The Problems with Australian TF2
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- čas přidán 1. 05. 2024
- This is a visual essay on the current state of Australian TF2. It covers the Australian experience, the history of Oceania TF2, three main problems affecting the community, and the wider response to the state of the game at large. I also explain my mindset approaching the game as a veteran growing up underneath the animation scene and older eras of the internet. Feel free to leave your own thoughts below.
✪ socials
Join the locker room club: / discord
Twitter: / mcskewl
Twitch: / mcskewl
Steam: steamcommunity.com/id/mcskewl
Second Channel: czcams.com/channels/L8o.html...
✪ media referenced in this essay
An Award Losing Journalist 2:
• We interviewed more tf...
TF2 Content Mattered:
• TF2 Content Mattered
How Valve Treats TF2
• How Valve Treats TF2
Fallen Angels
www.imdb.com/title/tt0112913/
✪ special thanks
millie
snags
hisanimations
rocket
jetminus
chloe burbank
✪ music
joji - untitled
joji - foie bump
joji - you suck charlie
tv girl - daughter of a cop
nujabes - aruarian dance
tv girl - blue hair
current joys - become the warm jets
✪ FAQ
Why are Replays such a big deal? What about demos?
Demos are nice if you want archaic, bugged first person recordings of your own plays with little to no creative freedom. They still serve a good purpose as hard drive space savers or for those who don't want to run replay buffers, but my point is the Replay feature had that distinct "early 2000s" home movie feel to it, and lots of inbuilt features to encourage players to make something unique and interesting.
What are you referring to by "community-led campaigns to get Valve's attention?"
There's been a few of them over the past couple of years due to the multiple crisis points the game has been depicted as reaching on social media. #Savetf2 is the pre-eminent example of this.
Given your stance on MyM, was Quickplay better?
Quickplay was the most fun I had in Valve-driven matchmaking. While it didn't have alltalk, it was far superior to casual imo.
How does Australian tf2 differ compared to other regions?
There are subclass specialists, meme players, and tryhards in every region. The distinction is how Australia's playerbase is diluted to have a lot more of these compared to f2ps (who often only make up 10% of a casual lobby) due to its overall small size, which leads to more chaotic/competitive lobbies.
✪ notes
I intended to make a new ALJ-style intro to usher in the solo reporter interview segment on the train, but I couldn't find a single working replay server in 45 minutes of attempts all over the globe. (There were none in the southern hemisphere whatsoever).
If you’ve read this far, comment "yo skewl nice phillip seymour hoffman medic"
#tf2 - Hry
![Why [TF2] has (Almost) Perfect Melee Weapons](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/NArb-D-M8aU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Why [TF2] has (Almost) Perfect Melee Weapons](/img/tr.png)
![[TF2] I played Engineer in 6s](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/X4J8uHLvVFo/mqdefault.jpg)
Australia is an integral part of TF2 lore we cant just abandon it like this
God, nothing hurts more than realizing just how far away TF2 has strolled from communication based fun with the conglomeration of Casual servers and the following lack of sprays, alltalk, newer account communication, and loss of some of the best community maps that you used to be able to find and play everywhere. It feels like any childhood I had with the game has been stripped away, left to rot with monetization focused minimal work models, the same remaining community servers on the same remaining maps and gamemodes, with none of the same fun left from the past.
Nobody's Home by Zesty Jesus really drived that fact in, too.
i miss medic vs engineer :(
Sprays weren't removed in MYM, they've been gone ever since they added valve servers.
id love a final update that undid meat your match, gave f2p all access back, turned all talk on, and fixed the bots.
bots arent a thing that can be easily patched so i'd doubt the bot problem would be fixed but removing the matchmaking system, giving talking back to f2ps, and returning alltalk would be a good send off from valve. The only other thing I think valve should add in that send off update is some fixing of the replay system to encourage people to use it
@@yes_and_so_what Cheater Bot problem would vanish if Valve would revert everything to pre Meet your Match update. For now tf2 is in stagnation and I assume a lot of players would come back and new ones show of if they would do that which would minimalise impact of cheater bots
@@Jasiuc330 even without meet your match the script kiddies running the circus can just make it to they fill what ever server they find in the server browser
@@yes_and_so_what Yeah. I mean with the whole source leak they had in 2020 I doubt they could ever get rid of bots. I just wish for 2 things.
