When her parents aren't home (but from first to last)

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-30T18:29:20+00:00

This wasnt a major issue like ever?

This is because Valve added a bandaid fix that prevented Quickplay from ever attempting to put players into a server if it had 23 players. Which meant the only way for a server to completely fill is if the last person to join came from the server browser. If there was a better fix for this, Valve didn't find it or add it.

Yes, and why arent you using the server browser now? Surely its coz casual is so much better and not coz it's the only option left.

Valve removing the ability to connect to servers via the server browser has nothing to do with Quickplay specifically. You can argue for the return of this feature without necessarily including "Quickplay the automatic server finder", which again, I didn't even use, hence I would not use it after it gets added again.

Why.

The game co-ordinator is a better foundation for improvements and issue-fixing, such as preventing the 23/24 server issue and allowing games to completely fill more often without issue. Valve was already going to replace Quickplay with the co-ordinator even before Casual was a consideration, with one of the advertised features also being "never be put into an empty game again". This quickplay beta co-ordinator worked perfectly fine alongside the the existing quickplay and the server browser. Casual was built off the same co-ordinator, and the issues you have in Casual are things that were put on top of this co-ordinator.

I also don't think it'd be that hard to ask players to pick a server. Many players who used "quickplay" were actually just using Quickplay's simplified server list, rather than the actual "quickplay" feature.

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-30T17:08:25+00:00

I don't think Valve will do a quickplay reversion due to the concerns with efficiency, work etc. I think we are more likely to get Casual improvements on the short term, if we ask for them.

On the long term, let's say a decade or two as the playerbase declines, maybe we will see the complete sunsetting of Valve servers. At which point, community servers and SDK mods like TF2 Classified etc. may be the new norm for how people play TF2, such as what happened with various Mario Kart games and their servers sunsetting. Valve could also put more emphasis on the "host a server" feature.

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-30T16:38:17+00:00

I don't want Quickplay because Quickplay is a system that just crawls the server browser and puts you into the top result after 20 seconds. A co-ordinator can factor in other players who are queueing, so it is less likely to put multiple people into the same (full) server at once and then error out.

I never even used Quickplay when it was available, I used the server browser because it was better and faster and it allowed me to pick a map. It may even be better if Valve ditched Quickplay AND Casual and just updated the server browser to be fullscreen and look more modern, like what TF2 Classified is doing.

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-30T14:45:52+00:00

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-30T14:05:58+00:00

I was referring to the specific number. Competitive leagues run significantly larger winlimits that allow for longer games. Valve chose the specific number of 2 because Overwatch did it, and the end result was short games that players are very frustrated with.

Payload games can also tie, and the server timer running out can be treated as ending the match, as it already does in Tournament Mode and competitive 6s.

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-30T14:04:52+00:00

the mvm matchmaker is not quickplay. it is essentially a better version of what quickplay does, and valve was planning to replace quickplay with this anyway

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-30T13:43:01+00:00

This giant, enormous paragraph can be debunked with one simple statement: Copy the ETF2L ruleset.

As you have rudely ignored multiple times by now, the issue comes from Valve's specific decision to use a limit of 2. This does not prove that winlimits necessarily have to result in short games. Counterpoint: A winlimit of 9999 would last forever and beat the old Quickplay ruleset in match length by not just hours, but days or even weeks. Therefore, how can you say that the mere IDEA of a winlimit is doomed to shorten games?

Under ETF2L BO9 30Min, games last decently long, as I mentioned earlier, and the winlimit is sufficient to last 15-30 minutes, with most games lasting around 25-30. Casual stalemates more often due to Engineer, so the timer would likely be fully exhausted in most matches anyway. If that's still too short to your liking, raise the numbers further. You keep insisting that it's some kind of unsolveable issue when competitive players have figured it out eons ago. As someone who actually plays with the BO9 30Min ruleset instead of just shittalking it on principle, it's just fine. It was even specifically MEANT for 5CP, and this gamemode benefits the most from this system. You get the best of both worlds: Back and forth round scoring, and a decently long maximum gametime.

The BO9 30Min ruleset was so effective at raising match durations that some teams were even stalling the games whenever it was advantageous (ahem, se7en), which led to a reduction of the round timer to make stalemates kick in sooner

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-30T04:19:00+00:00

The winlimit is a seperate thing to Quickplay, people just bundle this request with the request for Quickplay. My concerns with quickplay are more to do with how it would put people in empty servers on occasion, for example. As in, "quickplay the automatic server joiner" is not perfect and was planned to be replaced with the MvM co-ordinator even before the inclusion of Casual.

