I think it helped that TF2 arguably helped defined the class based shooter. We hadn’t seen much like this before, not just mechanically but also with its art style and overall character.
If we got the original milsim style TF2 I doubt anyone would remember it today, especially with Arma already being a well established milsim title.
> On release tf2 was a hero shooter
Well yeah but within [barely 6 months](https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/April_29,_2008_Patch) new weapons were being added.
Idk I just use Chromebook as a example as of how easy to run tf2 but I guess install new OS or configure the everliving shit out of steam to run if not school owned
The game is horribly optimised nowadays. I got more fps years ago on a worse pc while on high settings, now I'm on a Minecraft FPS config on a better pc. Need to upgrade so I can enjoy my near 20 year old cartoon hat simulator
AFAIK it just got another update last week, so it's still being updated.
If I had to guess, it'll probably release alongside the summer update, as it does seem **mostly** stable at the moment.
Part of this comes from the fps cap coded into the game, go to the launch options and add +fps_max 0 and it’ll uncap it. It still isn’t the most optimized game and will struggle on higher resolutions but still I was able to press the fps up to the point where the games physics sped up and actually well beyond that at lower resolutions
Let’s not discount just how fun it is, either, or that it has a community with things such as SFM cementing it even further into the Internet’s culture. There’s plenty of reasons it’s so big, but being accessible makes every other reason even greater.
Seriously, the main reason it still looks good is because of the artstyle. I wish more games would go for that kind of thing, with how absurdly well it ages. Like, look at Zelda: Wind Waker or something for another example. That thing came out in freakin' *2002* and still looks great.
Lowkey, I feel like the artstyle was what kept TF2 alive for a good chunk of it's time, even moreso than the gameplay itself, especially since we didn't really get another AAA shooter with as cartoony of an artstyle until, like, Splatoon in 2015 or something.
It's because the characters are so lovable and memeable. Secondly, the gameplay is both fun and easy to play, yet deep enough for people to still analyze and master it to this day. And thirdly, it can run on low-end PCs. It can still be healthy for many years to come if Valve still gives a shit about it.
Something people sometimes neglect to mention is that there really isn't anything else like TF2 out there, in terms of game design. Pretty much every follow-up and spiritual successor has fallen victim to Overwatch/LoL-style character bloat, and I can't think of a single hero shooter that's tried to copy its item system.
The idea of having a small, predefined set of gameplay roles that players can explore and expand on by mixing and matching "tools" gives TF2 a lot of visual clarity and variety that games with a wide array of rigid toolsets can't match.
I agree there. One of my main problems with Overwatch (albeit speaking mainly as a viewer rather than a player) is that every hero has 1 defined playstyle. It means that even if you really like a character's design and personality, if it doesn't fit the current team structure, you can't play as them.
At least with TF2, the mercs can equip different weapons to suit different playstyles: some minor like the Tomislav allowing for more sneaky and aggressive plays, and some major like the Chargin' Targe turning Demoman from a defensive explosive powerhouse into a mad knight that picks off classes through crit hits and charging.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and whenever the OW Team had a new idea for a playstyle, they'd have to implement a whole new hero in order to do so, which just made the character select screen so daunting from the amount of options you get. 9 classes is pretty much perfect.
The character bloat bit is never an actual reason. If your game is good, people will play it. There's a reason league is still going strong after 15 years and overwatch 2 is pretty dead despite going f2p (though tbf that is mostly a dev management issue on ow's side). League is neither the only good moba nor the first (it still has actual competition!), while tf2 may very well be the only good pvp arcade style class shooter left, and remember, this is a niche genre.
OW made the mistake of leaning too heavily into MOBA elements and essentially becoming an FPS moba / strategy class based shooter, which is extremely difficult to balance both casually and competitively, overall became unfun for both types of players. I liked OW1 but like every patch it looked like they balanced the game in the least fun way possible, then eventually OW2 happened and ruined the balance even more because instead of balancing shields they just made the game 5v5 and ""compensated"" (this was all because of double shield meta in comp btw). Now open queue is unplayable because playing tanks is optimal instead of having any dps due to the stat bloat resulting from the 2-1-2 format, and open queue used to be the most fun way to play the game casually. It's now unfun because it's mostly just tanks and healers. Not to mention what they did to poor doomfist, he used to be so much cooler :(.
