First of, Valve. The communication between you and the community is really bad. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it and it really needs to be fixed. It shouldn't be that much of a problem for you to take 1 hour or 2 each week to go through some of the most popular reddit or community hub discussions and respond to at least some of them. It would have a positive effect, unlike the silent treatment you've been giving us for the past few years which are negatively impacting how we see Valve and their employees.
Next, we really need some way to know what sort of changes you want to put into the game before it is released. It wasn't uncommon that you've made some changes to which the community reacted in a negative way and you had to change it back or modify it several times until the thing being changed wasn't anything like it used to be before.
Take, for instance, the dreaded Phlogistinator. The whole mess with giving it invurnerability on taunt could've been avoided if there was some communication going on between you and the community. You had to change the weapon several times until things finally went quiet. And in the end it may actually be worse than what we had before any of these changes. Most recent unnecessary changes were changing the Righteous Bison. I don't think I need to tell you that that was a huge mistake as the weapon is not really usable anymore in the way it was before. It's a gimmick now. What strikes me as really odd and a bit frustrating is the change log which claimed that the weapons ability to hit the same player multiple times was a bug... No, no it wasn't a bug. It was right there in the loading screen tips saying that it's this weapons ability and no one really had an issue with that weapon. In several years of playing this game I haven't had an issue with that nor did I ever hear anyone have an issue with it.
I won't go further into why some changes were bad or why some may be good, people have already written about it better than I can, but I think everyone agrees that we need to hear about the changes before they happen to avoid bad choices.
It really started rough, and I don't think anyone will forget the half an hour to an hour long wait for a game any time soon. Luckily the wait time has dropped down significantly, but it could use a bit more work.
The complete removal of quick play is honestly a mistake, some people really liked being able to pop in and out of any game whenever they wanted, and that was probably one of the go to reasons to play TF2 for some.
While casual matchmaking is nice if you want to play a game which is a bit more organized while not having the seriousness of the competitive, it's not always as fun as silly quickplay used to be. You've basically forced everyone into the casual matchmaking in order to give us more organized games where players could work to win... but you've also forced everyone else who doesn't want to play that way into the same room.
In short, keep the matchmaking, but bring back quickplay.

An issue that I had with matchmaking is that the party system limits you to only 6 players. This really sucks if I have more than 5 friends (which I do) so one of us cannot play with the rest. Additionally, not being able to jump into the game your friends are playing ruins the experience further, though this is a bit trickier than the party problem.
It isn't all bad however, the party system and matchmaking do allow at least 6 of us to have a guaranteed place on the same team so no one has to sit out while hoping that someone leaves the server and opens a spot for them.
Addendum: The game can now start with less than 24 players, which should lower the wait time. Players can fill in the spots as they become available. It's certainly much better than to match people into servers that are too far away from them.
So the beta has come and gone and I can't get over the feeling that the feedback you guys got from the players was ignored. I tried it during the beta and again after release, and it feels pretty much the same. And it's not really good. In the beta I could forgive a lot of stuff because it is indeed the beta, but we all expected a reasonably polished system on launch. However our expectations weren't really matched with your delivery. The system often matches wildly different ranks, there's nothing stopping completely new and clueless players from joining and quite frankly causing others to lose because they had to carry them. And this has happened, I've seen a few players who didn't know what to do and I've read other peoples stories, including one where one of the guys actually just installed the game.
Perhaps you should limit the competitive to those who had played in the casual matchmaking for some time and leveled to a certain level, kind of like in CS:GO?
Also the current way system works is seriously flawed. If someone leaves, the winning team just wasted their time playing for nothing and the losing team loses nothing. The person who left only has to wait 30 minutes before doing it again and they also don't get any loss to their rank either.
This issue needs to be your top priority.
According to the latest update on 28th of July, the penalties for leaving have been made harsher. This is a welcome change, however, as how it works, or if it works properly, we will see. Currently it works by having longer cooldowns for the first offenders with low number of games played.
However no word on the issue with winning team wasting their time while the losing team gets no loss if someone leaves the game at any point.
Addendum: FOV slider has been brought back (up to 70), now Valve did say they fixed some of the broken animations related to those FOVs, but people have been reporting issues with some animations and animations in min viewmodel mode. Guess we're not wrong in saying that valve doesn't play their own game.
One more thing. The performance issues really need to be sorted. It's weird that a game from 2007 can sometimes bring a modern computer to only 60 frames on certain official maps.
Now the fact that it brings a modern PC to this means that a PC that's weaker but still should, in theory, play the game smoothly doesn't actually go smooth in practice.
Admittedly a lot of this is from so many things being tacked onto the game in the past 9 years, but still warrants fixing to at least some degree.

