it in order to compete with Overwatch, but despite receiving plenty of feedback from competitive players during and after the competitive stress tests, Valve changed virtually nothing on top of that. They still clinged onto their "casual" perspective of the game when making the competitive mode despite it having supposed to be a COMPETITIVE competitive mode, not a casual competitive mode. Additionally, the graphics restrictions were the final nail in the coffin in terms of playability.
I still can't get over the fact that they forced matchmaking on casual players. I hate playing casual so much now that I've only reached level 52 in 7 years, and my review is negative since then.
I somewhat agree with this. Casual MMR does exist, it's a background number that helps nobody, and I hate it. Worse still is party-vs-party matchmaking. From what I've experienced, it seems the game prioritizes putting groups of people partied together in the same lobbies (regardless of party size). This means that if you're grouped with 1 or 2 friends it's highly likely that you'll get matched against some 6 stack or a group of bots.
Where I live there were some really atrocious community servers that ran only a set of maps over and over again with some really pubstompy teams something that the matchmaking fixed, one time there was this one loser that impersonate another popular community server and would ban anyone at random. People saying that community server were better are just being inconsiderable with the rest of the community that exists outside of Europe and the US.
I miss the server browser so much. Also worth noting that Valve servers not showing up in the browser effectively kills all niche gamemodes. Imagine being able to instantly hop into the most populated Mannpower, Pass time, Doomsday or Degroot Keep server if you love those gamemodes or just want to try them out. Instead you can either sit in the lobby for hours waiting to get put into one of these modes if you queue for them exclusively or you can get put in them once in a blue moon by chance if you add them to your list of other maps. What a travesty.
very true, I miss those days, the weird maps are all my faves so I really felt this tho just on a positive note, if you keep those gamemodes in your casual selection, you will get them sometimes, and queuing for them exclusively doesn't always take as long as you'd think
Glad somebody said it! Ive been thinking the same thing where matchmaking basically killed all niche gamemodes because nobody wants to sit in a lobby for hours to be queued up for 2 measly matches whereas before you could just simply... join the server yourself. Even Payload Race is dead because of matchmaking.
Glad to see people are finally recognizing how devastating the removal of quickplay to community servers and how matchmaking actually facilitated the rise of bots. Whenever I mention MyM and how bad it was people always seem to either have no negative opinion on it or deny it's awful repercussions. I see people are finally connecting the dots. The system really should be removed.
Yeah, I vaguely remember feeling alone in my opinion, so I just quietly left the game and only started looking back in the past year, thanks to TF2 youtube videos being pushed to me again.
@@capofantasma97They should've just kept TF2 community run imo. You didn't have to deal with cheaters back then. And even now in todays community servers, cheaters/aimbots won't target them because they're actively moderated.
I don't know, now, I wasn't around for the times before quickplay and their "matchmaking" but the idea of having to rely on community servers sounds like a pain. I'd rather consistency then luck and I vastly prefer this new system over even quickplay. I only really tolerate community servers now.
@@yipflaptheexecutioner6519 Well, you'd be wrong. Navigating the community server list was easy, especially if you were actually playing the game back then and could recognize the different types of servers. If you wanted a hardcore gaming experience, you went to the tryhard servers, if you wanted a more relaxed experience you hop into something running more vanilla options, and if you wanted to just fuck around with friends, you could pop into any of the Mario Kart/Wacky Racers/Blimp Racing servers and just have fun. It was an experienced catered to those who played the game, and considering the sheer amount of community servers finding one you wanted to play on was super simple and easy.
@@yipflaptheexecutioner6519Imagine being able to reliably join a default community server with very few modifications to the gameplay mode and a good general mix of player levels, and if you didn't like it or a hacker showed up you could just leave and join a different one in less than a minute. That's what Valve servers were like, and what MYM took from us. QP was basically just a way to quickly get into one without being picky about which one you would join.
You really hit the nail on the head on how bad MYM devastated TF2 community and led Valve to abandon the game. TF2 is the kind of game you can goof off and have fun any which way you want depending on what type of player you are and Valve almost completely destroyed that with Competitive and Causal matchmaking (and poor UI design :P). Casual is okay now but it is extremely painful when you keep getting matched with bots, especially now with Scream Fortress XV. I still try to play on community servers that aren't 24/7 2fort or dustbowl classwars whenever I can.
TF2 should of never been a competitive game to begin with. I mean the game doesn't even take itself seriously. Not EVERY game should be competitive and I blame that community for ruining the game.
@@Labyrinth6000The update being a disaster was entirely Valve's fault, if Valve would've actually listened to the competitive community and changed things from the betas, we wouldn't be here complaining about it right now.
