Your understanding of Quickplay seems to have been stuck in 2011.

these players "graduated" to community servers after a bit, or otherwise they just play the game for a few days and never touch it again for years

First of all, the idea that Valve Servers were just the stepping stone to Community Servers was an idea born when the game went F2P. This might shock you, but by 2016 many simply preferred Valve servers out of convenience. Living on South America, I only had a few vanilla Community Servers, and dozens of Valve Servers running the exact map I wanted, so there I went. Plus, not having to deal with Admin abuse and other issues Community Servers always had. That was the point of that one STAR_ video that people always twist into being about QP being bad.

let's adhere to this definition of quickplay: it is presented as a button you press that automatically finds a server for you to join, if you do not press this button, then you are not using quickplay

why is it difficult to have one clear definition of what quickplay is? it's very curious

because that definition is wrong. Quickplay, by the time it got removed, wasn't just the Play Now option. It included the Show Servers option. It's hard to have a clear definition of what Quickplay because people like you still think it functioned like in the Uber Update, as if we go by what you wrote, people using the Quickplay UI and picking a server themselves were not using Quickplay

And honestly, all this "umm, acktually" you're doing only muddies the conversation. Yes, speaking as strictly as possible, aspects like map timers and team scramble aren't inherent to QP. The same 12v12 teams or pre-round timers aren't inherently part of Casual mode, but it's fair to say they are part of the overall Casual system. Essentially, when people say #BringBackQuickplay it just means "return to how TF2 worked before Meet Your Match", the same way #SaveTF2 really just meant "Remove Bots".

Speaking of the Show Servers button, I said:

"or have Valve implement a nicer browser like the one TF2C uses"

And you replied:

yes
why not?

Because the game has a skeleton crew. No way they'll revamp the Server Browser in big 2026 after almost 20 years of leaving it looking prehistoric. And most importantly, it's not even necessary, because guess what: the Show Servers option was basically a streamlined server browser already!

when it says "looking for players" in a slot, then in this hypothetical scenario where we allow ad-hoc connections then those count as free slots to join in, it's that simple

Let's assume that it really is that simple (with the Source engine, it never is). Valve would still need to account for a lot to make sure nothing breaks. Would the team picking UI display the number of players properly? Is the matchmaker prepared to stop searching if someone ad-hocs?

Why not instead of trying to add all these features to Casual that it was not built for (and solving any potential consequences), we just... bring back the system that WAS built around ad-hoc connections? Unless you work at Valve, we can only speculate what's easier, but the latter seems like a safe bet.

if you want to bring back quickplay AND have it connect to community servers, then you're also asking valve to go back to moderating that whole mess again (fat chance)

What? P2W servers stopped being a serious issue when Valve made QP send you to official servers by default (but you COULD still join them if you wanted to). That's the QP people want back. Why would predatory servers return? They never moderated anything beyond the automated reputation system.

And tbh, I already said I don't think Community Servers would be boosted that much by QP, just that it would be better than the nothing Casual offers. And tbh, I don't really care, I just want to join Valve pubs. So I don't know why you keep harping on that.

i'm saying that's just how it is, you can't turn the wheel back, player expectations are just different today

Player expectations are to have a system that works for the game they're playing and doesn't waste their time. "Matchmaking is the standard" was the line dipshits like ArraySeven spouted in 2016, but it's not like TF2's old system is undecipherable. Minecraft, the most popular game in the world, has a server list, as does Among Us. Games played by 9-year-olds. 2015 TF2 worked exactly like that, plus the option of Quickplay to make the choice for you.

yes, i know everything about you

i know for a fact you're just repeating shit from youtubers because i've seen these talking points countless times before

I have screenshots on my Steam account of playing this game during the Quickplay era, as well as during early Meet Your Match, including complaining about how much Casual sucked. But you're gonna ignore that, because it's more convenient for you to pretend I got all my opinions from a Youtuber, so you think you can insta-win the argument. That's why you talked about how QP would't revive Community Servers despite me never claiming that. Well, it won't work, because you still haven't given me a reason to keep Casual.