Team Fortress 2, what happened?

Detail · Jul 3, 2019

Man, I haven't played this game for a number of years but I don't remember it ever being this awful online?

Genuinely, within 5 seconds of being in a match I was met with players cursing at each other relentlessly in chat, references to Hitler and Nazism, racism, the list goes on.

There is even a feature at the end of matches that lets you doodle over the scoreboard, you can only imagine the sort of things people draw on it.

Back when I used to play it many years ago the community, at least to my knowledge, didn't have this much of a problem? Is it simply because the game is free to play that it attracts this sort of behaviour now?

I tend to avoid online games for this very reason but with it being the steam sale I figured I would try to grind some points for that £5 off voucher, seemingly it was a big mistake to do so.

BDS · Jul 3, 2019

It's a free to play game whose heyday ended years ago.

Kuro · Jul 3, 2019

Deleted member 198 · Jul 3, 2019

Overwatch

Deleted member 54320 · Jul 3, 2019

TF2's hype died years ago. Since it's F2P as well, its filled with fools.

SteveWinwood · Jul 3, 2019

free to play was part of it
also the push for public matchmaking features really did a number on the fairly healthy player hosted server communities. yeah it probably made it more popular with more players but all the fun vanished

Gutsfree · Jul 3, 2019

I haven't played in a while but moving people into a quickplay format probably isn't helping. The servers that I played on always banned people being too toxic.

Kunka Kid · Jul 3, 2019

F2P and it's kind of a "forgotten" game so the only people left playing are these weirdos, and they don't really get any outside scrutiny.

Scuffed · Jul 3, 2019

The alt-right surge just raised the level of hateful shit across all content imo.

Deleted member 49185 · Jul 3, 2019

Nevermind

derFeef · Jul 3, 2019

F2P, focus on player driven content.

Daytak said:
Overwatch

Good joke.

Patapuf · Jul 3, 2019

Matchmaking is much more convenient than a server browers but it's also destroyed any sense of community these older games used to have.

Having "good servers" that police BS is not something that exists anymore.

Ravelle · Jul 3, 2019

Hats, Keys, Crates and Drops ruined TF2. Once one of my favorite team shooters. :(

derFeef · Jul 3, 2019

Valve abandoned it, so it's sad to see the alt-right invaded even this game.

Big Yoshi · Jul 3, 2019

The games systems wasnt designed to handle the amount of shit in it. Whcih caused it to run like shit on everything.

Deleted member 21003 · Jul 3, 2019

Hats. And they kept adding all kinds of stupid bullshit to it.

BossLackey · Jul 3, 2019

As everyone else has said, hats, and all the other unnecessary shit they crammed into the game.

I sometimes mourn the loss of TF2 over Valve's greed. They should not have fucked with the characters in either design or weapons/mechanics. Pretty much the second hats were introduced, I fell off. I EASILY could see my self still playing it to this day had they not done that.

Bunkles · Jul 3, 2019

Valve pretty much dropped it so now the inmates are running the asylum.

SigSig · Jul 3, 2019

Matchmaking killed it. There is not a single incentive to moderate this mess.

SecretCharacter · Jul 3, 2019

derFeef said:
Good joke.

I mean, it isn't really that far of a stretch. Overwatch copied the base formula and kept working on it. If valve had kept development going and added a class every now and again (instead of very loot dependent items that alter a class) then it might be a lot healthier.

Hogger · Jul 3, 2019

It's always been a weird 4chan infiltrated game.

MMarston · Jul 3, 2019

I actually recenty re-installed the game out of boredom -- the last time I played the game being 2009 -- but uninstalled it immediately the following morning for the same reasons you mentioned OP. It's practically a madhouse of unsupervised children and man-children at the the same time. It's a shame because the gameplay is still pretty solid.

Deleted member 2317 · Jul 3, 2019

SigSig said:
Matchmaking killed it. There is not a single incentive to moderate this mess.

That's what killed it for me.

They removed dedicated servers and implemented "matchmaking" on a much larger scale, destroying all sense of community servers that aren't gimmicks. Like, it used to be US WEST PAYLOAD 24/7 1, 2, 3, 4, now it's "scanning and placing you somewhere in your region" so no more regulars, all randoms.

derFeef · Jul 3, 2019

MMarston said:
I actually recenty re-installed the game out of boredom -- the last time I played the game being 2009 -- but uninstalled it immediately the following morning for the same reasons you mentioned OP. It's practically a madhouse of unsupervised children and man-children at the the same time. It's a shame because the gameplay is still pretty solid.

Yeah, shame. Like I had fun playing but then there was this community map where you had to do some confusing shit and I wasn't getting it at first glance. Basically I got called a few things and then kicked and banned because I suck so much. Fun.