1- more gun spy ofc
2- they use the crates money to hire a team or outsource anti-cheat and minor maintenance.
I doubt sprays will ever come back sadly, I miss em
I think that's a taller order than you realize
As someone who's multiplayer experience has almost universally consisted of 150+ ping servers. Australian tf2 servers were the one place where a kiwi like me could fuck around in some weird ass server with 23 other dudes and get to have some real honest fun. In a way I wouldn't be the person I am without them.
It's still technically possible to do that now but the general culture has shifted away from the general antics I enjoyed so much, even the 24/7 skial servers feel incredibly hostile at times, uncletopia isn't much better in that regard and casual just doesn't feel right to me.
The decline of Australian tf2 feels so much more of a loss for me because it was the only place that I didn't have to compromise on some aspect to really enjoy the game.
Thanks for weighing in, always appreciated the NZ homies. Yeah, it's something I didn't get time to speak on in this video, but you're right with how the general atmosphere of community servers has changed from places to goof off and be creative with the game into pretty hostile, unwelcoming lobbies, usually from regulars that have been spawncamping 2fort for six hours. It's good to speak on what it used to be. Thanks for your reply
Playing tf2 now is like living during the fall of an empire. The golden age is a distant memory, and the collapse feels ever present. But we try our best to hold on and survive
tf2 is my favourite game, and I've played for 12 years as long as theres players ill play, but it still hurts
Go Victoria
Not an Australian but glad I checked this out. Australia’s (tf2) problems are the world’s problems. Even besides the obvious problems, I miss all talk like you wouldn’t believe.
F2P Scout bro speaks the truth! We're ALL screwed, they're just feeling it first.
I made a post on the TF2 steam discussions a while back about putting all-talk into Casual, and I swear nobody likes the idea of a laid-back fun game of TF2 anymore (what Casual mode SHOULD be). Everyone disagreed and some said it was outright gay. What made TF2 so good in the past was hearing your enemy. If that meant them trash talking you, so be it. That's what made the game so funny and community-oriented back then, when you could hear who you played against instead of just seeing cold, blank text-chat where there is no emotion involved or anything alike.
As someone who plays on AU servers, I couldn't agree more with what you say. There's so little variety nowadays. I remember getting into a game of medieval mode or pass time once and my friends just wanted to play payload, but I was so excited to finally play something new.
Thank you, meet your match had a massive impact on the way we played the game socially, no more joining mates mid game, no more joining the enemy team to play against your friends
All talk barely exists in any game now, makes online play seem cold and unpersonal compared to old cod lobbies and csgo half time, for better or for worse
I only play community servers now because of how bad the bots are, the rare time I manage to find a casual game without them it’s mostly the same people I see on community servers, zesty jesus’ video on the true player count explains this in hindsight
Aussie tf2 is in a rough place right now but there are still a handful of new players only just discovering the game that we spent so much of our lives enjoying
that’s enough for me
I won't pretend that I feel exactly what the AU and SEA players are going through because I don't play in that region. However, I've been playing TF2 even longer than you, so I can sympathize with exactly what you're saying. I've seen the rot even in the most populous regions of the world. We've all lost our homes many times over and the number of times I boot up the game these days has slowed to a crawl. In fact, if there were any place that it made the most sense to remove Valve servers entirely, it might be in Australia. With no low-ping matchmaking available to take players, perhaps your smaller communities would condense to the point that you would be able to establish private servers like the old days. This decay IS the ultimate destiny of all TF2 fans and it just sounds like it's accelerating where you are.
All things end as they say.
But god, make tf2 goofy again
dude i felt this video on a different level. nearly 11 years playing tf2 and most of those years were spent play community servers like deathrun and jailbreak. all i play now is mad mayhem and a few community 6s games. such an unfortunate result as to what the game used to be. good video homie
I miss all talk servers
I miss exploring a ton of new weird community made maps each day
I miss playing with real people, not bots
I miss watching gibus vision pyros walk directly off a cliff
I miss the old tf2
100% agree that alltalk should be re-added. That goes for uncletopia too, I'm not sure why it's not enabled there.