@@Labyrinth6000you dont take the game seriously because youre bad at it lmao the game is inherently full of insane depth since its the leftovers from the days of quake, with added mechanics that you dont see anywhere else if tf2 was completely unable to have a competitive scene, one wouldnt pop up literally a month after release youre only complaining because you cant accept that the big bad comp is something you made up
Deluded compers in this thread. If tf2 comp were to succeed, it would. Turns out 6v6 is boring to watch and not tf2 at all. Who would've thought. Guess Valve was right.
11:12 That's literally what Left 4 Dead 2 and Warhammer: Vermintide 2 does now. You select Quickplay and the game looks for a player-made lobby for you, this includes community servers for L4D2.
>valve makes TF2 f2p and has community servers on quickplay >"NOOO NOW OUR COMMUNITY SERVERS WILL BE OVERRUN WITH BAD NEW PLAYERS" >valve makes quickplay only search official servers by default >"NOOO NOW OUR COMMUNITY SERVERS WILL DIE FROM A LACK OF NEW PLAYERS" Hysterical.
FYI I ran a server during the days of Quickplay. A very goofy, heavily modded server, but one that managed to adhere to the settings outlined in order to qualify for being queued into (at least during a Vanilla map). I never once expressed the 1st sentiment you listed, because we were all new once, people can learn, and it should be more about having fun together as a community. A lot of people were introduced to my server through Quickplay and are still in contact all these years later. I shut the server down after a year and a half (Jun '12 - Oct. 13) due to stress, but attempted to start it up again in 2017. While there are many other reasons for this, the attendance was not what it used to be despite advertising it the exact same way and I can't help but think the move to strictly Valve servers for matchmaking is partially to blame. Tbh I get it. The appeal of instantly joining into a full server where you don't have to wait around for people to join is too hard to pass up. You also know what you're getting immediately. I've thought about starting mine up with many many players moving towards community servers as an escape from the Bot crisis, & the demand for good ones going up, but with a focus on incentivizing those initial brave souls milling around at 1-3 players who play long enough to get it full. Things like 3x the amount of credits you get for custom "shop" items- Chat tags, MvM player models, cosmetics etc. Also the ability to toggle tf2 bots till players join, and alerting the player to maps that are better for lower player counts (climb maps, jump maps, co-op maps, boxing maps). If I could pause time I swear to everyone reading this we'd have one of the best community servers but ya know, job, life kinda takes precendence. I guess my point in all this is to say many server owners suffered who were not complaining in any way about "bad players". The more the merrier to me.
I find the whole community server saga ironic and kinda funny how those toxic veteran players first bullied the new player then straight up lied to Valve, only for those action to cause community servers to wither away. All because those new player weren't joining their games.
@@RichterOvertimeHey could you make a poorly informed video on tf2 again? One with a click bait title and misinformation for people to never be corrected on? Thanks!!!❤🎉 Editing 2 days from posting: @RichterOvertime basically made a video during the file leaks, which are dated before Jungle Inferno, That TF2 was dead. The title was “Tf2 is officially dead” but he’s now changed it but the thumbnail has the text still written. This got Moistcritical to react to his video live on stream and at the time I vaguely remember before the title change he had 300-400k views on the video already. His whole video was based off the fact there’s nothing in these files that show any work being done on the game but it turns out it’s just an old file but his like to dislike ratio using extensions were extremely positive and commenters were all talking about the death of the game and future. Really bad for a community ran game at this point. He made one of the most popular tf2 videos if you include the reaction and attention it got from outside of the community and it’s huge view count from essentially bullshitting about something he hardly knew about and produced in a rush and never clarified till the summer update was announced Imo, it was all just negative bullshit that didn’t need to be so clickbaity. It gave TF2 really negative press and many people I doubt from Moistcriticals stream will know about tf2 summer update announcement and how valve is slowly warming up to tf2. The game already has a poor retention of players due to cheaters and communication restrictions he didn’t need to make this poor video to worsen the situation. This is the video I’m talking about: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8un3dBLVSCw.htmlfeature=shared
@@gackybasscs2 is nowhere near as bad as ow2 or mym if you want a real terrible cs update, mention the release of csgo or the global economy update for css, with 10 dollar m249s
Nah it's a positive change overall. Given back in the day f2ps were basically segregated anyway this ended it in a way that made sense. Also, community servers were way too hit or miss, valve servers have always been the ideal way to play
@@Jiub_SN The biggest problem with casual for me is the fundamental way that it works. I would always connect to Valve servers via server browser or join my friends via adhoc. If one of us got autobalanced we could at least goof around and wait for a slot on the other team to open up again and rejoin it. Now that's a re-queue. If a Valve server was bad it was also easier to find a new one then it is now via server browser. I don't like waiting on a queue. I like actively searching for a game and picking where that server is located. Too often I get thrown in an LA or Washington server where I have pretty poor connection (and hitscan hitreg on LA Valve servers has always been weird even during the quickplay era but at least then I could avoid them). I would just play on community servers, but there aren't too many options for just the normal game anymore and I'd rather not go to 24/7 2fort.
