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[ashecitism]

Again, this is par for the course with current Valve.

 

[LUFTRAUSER]

I'm upset that Valve removed the abandonment penalty. I think people that just want to fuck around and leave any time should just stick to the community servers.

 

[EatinOlives]

Wait, sorry if I'm just repeating things people already know, but I haven't had the chance (or really the desire) to launch the game post-update. They replaced the matchmaking that already existed with a "casual mode" AND removed all of Valve's official servers from the server browser? And on top of that they had leave penalties in the casual mode (that they're thankfully removing)?

If I understood this correctly, what a gigantic fuck-up.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

I tried some matches yesterday, the maps have a lot to be desired, super surprised there aren't custom options, totally neutered experience compared to just a month ago, really want 9v9 instead of 6v6 aka WHAT A CLUSTERFUCK. I thought people were exaggerating.

6v6 >>>>>(...)>>>>> 9v9

9v9 is competitive for people who don't want to play competitive.

 

[LUFTRAUSER]

Wait, sorry if I'm just repeating things people already know, but I haven't had the chance (or really the desire) to launch the game post-update. They replaced the matchmaking that already existed with a "casual mode" AND removed all of Valve's official servers from the server browser? And on top of that they had leave penalties in the casual mode (that they're thankfully removing)?

If I understood this correctly, what a gigantic fuck-up.

No, there was no official matchmaking in TF2 before this update. Valve replaced quickplay with Casual Mode and added a matchmaking Competitive Mode.

 

[EatinOlives]

No, there was no official matchmaking in TF2 before this update. Valve replaced quickplay with Casual Mode and added a matchmaking Competitive Mode.

Yeah, I meant quickplay, not matchmaking. My bad.

It's still pretty terrible that they removed all official Valve servers in favor of a new Casual Mode that wasn't in any way comparable to the existing quickplay experience.

 

[TheSeks]

PASStime is still bad. A bunch of people running around like headless chickens. :/

 

[Fandangox]

So after playing a great first round on a competitive payload mode, and about to end the second round really quickly one of the players from the other team ragequits which means we didnt get any experience from it.

gg valve

 

[TheRedSnifit]

So after playing a great first round on a competitive payload mode, and about to end the second round really quickly one of the players from the other team ragequits which means we didnt get any experience from it.

gg valve

I don't really understand why people leave. Not only do you lose rank, but the time penalty means you're wasting more time than you would have if you just stayed.

 

[BlindJesus]

Is there a Neogaf TF2 community? Id love to find some people to play with in competitive. I have been playing the game on and off since '08,but the recent update has really dragged me back in, but the skill level of the average player is... disappointing to put it lightly..

 

[derFeef]

Casual mode suits me well, 6vs6 sounds really boring to me, and yeah I know it's for competitive but the maps are not designed for that initially. I hope they fix the concerns, TF2 is still my true (casua) MP love.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Casual mode suits me well, 6vs6 sounds really boring to me, and yeah I know it's for competitive but the maps are not designed for that initially.

TF2 was originally 8v8. 6v6 is much, much closer to 8v8 gameplay than 12v12 or even Highlander.

There's also the fact that most of the community maps (including Sunshine and Steelworks, which are both featured in this update) were explicitly built for 6v6 comp play.

 

[derFeef]

TF2 was originally 8v8. 6v6 is much, much closer to 8v8 gameplay than 12v12 or even Highlander.

There's also the fact that most of the community maps (including Sunshine and Steelworks, which are both featured in this update) were explicitly built for 6v6 comp play.

Man I almost can't remember the vanilla game, maybe I should check out comp. mode then, even though I know it will go pretty bad. What I can not stand are fast respawn servers.

 

[Guess Who]

TF2 was originally 8v8. 6v6 is much, much closer to 8v8 gameplay than 12v12 or even Highlander.

Huh? TF2's always been up to 12vs12 on PC (with 16vs16 being the "you probably shouldn't do this because it breaks the game" max players option).

 

[Wolf Akela]

TF2 was 8v8 on consoles but that's probably hardware limitation.

