tmpod

tmpod, 5 miesięcy temu

The last major update was in 2017, bots started plaguing casual mode around 2018/19, and ever since the game has seen anastonishingly tiny amount of updates outside ofhthe usual summer, Halloween and Christmas updates (which just shove community made content from the Workshop into special gamemodes and crates); apart from the recent 64-bit version and the VScript addition a while back, nothing of interest has happened in the last handful of years. F2P lost their ability to call medic and the bot crisis is completely unsolved.

It’s sad. But as another user pointed out, at least we have e community servers (and good ones).

tmpod, 5 miesięcy temu

Yeah! My current favorite is Uncletopia, which was created by the popular UncleDane TF2 youtuber but is now run by a community of dedicated people (but I think Dane still pays the bills). It has non-vanilla tweaks, such as no random crits, no random bullet spread, voting for maps and team scrambling, etc. The skill ceiling is also a tad higher than regular casual, which I like since it pushes me to improve further. I love the tweaks, the community and have never seen any bots, so it’s great!

Skial is another major network that has been around forever and is still rocking like a champ. I don’t play as much there, but I always find it a nice place as well :)

tmpod, 5 miesięcy temu

Nice! Would love to see you around :)

tmpod, 5 miesięcy temu

hehe let me know how it goes!

tmpod, 5 miesięcy temu

Nice to hear! I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it again :P
What classes were you best at?

tmpod, 5 miesięcy temu

what are some proposed solutions we think Valve can implement to solve this crisis?

One of the most critical things they have to revert is the voice command mute of F2P. This kills a very important game mechanic for newcomers, while not really stopping botters, since they will just spend money and unlock the features for their accounts, as it’s evident when you join a casual match.
Another obvious thing is: improve VAC. And to reply to your next point, yes, it is a joke. No, it’s not a joke because it’s not a client-side anti-cheat. Lots of community servers operate essentially with no cheaters, because they employ better protection SourceMod plugins and empower users further. For example, Uncletopia and Skial are very much bot-free, and creators.tf was too, before it shut down some months ago (due to unrelated issues). If the community can develop these effective server-side plugins, so can Valve, and most likely do a better job at it. They have incredibly talented people working there, I’m sure they could make a way better VAC if they wanted to.

And yes, community servers are currently the salvation for people who want to play TF2 unencumbered by swaths of bots. I play mostly on Uncletopia nowadays because I agree with most tweaks they apply (it’s not 100% vanilla casual) and the skill ceiling is a bit higher as well, which pushes me further.
Some sort of federation of community servers, where bans and whatnot are shared between instances sounds like a pretty good idea.

Edit: Ultimately, however, Valve should fix the vanilla casual mode, that’s where the vast majority of players are, and where newcomers will first go to.

tmpod, rok temu

Been wanting to see a TF2 community on Lemmy as well :P