I've also been thinking some kind of proximity chat in casual would be fantastic
You can't readd something that never was originally there. Valve servers have never had it enabled and it was never the default meaning that community servers would have needed to manually change the configuration of the server to enable it
As a West Australian, thankfully I have another option to the bot-infested heap of Sydney servers: Singapore servers. I actually have less ping where I am for Singapore servers than Sydney, so I tend to join those servers rather often. I used to hate Singapore servers due to the high numbers of noobs that could not comprehend kicking bots, closet cheaters, and toxic Spy main weebs, but now it's become my safe haven. Beggars can't be choosers.
PS I've played since 2008 and to say I miss old TF2 is an understatement. NOTHING compares to this day to the fun old TF2 could offer you. NOTHING. The constant updates, the niche but laid-back community, the artstyle, the old weapons (sandman used to be my favourite melee RIP). It was genuinely just such a good time to be alive. 2010 - 2014 were by-far the best years - the golden years - of TF2.
great video man. awesome commentary and editing. keep it up.
it was nice having like 2-3 days of no bots whenever 64-bit dropped, I had some of the most fun I've had in years when it happened and was lucky enough to find a bunch of people in voice chat. despite all the flaws of tf2 updates that have changed a lot about the community and the like, if they could just remove bots I wouldn't really care as much not complain, one of my most played games in recent weeks has been mario kart wii, which hasn't been updated in 16 years. It's also unfortunate that I have 5-10 friends who really WANT to play the game but unfortunately were only introduced to TF2 in late 2024, so they never even had the chance to really enjoy the base game to begin with, I've been forced to take em through community servers and play jailbreak and stuff, which is not where the charm of TF2 lies for me.
Good video, That is a really fair point for how Australia is a veil for the future of tf2 in other scenes EU/NA. Encourages Introspection, thank you
I watched this late at night and now I’m sleepy.
Tf2 in it of itself is australian, like the sniper, saxton and robin walker. If remiving quickplay did this we need to bring it back
Whilst I would normally say something about how Australia seems to have the most serious issues with cheaters and bot hosters (both in the cheating sense and doing-other-terrible-things sense), the points you've raised in this video are not only 100% correct but probably haven't even crossed people's minds when thinking about how TF2 has changed. It's possible that Australia's bots and cheaters are especially bad because we seem to be the region most actively fighting against it (M.A.C, content creators such as yourself, etc.) but the issues you've bought up also apply to the greater scope of TF2 that a lot of people don't seem to be aware of. Hopefully more people catch wind of this video, even to just be better informed about the state of TF2 beyond the more glaring issues.
this was a lovely video. i've played aussie tf2 for a very long ass time also (since 2010 on the damn xbox) and have experienced a lot growing up with this game. some of my favourite memories will be of spending hours and days in community servers seeing people new and old, playing fun gamemodes like vsh, deathrun, trade, etc. and just being part of a niche community. this game has molded me more than i like to admit.
that said, it is such a shame so many community servers have fallen off and that the only ones that stick around are rather homogeneous. casual is nice but it could be so much better, along with comp mode. god current me wishes comp mode was even a sliver of decent. tf2 really needs a giant fixer upper to get new blood into the game, as that's what keeps the vibe and community alive as a whole, as well as better support of community servers.
i've watched your videos for a long time, and even tho i haven't kept up as much as i would've liked to, it's still always nice seeing you around. you remind me of those nice times and that new fun memories can still be made to this day. i even remember being in some very old videos of yours from a few years ago (i went by jumper back then, how time flies). i don't think i'll ever fully stop playing tf2 anytime soon. i just hope us aussies can come together and make the most of what we have and keep having fun despite everything.