As someone who played TF2 Back in June 2008 thanks to the Orange Box I got as a birthday present, All I can say to those who first played the game after Jungle Inferno is that I SERIOUSLY feel sorry for you! You missed out on the GOLDEN AGE when Valve put SO MUCH dedication to TF2! So many updates, comic lore, merchandise, and other games on Steam wanted to promote their content in the form of TF2 weapons and cosmetics and the game was at the top of the world. Playing TF2 after Jungle Inferno for the first time is best described as going to a friends party after hearing how amazing and wild it is and by the time you showed up, the party was over hours ago and the only people left are a handful of passed out people, trash everywhere, and the house being a mess where YOU have to make the best of it. It is a never ending purgatory until Valve does something about it and the best this year is the new official VSH and ZI modes and the 100 man servers.
As someone who played since 2011. The GOLDEN AGE you speak of stopped being a thing in 2014. So it's even way before Jungle Inferno that TF2 got to decline in quality. EDIT: Also agreed about VSH and ZI being the best things that happened to TF2 since Jungle Inferno (Jungle Inferno was a bad update but at least it was a major one).
I started playing tf2 in about 2018 I think and I can't lie, I've still had a blast playing the game as I followed tf2 RU-vidrs back in the day and the first time I heard about the game was from Muselk and really enjoyed watching his videos. I know many people think the game is just not the same, but in my eyes I still see it as a very fun game with new ways to play over time.
The bit at the end about TF2 being the last bastion of old-school multiplayer gaming is absolutely true. I began playing TF2 in late 2021 after getting a laptop for Christmas to use for college the next year, I decided to give TF2 a shot. I had been interested in TF2 because I'd heard about it in passing and also I had watched LazyPurple's "How It FEELS" series, but no other reason other then that. But after I played it, even being a stupid fresh-install who maybe got 1 kill a game if I was lucky, I was completely and totally hooked. TF2 (the game itself, not Valve) respects it's players. While it has all those microtransactions, they're all totally optional, and while they _are_ a bit predatory, I think MTX are always going to be a bit predatory no matter what. And the community, while it has many, MANY blemishes, I love it. The memes, the inside jokes, the RU-vid content, all of it- It's what keeps this game going. Without this community, it would have died. I've long given up any hopes of a new major update. I really wish Valve would do something new already, and I suppose it hasn't been long enough to tell yet, but if Summer 2023 doesn't get Valve back to making content for TF2 I truly don't think anything else will. But Summer 2023 also proved that that's OK. The maps added in Summer 2023 were all bangers, even if some like Venice weren't amazing, maps like Selbyian and the VSH maps are awesome, and despite its problems I'm glad Valve seems OK with adding more community-made gamemodes like we saw with Zombie Infection in Scream Fortress XV. TF2 is the single most resilient game I have ever seen, and after everything that's happened and continues to happen with it, I truly believe TF2 will be around for many many more years to come. The community refuses to go down without a fight.
Your TF2 history videos are always so well-made and I respect the amount of effort that goes into the research and editing! When it comes to the differences between the Quickplay and Matchmaking systems, I personally don't believe that it's as black and white as a lot of people like to say it is. They both have/had some pretty detrimental flaws that Valve refuses/refused to address. I think players like to look back on Quickplay with rose-colored-glasses because it's easier to point out issues with the current system while being nostalgic for the old ways. I personally prefer the *idea* of a matchmaking system more than Quickplay, but unfortunately Valve's apathy towards TF2 (which by the way, saying that Meet Your Match is a direct result of that apathy is pure speculation) has caused the system's inherent issues to be multiplied (mainly the cheater stacks/bots). I don't believe that TF2 (almost) died in Summer 2016 but I do believe that the addition of Matchmaking is unrealistically remembered as a historic downturn, despite the fact that the game has only flourished and continued to grow since. And keep in mind I say this as someone who has created and continues to maintain community servers as an alternative to Casual Mode. I don't think there is a right way and a wrong way. We can have the best of both worlds, and I think that's a big factor for TF2's everlasting success.
bro what are you talking about flourish lmao the game is already dead and a safehaven for cheaters cant wait to see you complaining about bots in the obligatory scream fortress video doe
@@UncleDaneit has already stuck, the quality of the game is overall worse, the playerbase has only gotten more annoying, and the game feels like a rotting husk being powered by hopes, dreams, and a little bit of autism the shell of the game is dead and broken, the reason why people play it, is because the core is almost intact but all in all, everything has gone down the shitter, bot hosters are still laughing at us and the only future the game has is new maps and modes being added by novice modders
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413 As EU player that was constantly put on US servers a few days because reasons(?), all I can say that US servers are completely rotten. On just 2 maps, bots after bots, cheaters after cheaters. After doing almost all Halloween contracts on UE servers, I managed to see twice a bot spamming YT link in its name by joining and leaving the server, and one time a stack of 4 bots on enemy team. How US players can play Casual in this state is beyond me.