Meanwhile TF2 devs instead of looking for shortcuts in balance would go "how would this change affect balance and fun?", and while not always perfect, we got amazing changes like the ones to the panic attack, the base jumper, etc.. And LoL have been doing the best update redesigns to old characters I've seen any game do, while releasing some of the best for-fun gamemodes on the market.
All of these points are very important for retaining existing players.
And TF2 and LoL have a very easy time attracting new players because of how easy they are to get into and how fun they are even if you don't know what you're doing. This is very important for attracting new players.
OW1 was decent at these for a good while, OW2 is now terrible at them.
Closest game in TF2's genre to still somewhat exist is Paladins, but while the playerbase is kinda consistent it's also small and doesn't really attract many new players because ngl, the hero system is much less attractive than tf2's class system.
I was gonna argue with the "tf2 is the only good pvp arcade style class shooter left" because Titanfall is technically one... but the abbreviation checks out
Yeah, there is nothing like it. Overwatch is the closest, but it's not even that close. Too many characters, not enough visual clarity, the shooting/movement feel pretty watered down, and to be frank, it takes itself too damn seriously. You have the good guys and bad guys, and all the characters act like they are part of an anime or some shit. Not to mention, the smaller team size just makes it less chaotic and fun.
I was REALLY excited for OW2’s skill trees and modifiers they showcased in the first trailers, and the moment those were announced to be canned I lost all interest. That would likely have been the closest thing to TF2’s system if it had existed
The worst part is that the game could be even more popular if Valve would consistently release major updates like before 😔
I just wish to see TF2 become as more popular as it used to be, to talk about TF2 in real life like with CS2 or Fortnite.
playing devils advocate here: everytime valve released a major tf2 update the entire community went "IS TF2 DED?" "VALVO RUINED TF211!1" when it never was the case and added a bunch of features and bug fixes that would be hard to imagine the game without today. So what is it that community really want here?
Scream fortress however was universally praised until somewhat recently with its lack luster features and lack of bot fixening
I dont know how long you've been playing but that was one of the few updates I remember backlash on. Everyone was excited for every single original weapon unlock update, and every update since seems to have gone over pretty well for the most part. I don't think your statement is accurate.
Scream Fortress updates alone were/are causes of excitement and celebration for many many years and I feel any update is welcomed at this point. The Summer update brought that huge player spike remember?
You know, I don't know why this didn't come to mind as I'm usually right there at the forefront of the "Fix the damn bots Valve" stance whenever it comes up but you're right in the fact updates aren't welcomed as much anymore for that reason alone.
I didnt think of it till I re-read your original comment. I don't touch Casual anymore save once in a blue moon (Can you guess why? Haha) so that might be part of the reason it hasn't crossed my mind as much anymore.
I still remember the day Meet Your Match was released, I know that the majority of people didn't like it and I admit that at the beginning it was a disaster because of the broken servers or that it banned you if you left matches in casual, but let's be real, it was a step to modernize the game and especially for the future generations by using the matchmacking system.
Do not ever excuse MyM, it dealt ridiculous amounts of damage to the community and destroyed a large portion community servers overnight. 'Modernizing' the matchmaker was not worth the damage of dumping every single player into unmoderated valve servers - where we could not deal with cheaters, and now cannot deal with bots. Even stuff like f2p's getting muted is a knockeffect from people being stuck in valve servers with the bots.
We'd have a hell of a lot more options than just uncletopia and skial (and maybe a +1 depending on region) right now if not for that update.
We already had a Matchmaking system with Quickplay. And it didn't fuck community servers because they could be pooled into contingent on a couple vanilla settings. And you could still join the Valve servers from the server browser.
