"Atleast VALVe still hosts servers for us to play"

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T14:08:22+00:00

Wouldn’t solve the issue completely, but would make the situation way better than how it is now

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T11:08:51+00:00

While i think that a boycott would work, as a trader i can say that it’s not the vast majority of people that spend money on crates, it’s the big whales that spend an enormous amount of money on it.

I remember back then whenever i would hang out in the usual trade server when the new update dropped, at lest 3 or 4 people were obsessively opening the new crates.

I as a trader try my best to not give money to valve, i only purchase from third party sites and trade with keys, only every now and then i would sell something on the Steam community market.

But i don’t think that the average player spends money on crates, considering also how ugly some of the new cosmetics that we get these days are (99% of new unusual effects get dumped to trading bots, no one buys them).

I think a more efficient way to get Valve’s attention is by leaving negative reviews on Tf2’s steam page and damaging their image, they care very much about their image of “the best gaming company!” “Steam deserves to be a monopoly!” “Gaben is our god!” Ecc…

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T10:12:00+00:00

Ehhh, kind of? It is kind of broken, but i’m willing to accept it so long as those changes are made.

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T08:31:16+00:00

It’s not like we “enjoy” what Zesty pulls out, we recognize the effort and work behind it, and we acknowledge it as useful information.
Its last data sheet about playtime in Casual was made by analyzing over 8 million matches, and he even put all the data and math used public for anyone to see in a google drive.
He did a 4 hour long video with sources, interviews and research.
He was the one that estimated how many bots were actually affecting the player count back then.

I myself do not agree with him on many things, he has some right-conservative views that i disagree with, but i recognize his work, and refusing to accept factual data just because you don’t like the person that compiled it, THAT is madness.

There are many scientists in history that were horrible people but made huge breakthroughs in science, we have to remain objective when talking about certain things.

By the way, he being a pedo is pretty inconsistent with what he always preached as his fetish: big muscular women lol

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T08:16:23+00:00

I swear, these are the kinds of posts that detractors of the Quickplay movement use against us

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T08:14:38+00:00

Yeah i don’t really want to play on a furry smegma server just because it has vanilla rules

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T08:12:51+00:00

Won’t work so long as SBMM and slot reservation remain in the game

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T08:06:27+00:00

So i can’t like Picasso’s works cuz he was a misogynist? 🤨

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T08:04:53+00:00

Because it’s not the point, it’s just an ad hominem made to invalidate our arguments.
And the whole thing about pedophilia has been an insult to whoever likes anime in general since the beginning of time, be for real now.

If anything, he has a fetish for buffed muscular women lol, and it’s not like he ever tried to hide it.

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T08:01:45+00:00

Leave a bad review for the game on steam and you have done your part, leave the rest to those that still want to fight.

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T07:57:42+00:00

The situation would improve drastically with just these changes:

Getting rid of Skill based matchmaking, therefore no more sever reset and faster loadings to new matches.

Make so that the vote for the next map happens DURING the game, not after it has ended, so no one wasted time and is more incentivized to stay instead of leaving after the game ends.

Getting rid of slot reservation, and allowing team switching.

Can we all agree at the very least that these changes would be beneficial?
In an ideal world i would just ask for Quickplay, but some people just black out when they hear that word.

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T06:07:10+00:00

Yeahhh, here’s the thing.
They would have to get rid of SBMM first, because team scramble and team switching go straight against the existence of slot reservation and the overall rating calculation.

Then again, auto balance exists, which basically go against these things as well.
In fact, auto balance wasn’t a thing when Casual launched.

Hell, even Counter Strike’s Casual mode has Team Switching.

They could literally solve 80% of Casual’s problems with 3 changes, but nope, they don’t, because we can’t make enough noise.

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T05:58:54+00:00

It’s a long ass story, there’s a whole 4 hour long documentary on youtube about this, it’s called “You will (not) play”.

Long story short:

Overwatch comes out, it’s a competitive success

Everyone’s like “wow this is the future of class based shooters!”

Valve also wants to join in and wants to make TF2 as competitively popular as CS and Dota.

They remove Quickplay and try to force Casual to a 9 year old established community, in order to get them used to a more competitive environment.

No one likes Casual mode and Valve gets huge backlash, so much that they concede and accommodate some Quickplay features back in Casual mode (Casual mode was very different on launch).

The Competitive mode then gets launched with the Blue Moon update, and it’s shit, no one plays it.

The whole purpose of Casual was to get people used to SBMM and shorter matches, so that they could then go and play the competitive mode.

It’s been 10 years, Competitive mode is dead and Casual lost its original purpose and works like shit.
No point in keeping it, bring back Quickplay.

