TF2 Competitive mode rant - Games

Before you read any of this. This is from my personal experience after I've played quite a lot of the mode. /rant I've been playing TF2 more or less, with some pauses all the way since it was released back in 2007 and I never really lost love or passion for it, except for a few months here and there, but I always found myself playing and enjoying it again. So naturally I was, just like pretty much everybody else, really excited about the promised competitive update. And now, a while after it was released.. it only left bitter taste behind. So, where do I begin, because holy hell what a mess this so-called update is. First of all, the matchmaking itself. The system seems to ignore ranks all together and just throws together the nearest players available. What does that actually cause? Either my team steamrolls the other or the opposite. In average, 1 out of 10 matches is actually fairly ranked and not a complete shit fest. Imagine playing as a master guardian against a global elite in CS:GO. Yeah, so much fun, right? I've seen 6 rank 1 players, playing against 6 rank 14+ players. And not once, hell, every third match. Also, you can and you will run into the same players one game after another. Played against random 6? You'll probably have at least 2 players of your enemy team in your team next game, or better yet, there's a high chance you'll play against the same team, again. While I'm talking about teams. Playing as a premade team is a huge gamble. Because the system apparently doesn't give 2 shits whether your team is around rank 2 or 15. If you have a premade team, the system will search for another premade team. And most of the times me and my mates played like that, we got pit against a much more skillful team. As I said, rank 1-5 against ranks 10-15. Continuing on about the whole matchmaking mess. There is no way to choose a mode/map/whatever. So if you don't like playing payload, well, sucks for you, you're gonna play it anyway. And there aren't that many maps in rotation in the first place. Too many times I've played on the same map 3 or even 4 times in a row. Next is match abandoning. The single most annoying thing of them all. In CS:GO the disconnected player is replaced by a bot and the game goes on. Here, the match just simply ends. Doesn't matter when. So if you tried really hard to win a game and after 30+ minutes you almost do, if a player disconnects, it all becomes irrelevant. Valve needs to either implement a way stricter bans/XP loss, replacing the leaving player with a bot (and letting the match go on) or add a longer cooldown (so the match won't end if a player leaves a damn second before you cap the last enemy point). And for the last thing, hackers. God fucking damn it. Valve doesn't do SHIT about them. And this isn't some wallhacking or another not so obvious hacking. Players are using aimbots and spinbots, killing the entire team in seconds. The report function is obviously there just for show, because nobody is getting banned. There's one hacker with the name "Diane" who's ranked on 36th place on the world TF2 competitive leaderboard. And »she's« most probably not the only hacker on there. I could also mention bugs, like losing XP even though you won the match, but what's the point. /rant tl;dr, matchmaking is a mess, almost nothing works right, hackers are roaming free and it all seems completely unfinished. Valve needs to act.

To top it off, said "Diane" uses a stolen 10 year old account and a brony pic. [t]http://shrani.si/f/3I/Hh/P6ho18C/440screenshots2016081323.jpg[/t] If you see this dude in your scoreboard, just don't leave the spawn. All I wanted was a functioing competetive update, but now I'm stuck with system so flawed, I can only hope, since there is no block function like in CSGO, that I don't run into a brony hacker or get stuck with gibus wearing teammates. For fuck sake I am rank 7 I shouldn't be playing with fresh meats every goddamn match. [t]http://shrani.si/f/1z/RS/3bkmpIC6/440screenshots2016072523.jpg[/t] This is how most matches look like [t]http://shrani.si/f/24/jW/21yo7qX9/440screenshots2016073115.jpg[/t] and then ther's shit like this These are some major problems with easy solutions. Too bad Valve doesn't care as long as its getting that sweet 9$ dough from comp passes. What a fucking joke [editline]16th August 2016[/editline] It is worth mentioning that I had a lot of fun matches, but on the other hand i got also a lot of absolutely terrible frustrating matches which completly overshadow the good ones

[QUOTE=Scizor;50894837]To top it off, said "Diane" uses a stolen 10 year old account and a brony pic. All I wanted was a functioing competetive update, but now I'm stuck with system so flawed, I can only hope, since there is no block function like in CSGO, that I don't run into a brony hacker or get stuck with gibus wearing teammates. For fuck sake I am rank 7 I shouldn't be playing with fresh meats every goddamn match. These are some major problems with easy solutions. Too bad Valve doesn't care as long as its getting that sweet 9$ dough from comp passes. What a fucking joke[/QUOTE] The problem with you being matched with Fresh Meats is because there really isn't a lot of players above that rank. Not even a lot above rank 3 for that matter, so the game compensates by putting you with them. Plus competitive split a lot of players and with matchmaking taking a rough start, most just didn't play or went to community servers for a better experience.

[QUOTE=X marks it;50894852]The problem with you being matched with Fresh Meats is because there really isn't a lot of players above that rank. Not even a lot above rank 3 for that matter, so the game compensates by putting you with them. Plus competitive split a lot of players and with matchmaking taking a rough start, most just didn't play or went to community servers for a better experience.[/QUOTE] I realise that, but it's been a month or so since the update came out. Surely by this time I could've had a match which didn't contain fresh meat. Too bad there are no statistic which could support any claim whatsoever.

Reports do stuff now, so that's pretty cool. They ban you for 6 months. They should replace abandoned players with expert bots. Expert bots have perfect aim, but terrible gamesense, making those bots pretty good as a replacement for a real player. I would just suggest not allowing bots to go sniper, since they have perfect aim and will lock onto your head if they see you.

[QUOTE=Scizor;50894870]I realise that, but it's been a month or so since the update came out. Surely by this time I could've had a match which didn't contain fresh meat. Too bad there are no statistic which could support any claim whatsoever.[/QUOTE] I've always seen this as an inherent problem with solo queuing up for matches. If you want to dramatically against that problem with the game, try finding people who play well that you can enjoy playing with. Hell, make a small community page where you can gather and set dates up to play with one another. I'd recommend getting more then 6 people encase people are busy as well. Solo queuing is generally there to be there, but nothing more then ensuring your going to have a much less enjoyable time when you actually get into matches.

you shouldnt need to queue with a 6 stack in order to have an enjoyable game

[QUOTE=Avvy;50901435]you shouldnt need to queue with a 6 stack in order to have an enjoyable game[/QUOTE] I have never heard of a very team oriented game were solo queuing wasn't completely awful. It can in theory be great. But realistically it blows chunks almost everytime no matter how you swing it.

with faceit/pugchamp etc playing solo is not an issue because you are playing with people who actually know what to do. this isn't the case with matchmaking. the introduction for new players is extremely poor and i've had countless games where some, presumably new, players have had no idea what to do. there needs to be some sort of beginners tutorial explaining the basics of every gamemode, especially 5cp. many times have i rolled out to mid on badlands while one of our engineers starts building on last and one on spire.

They should show how many times somebody has been reported to players before the game begins. Like a feedback feature. That way people would choose not to play the match against people with a high volume of reports; likely hackers. At the very least, it puts the options more in your hands.

[QUOTE=Kitt Stargaze;50902556]I have never heard of a very team oriented game were solo queuing wasn't completely awful. It can in theory be great. But realistically it blows chunks almost everytime no matter how you swing it.[/QUOTE] Dota2, another game by Valve, has a great solo queue system. Occasions where you have parties versus all solo players are rare. For a while they had a "only solo players" queue, but that queue was removed after a month due to longer waiting times for matches.