I think I'm going to wrap this up here.
In short, communicate more, talk more about upcoming changes and have a testing ground for people to see how it works and to give feedback, bring back quickplay, allow larger parties, fix the issues with competitive outlined above.
And please, enough with the cosmetics, people really want functional items. The last 3 years were really disappointing and the only updates that are more or less good are the ones that brought us new functional items or new game mechanics (like picking up the weapons of your fallen friends or foes from the Gun Mettle which was a better update).

That's it from me, have a lovely 2016 year. Cheers.

Edit: Overall there's been some "nice" changes, but nothing good enough. More info about changes are on TF2's website.

Valve doesn't listen to the playerbase.
Valve doesn't test updates.
Valve doesn't communicate with the playerbase.
Valve doesn't know the game their updating.
Valve doesn't give a ♥♥♥♥ about TF2.
Valve abuses their cult following and makes ♥♥♥♥♥♥ updates.
Valve uses TF2 to scrape up more money for ♥♥♥♥♥♥ updates.
Valve doesn't care about TF2.
Valve admitted to not communicating properly with their players.
Valve then underwent radio silence.
Valve heard that an item was OP and ruining games for over seven months.
Valve later buffed this weapon.
Valve finds an item that is perfectly balanced in its usage, and never received complaints.
Valve nerfs the item until it is no longer usable.
Valve saw that the Phlog was seen as an issue more often than not in it being a bit OP, but not too much.
Valve buffed the item extremely.

TF2 has gone to ♥♥♥♥. I won't recommend it until they fix the mess they created, even then, I doubt they'll take responsibility for being absolutely ♥♥♥♥ at keeping their own game updated properly.

I'm sure I'll get told "dood you're too hard on vulve' or 'it's a hard job you try it.'

Screw that.

I know making video games is hard. I work in a Deli, you think I know how to do anything more than basic programming?

But I ♥♥♥♥ing do my job. I do what I'm told and go above and beyond in serving the customer. When someone tells me I did something incorrectly I don't look at them blankly and ignore their existence and proceed to make the same error for seven months, I ♥♥♥♥ing fix my mistake and apologize.

You can't have a good relationship with your playerbase when you ignore every single piece of criticism.

• https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/138912701/badplayerslain.txt
  
  
  2 bad updates a year
  
  
• dev team doesn't even play the game, nor do they communicate with the community at all
  
• its been almost 2 years since the last weapon release, which were boring, uninspired, and offered nothing new to the game
  
• truck loads of more bad cosmetics and skins that don't fit TF2's art style in the slightest
  
• tons of high quality, well-designed weapons that have been the highest rated since the steam workshop's inception still not in the game
  
• overhyped and barely functional "competitive mode" (that you have to pay for if you don't give steam your phone number) that should have been added years ago
  
• mvm left to rot for years
  
• medieval mode left to rot for even longer
  
• unusuals, australiums, and other cancerous bling items
  
• random crits are still a thing
  
• community servers completely unpopulated because of quick play
  
• end of the line was awful because valve wouldn't let them add anything meaningful, which set the standard for future community "updates"
  
• you can no longer join valve servers through the server browser
  
  
  bugs, horrible optimization, and major game balance issues lingering for years on end
  
  
• it took 5 years to nerf the degreaser
  
• it took almost 5 years to fix being able to store the gunslinger's 3rd punch by hitting teammates (minor and situational bug, yes, but this is just one example of bugs taking ages to fix)
  
• sv_pure 1 is still completely broken and crashes your game if you join a server using it with mods installed. additionally, harmless mods such as weapon animation replacers are not allowed by it
  
• l m a o box is still running rampant (nice censoring valve)
  
• shortstop's perfectly balanced, main functionality which was 20% more health from all sources when deployed, replaced by an entirely new mechanic (able to push players on alt fire), which could have been used on a new weapon, basically a ♥♥♥♥ you to the people who want new weapons
  
