The Team Fortress 2 community is calling on developer Valve to make significant changes to the way that the game's matchmaking system works. Thousands of players have indicated that they're not happy with Team Fortress 2's Casual Mode.
Originally released in 2007, Team Fortress 2 still has a sizable fanbase despite its increasing age. However, fans have also been quick to criticize its developer, Valve, where they feel it's appropriate. The community previously orchestrated a campaign to address a major bot problem in Team Fortress 2, and now the fans are asking for another fix.
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Members of the Team Fortress 2 community have now sent a letter to Valve in an effort to see the Casual Mode matchmaking system improved. The letter lays out the concerns and potential solutions, alleging that the game has suffered since Valve shifted from the prior Quickplay system to Casual Mode nine years ago. As a result, the community letter has asked Valve to make changes to the way that Casual Mode works to improve upon it and restore some of the functionality that was lost when Quickplay was axed.
Team Fortress 2's Casual Mode Draws Criticism
The authors of the letter allege that the current Casual Mode system "creates friction" for those looking for matches, and points to a number of shortcomings. These include limiting parties to six members, slot reservations causing slowdowns in filling servers, short matches, long pre-round timers, and perhaps most importantly, Glicko-based matchmaking. The writers claim that Glicko-based matchmaking has led to one-sided matches, with a number of commenters reinforcing it, saying they're tired of playing matches that amount to either "being stomped" or stomping others. These changes, the petitioners claim, have led to diminishing vanilla community servers, dropped player populations, and the loss of some TF2 communities.
The letter has also proposed a number of potential fixes to Casual Mode that could improve upon it. This includes 45-minute map timers, manual team selection and switching, real-time team scrambling, easier methods of joining friends' games, and reincorporating vanilla community servers in the game coordinator. The end goal is to bring back more balanced matches and encourage Team Fortress 2 to grow.
Whether Valve responds to this letter remains to be seen. Prior efforts like the SaveTF2 campaign were eventually acknowledged and steps were taken to address some of the game's issues. It's clear that the community feels there's still room for improvement, but it's not clear if Valve will put as much care into the aging game as the fans are hoping for.
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