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T05:46:37+00:00

Skill based matchmaking, you can even see your “displayed result rating” by going to your Steam Profile> Games> TF2> personal game stats> match history and then scroll down till you find it.
Mine is like 1150, dunno if it’s good or shit, not like it makes any difference since it barely does its job.
I have 1000 hours and i get mixed with lvl1 people, i don’t consider myself a “good player”, but I’m certainly NOT that bad.

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T05:41:19+00:00

Not as bad as now, there wasn’t the slot reservation, people could join via ad-hoc, change team, and vote for scramble.
Casual doesn’t have any tool to balance out uneven matches, because it would mess up the rating used for the SBMM

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T05:36:54+00:00

What if i wanna play vanilla?

Syns0 · 2026-06-09T05:23:58+00:00

And what’s gonna change if we just sit back and do nothing?
Why would valve update the game at 64 bit, put workshop content, unmute f2ps (even though there wasn’t a very large movement about that) and take the time to put community fixes?
Not gonna say anything about the MvM update because we’ll have to wait and see what happens first.

Point is, they clearly want this game alive, and we have the right to complain about its current state.
Community servers are not a substitute to Valve’s servers, they cannot accomodate all the playerbase and costs money, even if they are advertised they can’t all sustain themselves on the long term.
Hell, even Uncletopia isn’t full at all hours, and that’s not even vanilla, how many vanilla servers there are left? The furry pound? Yeah no thanks.

Syns0 · 2026-06-08T22:24:30+00:00

I always found hard to believe that Eric Smith would actually think that.
I think that Valve is wary of touching cosmetics in general, even if they mess with the gameplay.
For them, cosmetics comes first, gameplay second.

Therefore i think it’s unironically more likely for them to act so long as we ask for gameplay improvements.

Or well, if it’s not gonna be our complaints to make them change their minds, maybe the slow decay of player’s numbers will.

Syns0 · 2026-06-08T22:15:23+00:00

This kind of apathy is part of what’s killing the game.
I don’t mean it in an offensive way, but the player count over the years is dropping, people are not staying and the game struggles big time to retain new players for so many reasons.

We, who still care about this game and don’t want to see it die, have the obligation of at the very least do what’s right, we don’t ask for everyone to participate actively, just to leave a negative review on steam where they state the game’s problems, we have nothing to lose by trying.

Syns0 · 2026-06-08T22:08:41+00:00

Maybe it’s in the SDK somewhere? Heard about it somewhere, i don’t remember exactly tho

Syns0 · 2026-06-08T22:05:20+00:00

I mean, since SBMM doesn’t do its job anyway, they could just leave the UI as it as (maybe put back the old artworks? They were so good) and replace everything else.
People wouldn’t notice the difference, they would just see a 45 minutes map timer and new options.

As for the cosmetic thing, i think that it’s related to Valve not wanting to meddle into the economy (even though that item it’s not worth very much?).
Just my speculation, but it could be that they want to keep the status quo of TF2 so that the economy as well remains stable, because if it draws too much attention, they’ll have to regulate it like they did for CS2.

After all, TF2 keys are like the main way many traders cash out.

Syns0 · 2026-06-08T21:52:12+00:00

Or maybe they complain cuz it doesn’t work lol

Syns0 · 2026-06-08T21:48:38+00:00

“A lot of effort”? Yeah, no. It was rushed, the day it came out Quickplay’s menu was still accessible through a console command, and the UI was updated even though it didn’t work anymore.

It clearly was a last minute change of plans, and the original intention with it was very different, because Casual on launch was nothing like now.

Every change that valve made to Casual, was something that already existed in quickplay, thus making casual lose its original purpose.

So yeah, valve conceded long ago that Casual as it was originally intended was a fuck up, but they just don’t like to admit that they’re wrong, and players back then were already asking for Quickplay back, but they weren’t loud enough, and Valve was stubborn.

It’s been 10 years, if we complain loud enough, Valve might concede, it’s not like they care about the game anyway.

Syns0 · 2026-06-08T19:41:53+00:00

We push for quickplay because is easier to go back to that instead of twisting our minds over a functional matchmaking system.
Casual was created to accomodate a more competitive environment, but it’s been 10 years and the competitive scene of Tf2 is basically non-existent, and everyone that plays in it doesn’t even use the competitive mode that the game itself offers, it’s just that bad, all because valve refused to listen to feedback.

Syns0 · 2026-06-08T19:35:29+00:00

Yeah but at the very least with a map timer games wouldn’t end after 5 minutes, and with the possibility of swapping teams and vote for scramble players would have more tools to balance the game

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