All of your videos make me tear up for some strange reason
i love how youre bumping old joji in the background
Thank you SO MUCH for making this video. As an Australian I almost ONLY play 24/7 Hightower or payload because there are NO OTHER OPTIONS
I havent had fun playing Scout since the sandman stun got removed. Never considered myself a lime cap Scout but that's definitely the closest I got. Giving that dood combo abilities was a great choice i have yet to see implicated properly again.
yo skewl nice phillip seymour hoffman medic
Verse 3)
You're lagging behind, can't handle the pace,
Every time you join the match, it's a damn disgrace,
Your reaction time’s slower than your old dial-up,
While I’m out here winning, you’re just a runner-up.
So take a seat, Mcskewl, and enjoy the view,
Watch the real players, learn a thing or two,
You had your moment, now it’s time to retire,
Your Dota career’s done, it’s a dumpster fire.
(Chorus)
Mcskewl's in the house, but he’s lost in the game,
Old man McBeezzchurgr, you’re just bringing shame,
Can't keep up with the meta, can't even get a kill,
Time to face the facts, you ain't got no skill.
(Outro)
So here's the truth, Mike, you’re out of your league,
Go back to solitaire, leave Dota to the sleek,
Mcskewl, McBeezzchurgr, whatever your name,
Step out the game, you’re just bringing lame.
GREAT VIDEO MIKE McBeezzchurger
As a fellow Aussie I find it increasingly harder day by day to come back to TF2 in recent years as everything I knew and experienced with the AUS TF2 especially on community servers are just entirely gone and as much as I want to come back to TF2 and experience the game again, the general feeling of the community slowly dying out and the lack of options makes it so hard. TF2 is a game I want to play, I want to enjoy Aussie TF2 but I just can't anymore and it makes me sad.
I really love your nostalgia take. I feel like the players who want to say that TF2 “isn’t the same as it used to be” aren’t adding anything substantial to the discussion beyond just pointing out that TF2 has issues different than the issues it had before. But every online game can have problems, and TF2 has a history of exceptional problems unique to a game built as much on style and fun as it is on its unpredictable gameplay loop. I’m hopeful that the grating nature of both these sentiments and the newcomers who want to treat TF2 like a fast-paced, tactical hero shooter for Serious™️ players lead to them losing popularity to give way to other ideas getting some visibility, but I guess to expect change and not do anything to actually enact it is what led us here to begin with.
I know I’ll always come back to TF2 as long as it resembles even a distant relative of the gameplay loop from a decade ago, and I think inching towards something like that with more of a focus on accessibility and, as you pointed out, encouragement towards communication is a good start.
Great video and analysis!
Kiwi here, please save us.
0:58 One of my friends is the demo :)
I sympathise with not being able to play one of your favourite game modes. I used to love playing sd_doomsday and player destruction, but nowadays it is nigh impossible to find servers that host either in the UK/EU region. I also find it effects individual maps as well, my favourite of all time is koth_king, yet it rarely appears in map rotations, back in the day there would be at least a couple 24/7 kong king servers.
I run/ran the FTW servers. We had Replays, alltalk - the lot.
The Quickplay changes killed our community servers. Before that, we consistently had a flow of new players. After, we had to rely on regulars to seed the servers and they would empty as soon as we had to log off.
Meet Your Match only made things worse.
European community servers feel much in the same way, I think the fallout of matchmaking over quickplay still hasn't fully hit, but it's far too late to do anything meaningful about it. I think we as a community should try encouraging people to make and participate in community servers more and that's about it
Emails are an effective method of protest given specific context. If we want it to work for something like tf2, we need more numbers. Unfortunately you can't fix casual if there aren't any players online.
Degroot Keep has gotten harder to queue into in American servers too, often I'm stuck in a server in Frankfurt when trying to play it. It sucks, because genuinely, it is a bit of a safe haven from the bots. Yes, you CAN make bots in the mode, but they're far rarer and far less invasive. Guarenteed critical hits from a laggy sniper can be worked around easily enough by simply using weapon range to your advantage, either swords from demoknight or crossbows/bows from medics/snipers.
Alltalk was sick.
I have 'Voice communications have been disabled for this account' and i must scream
In Adelaide, there are usually only 3 servers that are under 30 ping; two of them are jump servers and the other alternates between 2fort and hightower. Most skial server are Asian servers pretending to be Australian servers showing low ping, but as soon as you join, it bumps you to 100 ping. Australian tf2 is in a very sad state.