• bazaar bargain still lightyears ahead of every other sniper rifle for over a year now
  
• countless weapons still garbage since release
  
• heavy is still a joke class
  
• spy buff LOL
  
• medic buff LOL

>Be me in 2010
>Be a pimply foul-mouthed misanthropic problem drinking 20-something with no girlfriend and no job
>Be all these things because you put thousands of hours into League of Legends and are still only Silver 2
>Download TF2
>Uninstall League
>Watch your life-crippling self-hatred, devoidity of self esteem, and depression disappear!
>Watch your life turn around as you get buff, bring up your GPA, woo a wonderful woman, re-discover your sense of self respect, and log into a quickplay round every so often to shoot people in the face when you're feeling low.
>Play with friends.
>Play for 2 years solid.
>Watch as the fantastic fluidity of gameplay, snarky hilarious community and the slow rise up the skill curve on sniper and spy allow you to delete trolldiers, demos, and script pyros that have been terrorizing you for said two years solid slowly bring you to the realization that you have fallen in love with a truly unique and unrivaled gaming experience, and that you are in love.
>Watch it all go down the tubes when valve ignores the overwhelming community hatred of the new "let's annihilate our core playerbase in an attempt to attract whiny tryhards who are garbage at overwatch and try and give the pros more recognition" update.

Myhearthasneverbeenmoredevastatednotevenwhenmypuppydiedandmygirlfrienddumpedme/10 cannot recommend unless they bring back quickplay. Might even uninstall. It was good while it lasted.

Fantastic game.. until the so called "meet your match" update decided to not only update the game but completely annihilate the game.

It all begun with a very vocal, but ultimately a minority, calling for a bland yet rampantly generic competitive mode to apply to Team Fortress 2 as well. While this would be a great addition to the game, I stress that making this the ONLY mode is beyond impetuous.

Let’s look at the bigger picture for a second, the indomitable tag for this game is the most fun you can have online. This is something I unflinchingly used to believe in, seeing a spy get panned in the face as a heavy munches down a sandwich. A friendly heavy from the other team throws you a sandwich or a pyro from the other team just baffled by how something utterly ridiculous happened gives you a thumbs up and moves on without being hostile. The moments where you just start laughing out loud happen all the time.

This cauldron of humour is made possible by exactly Pub Games! Where there is nothing at stake for winning or losing and you can at any time change or search for another server with your preferred ping, player amount, gamemode and map. Replacing this with a rank chasing casual mode only will ossify the fun and with that the soul of the game.

Now let me elaborate, as much as I hate matchmaking itself and being unable to join friends in progress that’s not important here. It’s the simple fact that with people being pit up in actual team battles and having ranks, yes even in casual, the serious aspect overpowers this open mind for ridiculousness. Suddenly people are locked in a server and with a set team, meaning if someone decides to go friendly you’re at a disadvantage and inclined to rage in order to achieve that boost of xp.

My main argument with all of this is, since we already have an actual serious matchmaking competitive module in place that people wanted. Why the foray into making a “casual” one, where you force everyone else who DOES NOT want to play it into playing it but without it mattering thus defeating its very purpose and bringing about a existence that nobody really wants at all.

And finally! The cascade of arguments with community servers… Just no, do not be so obstinate and forlorn. Those of you who use that argument have no right demanding any sort of official competitive either from Valve as there’s community competitive modes and matchmaking out there. Oh? You don’t like the specific rules? Well guess what, the very same issues are just as valid for those of us looking for fun pub games. Let me be clear about this. A valve server is like a public park where every player is bound by the same rules that they’re all aware. Meanwhile a community server is like a private yard where the owner can manipulate, advertise or just outright cheat – leaving you there powerless.

Those of you professing exultation are dead wrong, my focal point is how the game has declined in terms of playability and options – which can only be wrong as we all know how toxicity will only increase with the “seriousness” and ranks. Keep it optional is all I wish! We already got one comp mode, fantastic! Great! No need to annihilate the game then with another casual one. Return the pubs and allow us to actually choose ourselves what we want to play instead of forcing us into this limbo. I understand the need to “bring the game up to date” with the generic and superficial traits found in the other titles – but do not rip the very soul of the game doing it.

