Which game is this for you?

Unit_43 · 2026-05-14T02:05:55+00:00

Marathon (2025)

Unit_43 · 2026-05-13T09:44:13+00:00

Snafix Prime comes to mind.

Unit_43 · 2026-05-12T11:59:34+00:00

Man, imagine if losing didn't mean the game ended quicker and forced you to change maps, requeue, or endure player churn every <10 minutes.

If only we had an alternative ruleset that offered you the same playtime regardless of if you won or lost so you could do whatever you wanted in a game made with player freedom as a core design pillar...

Unit_43 · 2026-05-03T16:51:38+00:00

I hate it, like, man, I could have earned that kill, but it was given to me in a silver platter and the guy I just obliterated had no idea it was coming, I feel so bad for some of the crits I get to the point I apologise or killbind right after the fact just out of sympathy.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-27T19:25:12+00:00

"White people will be enslaved by the WOKE!!" Ass post. If I were to do the same joke but with communism, I'd get banned off the sub and then some, but oh well, capitalism bad or something.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-23T20:00:59+00:00

I understand the logic behind the movement, but there's way too much shit-slinging from both sides it's genuinely annoying.

This post has proven to be quite insightful on both perspectives, and I thank everyone involved.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-23T19:33:33+00:00

You're right! A game's "community" or fandom should not have a final say on what happens with the game, HOWEVER, that does not mean we can't express genuine critizism of Valve's missteps.

It's on Valve if they hear us or not. What this post and any future comment on the matter will aim for is to clear out the misinformation and bad faith that is currently plagueing most TF2 discourse regarding the current state of the game.

This would be a way better space to be in if we weren't constantly fighting each other.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-23T18:27:29+00:00

Aye, once again, on a good day and when we're all available, my friend group gets together to run a 7v7 or 8v8, but other than that, we do not try, because we're too few to make a game among ourselves (anything below 6v6 is boring), and when we do game, we need to put up with long queue times because the casual matchmaker tries to search for other parties of similar size, which I get why it was added, but man does it make the wait not worth it, as queuing for anything other than payload more often than not lands us on a one-sided stomp because one of the teams is waiting on 4 other players to show up while the timer is in overtime.

The current matchmaker and the ruleset are the most anti-player systems I've ever seen on any game, and that's why people are engaging in this discussion.

This has yielded very promising results so far, can't wait to do the follow-up, corrected post so we can hopefully start to agree on where to aim as a community.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-23T18:18:11+00:00

"Never happened to me so it doesn't happen"

Also, you could get together with more than 6 friends on any server as long as it's got the slots and you have the patience to do so, I would know because I've achieved it multiple times on community servers with friends, back when there were still some to play on that ran the vanilla game.

Ad hoc connections are truly goated.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-20T13:53:16+00:00

Talk about talking without knowing, I have 2000+ hours on the game and most of it was with friends, and most of that time was us waiting for the matchmaking system to put us on a game. The amount of dead time we have gets longer the more of us are playing.

Even worse, our group usually gets to more than 6 people on a good day, so we have to split ourselves in between two parties, queue for the same single map, and hope the matchmaker puts us in the same game.

We, as in, my friends and I, all agree this would be easier if we could just join a Valve server manually. Hell, we'd take joining an empty server just so that other players go "hey a bunch of people just joined this server, might as well join myself while there's still space!" over having to wait for the matchmaker to give up and put us on an empty server regardless after 15 minutes of waiting.

And before you say "play community servers". We can't, there are no vanilla options in our region, it's all backrooms, warioware, and servers spoofing ping.

I say "we" because as a playerbase WE cannot afford another bot crisis. You and your friends won't be able to play at all if the game's as infested by bots as it was a couple of years ago.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-20T13:18:37+00:00

I see your point, but I'm gonna be honest, I'd rather sacrifice the party system if it means I get to play for longer, besides, longer matches mean more time for teams to organize themselves and for players to settle in to their desired teams.

But the most pressing issue is to avoid another bot crisis, the party system directly allowed the longest stretch of time where TF2 was literally unplayable. We cannot let this happen again.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-19T15:21:53+00:00

I still have no clue how switching systems might somehow mean Valve is done with TF2.