I hope things will improve, not only for our AU servers but for the game as a whole. As unlikely as that might be, given the amount of bots to players in our region. Our ingame peak seems to be around 700ish oceania players on a good day.
That was a mcskewl type video
I'm not even close to Australia, but thanks for the video.
I wish i was around when chatting was free
insightful commentary as always skewl, thank you for the video
any australians remember the golden age servers {GAS}?, unfortunately they closed but i had alot of fun with you guys who played with me
woah this already looks cool from the start!
Huh, really captured my childhood perfectly. Old australian servers bring back a smile
I love the use of chlor burbank for this
I always hope to queue into a Sydney server but it's most of the time just not happening. People know each other in au and everyone is sentient in the sense that they communicate
8:46 Yeah I am. I've heard people say perth is a bubble. It fits.
Sick intro dude!
I'll share my two cents - yesterday i was trying to find a rapid fire server with a unique trade_minecraft map i used to play a lot in. After some digging it turned out it was from an Australian steam group called Smexy Trading. Now how I ended up in an aussie hosted server when i'm from the other side of the planet is one thing but I remember meeting some interesting people there ranging from all over the world, hell I've met life-long friends there too.
It's quite depressing finding out the servers have been shut down since 2018 (it had a bit of a revival in 2020 but that's gone too) and seeing the servers slowly dwindle into the same 3 host groups makes it more harder to experience something different you can't find on casual or other community servers. I have not seen any other maps maps aside from the same rotation of 2fort, dustbowl and badwater, and those that do have different maps are mostly empty or just a friendly-focused hangout center or some gimmicky custom gamemode.
Aside from a round of custom MvM maps every couple of months, I've stopped playing TF2 and I don't want to play on Uncletopia because of the amount of sweats and phlog pyro pockets steamrolling the matches I'm in (haha skill issue) and playing on a 24/7 2fort server just doesn't do it anymore when I'm stuck playing on the same map for hours. Idk if Valve is gonna do anything, I gave up on them long ago but I do hope TF2 would just crawl out of the rotting hole it's currently in or the whoever is in charge just pull the plug already and let the community run the game on their own
You're my favorite tf2uber.
Ah, the melancholy of TF2 nostalgia, and the emotional inability to engage with it today... 😢
Dang, LCD Soundsystem reference medi-gun?
Sry to hear that Aussie tf2 ain't well. High hopes for you guys down under man❤
Guess this'll be pretty sad for me. Later this year I'm moving to New Zealand and I suspect that the only servers I can connect to will be Australian servers. I live in the Philippines and Asian servers here have less bots and plenty of tryhards. Guess I'll make the most of the time I have left while I still can, join matches and play them and keep making my nostalgic style of TF2 videos for my channel.
Edit: if all is lost, I'll try TF2C maybe.
I play on singapore servers, and sometimes there were aussies here. But sadly most of the time they are the cheaters that you can find on mega's database
Fallen angels is such a beautiful film man.... My friends don't like Wong Kar Wai movies that much cause the writing is never like out of this world or groundbreaking but, i dunno the vibes are all there imo.
Wicked art brotha
Woman with time machiene: "Im your grand daughter." "Really?"
Men with time machiene: "Don't release meet your match!"
tbh by the tittle i was expecting to see people playing upside down and having problems to aim this way
woa i use both of those cosmetics on the demo from the thumbnail
god I see another video like this and more and more I feel less and less like I'm going to ever be able to fall in love with this game like other valve games
My problem with Australian TF2 is if I try to join Casual I keep being dumped into servers where I'm the only non bot but if I join the community servers like Uncletopia the playerbase is far beyond my level of skill to the point that I spend 90% of my time watching the respawn timer tick down. Even as a 10+yr veteran it's hard to enjoy the game.
Harrowing, this is harrowing.
