Major Update Speculation V35 - A Distinctive Lack of Communication - Games

16 days without updates, nice job Valve.

[QUOTE=Magypsy;51634196]They haven't talked because nobody has forced them to. Aren't Reddit still slobbering the TF2 Team over this update?[/QUOTE] I think the team needs to stop giving the r/tf2 hivemind any sort of audience

[QUOTE=A_Guardian;51634176]the problems are too big..[/QUOTE] This is the most likely, I highly doubt they're resting on their laurels because /r/tf2 thought it was a good update.

[QUOTE=SediSocks;51634397]This is the most likely, I highly doubt they're resting on their laurels because /r/tf2 thought it was a good update.[/QUOTE] Honestly I don't even doubt that.

[QUOTE=Everton1992;51634258]16 days without updates, nice job Valve.[/QUOTE] To be fair there's been 2 holidays since the last TF2 update and Valve employees have probably had a lot of extra time off between the last update and now. [editline]6th January 2017[/editline] Does anyone else think Valve should just take out the map voting after a casual match? It seems like every game 2/3s of players just quit anyway, which is probably what's causing all the low player count issues.

[QUOTE=ComodoreBluth;51634464] Does anyone else think Valve should just take out the map voting after a casual match? It seems like every game 2/3s of players just quit anyway, which is probably what's causing all the low player count issues.[/QUOTE] They shouldn't take the map voting out. Sometimes I actually get good rematches going for multiple rounds. They should just fix their dang system.

[QUOTE=Blackavar;51634314]I think the team needs to stop giving the r/tf2 hivemind any sort of audience[/QUOTE] As bad as Reddit are, their constant criticism of the MyM update was what made the TF2 team talk. They have the numbers and not a whole lot else. Oh, and Wickedplayer, I guess. They can keep him.

[QUOTE=tekt;51634531]They shouldn't take the map voting out. Sometimes I actually get good rematches going for multiple rounds. They should just fix their dang system.[/QUOTE] I still leave after every match without fail, because whenever I rematch the server is always almost empty. In the time for the rematch vote to finish, I can be queued up and in a full server playing.

[QUOTE=Magypsy;51634537]As bad as Reddit are, their constant criticism of the MyM update was what made the TF2 team talk. They have the numbers and not a whole lot else. Oh, and Wickedplayer, I guess. They can keep him.[/QUOTE]I think almost every forum was full of players criticizing Valve after MYM hit. I can't think of a single person who was happy the day MYM launched.

[QUOTE=Dreamscape;51634711]I think almost every forum was full of players criticizing Valve after MYM hit. I can't think of a single person who was happy the day MYM launched.[/QUOTE] I was happy with the direction MYM was taking the game. I finally started getting into games where I wasn't stuck with a bunch of people playing different games on a single server or constantly being hurassed by friendlies trying to voice kick me because I kept killing them. It felt good to have non stressful matches where people regularly played the objective. For the first time I was actually having an enjoyable match, and not looking like this fellow while I played: [t]http://static.thegeekstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/bored-with-computer-300x199.jpg[/t] Which was how I felt during quickplay I'd say roughly 80-90% of the time. But yeah, I did feel it needed a lot of touches up though when it first hit to be better mind you.

MyM just reminds me of "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions". So many attempts to modernize and expand TF2, but all of them were horribly executed or managed to fall flat. While I don't blame comp players for not influencing MyM more (ie, I'm pretty sure they didn't know the extent of Casual or that Comp MM would be virtually unchanged from the beta, which nobody liked and nobody played), I do wish the TF Team had run the extent of their plans by at least a few people, but only comp players really heard anything, and that just seems to have been "hey you guys are getting the comp mm you've asked for for years!".

Jill sent someone an email letting them know they were going to fix MVM cool down bug in the next update: [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/f0LbNRB.png[/IMG]

[QUOTE=Kitt Stargaze;51634808]I was happy with the direction MYM was taking the game. I finally started getting into games where I wasn't stuck with a bunch of people playing different games on a single server or constantly being hurassed by friendlies trying to voice kick me because I kept killing them. It felt good to have non stressful matches where people regularly played the objective. For the first time I was actually having an enjoyable match, and not looking like this fellow while I played: [t]http://static.thegeekstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/bored-with-computer-300x199.jpg[/t] Which was how I felt during quickplay I'd say roughly 80-90% of the time. But yeah, I did feel it needed a lot of touches up though when it first hit to be better mind you.[/QUOTE]I was referring to day 1 where absolutely everything was broken. (The 30+ minute queue times were absolutely awful.)