Oh god, I remember pressing "Random" in Quickplay and jumping of joy when being put into a freak fortress server. Me and my brother had not figured out how the server browser worked until much much later. So getting this seemingly 1 in a million chance felt so nice. Wonderful nostalgia
IT DID DIE. The soul part. MYM did and irreparable damage to how tf2 play fundamentally and killed the micro community that build up when you keep playing on the same server for 3h. With many many other things.
Gonna be frank. Comp as an overarching concept is a plague on games and I'm sick of every major multiplayer release being designed to be an organised competitive esport. Meet Your Match was TF2's biggest attempt at it. Comp players themselves froth and scream at even the slightest notion of something being balanced around casual play or simple fun instead of sweatfest world tournaments because how dare the devs not make everything revolve around their clearly superior ideas for balance. They need to stay in their corner and shut up so we can have a return to the lost era of wild west casual multiplayer.
yeah looking back, that big push for competitive and "e-sport" during the 2010s was not the best idea(s). Not only did the development teams cause rift with causal and competitive as most of the time it, the balance are annoying. it best for the competitive side to community run as when the developers, it not really good. It comes across as "no fun allowed".
speaking of the wild west era as if you were around back then lmao as if cs wasnt competitive in the 2000s, or mobas werent a thing, or even team fortress classic, which was known as a fast paced comp game unlike any other none of these started as competitive games, they became them. youre like nintendo, trying to kill the smash bros comp scene because it was meant to be a party game >COMP PLAYERS ARE RUINING OUR FUN! but how >MUH CABER!!!!!! valve did it, nuff said. blame valve, not the player
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413Comp players are ruining fun by expecting everything the devs do to revolve around them and them alone while considering the rest of the playerbase to be second-class citizens. They are absolutely deserving of the blame.
@@hyperdimensionblissexcept thats not what happened and youre making up phantoms to shake your fist at if anything youre the one expecting valve to revolve around you lol
The ESports market is extremely saturated, just like Battle Royale and zombies were back then. It's just that it took people a lot longer to get sick of it, I have this feeling that the reason why so many people are playing for the first time or just coming back to TF2, it's because the game is a lot more casual and take itself less seriously. Nowadays, a new MP game feels like it was made by investors that don't even play games and just look at what is being a success around them, Valorant, Apex Legends all look the same as Overwatch, LoL and others, for example. TF2 is disconnected from this market and people saw it as fresh air. Out of all competitive games from the 2010's, the only one I can see it's still relevant is CS:GO (CS:2 is just CS:GO in the Source 2 engine).
The TF2 devs are ancient 90s gamers, CTF was the best gamemode in TF1, thus they believe it's the best in TF2 as well. To be fair though, 2fort is statistically the most popular map in casual!
I think competitive was a hot potato they kept passing to each other without giving much detail so that they would not pass it to someone else right after
I've been playing since a month before the Scout update. You hit the nail on the head here. I don't need new weapons, new maps, or new hats. As much as I'd like them, I don't even *need* good balance changes, or bug fixes. I just need to join a server, and have a good time. And the easier that is for everyone, the better the game will do.
If I could ask for a single balance change on a single weapon, I'd ask for the damage vulnerability on the buffalo steak sandvich to be inverted into a damage resistance. I just can't fathom why a weapon that restricts you into melee, would make you MORE vulnerable to damage.
@@bobthebox2993 high risk high reward. its downside shouldn't be damage vulnerability however... it should be any of the following: A: doesnt heal at all B: takes longer to recharge or has to be earned via damage C: reduces max health or blocks overheal/uber
there have been people who have gotten hooked on the most addictive drugs known to humanity and still managed to overcome their addiction before a TF2 player truly stopped playing.
I have had a vendetta against the concept of matchmaking since it (mostly) ruined this game, and god damn do I appreciate this video, especially the point that the outdated level of player freedom that tf2 still provides is exactly the thing that has kept it alive, it blows my mind how many modern games don't even let you pick what map you want to play on
Watching this guy look uncritically at the "smashed playercount records" that are clearly bot networks is like a fart in the elevator at the end of an otherwise wonderful video. I'm sorry, but the narrative of "how is TF2 still alive???" Is just a fantasy. You were right in the first half; MvM did kill TF2 (arguably mann co did but still) The player counts you are seeing are a lie, and it takes 10 minutes in game to see that.
Yea I’m sure he was supposed to expect that 80% of all players are bots. Everyone knew the game had bots but you’re lying to yourself if you thought that 80% of all players were bots
This has become one of the hardest videos to watch for me. it took me 3 sittings to fully watch the video without feeling actual pain, the fact that TF2 could have remained such an amazing game if only VALVe didn't rush the MYM update because of the entire internet hyping for overwatch, and then dropping the game on life support after another update without fixing anything. and now we just get the same boring updates with the same boring, saturated and not-fitting cosmetics and warpaints AND maps on the queue that doesn't feel like it should be on TF2, and it hurts me so much that it will remains like this forever. YES the game is not dead, it's more alive than ever, but it hurts so much that it's in this state, and for me the TF2 i know it's dead.
fun fact: casual matchmaking actually has a mmr/elo system, but its so bad that its been practically non functional for several years my elo is still only in the 1300s
Valve should do either 2 things: Remove casual and bring back quickplay or add an actual functioning elo system that matches you with people of roughly the same skill/experience. Without this, casual is basically just a worse, much slower version of Quickplay with more restrictions.