Yep your right i despise casual its all snipers some days it just dosent work
I read it "saving autistic tf2" 💀
Am leaving a like for Aruarian Dance ;)
Now imagine what it's like in Aotearoa NZ
don't have to.
please help us.
i like team fortress classic for this exact reason, it just kinda feels like you're stepping back into the days where we all fucked around with eachother and were allowed to do that. now with the outflux of cool aus centric servers, and that gap now being filled with skial and hightower 24/7 servers where it's a much less friendly environment, it kinda killed any hope for australian tf2 (and mainly tf2 as a whole) to have that spark again. i still love tf2, but i love tf2 the meaning, and the game just isn't fitting that meaning for me anymore, even if, at the core, it's still the same game that i enjoyed so much as an 8 year old kid on her mums awful laptop, it just not the same feeling. R.I.P. medievil, you will be missed.
hm I tried getting back into Tf2 recently but every server has a infestation of bots
All talk was never enabled on Valve severs. Meet your match didn't get rid of all talk.
I'm referring to Quickplay, which was Valve's queue system that included Community servers that had alltalk. When Quickplay was replaced by Casual, it moved any possible alltalk servers into the background, leading to the low playercount we see today.
@@mcskewl Fot most of quickplay's life you would not be sent to community servers. The default setting for quickplay was Valve servers only. You had to go into the settings for quickplay and explicitly opt in to being sent to community servers. Most players did not opt in to community servers in quickplay.
this is a mcskewl type video
I haven't play team fortress 2 in a long time, servers are a big issue when it comes to finding games and finding reasonable ping. (Which is once in a blue moon for me)
Being a Australian tf2 player is hard mate.
Ricky Kasso gaming
Loved this video even though mcskewl is a worm
tbh even on EU servers the community tab feels kinda stale. I wanted to find a cool server today and coudlnt find anything interesting, over half of the servers were boring achievment/trade, 100x or 2fort. there is only one server i know that has funny gamemodes that changes every few rounds with players being able to vote. my favorite was wario ware or smth like that where you play a lot of minigames :) Also the badge, i have one from december 2012 on my oldest steam account :D
well i'm not a yank but isn't this the exact same thing happening to every other region
Imagine my disappointment coming back to the game after not playing for a couple of years and seeing that Australian community servers were barely existent. There were a couple of Aussie servers that I always played on it because it felt like the people on those servers were all the same level of skill and all played to win matches. Everyone working together which was fun. Matchmaking just feels boring tbh.
There's bugger all to play with.
I got kicked by a slur-slinger by saying “Bro’s Australian and using the hard r”.
real af
i thought that to play tf2 in australia you just had to go outside
i miss HJ fort
the only reason I play tf2 is because The Medic class is a unique take on the healer class that I dont see any other game manage to replicate. it sucks that i've been hit with so many "wtf is our medic doing" "our medic is ass" "its tf2, what do you expect from medics?" responds that it's really pushing me to drop the game entirely.
like seriously, the game already have a dwindling player count. stop complaining for once already
Oceania and Asia kinda share the same environmental now, I see plenty of Australia, New Zealand on Singapore/HK server.
Heck even mainland CN has like 3 server duct taping the either tf2 community in china.
Someone should really make an Asian perspective of tf2
it would be really interesting to get an overview of the tf2 playerbase from a lot of the different regions besides australia
how the players act, what the cheating / bot situation is, how rare casual / community servers are to come across, etc
i think most people know that the australian servers are struggling the most rn, but it would be cool to hear how the other regions are going too.
bine
I live in neither Australia nor TF2 but this video really resonated with me
play ozfortress is le epic 😄
Good video. We need Degroot servers back in australia.
I only play degroot. It's the best game mode.
7:37 - 7:45 what animation is this?
Hi Microsoft Powerpoint, that's "Deserve" by KrasniyB:)
@@mcskewl man why the fuck is medic fucking the chest :((( edit: nvm they started jerking it to a fire spirit that is worse
No country for old mercs
this is what you get for living on dinosaur island
I love Australia!
Love it as well!
Hey mate I'll be hosting a medieval server for a bit in Aus if you wanna play
Who the hell would be dedicated to only market gardening, what losers.
People who like fun and whimsy and just joy in general.
The joke is I only play trolldier
baed..... ....
The reason why no one hosts (or play) degrootkeep is because the gamemode is fucking dogshit. Gotta be insane to host a 24/7 of a map that restricts 2/3 of the fun.
uncletopia servers are great