Competitive matchmaking in Team Fortress 2 has been in the works for quite a while, so much so that it almost felt like it was never going to arrive.
But Valve has moved one step closer to implementing a model that’s hopefully similar to what has proved so successful for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. That step is the opening of a Steam group that will be used “to send out announcements related to the competitive beta as well as seed beta invites for the expansion of the closed beta”.
If you want to get in on the action, there’s no prerequisites for doing so — simply follow the link above and join the group. Whether Valve decides to implement any restrictions or qualifications on who gets invites from there is another matter. But for now, all you have to do is join the Steam group, something anyone can do.
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7 responses to “Competitive Matchmaking For Team Fortress 2 Gets One Step Closer To A Full Release”
I’m going to call it now. It will suck. Just like all there updates the last 2 years.
What do you mean? Gunmettle was amazing, it made almost all of the weapons totally viable again and recent changes have further rebalanced weapons that were for ages considered straight upgrades like the degreaser finally being nerfed to be more of a sidegrade to the stock to name one example. Perhaps balance changes aren’t as exciting as new weapons, but the amount of maps they’ve added makes up for it and the balance changes are getting closer and closer to a point where weapon bans won’t be needed in competitive (the reason I think there’s been very few new weapons recently).
Why would you dump on something the competitive community has been asking for for years and is currently getting praise from the few competitive players that have access to it? Valve make a shitload more money from cosmetics which also take much less time, but you’re criticizing an update that takes an immense amount of work and is being made with frequent feedback from the existing competitive community before it’s even finished, detailed or released to the general public? That seems awfully unfair.
How many hours do you have in tf2? Just out of curiosity…
Around 1350, no competitive but no trading either, not an immense amount I know a few people with over 5000 hours that still aren’t in competitive, but it’s the only multi-player game I like/ play and the only competitive scene I watch, so the matchmaking update is tremendously exciting, especially given that they’re directly consulting with long time competitive players, I may not be the biggest fan of B4nny, but his immense amount of experience is certainly valuable and he’s one member of the competitive scene that’s pretty much in direct contact with Valve in regards to advice on problems, implementation and bugs. With the sort of experience he has and the fact that Valve are fielding information more or less directly from the existing competitive community I think they’ve got a good shot.
Unfortunately it seems for the moment that 6s and possibly 4s will be the focus as a matchmaking system with a highlander or 9v9 format being rather difficult to implement, a shame given that I’ve always preferred 9v9, but 6v6 is good too and I’m just happy that they’re sinking as much time and effort into something non-cosmetic related for such an old game.
I wont bag you for your opinion, but i disagree about whay you said. I also won’t rant about why i think they updates are bad, I’ve lost count the amount of times i have done that.
I have 1.700 hours on record (with my main and alt) and am pretty cut up that my lost played game is getting these imbalanced nerfs and buffs and mediocre content updates.
It’s gotten to the point where i don’t play anymore.
, in HL or in pub servers. I even stopped hosting a tf2 server because off all these poorly picked nerfs.
Who knows, i might try out the beta and see how it goes from there, just not as a hales own engi…
Well to be fair if you’re an engie main the loss of the sigafoo save through nerfs to both the wrangler and the rescue ranger is a bummer, I definitely feel that I play engie less than I did before those changes, but as a sort of demo then solly then medic main (with a lot of Pyro on the side) I like the changes, an engie who knew how to abuse the sigafoo save used to be tremendously frustrating. Balance changes are of course going to be a personal thing and different classes have been targeted more than others (Demo, Engie and Spy all got pretty used to some hugely powerful strats and weapon combinations which have more or less been taken away from them since, I know a spy main who more or less switched to CSGO after the dead-ringer nerf while I for example find the new DR more fun than the old and actually use it more than I used to).
So I don’t blame you if you’re annoyed that your favourite class or strategy was targeted by a nerf recently, that’s a pretty big bummer for a lot of people, I just tend to get defensive over TF2 what with all of the discussions about how it’s dead, how Overwatch will take over, how the comp. scene will never take off etc. because I love the game like I’ve loved few others and I love the competitive scene that have been trying (quite literally for years) to get a matchmaking system into the game they love that most dismiss as a “casual/ hat simulator” game.
i reckon if the weapon variety gets scaled back/restricted and the max players reduced it could be good.
vanilla tf2 on console (much smaller server sizes) was really fun and allowed for some good tactical/strategic play if you had a few mates to coordinate with.
pc with its large 32 player servers was always a fair bit more chaotic and all over the place – especially with the all the different weapons and what not now.