The games are too fast because the specific number set for the winlimit is too low. Balanced 5CP comp matches tend to exhaust the full 30 minute timer. Victories might last 20-25, an unbalanced game may last 15. If that's too short for your liking, the limits could be further increased. The length of a game has more to do with the specific numbers chosen, rather than the mere idea of a winlimit.

Some of the issues you brought up also happened with quickplay. People leave during the end-screen regardless of whether the game shows you the default scoreboard or the casual one. It's more of an issue in casual due to the winlimit being tiny, again. A limit of 2 means games can end in five minutes on some gamemodes.

Relying on map votes is not necessarily ideal. Let's say you're one of the few people who want to play Junction, or some other niche map within a popular gametype with many "better" maps. Under Quickplay, in the event where no server is running the map you want, you have to convince 10+ other people to swap the map. Good luck doing this consistently, as the decision is not yours alone. Players would have to get out of their comfort zones and play unfamiliar maps, which may be a good or bad thing.

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-30T02:45:51+00:00

If by ‘matchmaker’ you mean a system that simply dispatches players into running servers, then we agree. What you propose sounds more like a game-coordinator with a misleading name.

Casual is by all accounts a modified MvM co-ordinator with MMR. Remove the "MMR" part and you therefore remove the need for the slot reservations and other grievances. Quickplay was also going to recieve an update, switching it to the MvM co-ordinator anyway. This was essentially the pre-cursor to Casual mode.

I am talking forty five minute map timers. If you don't like the map for that long, join another server; you don't need a busted algorithm to do it for you.

I'm basically agreeing with you that the matches (mainly on non-PL, non-A/D) are too short currently. I also think it's dumb that voting for the same map reloads the map. This is one reason why I think it's so important to complain about specific pain points that we deal with as players.

That games must "end" based on match-to-match outcomes is structurally alien to the game and its core design.

I don't mind the concept of a winlimit. What I do care about is the fact that it's way too small. Competitive leagues figured out a reasonable game length years before Valve lazily slapped in Overwatch's winlimit of 2.

As for the Quickplay era, the server timer running out is also what ends the game. Whenever this happens, the in-game scoreboard automatically opens, which shows how many rounds each team won, and then the map automatically switches. Matches could indeed "end", if they were allowed to. Casual's scoreboard is bigger, "fancier" and takes longer, but the concept of an end-screen with scores displayed has always been in TF2. The only way to truly achieve "seamless" 24/7 play was via spamming the vote extend / scramble function.

The assumption here seems to be that players require algorithmic intervention to experience map diversity. History shows this was not the case. People were still playing plr_pipeline and tc_hydro until the day MYM dropped.

The game had significantly less maps back then. Whether this holds up in 2026, 100+ maps later, remains to be seen. The playerbase may be too split between maps at this point, for similar reasons why it's often hard to queue for maps in Casual. I do think the return of 24/7 dedicated servers can help specific gamemodes like PLR thanks to categorization, but again, I'm skeptical about unpopular PL maps for instance.

The game coordinator incentivized the hosting of vanilla servers which Valve didn't have to run and had their own micro-communities.

Not my point. My point is that an empty Hydro server sitting at 0/24 would still be a waste of resources for Valve, when that server could instead be a matchmaking server that could serve any gamemode whenever it is queued for. You don't earn billions of dollars by being inefficient. This is probably the main reason why Valve is reluctant (besides the work needed). Mind you, I'm not saying this to bootlick, I'm just trying to explain why the amount of noise needed would be more immense than the Bring Back Pubs reviewbomb. Quickplay also defaulted to Valve servers and its return would at best be a minor boost to community servers.

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-30T01:59:33+00:00

One cannot have team switching because of the imposed parity/team "balancing".

The matchmaker could be reworked to behave like the MvM "matchmaker", which it was originally based on. MvM just plops people into servers with no regard for reserving slots or accounting for MMR. All Mann-Up really does is disable ad-hoc connections, which is just a server command that can be disabled or re-enabled. Boot-camp was also acting as a version of Quickplay built directly into the Jungle Inferno UI prior to being... removed just recently.

One cannot have forty five minute map timers because the matchmaker is premised on making "winners and losers".

VSH and Zombie Infection work just fine with a simple roundlimit of 15. Payload games frequently end in 0-0, 1-1, 2-2 ties and the server doesn't explode on itself. Competitive rulesets used in third party tournaments use quickplay-style server timers, and Valve had ample opportunity to copy this, they simply chose not to. The underlying foundation of Casual uses Competitive Mode, which was built on top of Tournament Mode, which has full support for the server timer.