Here after hearing Zesty Jesus mention your video. I guess Overwatch did kill TF2 in a way, but only because Valve panicked and shat their pants trying to rush out a complete (and mostly unnecessary) overhaul of their game.
I started playing TF2 back in 2010 and never really stopped. With that perspective in mind, this is among the best recounts of these events I’ve seen. I often see the old heads blame the Uber update for the game’s decline while jungle inferno newcomers blame bots for it and it’s honestly a series of unfortunate events which led us here. I do regularly think back to the events of ~2016 and how the air was electric with anticipation in the community. With things like the global whitelist, competitive letters, and even casual RU-vidrs hyping the release of MYM it felt like all hands were on deck and that something amazing was about to happen, a golden age was on the way. Sadly, the crushing arrival of MYM really scarred the player base. In hindsight, MYM was likely my single largest let down in gaming simply because I’m still playing TF2 today and feeling it’s effects (or lack-thereof).
"Fuck f2ps! Get em out of our servers! >:(" "ok" "wait no come back ; ;" I like how they did 11 major stress tests to do nothing but fix lobby bugs from them reusing the mvm lobby
i remember quickplay, it was such a better system, it takes me like 5-10 minutes to join a server that I know has a lot of people, like the perks map or the zombie survival one. It's so annoying
Nobody ever claims that quickplay was perfect, but it certainly was objectively better in every concievable way than Casual MMS. MYM is literally why there is a botting crisis because the party system and forced automated matchmaking in servers that very frequently change their map usually to the same one that it was just on is the most ideal conditions for bot hosters to fuck everything up
I have no idea where this 'quickplay was bad' comes from. I've never seen anyone complain about it since they changed it to connect to Valve servers only. One click, 10-20 sec later you are already playing. No need for any matchmaking that takes minutes to find you a server.
To me, what made TF2 so enduring was the entire franchise of software and content built into it. GMOD pulls in custom models as well as allow content creators to create new ideas relatively easily. Source Film Maker, while incredibly outdated, still enables new film makers to experiment on a well researched and tested piece of software. TF2 pluggins and now Code enables a wide variety of games and other ideas to be made a reality, with the most popular one being VSH. Finally, the community content creators who develop different communities to mess around in. For me, that means Uncle Dane for super serious, and Shoenic and Solarlight for goofing off. Skial is awful to deal with.
It may have not died in player count, but it did die for many players leaving the game. Many of my friends who were into competitive left the game because of that update, and because of the decline in quality Valve have been ignoring even many years before that. If they wanna pump more life into TF2 they got to bring back Quickplay that was for community servers, and add options to filter certain servers.
Its so sad that a _youtuber_ managed to make an incredibly popular server just by adding a class limit and removing random crits. It hurts to think what competitive would have been if valve had just listened to the community
Not to be that guy but valve servers were already in service prior to the uber update. They just became more popular and the only servers used by quick play around then. (Quickplay used to pull from both community and official servers prior to that.) The real loss for them was when they converted the official servers to the casual servers and no longer allowed direct connection to them through the server browser.
3:13 i dont get why everyone shits on the server browser. sure it looks old but its a lot more powerful than the modern ones. you can actually filter stuff and sort by different things like player amounts, tags, ping or maps.
A fantastic, fantastic video. I truly believe you're one of the best tf2 content creators on this entire platform. This is by far one of the best, nuanced takes I've seen on the history of the game and why it's in its current state, and as someone who only joined well after jungle inferno it's suddenly starkly apparent what happened.
Honestly, probably the biggest issue I have with Auto-balance is that it happens at some of the worst times. I can understand if the game is halfway done and they need to balance the teams, but it really sucks when I'm switched teams right before I'm about to win. Perhaps they could do some tweaking so that if one team is on the verge of winning the auto balance won't occur until the start of the next round.
At least Valve has accuratedly recreated the match making experience. Wasting. Your. Time. 5 cancels, 10 dodged just to get placed into a match with an AFK and 3 account buyers.
Honestly, even if the launch of MyM went smoother and Valve's comp more were more in line with community standards, the lack of something like CSGO's Overwatch system would've been a serious threat to any longevity the mode could have. What would be the point of trying to grind through the ranks when squads of cheaters could just queue together and run wild with virtually no recourse for legitimate players other than hoping Valve would do manual banning sprees?