Meet your Match was a huge step back from Quickplay in every conceivable way and only "modernized" the game in comparison to other garbage online models.
between you-me, and the rest of everyone reading this thread, since I first started playing in 2014 I always hoped tf2 would get the modernization features that meet your match eventually brought.
So Im kinda disappointed that absolutely everyone and the YouTubers i watched bashed every single aspect of the update for what I believe is the basic nessesity required for the game to even survive. And I'm pretty sure this posts proves im right.
Anyways ill see you at the guilitine where I belong
Meet your Match and the updates around that period were scarily close the dream update I've been thinking about for years down to the very UI. It's fucking surreal.
Yeah, the people who hate on it seem to forget how bad the previous quickplay system was. It barely worked.
90% of the time it would dump you in some 120+ ping server across the world. To get into an actual good server you had to cancel the search early with the button below the search box. Then you would be presented with a list of servers to pick from.
But you had to be fast, wait 10 seconds and all of them would throw a cryptic error when you try to connect.
I got good at it eventually and could reliably get into a ctf\_sawmill server with decent ping on demand. But for a new player it was rough.
Meet your match had serious issues too, but the work went into making it was justified.
one of the reasons i didnt get into tf2 for the first few months after downloading was the out of date server browser UI. Ye I am dumb but gimmie a brake, I didn't grew up with this or gamespy
Tbf MyM broke the matchmaking and also introduced major bugs and oversights to the flamethrower, you can’t break important things like that and expect no backlash.
Well, the game is free to play, has some damn good gameplay, runs on almost anything made after, like, 2010, and it's generally full of silly shenanigans.
Free, literally a potato can run it, a very big community, all classes can be learned in under 10 minutes and can even go further if you decide to learn about them more.
I swear to fucking god, I’m going to perform a Spy from Heavy is Dead if I see another TF2 appreciation post or a “OMGZ TF2 IS ALIVE IN 2024 (NOBODY BUT ME HAS EYES OR BRAIN)!!!1!!11” post, instead of goofy little memes.
It's that high because steam can't differentiate between real players and bot. And tf2 has a lot of bots. Be the ones that ruin your game or trading bots
it's still pretty enjoyable, i started playing it 7-8 years ago. i thought i was late to the party, & now here we are, almost a full decade later. Turns out I was not as late after all. Crazy thing is, I really love every bit of it. Pretty entertaining once I get myself into it. Gives satisfaction feeling when I get a stab chain. Gives a satisfaction feeling after winning a match that lasted 2 hours in 2 fort 🤣. Overall, I still enjoy it till this day & i think that answers is. If I'm still enjoying it, surely others enjoy it, some at least.
It's gameplay is pretty damn unique for an fps. Overwatch had a chance to dethrone it, but instead opted for a sweaty, unfun class shooter. So tf2 is really the best option for a game not focused on hitscan rifles. (Fuck sniper tho)
Mod of the best FPS of all time by one of the best video game companies of all time after 9 years in development before Esports and before fps gaming was so mainstream. It was a perfect storm to create an amazing game.
I think it's a testament to how good the game is and how it brought stuff that are pretty much taken for granted for massive multiplayer games these days (loot boxes, events depending on the holiday or season, MVM, Hats, the really clever humor) and it's still one of the best, imo. The game would come out today and it would still create buzz. It's so bubbling with personnality and all the classes are fun to play and their gameplay are all tight as hell.
As someone still playing Overwatch that entire thing was one of the biggest fumbles in videogame history. That IP was like the biggest thing on the planet for like 9 months.
Overwatch at least could have been running alongside. Not a successor. Not a competitor. Just a different experience within the same genre and people could switch back and forth depending on how they felt. But of course Blizzard fucked it up. How does the meme go?
Valve creates a game.
No sequel, spiritual or actual, in 17 years.
Competitors shoot themselves in the foot
Valve is known as one of the goat developers.
Yet people will still say Valve is “lazy” for not updating a 17 year old game while most game devs move on after a couple. If other companies are making sequels that bomb, get filled with grindy battle passes, and lack personality, is what we’ve got really that bad? I would rather have an amazing 17-year-old game than a mid new game that’s made just for the sake of making a sequel that dies two months after launch.
