My Experience with TF2 after 1700 hours

[froob]

Yes, today I'm talking about TF2. And yes, I have played for 1700 hours. Its sad, I know. And I hated probably 1600 hours of it.

Today, I'll be discussing the two communities of the Team Fort Defense franchise. I'll be pointing out the cons (mostly TF2 related) of the "two" communities, and I'll also be discussing the pros of the two communities.

First off, TF2.
My oh my, that community is bad. Since it's height of players in 2008, the Team fortress 2 community has degraded over the generations. But first, let's talk about Valve's input with the TF2 community. Back then, the game had a plethora of creative minds working on the game to create a fun, fast paced environment with the updated Source engine. Enormous amounts of work were put in to the game just to give the environment its unique art style, which actually was based off of Norman Rockwell's style. The developers were active, and regularly interacted with the community.
Now, the TF "team" as they are often referred to consists of roughly 15 people. 4 of which are actual coders, and about 3 SFM artists. The rest are comic artists, product management, and writers. And this number has steadily declined over the years, and *eventually* the TF Team will either move to a different project, or simply leave.
A "famous" detail of Valve Corporation is that "The chairs and desks have wheels" what this means is, whenever you want, you can stop doing what you're doing on a certain field, and move to a different field.
The thing is with TF2, the engine hasn't changed much in 11 years. And not only that, but several different coders and developers have worked on the game, and of course left at certain points. Today, the game has about 11 years worth of different programming and coding which all needs to be either silently removed or changed in time for a new update, otherwise the game could be unplayable.

Now, the community. Codename - "AIDS"
The community is extremely bad. Over the years, as I mentioned, it has degraded into the state it is now. I played just a couple days ago after months of refusing to touch the game, and I asked for a few tips for playing the spy class, as I had "lost my touch" as they say, first of all, I was called extremely unfunny and downright reprehensible slurs such as (these are NOT my words, no ban pls) "Faggot" "N*gger" and everyones favorite; "C*nt."
Afterwards I just stopped talking and tried to remember, but I swear to god, 10 minutes after I asked the question, I was locked in a vote which was to kick me from the server for cheating. First of all, my computer cannot handle lmaobox, (the primary tf2 cheating software) it will probably crash my game as I have seen a youtuber by the name of ArraySeven test it on his own server with his superior computer, and barely able to get 14 FPS. It would kill my game. (Even though I think cheaters are just dickheads trying to be assholes at the expense of others enjoyment) The vote passed, because usually people just click f1 to get the menu out of their face, as it literally blocks your peripheral vision. Of course, I got kicked because of the toxicity. This is not a single occurence of toxic behavior, I see this probably every time I join a Valve casual server. Someone is spamming racial slurs in the chat, somebody is spamming loud obnoxious music through their microphone, and quite often someone either has walls or is a straight up aimbotter.
Sure, there are some nice people in the community, I'm generalizing about 39,000 players, but there is undeniably a pattern of dickheads in the community.
Don't even get me started on the balance issues. Even after the recent pyro update which supposedly "nerfed pyro into the ground", that class is still overpowered and unfun to play against. Also, with the variations of weapons skins for both the stock weapons (standard shotgun, rocket launcher) but also for the gimmick unlockable weapons, it is nearly impossible to tell what a player is using on certain maps where their weapon skin blends in to the environment.
I'm not even going to go into the matchmaking system. Let's just say its a catastrophic mess.

Now, for the Team Fortress Classic community. Which is as far as I'm concerned, the polar opposite. This game, is by all means, timeless. Whenever I play TFC, I never see people deliberating degrading and being toxic to other players, and I also never expect a soldier to be using a rocket launcher which has a 25% damage bonus, can do 2x damage on airborne targets, and fires 80% faster rockets which can instant kill medics, scouts, snipers, spies, and two shot all other classes except hwguy. Sure, there is no development team whatsoever, but thankfully with the help of Master, as well as the dude who runs Twisted, and Drippy himself, this game will never need a valve update.
Can we just appreciate the fact that this game is 20 years old, and is still played often, and by people who are actually respectable and awesome? Can we also just appreciate the work of Master, as well as all of the clan members for trying their best to keep a 20 year old game from possible death? And when it comes to master, he fixed actual in game problems such as the nail grenade exploit, and he also fixed the spawn whoring system on 2fort which not only bans people if they run to spawn all the time, but it also kills them if they stay in for too long.

In this community, I can ask that simple question - "Any tips on how to play sniper?" And I will get an actual, reasonable and effective answer. Sure, there are some trolls in the servers who like to spam "yumad?" and "scatman", but /soundoff exists for that sole reason. And if somebody is being a douche, you don't have to go to a seperate menu just to mute them. Just hit tab and click on their name. Boom, muted.

In conclusion, I'd easily say that when it comes to game mechanics, and the community, Team Fortress Classic takes the cake. Thanks everyone for keeping this game alive and strong, and thank you to all of TFC's server owners who work hard to keep this game's legacy not a legacy at all, but for keeping it fresh.