[QUOTE=Dreamscape;51635243]I was referring to day 1 where absolutely everything was broken. (The 30+ minute queue times were absolutely awful.)[/QUOTE] I don't think anyone was happy with the state MyM launched in (not even Valve, I believe Sigafoo said in his 3 hour video about his TF2 team visit that Valve agreed it launched in a bad state). They were clearly having problems having issues getting matchmaking to work correctly (they kept doing public beta testing for the comp matchmaking in the few weeks before launch when they hadn't done any for some time before that). I hate to apologize for Valve but we saw similar issues with matchmaking a huge number of game modes and maps with Halo The Master Chief collection a couple of years ago (and I'm sure that game had way more people working on it since it was Microsoft's big holiday title that year). The MCC took way longer to fix then TF2 as well. I get the feeling that when you have a ton of maps and modes to put into a matchmaker then it's way harder to get it working correctly then a smaller number of maps/modes and you may need public data from people trying to play to get it to work correctly (though I'm not programmer and I can't say for sure, I'm just going off what I see). Even though I do think MyM launched in a very bad state I do think it was the right way for Valve to go, Valve pubs were awful and I hated playing on them. Casual servers are so much more playable and fun now that people are much more focused on completing the objective.

This is why I can never believe anyone when they say the tf2 team cares. They don't.

Day 1 brokenness of updates is one of the many reasons why I think bringing back the beta would be incredibly beneficial. One of the main issues with it, though, was that, when introducing weapons or doing balancing, you had to first get the weapon in the beta, which often took a while. But the TF Team could give the beta testers all the weapons upon starting, allowing players to instantly test new balancing. The TF Team could advertise the beta on the home page, perhaps even put the beta (balances, maps, core class changes, etc) in the game itself as a title screen option, instead of its own installation (which I've heard is another reason it was unpopular, leading to its removal).

[QUOTE=Blackavar;51635365]Day 1 brokenness of updates is one of the many reasons why I think bringing back the beta would be incredibly beneficial. One of the main issues with it, though, was that, when introducing weapons or doing balancing, you had to first get the weapon in the beta, which often took a while. But the TF Team could give the beta testers all the weapons upon starting, allowing players to instantly test new balancing. The TF Team could advertise the beta on the home page, perhaps even put the beta (balances, maps, core class changes, etc) in the game itself as a title screen option, instead of its own installation (which I've heard is another reason it was unpopular, leading to its removal).[/QUOTE] TF2beta was discontinued because a handfull of people played it. People fit into 1 server at it late stages. Thet didn't test out all the features in it either that were about to launch later. Just some weapon changes and only some. It was really tiresome for them to keep 2 branches of TF2 up-to-date with the minimal changes it had. Some features that got tested never ended up being released into the main game and that caused confusion too. It's better to put stuff directly into TF2 and deal with that. My only wish for them is that they would act sooner than "end if next week" to some of the issues that arise during weekend of the earlier week patch. But it's propably tiresome to pull out an update too with just minimal change.

If they bring back a beta branch, they should find a way to integrate it into the main game. Host Valve beta servers that change weapon stats (example: custom weapon servers already do this) and play in-development/upcoming maps.

I mean, the only broken things about this Update so far have been : The Delfy meme exploit Casual Servers not filling up after rematches/weird 6vs6 Casual matches

[QUOTE=Fluury;51635933]I mean, the only broken things about this Update so far have been : The Delfy meme exploit Casual Servers not filling up after rematches/weird 6vs6 Casual matches[/QUOTE] They also broke a lot of players expectations regarding meaningful content.

[QUOTE=Magypsy;51635984]They also broke a lot of players expectations regarding meaningful content.[/QUOTE] It's the players problem, though.

[QUOTE=agrastiOs;51636111]It's the players problem, though.[/QUOTE] All I expected was the usual weapon rebalances and even I was let down. Like, you can't expect people not to be disappointed when we don't even get the small things that have been in every Christmas update so far.

[QUOTE=agrastiOs;51636111]It's the players problem, though.[/QUOTE] Should we apologize for MyM too?

[QUOTE=Kitt Stargaze;51634808]I was happy with the direction MYM was taking the game. I finally started getting into games where I wasn't stuck with a bunch of people playing different games on a single server or constantly being hurassed by friendlies trying to voice kick me because I kept killing them. [/QUOTE] Alright, I want to open my mouth about friendlies. In my nearing 3000 hours I have seen exactly one group of people who kicked people for not being friendly. And that was on a quickplay server. Free to find a new server in less than a minute. All of the friendlies I have seen have just been some random dude with a sandvich out sneaking around. Then they get killed a few times, possibly bitch about it and continue their playing/disconnect. Well I guess they might get a few people tag along but then it must be some meme map, like nucleus or hightower. I'm ok with friendlies. They go on the same level as tryhards for me; I (almost) never want to be one.