You know that feeling when your nose is stuffed but then gets clear and you can breathe well once again? Damn, this video has really clear a lot of things to me, or at least a very good summary.
Been playing tf2 for 13 years now, no update got me closer to quitting permanently, the death of the valve servers was awful, no switching teams, no joining from the browser, endless queues to join a friend's game that was in progress.. also the SLOW BUGGY death of the Join Game button through steam for some reason (?), i dont even think its possible any more, if im playing a community server I just have to send the ip and explain to my friends how to use that.. sigh, i wish we could just UNDO casual and bring it back to post 2014 quickplay
Thanks for covering the f2p change and how annoying older players found it. Ive just recently gotten back into tf2 casually but it seems like alot of tf2 youtubers dont really cover this part in detail when almost everyone i knew quit and was the day tf2 died for us.
I'm sure the reason most RU-vidrs don't bring it up because very few of them actually played before the Uber Update, but it was cool hearing a new side of the story. I've always heard the Uber Update held as one of the best updates in TF2, and one of the most important, and while I think it is true without the Uber Update and making the game F2P was integral to the game surviving as long as it has, I think it's important we keep in mind what the players of the time thought
Yeah, i tried to return in summer update and the game isn't what i played before, i didnt even found casual experience it was before, where you can just hangout and play, and not getting kicked because you didn't do the objective. Maybe i became too old for this or demographics had changed.
@@DemodiX I get what you're saying, though I've never heard of anyone getting kicked for not doing the objective, at least not for several years. There are community servers that are just hangouts but personally I don't really like that, I'll do it in some instances but I get really bored quickly because every time I've tried to be social I've ended up miserable.
I love that you put in a lot of effort into explaining and exploring Valve’s thought process on all of these changes, but when it comes to Turbine staying in the comp maps, you’re just like “ok guys, wtf?”
casual games are so awful compared to what it was like playing on a valve server. back then people would stay on the server between maps, but now in casual it takes so long between the end of a match, to map switching, to pre-game (which is a thing now for some reason?), to the next map actually starting that everyone leaves games the second they finish to re-queue. Meaning that you never can just sit on a valve server for an hour, getting to know the people on it and making friends haven't even mentioned the removal of joining friends via ad-hoc connections on steam, in casual now you can only play with up to 5 friends whereas before you could all join the same valve server and just make it basically your own for a few hours
You are right about one thing. Meet your match didn't just almost kill TF2, it did kill TF2. It's was obvious from the start that the player counts was inflated with bots, but I was at first hopeful that maybe at least 50% of the players are actual humans. Heh, not even close. For the july summer update last year, less than 10% of the tf2 playerbase were actually humans all along and on average, about 80% of the steam player-base is just bots
Rome didn't burn in one day either. Several parts of the city catched fire at various parts of its history, the most famous fire in Rome in AD 64 lasted six days.
As someone who missed the golden age, of tf2 by literally 5 years. This video is amazing, and helps me understand why this update was so hated. Amazing video
Really rubs me the wrong way how dismissive you are of quickplay in this video; you don't even reiterate it's issues after the first time, so it seems like you're just ignoring the good aspects of it entirely and acting like it was entirely bad. Especially jarring when you get to the part where people were begging for it back after Meet your Match, 'cause it seems like you framed it as an entirely bad thing. :/
I seriously wish Valve reverted the meet your match changes honestly. Being able to just get on a server with the map you wanted, the amount of player you wanted and on the team you wanted was great.
I'm glad you're here and putting to words, exactly the sort of series of missteps that caused TF2 to fall from grace. I've often had this conversation with people and it's exhausting because it was a series of decisions and not so much one singular event, so I'm glad that I have a single video I can point to that lays out everything so well. Though I'm baffled at your endorsement of the spy speed buff which was probably the second-worst change made to the game after the Meat Your Match update. But I have to comment on this here at 53:42 . The idea that matchmaking "regularly surpassed 15 minutes" is an incredible understatement. Matchmaking at this time regularly hit more than /2 hours/. I'm a North America player, East coast for anyone wanting context and thinking this is about an unpopulated region. When the update launched I would not be able to find a game /for hours/ before I gave up trying. I watched movies on my TV while idly checking to see if it had connected me to a match yet. The day I was able to watch LOTR: Return of the King and the matchmaker still hadn't connected me to a match, I gave up and uninstalled. I didn't want to use the matchmaker at all, but as you so rightly pointed out, Valve choked the life out of the community servers that kept the game alive up until that point in time. I felt I really had no choice but to leave the game, as it was quite literally unplayable. Imagine being an old school TF2 player, spent years casually going from server to server, able to avoid obvious cheaters with ease, to being forced into a match where you knew if you left you wouldn't be able to get another match that day. That's what really killed it for me. Meat Your Match, amongst many other horrors, basically forced you to stay in a match with cheaters because it was unlikely you'd be able to get into another match that day. So it's either play with cheaters and/or bots, or don't play at all. Or, exactly as you put it at 1:15:30 . Couldn't spectate sus players to make a better determination if they were cheating, couldn't switch teams after an autobalance and teams got even again so you could go back to playing with your friends (autobalance back then wasn't so big of a problem because you could switch back after teams balanced out again, so autobalance was an inconvenience at best and didn't ruin matches back then). The match was ruined and there was nothing you could do about it except suffer for even longer because the alternative was another attempt at matchmaking which would take hours. What a godawful update. I honestly don't know how the game survived for the weeks where people could literally not play it. But I suppose there's something to be said for player loyalty. 1:06:20 worth noting that this feature still doesn't work most of the time. As someone who still gets dragged into playing, my friend can in be in a server that is half-empty for over five minutes and the game still won't let me join. Out of dozens of times we tried to connect to one-another to start playing immediately, this has only worked twice to get me into a match with a friend. We've given up on it as a feature and instead of us joining into each other's games, we just immediately quit our match and re-queue so we can actually start playing together.