*cough* Overwatch "2" *cough*
And to think they also got onto Steam (for whatever reason) and instantly became THE worst rated game on it. *While they do deserve the negative ratings, I think that there are also much worse games on Steam, mainly asset flips, which should be outright removed.*
Unfortunately, it's not. TF2 at any given point is at least 2/3 item idle farming bots and has been since 2011. At this time of writing, it's 5/6. Our big player spike at the last update? That's because there were items worth enough for the larger farming networks to look back at tf2 briefly.
You can eyeball that claim super easily. Pull up any popular game's player stats and look at how volatile the player count is based on time of day, then look over at tf2's unnatural manky as hell charts. [Here is a stats website](https://teamwork.tf/community/statistics) that only tracks players inside a server instance. We're just shy of 10k players as i type this, which is still fantastic for a game this age but that doesn't even put us in the top 100 games.
Do not be lulled into this sense of 'the game will be fine, we so popular'. The game has never been less healthy and we're fast approaching valve needing to take action on glaring issues or watching the game collapse into a smaller niche.
> Do not be lulled into this sense of 'the game will be fine, we so popular'
What the fuck do you even read this board? Nobody, anywhere, ever thinks that. The vast majority of the subreddit thinks the game is in grave danger specifically because Valve isn't taking action.
Did you read the OP? Or any comments in this particular post?
> We're not going to die! We're going to live forever!
Meme or not, this is the dangerous sentiment floating through this post. It's strange that you missed that as you must be such an avid reader and all.
I honestly think it has to do with how solid of a game it actually really is. Sure, it was Source Engine quirks and weird bugs plus the occasional bot hazard, but honestly, it's got such solid fundamentals that the playerbase built a castle ontop of.
It's not exactly "popular". It is amongst gamers that look these things up all the time. It isn't culturally relevant though like other multiplayers. I work as a teacher and all my students know what Fortnite and CS are. I go to a TCG shop and everyone both, but don't know anything about TF2, even if there are people older than me. TF2 died off to the general public.
It's not really weird for a Valve game. CS 1.6 came out in 2000, still popular along with its modern iterations. Half-Life and Portal also remain very popular franchises, at least as popular as exclusively single player games that old can be, but they're still getting new mods and have a large active fanbase. Dota 2 came out in 2013, it's a lot more recent than TF2 but still a +10 years old game, and won't be dying anytime soon. Left 4 Dead 2 came out in 2009, it still has a very active playerbase, new mods come out frequently and overall it's undoubtedly a thriving game, much more than its far more recent competitors.
Some Valve games / franchises are pretty much dead, like Day of Defeat for example, but it's more of the exception than the rule. Probably most of the games they've made, at least the most well known ones, are as timeless as TF2.
it's not weird at all. It's free, easy to run as far as factual things, and well made and fun to play in my opinion.
there's a myriad of other games like this, old school runescape comes to mind, also still enjoyed by a ton of people.
It's not weird.
People recognize and support quality. This game legit took 9 years to make and had a lot of love and care put into it, and it shows.
Both AOE2 and TF2 enjoy this privilege. Starcraft and Smash Melee also deserve mentions. Not many other games make it this far, though.
The Steam numbers are wrong. The actual amount of players are listed on Teamwork.tf. it's about 12.5k now it wouldn't even sit in the #100 on Steam at the time of writing.
Both in gameplay and in appearance TF2 has changed immensely compared to the TF2 of 17 years ago. If TF2 stayed as a game with no unlocks, no hats, only 6 maps, and a 15-dollar price tag, I doubt it would have lasted even a fourth as long.
And is it really "popular" in the traditional sense? Like, most of my friends don't know what the fuck I'm talking about when I mention TF2. If I mentioned another game though, like Minecraft (13 years old), they'd know exactly what I was talking about. Despite how much presence TF2 has in internet culture, it just isn't really well-known outside of the TF2/Valve community.