[QUOTE=tekt;51636449]Alright, I want to open my mouth about friendlies. In my nearing 3000 hours I have seen exactly one group of people who kicked people for not being friendly. And that was on a quickplay server. Free to find a new server in less than a minute. All of the friendlies I have seen have just been some random dude with a sandvich out sneaking around. Then they get killed a few times, possibly bitch about it and continue their playing/disconnect. Well I guess they might get a few people tag along but then it must be some meme map, like nucleus or hightower. I'm ok with friendlies. They go on the same level as tryhards for me; I (almost) never want to be one.[/QUOTE] Had the same a while ago on hightower, I got a refill in casual, went engie junped outside and everyone was friendly in the middle so I just built a dispenser and a teleporter to get some XP atleast, friendlies don't usually complain about killing them, it's only annoying when everyone is friendly and a f2p scout or a demo starts being a dick and mess their shit, but in a normal game, that one friendly heavy won't complain when someone kills him

[QUOTE=Nebrassy;51636482]Had the same a while ago on hightower, I got a refill in casual, went engie junped outside and everyone was friendly in the middle so I just built a dispenser and a teleporter to get some XP atleast, friendlies don't usually complain about killing them, it's only annoying when everyone is friendly and a f2p scout or a demo starts being a dick and mess their shit, but in a normal game, that one friendly heavy won't complain when someone kills him[/QUOTE] Maybe it was the game modes, but I got hit with groups of friendlies fairly frequently. Most of the time if you killed one even by accident ( since they'd often step infront of people that were actively attacking me ) they'd often get mad at me. If there were a large enough group of them and they were spouting about how how I'm interfering with how they want to play by killing them ( which ironically is a very hypocritical statement since you're telling me that I cannot play the way I want to play lol ), it wasn't uncommon at all to see one swap sides if there wasn't one on my team already to try and get me or anyone else vote kicked off the server. Towards the end of Quick-play, they started popping up quite regularly though for me. Hell, I'd say around the Tough Break update I started to see them fairly frequently. Highpass was a map I saw them regularly, large groups of heavies who would often heal my team while doing nothing for theirs. When MyM update came out though, they seemingly mostly disappeared. I've seen like 3 to 5 friendlies total, and they got vote kicked off pretty instantly everytime. Hightower was a problem in it's own, since I don't think I've ever seen a match on it that didn't have someone bitching about capturing the point and people getting regularly voted off even when DM alongside them and start dominating them regularly lol.

All will be well once they release the Pyro Update this or next month, which will blow our socks off and just make us forget 2016. Trust me.

[QUOTE=Fluury;51636690]All will be well once they release the Pyro Update this or next month, which will blow our socks off and just make us forget 2016. Trust me.[/QUOTE] I believe you.

[QUOTE=ComodoreBluth;51635317]I hate to apologize for Valve but we saw similar issues with matchmaking a huge number of game modes and maps with Halo The Master Chief collection a couple of years ago (and I'm sure that game had way more people working on it since it was Microsoft's big holiday title that year). The MCC took way longer to fix then TF2 as well. I get the feeling that when you have a ton of maps and modes to put into a matchmaker then it's way harder to get it working correctly then a smaller number of maps/modes and you may need public data from people trying to play to get it to work correctly (though I'm not programmer and I can't say for sure, I'm just going off what I see).[/QUOTE] Regarding matchmaking Valve had the competitive matchmaking beta which had a very small sample size. (Limited to Accounts with both a mobile authenticator and competitive beta access.) Valve had the data and should have known the sample size of the competitive beta was absolutely minuscule compared to the traffic that Quickplay had to deal with. Removing Quickplay and replacing it with Casual flooded the system with an amount of players the system wasn't ready for. The "stress tests" Valve ran were also limited to authenticator only steam accounts, not the general public which a Quickplay replacement needed to deal with. Valve had valuable data which used correctly could easily have prevented Casual not working correctly at launch. Either they legitimately were unaware their stress tests were absolutely awful or they knew of those issues and decided to launch Casual anyway. Casual should have launched as an open beta in MYM, not as the Quickplay upgrade Valve claimed it to be.

I don't know if i'm noticing it more because I am high rank now, but soooo many hackers in MM. Weirdos. Must have been some progress in lmaobox or whatever against vac.