Dude, absolutely magnificent video. TF2 has always been my favorite game since 2014 and there are so many things in this vid that I had no idea were a part of TF2. I took a year long break from the game when the botpocolypse occurred and slowly got back into it and I am very happy that the community is still trying to keep the ship afloat. The halloween maps this year like crasher and sanitarium have been so much fun. Also the ever classic Carnival of Carnage.
This video honestly makes me sad. I had my fair share of favorite community servers and the resurgence shows why people care and love tf2, I didn't think that even new players who are familiar with fortntie/overwatch would appreciate the casual and freedom of TF2. Valve is so scared to touch this game, and i've recently thought maybe it's about how toxic and divided tf2 community are, but this video reminded me it's all Valve's fault and forever will be.
Lister tour videos help me sleep at night and calm me on my long drives to work. Thanks for sharing your lovely soothing voice and niche information with us ❤
What a stupid reason to nerf that gun, especially since it's not exactly unthinkable to jump with more than two stickies without dying anyway. Like, the Uber is right there.
I've been playing since August 2017 and i guess this makes sense Years of hearing complaints and accusation from both sides of the argument and finally something that eloquently untangles this mess of opinions and events It always fascinated me how this game lives in a constant paradox where its problems, new and old, also reinforce just how great this game is, and it shows: people still make content related to it, the reputation it gained over time and just the sheer amount of players, and it's incredible how this game is really the last great bastion of a game philosopy long gone(although general opinion on esport and competitive focus is slowly changing). I may have missed the golden age, but i was still able to enjoy an experience now almost nonexistant(i'd say Minecraft still has dedicated servers tho), and i'm glad i did As for Valve now, what pains me the most is that i think Blue Moon-sized updates would honestly be fine, but it's kept alive by just one guy that i guess doesn't even have much of a connection with this game(the content of recent updates is mostly not great) and i really don't have that much hope left I truly wish for a reinassance to happen, but until then all i can say is great video, thank you for your job
Will you ever cover the End of the Line update? I’ve always wondered why the update was a mess and given your dedication of being thorough with all the facts and history moments, it would be a nice other video to watch
Yeah what the other dude said, try TF2 Classic. Its like a return to form of the 2008-2009 era of TF2 but with some new content (4 teams, VIP). Its my preferred way to play the game now.
Veteran here. (Golden Mercenary badge veteran). Had some TFC fun times when I was a bab, before TF2 was even released, but that doesn't count. First: TF2 died when it went F2P. What you have right now is not TF2. The TF2 of old had several things that made it so great, and actually the best game money could buy, the true Valve's gem. The main reason it was remembered as "the best team based, online fps game ever created": - A working anti-cheat, that protected fairplay on pub servers - VAC works, based on manual reviews from Valve. It is a slow and a very precise process, but it never disappointed. - Admins, would always chime in to get rid of any malicious players, when anti-cheat was not fast enough. They treated it like a job, and players responded in kind, witch hunting the s*** out of cheaters, and any smartass, who would decide to try and make entire server's life miserable. - Players, actually caring about eachother, would help deal with cheaters, figure out together the best next map to pick, would share tips and tricks, have some allchat voice chat friendly banter and etc.. It was trully a community. Second: You ain't getting the "good ol' TF2" back. "Rage cheating" is a monstrous baby of F2P paymodel. F2P easily and singlehandedly made community server moderation an impossible, thankless job, Sisyphean labor. You could no longer prevent ANYONE from rejoining your server. The one and only, best in the world, the ultimate way to tell a cheater to f'off and go buy an another copy of TF2, the SteamID ban, became completely useless. Even if you try to and go full "cargo cult", and create a community server, then the rage cheaters and ban evaders would easily remind you that you just can't, anymore.