16v16 is just messing around in pubs. Probably 24/7 instaspawn 2fort/dustbowl/goldrush/orange

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Huh? TF2's always been up to 12vs12 on PC (with 16vs16 being the "you probably shouldn't do this because it breaks the game" max players option).

TF2 PC private beta matches were 8v8, as are the console versions. Most servers ran 8v8 for the first few months of the game. The decision to make 12v12 the default came pretty late, and given how much 12v12 matches break with competent players, I refuse to believe that it was regarded as a serious format during development.

At any rate, people didn't spontaneously decide on 6v6. There have been leagues that did 12v12, 9v9 (non-Highlander), 8v8, and 7v7, and they all failed.

 

[Fandangox]

I don't really understand why people leave. Not only do you lose rank, but the time penalty means you're wasting more time than you would have if you just stayed.

What bothers me the most is that this essentially works out in favor of the losing team and against the winning team. Sure the one player that left is penalized, but the other 5 players that were about to lose don't lose out anything, and the winning team misses out on the EXP they were about to get.

I can understand why some people (emergencies, phones, someone at the door, etc) but at this point there were less than 30 seconds left before the second match ended, the timing was that of a ragequit, if that person HAD to leave the could have just stayed there and it wouldn't have made a difference since they don't get taken to a next game.

Valve could fix this by just simply making so if someone abandons the game, the other players of that team won't lose out experience, but the other team is still gets to gain EXP if they do win.

 

[Alienups]

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=23062

Thanks for all of your feedback over the last couple weeks. In our previous post, we talked about a number of issues with the Meet Your Match update and what we were doing to address them. Here's a quick recap on what has happened since then:

Matchmaking:
We have been working hard to improve the matchmaking system, greatly reducing queue times and eliminating most causes of errors when attempting to play. On average, queue times are now below ninety seconds for most players. There are still some issues with lower population regions and game modes that we are looking into.
We have identified and corrected several issues where players weren't being sent to fill empty slots for in-progress matches. There should be far fewer matches where this happens, and we will continue making improvements here.

Casual Mode:
Players are now able to specify the maps they would like play on when using matchmaking. However, it is sometimes the case that players joining in-progress matches (aka "late join") end up on maps they did not select. This will be fixed in an upcoming update.
Abandon penalties have been removed, which means players can come and go as they please.
Vote-kicking has been added. Players that are kicked retain the experience they've earned to that point, in order to reduce the likelihood of players using the system to grief others.

Next, we would like to give you a quick overview of the things we are working on, and go over some of the issues you raise as needing more attention and work.

Abandons in Competitive Mode:
We are going to make abandoning penalties much harsher. The current system increases matchmaking ban times based on the number of abandons over a period of time. We are making a change to more quickly move serial abandoners into really long ban times. We will also subtract the maximum number of rank points possible, per abandon. The amount lost will be far higher than what could normally be lost in a completed match.
In addition, we are investigating several options to offset the impact abandoners have on games that are in-progress. More on that when we have details to share.

Griefing in matchmaking:
We are working on systems that will give players with high numbers of in-game reports automated cooldowns from matchmaking, to discourage disruptive behavior.
As a side note, you can report players while in-game by clicking the "Report Player" button - located in the "Play" section on the main menu.

High ping and queue times:
There are still cases where players can wait longer than we'd like. This is more common in lower population regions and game modes in Casual Mode matchmaking, and the result is that players sometimes end up on a server where their ping is higher than normal.
One solution we are investigating is allowing matches to start with fewer than 24 players -- in cases where there are not enough available players to form a complete match, or when the players being considered are too far away. The system will instead prefer to start a smaller match more quickly, with a more appropriate ping, filling the remaining slots as more players become available.

Experience and incomplete matches in casual:
Right now, leaving a casual match results in no experience being earned. We are looking at changing this to avoid penalizing players for having to leave after investing significant amounts of time into a match, while still providing rewards for playing matches to completion.

We are monitoring the game around the clock, and we continue to read all your feedback and suggestions. Thanks again for taking the time to help improve TF.