EssBeeVee · Jul 3, 2019

Mafro · Jul 3, 2019

f2p and Overwatch happened.

Deleted member 28076 · Jul 3, 2019

Whole lotta people not reading the OP and complaining about microtransactions and cosmetics in a thread asking about how a game's community got so racist.

Anyways, to actually answer the OP, the surge of the alt-right across the Internet came at pretty much the same time the game turned eight years old, far older than most GaaS titles still receiving updates, and the push to matchmaking and away from dedicated servers means nobody's able to really police these communities, considering Valve sure ain't gonna do it.

Overwatch actually seems to have had a pretty minimal effect on TF2's playerbase, but it's hard to quantify this statement considering how diminished it was already by the time Overwatch hit. I know a lot of people formerly in my usual TF2 communities got excited for Overwatch, tried it, realized it's a completely different game, and then bounced right off of it.

Andres · Jul 3, 2019

I see people aren't reading the OP as hats has nothing to do with what they're talking about. It's honestly not something exclusive to TF2 and one of the main reasons I've dropped trying to play most multiplayer team based games. Also, I wouldn't even consider it a new problem, there have always been people like that in TF2. There were even a bunch of 4chan dedicated servers in the past from what I remember, you can guess what those are like.

Detail · Jul 3, 2019

Patapuf said:
Matchmaking is much more convenient than a server browers but it's also destroyed any sense of community these older games used to have.

Having "good servers" that police BS is not something that exists anymore.

I think you might be right here, back when I used to play on TF2 and old CS the servers were very well moderated (that I played on anyway) and anything like this would get an immediate IP ban.

Vintage · Jul 3, 2019

Daytak said:
Overwatch

Yeah, you're kinda right. TF2 was left to die long time ago, but to Valve's surprise, community and some dedicated devs are keeping it alive, but just. A lot of times updates looked like "eh, whatever, there's nothing to lose", just trying whatever sticks, leaving the game in a broken state. It looked like every update left it more broken, more incoherent, without any visible direction.
Then Overwatch came and a lot of good players left to play a game that's similar, but fresh, with clear direction, promising future and, you know, actually playable.
What's left in TF2 is the hats trading community and unmoderated players that you described, neither of them were the good part of TF2 community.

closer · Jul 3, 2019

Jesse Gomez (IGN) said:
Since it's F2P as well, its filled with fools.

this is such an excellent sentence lol

Chixdiggit · Jul 3, 2019

Just played it recently and definitely was some very poor taste in conversation going on. Still a really fun game, so I just muted the talk.

derFeef · Jul 3, 2019

Thinkdifferent said:
I think you might be right here, back when I used to play on TF2 and old CS the servers were very well moderated (that I played on anyway) and anything like this would get an immediate IP ban.

So Valve just doesn't care. Robin Walker left Valve a while ago, right?

TioChuck · Jul 3, 2019

Thank god we still have good brazilian community servers, matchmaking is a cesspoll.

Detail · Jul 3, 2019

MMarston said:
I actually recenty re-installed the game out of boredom -- the last time I played the game being 2009 -- but uninstalled it immediately the following morning for the same reasons you mentioned OP. It's practically a madhouse of unsupervised children and man-children at the the same time. It's a shame because the gameplay is still pretty solid.

It was shocking to me, honestly, having been a huge fan of It many years ago it makes me wonder did I simply not notice this behaviour back then? (Seems very unlikely) or have things just become far worse now?

Within 5 minutes of playing my first match I had already seen the N word 3 times and had people on my own team cursing each other out and flinging horrible insults at each other.

And then when I witnessed the drawing on the scoreboard feature at the end I almost couldn't believe it, nothing good will ever come from a feature like that when things are not moderated, it's asking for trouble imo.

The gameplay is still as fun as it ever was like you say but I was honestly really surprised at how bad the community had become, I always remembered it being a quite helpful and welcoming community.

ProstatePuncher · Jul 3, 2019

Scuffed said:
The alt-right surge just raised the level of hateful shit across all content imo.

This. Near every game has sewage-tier shit pouring out of the chat, avatars, etc.

Community servers are the thing that matters. Then again, its ignoring the problem of swathes of racists existing on Steam. I always report the profiles and get feedback that they've been banned or been forced to change their profiles though. Always good to keep a list so I can keep track of what is going on with profiles I've reported.

FoolsMilky · Jul 3, 2019

Thinkdifferent said:
Back when I used to play it many years ago the community, at least to my knowledge, didn't have this much of a problem? Is it simply because the game is free to play that it attracts this sort of behaviour now?