You were good son, real good...maybe even the best.
















Then valve decided to ♥♥♥♥ it up

Positive review because even though the wall of text is 100% negative, we need you all to keep playing and voice your opinions loudly so that Valve will do something about the horrible mess they've created.

The meet your match update was a mistake, the community has been in a constant state of outrage, outcry, and complete and total dismay, and all Valve has done about it is put on their fake god damn business smile and say, "We're sorry. We'll band-aid some of the minor problems right away," without even acknowledging the one, MAJOR f*ckup, removing Valve pubs and the Quickplay system in general.

Quickplay was not only for Valve pubs. It was also used by many to find community servers. One of those networks that was highly affected by Quickplay lost 70% OF THEIR PLAYERBASE over the last few weeks. I'm talking about TF2 APP. They are shutting down this Saturday. Because Valve won't acknowledge the one major problem with this update. They won't even say "We're sorry about pubs." They won't say anything.

If you wanna know exactly how kill your own game, just grab some ♥♥♥♥in' popcorn and watch. The ABSOLUTE most frustrating thing a company can do is completely ignore the entire customer base's main complaint about a product/update. This is how you drive out old players, and discourage new ones from coming in. It isn't rocket science, Valve. This game is 9 years old, man. Up until last month, it STILL had a concurrent 60,000 players. We're loyal as hell. We are loud as hell, but that doesn't make us less loyal. Speak to us with your mouth words, Valve. Use phonetic syllables to make sounds that our human ears will recognize, ALTERNATIVELY, use your fingers to press the buttons on your keyboard that would make up those aforementioned phonetic syllables. It's literally that simple. Open your god damn mouths and stop being so silent. The age old excuse of "we just dont wanna talk about stuff until we're sure it's ready to talk about" doesn't exactly apply here. It was cute when people were asking about HL3. Now we're talking about whether or not one of the top 10 games on Steam is going to die, by your own hands.

Get off your asses.

I can't recommend this game anymore.

The Meet Your Match (MYM) update ruined TF2 for me (and a lot of people as well)

I could deal with the toxic 10 year olds who worship Call of Duty

I could deal with the closed minded 300+ tours in Mann Vs. Machine

I could deal with Bronies/Furries/FNaF/etc. fanboys shoving their fandoms up other peoples' throats

I could deal with the constant ♥♥♥♥ups and bugs that Valve unintentionally caused

I could deal with the stingy and heartless trading community

I could deal with the constant shitposts in the TF2 forums

But I can't deal with this update.

They made comp official, and they killed pubs. They replaced the quickjoin official servers with "Casual" gamemode, and by "Casual", "I mean F2P Competitive with no 'experience' lost whenever your team loses a match and faster level ups". They claim that the levels would keep the games balanced, but it did the polar opposite. Level 20+ paired up with Level 1 F2Ps. And you get a Matchmaking ban for leaving a server within 10 minutes of joining. The ban is for all official gamemodes. Even when you leave after the 10 minutes, you're also "bound" to your server when you leave the game, and by "bound", I mean "can't join any other official games, including MvM". You can also get a matchmaking ban for leaving a MvM server for the first 10 minutes as well, which is basically Valve forcing you to stay in a game with underaged brick walls who don't know how to read, which is time wasted. At this point, MvM (and TF2 is general) is only enjoyable with friends. The absolute worst part of this update is that you can't kick micspammers/deadweights/♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s/etc. (You can still kick people in MvM, however)

Valve has given us several middle fingers in the past, but this update screams "♥♥♥♥ you" loudly and clearly.


Good game gone bad with this update, I still enjoy this game, but I don't recommend it anymore.




Yes, I am aware that they removed the ban from Matchmaking, but you're still "bound" to the server until the game is over, and you also get a matchmaking ban if you somehow get out of a MvM server before the 10 minute mark (being kicked, leaving, losing connection, etc.). It's been like this for about 2 months. Before the 2 months it was a lower priority after leaving before you attempted to complete a wave...

Team Fortress 2 used to be my favorite game. It still is, as a matter of fact. There are many good things to be said about this game, and I love the characters, gameplay, art style, etc of the game altogether. Recently, however, Valve has made this game one of my least favorite games I own.

