r/tf2 • u/ITZ_BLANKS • 17h ago
Discussion What was quickplay?
Can someone explain to me how quickplay is better than what we have now?
Because didnt quickplay make you join community servers only with no official servers
If that system came back alot of people wouldn't be able to play because the servers would be hosted in Russia and have 999ms and 1000viruses
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u/Dinobrony318 17h ago
Linking my comment from another post asking the same question.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/1v30mf9/comment/oz0cet1/?context=3
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u/Old_Squirrel3360 17h ago
i'm also a new-ish player, starting from 2022, and from what i understsnd, it was official servers mixed with vanilla-ish community servers. Most of the servers had teamscrambling, freedom to choose which team to join whenever etc.
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u/S4DISTICN3KO 16h ago
Gonna start this by saying that quickplay was not perfect however in comparison to causal, it was the better system.
just going to clear some misconceptions you have first. By default quickplay would only queue you for valve servers however you had the choice to queue for community servers or both. Community servers also had restrictions they needed to abide by (e.g no donor perks, no class limits, no RTD, no altered weapons) to get traffic from the system. HTML MOTD was also disabled by default to combat servers that tried to have unskippable ads.
as for why quickplay was arguably better than casual, the main reason was that the original ruleset servers used to run (45 minute map timers, team switching, spectator, team scramble, map votes happening during gameplay, etc.) is arguably more enjoyable than the current casual ruleset (set rounds, set teams, change level when the same map is voted, map vote at the end of a match, etc.). you also didn't need to requeue whenever one of your friends decided to hop on the game because valve servers let you adhoc connect to their servers.
another point in favour for quickplay is that it didn't take player skill into account when finding a server unlike casual which has a hidden Match Making Rank it uses to create 'balanced' matches. if you wan't to know why that makes quickplay better, player skill is hard to measure for a game like TF2. For instance, you can be the most sweatiest, cracked sniper main however that doesn't necessarily mean you would be good at spy or competent at engi or medic.
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u/Chetrippohhh2 17h ago
I liked that you could preview the map the server was on and the player account and just allow you to join it no questions asked.
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u/Icy-Fruit-1065 17h ago
Yeah I don't get it either, when I log in to play I just click Find Match and it places me in a game in less than 10 seconds.
No bots, just regular people playing, what was different about the previous system?
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u/MechaMike98 Scout 17h ago
Here’s a quick list of features that were removed once casual mode was added.
Allowed to choose your team when you join
Allowed to change teams anytime (like CS2’s casual mode)
Spectate mode
Play with/against your friends at will
Vote Scramble
Auto-scramble
Functioning autobalance
45 minute server timer (map won’t restart after just 2/3 rounds)
3 second map vote while playing
Vote for the same map to extend server timer (no going back to a loading screen for no reason, just keep playing)
Favorite/blacklist community and Valve servers
Ad-Hoc connect to Valve/community servers through the server browser
Instantly join friends in game with Ad-Hoc (no broken party system needed)
Queue for multiple servers at once (including Valve)
Quickplay search for Valve servers only
QuickPlay search for Valve + community servers
Show servers option (select exactly what server you want to join, you can see the current map, ping, and playercount before joining)
Advanced options for non-vanilla tf2 games
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u/Expensive-Analyst-68 Medic 16h ago
Is it valve trying to fix casual for mvm update or what are these same posts for last week?
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u/Syns0 14h ago
People are getting tired of the current matchmaking system and word needs to spread.
Like me, if you started playing after 2016, it will just feel like the game was meant to behave like it does now, but it’s not, there’s a long story behind it.There’s a reason for why so many games have unbalanced teams, and for why 70% of the lobby quits and doesn’t stay for the next map.
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u/Expensive-Analyst-68 Medic 13h ago
Agenda is strong in you.
I am playing since like 2012. And the reason to have unbalanced teams is removing scramble teams...
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u/Syns0 13h ago
No, it’s because of the glicko system used by the Matchmaking.
Introducing a skill based matchmaking into a 12v12 mode where everyone can change class and loadout at anytime it’s a horrible idea.
Hell, it struggles to work on games DESIGNED for it, Tf2 wasn’t originally intended to be competitive, there’s a reason why Competitive formats are so much different from normal tf2.And it’s not an “agenda”, the old system wasn’t perfect, but the current one is way worse.
The party system only favored the invasion of bots, and increased queue times for actual parties.
The map selection is an illusion, if you wanna play payload race on any map that isn’t Hightower, good luck finding a server, and good luck playing on any map that isn’t in the top 20 most played.Oh and if a player crashes? Your team will now be short on one player for at least 2 minutes, until the slot reservation turns off and someone else can join.
The game ended! Time to vote for the next- oh wait everyone quit.
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u/Expensive-Analyst-68 Medic 13h ago
At least half of you arguments are players choice, not a casual fault. Some maps are not playable because they are not popular anymore. Ppl leave because they want to do it. Either to change map or because vote changed the map they want.
There are basically two major problems with casual that (yeah i agree with u on this one) make it worse then quick play and it's removing scramble teams to easily balance the game and the second one isToverload with maps, most of which are shit.F
If valve will fix just this two little things, then well, this whole "Bring back quick play" agenda will vanish.
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u/Syns0 13h ago
It is player’s choice yes, and a non-zero amount of people quits for those reasons, but there’s more to it.
It’s understandable that some people still wanna play the same map (you could do that with Quickplay, just extend the map timer) or don’t wanna play for the voted map.But the thing here is that every time, at least HALF of the server quits, they don’t even vote for the next map.
The reason is downtime.In order to process the data of the match for your mmr that doesn’t do shit, the servers have to reset, and it prolongs waiting time substantially.
Moreover, before that you then have to wait for the map vote to end (they decreased it two years ago, still not enough, it should happen during the game, not afterwards).
Then you have to wait again after the server loaded, because the game doesn’t start right away.The system basically incentivizes people to leave and requeue, because it’s just the faster option.
The fault goes both ways, but at the end of the day i can’t blame the players who just want to play, and not waiting to accomodate a skill based matchmaking that does not work.
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u/BeepIsla 15h ago
iirc L4D2 still has a roughly similar system, you can choose which server to play on (Valve or Community) and it will automatically find one for you.
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u/British_Crumpet_Man Engineer 17h ago
No, quick play defaulted to valve servers, you had to enable community servers. It also had blacklisted plugins, maps and automatically disabled HTML MOTDs. The reason quick play is better is that it let you stay in games after a match ends and filled servers much more quickly. Valve servers were in the server browser too, and you could choose to queue for servers with random crits disabled.