Go to matchmaking and you're essentially getting random people from all over the internet, some who are also just trying the game for the first time. Just like you said, with this low a barrier of entry, you have people who are very vocal and some who are toxic. It (almost) isn't moderated in any way, but yo can obviously report people for straight-up hate speech.

Patapuf said:
Matchmaking is much more convenient than a server browers but it's also destroyed any sense of community these older games used to have.

Having "good servers" that police BS is not something that exists anymore.

I'm going to be presumptuous and assume that most of the people in this thread don't play the game anymore.

There are tons of servers with actual communities that are still moderated. The irony of this "community is dead" talk is that the introduction of matchmaking actually made it so random people enter servers through the server browsers less, making it so only a few people who actually want to be part of communities enter community-run servers.

I've played for the last 2 years on a server which moderates sexism and homophobia, as well as general "trolling" right out. I talk with the other people on almost a weekly basis, and it's one of the only places I know where women can play a video game in peace and talk to others on the mic without others (usually men) pointing out that they're women or making silly jokes.

My advice: Go through the server browser and find actual communities and you're more likely to have a good experience both gameplay-wise and community-wise. This game is in a rough state, but its actual community of people who care about the game has always been top-tier.

astro · Jul 3, 2019

Hats were the beginning of the end.

The move from server lists to matchmaking was a horrible idea.

Lots of the great servers I used to play on disappeared.

It doesn't even feel like the same game any more.

And yeh, you can still find servers that exist that are good, but something's been lost.

It's also possible I burnt out after thousands of hours.

Detail · Jul 3, 2019

derFeef said:
So Valve just doesn't care. Robin Walker left Valve a while ago, right?

I think whoever is in charge of development on the game, which I assume is still a sub division of valve, needs to moderate it.

It certainly seems like they have just let it become "the wild west" as things currently stand.

Many years ago a lot of the servers were community created but with the advent of quickplay and a lot of these servers lacking admins now it's basically an open door for the sort of behaviour I have described I guess.

Detail · Jul 3, 2019

FoolsMilky said:
Go to matchmaking and you're essentially getting random people from all over the internet, some who are also just trying the game for the first time. Just like you said, with this low a barrier of entry, you have people who are very vocal and some who are toxic. It (almost) isn't moderated in any way, but yo can obviously report people for straight-up hate speech.

I'm going to be presumptuous and assume that most of the people in this thread don't play the game anymore.

There are tons of servers with actual communities that are still moderated. The irony of this "community is dead" talk is that the introduction of matchmaking actually made it so random people enter servers through the server browsers less, making it so only a few people who actually want to be part of communities enter community-run servers.

I've played for the last 2 years on a server which moderates sexism and homophobia, as well as general "trolling" right out. I talk with the other people on almost a weekly basis, and it's one of the only places I know where women can play a video game in peace and talk to others on the mic without others (usually men) point out that they're women or make silly jokes.

My advice: Go through the server browser and find actual communities and you're more likely to have a good experience both gameplay-wise and community-wise. This game is in a rough state, but its actual community of people who care about the game has always been top-tier.

Would you mind sharing the server info? That sounds like a server I would love to play on.

derFeef · Jul 3, 2019

FoolsMilky said:
There are tons of servers with actual communities that are still moderated. The irony of this "community is dead" talk is that the introduction of matchmaking actually made it so random people enter servers through the server browsers less, making it so only a few people who actually want to be part of communities enter community-run servers.

I've played for the last 2 years on a server which moderates sexism and homophobia, as well as general "trolling" right out. I talk with the other people on almost a weekly basis, and it's one of the only places I know where women can play a video game in peace and talk to others on the mic without others (usually men) pointing out that they're women or making silly jokes.

My advice: Go through the server browser and find actual communities and you're more likely to have a good experience both gameplay-wise and community-wise. This game is in a rough state, but its actual community of people who care about the game has always been top-tier.

I always hated the fast respawn servers ;) But I will actually check it out if such servers exist in my region because it sounds nice.

FoolsMilky · Jul 3, 2019

Thinkdifferent said:
Would you mind sharing the server info? That sounds like a server I would love to play on.

derFeef said:
I always hated the fast respawn servers ;) But I will actually check it out if such servers exist in my region because it sounds nice.

{Fucked in the Head} 18+ Adult Server-GameMe
216.52.148.223:27015

Don't let the server name fool you. There's tons of swearing, but hate speech and slurs are 0-tolerance, as is being a nuisance to others through micspam, being disrespectful, etc.

Server is full 90% of Friday/Saturday/Sunday nights (It's mainly an NA evening server because everyone works during the day), and it can be a toss-up on weekday nights, but even weekdays there can still be 32 people on at night.