It's not like the money barrier stops the mentally ill, most bots still spam the chat on casual despite them being banned frequently, so these furry weebs are paying premium upgrades out of pocket for their bot hordes like the pathetic manchildren they are
I discovered tf2 in mid 2020, and it is weird to imagine the game was once so different. I never experienced big events made by Valve, and never logged on a community server other than jump academy. I can still say I enjoyed my pub time with 300 hours, and a lot of bad spy main frustration too, but I wish I could play and enjoy the quick play experience, which I didn't even know had once existed before today.
I wish they could revert those changes so you could experience it. This game used to feel so fresh, free and enjoyable before those changes. Today's TF2 feels very DIFFERENT from old TF2.
@@fallingbrick9514 dunno, it has been a while since I last played tf2, but I believe I just wrote "jump academy" on the server browser, and joined closest one from where I live
As someone who started playing tf2 somewhere around 2021 and is still learning many playstyles and unlocks. It's really interesting to hear about the better (and uh worse) days this game I love has seen.
I started playing in 2009 and this game's definitely been through its ups and downs. I don't play it as often now but I always come back for at least a little while.
I still have this conspiracy theory that when valve was working ""with """ the competitive community. I was joining the comp comm right in the end of 2015 and everybody was hyped to talk to valve for a "Comp update" and my conspiracy was that valve let players balance weapons while valve was adjusting the matchmaking. And I remember a comment there saying "this will be our update" just like invasion or end of the line. And some others forcing matchmaking on "pubs" When the updated launch I straight up quit tf2 until they patched the long wait times for a match, the stopwatch, and the forced "not being able to join mid match" It felt like everybody on board jumped off when their solutions didn't work, valve included. To me, that was the day tf2 killed their own flare. My favorite community lists not only became 0/24 but made them go offline. I... just play tf2 from time to time from that day. But anyways. Great video!!!!
in my opinion I think tf2 is dead and its community are just living in a false hope that someday there's going to be a huge update and tf2 will be as active as it was before the pyro update but sadly they don't seem to care for the fact one guy literally works on the game and its not easy to update a fuck ton of old code.
I think we can all agree that the reason competitive failed was because of map variety. I think to truly revitalize the game mode they should add ctf_turbine back for a fourth time and remove any other map
Amazing video as always, lister. I know you mainly blamed Valve's horrendous attempt to implement modern matchmaking into TF2 as the nail in its coffin, but what surprised me the most was the way Valve "gave up" on the game after MYM. In the early 2000's and 2010's, Valve was renowned for their extreme attention to detail and emphasis on quality control for their games, especially on the functionality side of them. But they gave up on the game simply by unironically Rage-Quitting and slapping the weakest bandages onto TF2, leaving it to bleed out especially to this day with the Bot crisis. I'm not convinced that MYM was the primary killer of TF2, SOMETHING must have happened within Valve's company for them to abandon their past standards and practices on high-quality gaming experiences.
The developers who are passionate either moved on within the company, or left Valve entirely. It's like the same thing with Rare; their glory was coming at an end, before Microsoft's acquisition. Talent comes and goes, especially in a greatly competitive industry. We all hear about how, "Valve Employees can work on what they want," and that's simply not true. It's a high-bar corporation that priorities on stuff they want as a company, and will allocate their resources accordingly.
Valve stopped caring/making games because they got bored of creating them and they started focusing on devices instead (like the vr, the steam controller and deck).
still patiently waiting for the server browser to be used commonly again so I can play the fun servers with regulars and allchat and whatever crazy map that shows up.
this video killed all of my hope for a major update I strated playing this game in 2016. my computer died and this why I could play seriously only in 2017 and exactly in 2017 the updates just stoped
Things were better when you could just play a map for hours and leave when you wanted. Things like the ability to switch teams, team scramble, and auto balance was enough to keep the game balanced and fun. Now we have a shitty waiting system. No more switching between teams, thats against the rules now. We gotta keep things "organized" and have all these needless rules. All matches are two rounds only, so if you lose or win quick enough, back to the same annoying loading screens. People are so tired of seeing that horrible end screen and seeing the "Please rate this match" prompt that does nothing. Most people leave at the end of a round just to skip this screen. Why did they have to change quickplay? It sucks so bad and it only gets more annoying the more I play casual. How hard would it be to just revert it or add back the old ways of playing? They were so concerned with keeping up with Overwatch and the comp players needs that they abandoned what made the game simple and fun. Truly the worst update to ever be made for this game. its a wonder how this game is still being played today, despite how much worse it is. The heart is still there, and the game is still fun. But its just bogged down with waiting. Im tired of waiting and looking at load screens...
It's nice to hope for TF2's comeback, but it simply won't happen. Valve's company structure and their unwillingness to outsource development to another studio similar to how CSGO was will see to it that the only thing that will ever happen to TF2 is a janitor passing by to water the office plant and push a button to release some more hats. And that's the part that saddens me most; even if folks at Valve only want to work on the newest VR software or doohickey, the very least they could do would to be to try and find a dev team willing to put in some work to breathe some fresh air into the game again.