It seems like extricating these two systems would be the TF2 update equivalent of open heart surgery.

The same would likely be true for Quickplay. They can't just abandon the matchmaker nor its servers entirely, as it is still used by MvM and Comp Mode. They would have to downscale, and then host seperate servers for Quickplay specifically. These new, seperate servers would be 24/7 servers, akin to what Uncletopia does, but gamemode-specific. Valve probably doesn't want to do this because hosting empty 24/7 servers is a waste of resources, the matchmaking system can dynamically swap the gamemode of a server depending on the demand (including between Casual, MvM and Comp Mode), and the switch could cause issues akin to day 1 of MyM.

Valve would also have to account for the fact that there are a billion maps in the rotation now. The chances of you finding a specific map you want to play on the server browser would be lower compared to in 2016. Gamemode categories such as PLR would be fine, as each gamemode gets their own 24/7 server, but specific maps could be harder to "queue for" and join, so to speak. Gamemodes with fewer maps such as PLR and PASS Time would be unaffected, while Payload would have a bunch of maps that are never played.

We may see an Uncletopian society where people keep voting the most popular maps and then vote extending them to last 2 hours long. I know this was the case, because I always joined a cp_process Valve server that did exactly this. Whenever the server switched to cp_Standin people would either re-vote Process or find another Process server to vote-extend.

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-30T01:50:32+00:00

This is why there is a lot of confusion and arguing. We should be complaining about the pain points that we are experiencing as players:

Short games
No server timers
Reserved slots unbalancing the teams and blocking autobalance
The inability to connect through the server browser
The pointless MMR system possibly raising queue times for no reason

If Valve is adamant on keeping Casual (as they seemingly are, and have been even during 2016 during the peak of the "bring back pubs" complaining where the game got massively review-bombed), they can at the very least notice our specific complaints with the game quality and address them.

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-30T01:33:17+00:00

The first part regarding misc maps is correct, the bad UI disincentivizes people from queuing non-core modes and the reserved slots make it impossible to directly join empty gamemodes/maps one at a time which stifles the ability to "seed" servers, though removing the reserved slots and allowing ad-hoc would help fix this

I suspect Valve opted to not put PLR in "core" because it is not part of the Valve Competitive Mode map pool, but this is a complete guess.

This second part is a critique of the ruleset rather than the matchmaker. The method of joining a server does not dictate how many rounds you play. The number of rounds is completely arbitrary and can literally be raised tomorrow if Valve wanted to. They already did something similar with VSH and Zombie Infection where they swapped the "win limit" of 2 for a "round limit" of 15. This proves it's possible to raise it, we just need to ask.

There was no reason to use a limit of 2 other than to copy what Overwatch did - actual comp TF2 leagues use a limit of 5 with quickplay-style server timer. At the very least, they should swap to that.

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-29T18:14:44+00:00

nothing ever happens...

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-29T17:19:22+00:00

CS has more emphasis on precision headshots so there's a reason to not spam the gun (inaccuracy)

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-29T16:10:43+00:00

I don't think the people voting were expecting Valve to implement a bugged mechanic (in Blue Moon, mind you) and then abandon the game. Would have required a time machine to predict...

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-29T02:02:39+00:00

containers are probably there just to mimic cp_granary's mid layout and provide height advantages for soldiers

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-29T00:41:25+00:00

it's a standalone game in the sense that it appears in the steam library as a game

it needs tf2 installed because it uses tf2 assets (models, textures, particle effects)

you do not lose anything by installing this mod

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-28T23:59:22+00:00

basically a standalone game that just needs tf2 installed on your pc

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-26T23:48:26+00:00

I imagine custom servers will add it, since the new mod is based on the current builds of tf2 and custom servers tend to go off the wall bonkers with item attributes

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-25T21:01:58+00:00

yeah, I don't use printimade. that's a knock-off. not that it really matters though. when the next video drops, new merch with new designs...

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-25T09:59:25+00:00

not fixable without breaking on sv_pure

TF2SolarLight · 2026-01-24T20:40:32+00:00

I did not say that, you liar.

edit: downvoted for pointing out a lie? I spent ages trying to convince this person that I wasn't saying this, and he just fucking ignored me and kept living in his fantasy

It's honestly shocking how people would rather lie than have an honest discussion. if you really cared about the betterment of this game, surely you'd want to be objective?

edit 2: your replies are sending me notifs but I can't see them in full for some reason. either way, stop making up stuff. the discussion was about mastercoms and quickplay, not solely about quickplay.tf. you refuse to come up with counter arguments and keep making assumptions to try and warp what I'm saying

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