And don't worry, if you don't like fast respawn, there are plenty of people on the server who will be glad to hear from you :)

Detail · Jul 3, 2019

FoolsMilky said:
{Fucked in the Head} 18+ Adult Server-GameMe
216.52.148.223:27015

Don't let the server name fool you. There's tons of swearing, but hate speech and slurs are 0-tolerance, as is being a nuisance to others through micspam, being disrespectful, etc.

Server is full 90% of Friday/Saturday/Sunday nights (It's mainly an NA evening server because everyone works during the day), and it can be a toss-up on weekday nights, but even weekdays there can still be 32 people on at night.

And don't worry, if you don't like fast respawn, there are plenty of people on the server who will be glad to hear from you :)

Excellent, I don't mind swearing all that much unless of course it's being used to insult people in a non playful manner.

I will pop in and give it a look, with me being in the UK the time difference might be difficult but sometimes I am up later than usual so when I am I will check it out for sure.

Patapuf · Jul 3, 2019

FoolsMilky said:
Go to matchmaking and you're essentially getting random people from all over the internet, some who are also just trying the game for the first time. Just like you said, with this low a barrier of entry, you have people who are very vocal and some who are toxic. It (almost) isn't moderated in any way, but yo can obviously report people for straight-up hate speech.

I'm going to be presumptuous and assume that most of the people in this thread don't play the game anymore.

There are tons of servers with actual communities that are still moderated. The irony of this "community is dead" talk is that the introduction of matchmaking actually made it so random people enter servers through the server browsers less, making it so only a few people who actually want to be part of communities enter community-run servers.

I've played for the last 2 years on a server which moderates sexism and homophobia, as well as general "trolling" right out. I talk with the other people on almost a weekly basis, and it's one of the only places I know where women can play a video game in peace and talk to others on the mic without others (usually men) pointing out that they're women or making silly jokes.

My advice: Go through the server browser and find actual communities and you're more likely to have a good experience both gameplay-wise and community-wise. This game is in a rough state, but its actual community of people who care about the game has always been top-tier.

You are right of course but to the casual playerbase these are pretty much invisible. There are also still decent CS communities.

But for example Battlefield completely killed that part of the community.

MMarston · Jul 3, 2019

Thinkdifferent said:
It was shocking to me, honestly, having been a huge fan of It many years ago it makes me wonder did I simply not notice this behaviour back then? (Seems very unlikely) or have things just become far worse now?

One of the first impressions I got on my replay was "Wow, the players make me feel like I'm stuck in 2007" because I do remember this sort of behavior going on occasionally back then --- I just did not have any self-awareness to realize the gravity of it back when I was 14.

But it does feel more rampant now.

derFeef · Jul 3, 2019

Patapuf said:
You are right of course but to the casual playerbase these are pretty much invisible. There are also still decent CS communities.

But for example Battlefield completely killed that part of the community.

I miss the days of server browsers and favourites.

Sargerus · Jul 3, 2019

Hats
F2P
Matchmaking
Overwatch
CSGO

Take your pick.

C.Mongler · Jul 3, 2019

It's been this way more-or-less since it went f2p. I noticed in the weeks and months following that change that the amount of shitheads playing with me skyrocketed. I can only imagine that it's gotten worse over time (I haven't really played myself in probably 5 years or so at this point)

FoolsMilky · Jul 3, 2019

Thinkdifferent said:
Excellent, I don't mind swearing all that much unless of course it's being used to insult people in a non playful manner.

I will pop in and give it a look, with me being in the UK the time difference might be difficult but sometimes I am up later than usual so when I am I will check it out for sure.

Hope you enjoy it :) I should also mention that the 18+ means people tend to say some sexually explicit things as well as discussing sex or making sex jokes... which may bother some, but again, people only get playfully ribbed if they're known and talk to others.

Patapuf said:
You are right of course but to the casual playerbase these are pretty much invisible. There are also still decent CS communities.

But for example Battlefield completely killed that part of the community.

Someone opening TF2 now has almost nothing in the way of a tutorial and very little new player experience. It's almost less friendly than CS:Source was back in the day. You don't know how to play the game and random people are often uninviting and annoying. The server browser is intimidating especially as the years go on and most games make such a process more simple.

It's not easy for a new person to play TF2 for the most part, and they may never experience the sense of community that Valve's multiplayer games are known for.

It only makes the ValveNewsNetwork news feel like we'll never have fully-fledged development on TF2 ever again. Maybe not even getting any kind of TF3. But who knows, maybe they really are coming out with a big update soon.

Deleted member 3058 · Jul 3, 2019

SteveWinwood said:
free to play was part of it
also the push for public matchmaking features really did a number on the fairly healthy player hosted server communities. yeah it probably made it more popular with more players but all the fun vanished

Yeah, that's around when I stopped playing it.

Team Fortress 2, what happened?

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