TF2 recently recieved the Meet Your Match update, which brought their new Competitive Mode out of beta, as well as changing the casual lobby, balancing weapons, and adding new crates and taunts. Despite the good things that came out of the update, I personally think Valve has destroyed TF2's casual community with the new changes.

First of all, the quickplay menu no longer exists. It has been replaced by a ridiculously broken game coordination system that places players on uneven teams. In addition, casual gameplay has drastically become more competitive. I remember times when you could go on a Valve server and screw around dancing with the enemy team. Now there is no time for that, it's all pressure to beat the enemy team's time or capture that one extra point. Map selection is unavailable, as well as autobalance and even simple mechanics like dominations and revenges. Not to mention that hackers cannot be votekicked anymore, and that voting in general is disabled.

The second major flaw in this update is the unneccessary balancing, again. Specific weapons being buffed like the Huo-Long Heater and Sun-on-a-Stick changes have been good, however lots of horrible "balancing" has been put on weapons that didn't need them in the first place. The Brass Beast and Natascha were nerfed again, making them worse than they were. The Pyro has been buffed again with the ability to interrupt a Medic's healing rate, and the Shortstop now has a shove function which works similarly to an airblast. The Soda Popper is now worse than before with the new function of building Hype on hit rather than on movement. The most surprising part of all this, though, is that the Quickiebomb Launcher and Iron Bomber were both buffed, which makes them more overpowered than even before. Like I said, these changes were mostly unneccessary.

The last thing I will go off about in this review is the community. Sure, there are several nice people I have met through TF2, and I am not saying there aren't nice people in the community. But servers I see now are full of micspammers, hackers, people being ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s, and in general nobody working together as a team to complete the objective or otherwise. If you try to tell someone to do something strategic that will work, usually the response is "♥♥♥♥ you". I have lost many a match because the team I'm placed on will not cooperate to beat the other team.

My point is, TF2 is horrible and practically dead after this new update. I still enjoy it out of long-standing habit, however I do not reccommend picking this game up right now. Unless you love the matchmaking system and skins of CS:GO. This game is not what it used to be, and I am utterly dissappointed to give TF2 a negative review.

I love this game at its very core, I really do, and have played and continue to play it for years. However this latest update forces all players to choose between "Competitive" (HAHAHAHA) which is full of cheaters and horribly unbalanced matches in which it's always a match of you and five idiots versus six invincible gods/aimbotters (Or if you're playing Casual mode, it's you and eleven doofuses versus 12 gods/aimbotters) or the other option of the only community servers left, which are 24/7 ALLCRIT LIVE NUDES TURBINE DONOR PERKS PINION ADS UNUSUAL GIVEAWAY RTD SAXTON HALE !ROBOT MINECRAFT SKIAL NBSCLAN FURRY BRONY TRADE servers, all of which are ♥♥♥♥ing awful and full of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ admins that ban you for breathing and plaster your eyes with advertisements.

I joined this game after it went free to play in 2011. Since then I've amassed a collection of hats (and I sorely wish I never gave Valve a penny for a cosmetic, but what's done is done), become very experienced with the game (although this isn't going to help you because no matter how good you are, there will always be that one Scout who just installed the game who kills you with a random crit he doesn't deserve) and made a bunch of online friends. (No complaints there.)

With that said, I've been playing this ♥♥♥♥ for five years and can wholeheartedly tell you, with 100% certainty, this is not the game I fell in love with five years ago. This is a shell of its former self desperately clinging to relevancy in an attempt to gather even more ♥♥♥♥ing money. Valve placed quantity over quality, bloating the game's carcass with enough hat models for the game to amass a stunning weight of 15 GB compared to its release version weighing only 2 GB. They've thrown balance and performance out the window in favor of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game-breaking gimmicks and cosmetics that detract from the brilliant and carefully-laid-out image TF2 was originally made with.

Competitive is a ♥♥♥♥ing JOKE, and it's not a funny one. If you don't have five friends who are always online when you are and are either really ♥♥♥♥ing good or really ♥♥♥♥ing cheap and can abuse gimmicks or exploits that you can matchmake with, you will always be stuck with people like this against aimbotters or people drenched in eye-murdering neon colors who are so good they're damn near close to an aimbot. In the rare event that you win, you won't be properly rewarded for it and get almost no experience points. When you lose (the more common outcome unless you have those five good/cheap friends) even once you'll lose so much experience you won't know why you bothered to play in the first place and will be sent back to square one to pair with those same idiots you fought so hard to leave.