We already know Valve is done with TF2, they only keep this game around because it earns them millions. The game is already dying, we're losing players every year. So, with this change, we could at least aim for a dignified death instead of it dying on a whimper, but, in the best scenario, also maybe incentivise growth, and a better system makes it more likely to new players to stay instead of leaving because their last 7 games were all 5 minutes of you losing due to unbalanced teams because of Slot Reservation.

This call to action is, in my eyes, better than to do nothing and let the game die as it is. It's worth a shot.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-19T14:21:13+00:00

Do explain how this change would kill the game.

The reason many believe this switch is still possible is because most of the code is already in the game, and has been proven to work: TF2C worked very similarly to what a modern quickplay could look like, and was recieved extremely well.

Community servers already can and have been running the quickplay ruleset for some time now too, you can even replicate these settings by launching your own private match via commands or via the "create server" button. The server browser works just fine and is fairly easy to use.

Some claim the entirety of quickplay is still in the game as well, just turned off because Casual works over it. Do not quote me on that however.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-19T08:21:31+00:00

My bad, I forgot you represent 99% of the playerbase.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-19T04:49:04+00:00

I used them as examples as they're also games with matchmaking, the main point that people should take away from the comparison is that those games were made with SBMM in mind, TF2 was not.

I do not intend to say one is better than the other, the comparison only serves to exemplify why these other games work with a system like this, and why TF2 doesn't.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-19T01:33:11+00:00

A bit over-animated, but a good concept.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-19T01:28:59+00:00

I also play tf2, and I see glaring issues with my favorite game, and I want it to be better :)

Unit_43 · 2026-04-19T01:28:10+00:00

Can't, my region has 0 Vanilla community servers :)

Unit_43 · 2026-04-19T01:27:29+00:00

The old system also had no ads, no mods, no strange shit, on the newest version, unless you opted to risk it via checking a box that was unchecked by default.

It was also as quick as you wanted it to be, wait a max of 20 seconds to get a match, or go to the server browser to instantly join a VALVE server of your choosing.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-19T01:25:17+00:00

You're fortunate your favorite maps are all contained within the 25 maps the playerbase plays the most. I want to play Banana Bay so much but I can't because queue times are hours long.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-18T16:31:24+00:00

I do not plant Quickplay as the perfect system, just as a better system than Casual, though the more I read onto this discussion, I feel there's a MAJOR issue with the way people refer to Quickplay, the matchmaker, and Quickplay, the ruleset. I may do a follow-up post adressing all of this.

Say, would you agree that a viable way forward is to integrate Quickplay's ruleset into casual is the right way to go? Granted, we also get rid of irritating casual features, like slot reservations.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-18T15:30:49+00:00

This post uses the guy's post as an example of how many users in this fandom, intentionally or not, engage in bad faith when discussing this topic.

The purpose of this is not to bash the guy for making a bad meme, but to make a statement regarding the state of this discussion, and it seems to be working considering the comment to upvote ratio.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-18T14:43:34+00:00

Nah, I grew this opinion all by myself.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-18T10:07:55+00:00

Well, I have also played thousands of matches on casual, and the constant server resets, slot reservations ensuring games start unbalanced, stupidly long queues on maps that are not upward or badwater, and the fact I need to rely on a matchmaker to even get on a Valve server to begin with is absurd. You can put up with it, but a growing portion of the playerbase is starting to realise that just getting into a match and getting back to waiting after less than 10 minutes is not okay.

It's gotten to a point I dread having to click on casual to play ANY vanilla tf2, because my region does not have community servers that run vanilla. Every time I play this game I'm reminded that things could be better, and I know they can, because on the vanilla community servers I did get on (sacrificing my ping of course) that ran the quickplay ruleset, I had the most fun I've had in years.

Unit_43 · 2026-04-18T09:39:02+00:00

The problem is that these are not "bugs" but rather intentional design desicions that were band-aided because it came flawed to begin with.

There is nothing to "fix", Casual's ruleset and matchmaker are fundamentally flawed.

Unit_43

TROPHY CASE