Casual mode is hardly any better. Long ♥♥♥♥ing loading times and gangs of bunnyhopping aimbotting speedhacking ambassador spies or snipers in formation to prevent being votekicked. Speaking of jokes, what's useless, ancient and doesn't do jack ♥♥♥♥? If you guessed that it was your great aunt Cassie, you're close, but it was actually Valve's Anti-Cheat system. To put it simply: It doesn't ♥♥♥♥ing work. Take a look at Max Box, the most notorious TF2 hacker around, who's been ruining games for years and boasting about it claiming he's changed afterward. The only time he ever got the VAC ban he deserved was in ♥♥♥♥ing Counter-Strike, not TF2. Valve doesn't care about quality, only the quantity of hats, money, and things they can break with every update.

Community servers are hardly worth even talking about, but to save you the trouble of being so bored out of your mind wishing Valve servers for non-Casual play would return that you make the absolute madman decision of picking one of those 24/7 ALLCRIT LIVE NUDES TURBINE DONOR PERKS PINION ADS UNUSUAL GIVEAWAY RTD SAXTON HALE !ROBOT MINECRAFT SKIAL NBSCLAN FURRY BRONY TRADE servers to play on I'll give you a run-down of what pretty much always happens on those: You join one of these ugly servers with tacky names and a list of tags longer than Santa's naughty list and sit for two and a half hours while your client downloads a bunch of dumb ♥♥♥♥ing Quake and My Little Pony sounds and models you won't ever see or hear ingame anyway. When you finally get in you hear the Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 and Mortal Kombat announcers all screaming in your ear at every ♥♥♥♥ing action anyone does, as if Ellen Mclain's narration in TF2 wasn't enough information for you. You're stuck on the MOTD watching an advertisement for a game that totally isn't a clone of World of Warcraft for sixty seconds and even if you're like me and disable all these downloads and MOTDs you have to sit there for even longer as your punishment for being too sane to put yourself through hearing loud-as-♥♥♥♥ commercials in your god damn video game. When it's finally over you walk out of spawn and get crit-killed by a scout covered in his donor perk(TM) unusual effects granted by the server since he stole his mom's credit card to buy them with. While you respawn the MOTD pops up again to show you more advertisements. You disconnect because you're not a masochist and decide to play a different game or to suffer through a casual/competitive match full of cheaters and 9999-hour burning team captain soldiers on the enemy team.

The original Team Fortress 2 was a perfectly balanced (save for perhaps the Stickybomb Launcher but everything else is so deliciously good I'll allow it) and beautiful game consisting of nine unique characters with their own personalities and playstyles. The Team Fortress 2 we have now is a horribly unbalanced and nightmarish Eldrich Horror of a crucified art style and blasphemous performance. Now, I have a really good computer, believe me. TF2's original release from 2007 gives me at least 200 frames per second, which is damn good! Modern TF2 needs a miracle or a severe graphical Minecraftization to get even above 30 frames per second, mostly due to all the entities the game is forced to render especially if 24 to 32 players are all wearing three hats, one action item and a weapon with a highly detailed CS:GO skin.

That's what TF2 is now. It's not good. It used to be good, but it sure as hell isn't now. I don't even think Valve can salvage the game, and I doubt even more that they even care to salvage it since it's a nice big fat cash cow endlessly squirting dollar bills into Valve's moist and smelly pockets the way it is right now.

There's still alternatives for TF2 like 2007 TF2 and TF2Classic but they're mostly ghost towns and games with more than eight players are a very rare and precious sight to see. 2007 TF2 is literally just the Orange Box release of TF2 conveniently made a sourcemod you can slap into your steam folder and play like the good old days, and TF2 Classic is a community-made revival and optimization of 2007 TF2 with new stuff to keep it fresh.

To summarize, TF2 at its very core is wonderful and insanely addicting. PC Gamer was right about it being the most fun I would ever have online. The way it is now, though, Team Fortress 2 is probably the most frustration and dissatisfaction you can have online. If you've never played this before I wouldn't suggest giving it a shot at this point, it's just not worth it unless you play one of the two alternatives to it I mentioned.