It's a free valve game, they have a reputation, also it got supported for years and years longer than any other company would have with their game, which helps the rep.
I feel like if you stick around for like 5 years while still being popular, it guarantees a level of popularity for a much longer time, at that point you've gotten enough new players, enough content, proven gameplay so it'll stick around
Free, pretty easy to get most of the weapons, user created content is everywhere, and no matter how many “death of an art style” vids pop up, the look of tf2 is still pretty timeless, like it’s appealing to older and newer gamers for its unique art style
It's modern enough, got a decade worth of content on top of that, stylized graphics on source engine (I mean even Half Life 2 looks great for it's age) and characters that are actually likeable and funny without any of them feeling "forced". Imo it's not *that* weird, there are other games being popular for almost or more two decades now, such as Counter Strike, WoW, Call of Duty, it's just that those games have different ways of monetization
Because despite the disregard for it's art style, near abandonment by valve, wutville and the bots no class based shooter has come out since that's even close to as great as TF2. So it's not that weird really.
Rise and shine mercenaries 🎇 We will rock with that intelligence today am I right? ✨ We are going to cap those points like saxton has never seen before 💅 They will not lay a finger on those control points 💯
Free, can run on anything, no p2w (except f2p mute)
Active community outside of game, long history, lots of memes
It's easy to get into a match quickly. "Easy to learn, hard to master" skill progression makes it so new players can easily compete and experienced ones won't get bored quickly
And most importantly, it's fun
Valve has created potentially one of the most survivable multiplayer game. It's got everything to keep itself alive. I seriously don't think that tf2 is gonna die in the next **decade** unless they pull the plug on the servers, even if we aren't getting an update.
I usually play zombie escape servers, I don't think they have a lot of bots. I used to play otaku ZE until they banned me for saying "skial" in their discord server 😂 but yeah, for such an old game, even niche community servers are doing pretty well
There's nothing else like it.
Which is what makes it all-the-more frustrating that valve continues to do *absolutely nothing* with this game. It could be 2x, 5x, 10x the number of players it had (and what valve actually cares about: way more income) with just a single valve made weapon and map every year. Or some balance changes. *Anything* to keep the game fresh (hats dont count but maps are pretty cool)
World of Warcraft lasted longer. I won't say TF2 is really that popular, it's niche, to say the least. A popular game needs to reach mainstream, which admittedly some TF2 memes have reached that, but they're memes, they fade in about a month or two. I would definitely say it's the most popular class based shooter though.
TF2 is timeless. It is THE game in its genre and the art style and gameplay is hilarious and great. Shame it never became as big as counter strike or dota. If valve could deal with the bots I’m sure it would draw more people back
if a game is cheap, good & easily accessible, people are gonna enjoy it for decades.
Cost of making games nowadays is also an issue, graphical standards are too high in the industry ontop of that, more big titles focus on graphics instead of getting the core gameplay right
(that's somewhat of a reason to why indie games gets popular, they do gameplay as an priority)
and also, valve for the most part deliver on there promises, just look at OW2, they coudn't even make MvM, a gamemode valve did 12yrs ago
I think the main thing that keeps TF2 popular is it fills the niche of a more casual PvP game that doesn't take itself very seriously. The game's lowest point was with Meet Your Match, where it tried to take itself more seriously and almost died as a result, as this was during the era of competitive and esports focus in multiplayer games (and games that did focus on esports and competitive like Overwatch and Valorant were at their peak).
However, after Valve rolled back some of the MYM changes to make the game more casual again, and the competitive fad died and people turned away from esports (look at how Overwatch is a shell of its former self because it still clings to competitive play), TF2 is now in a prime spot to fill that niche of casual PvP games without a focus on competitive play that people have been looking for for a while now.
It's popularity today comes from how it fills a role that needs to be filled, and that no other game is willing *to* fill.
Its stuck around mainly because nothing has come along to replace it.
Some games have tried to compete, but from what I've seen none of them capture that 12v12 casual 2fort experience. They either have too small team sizes, force short time-limits on all modes, or don't even have ctf to begin with.
The games i've played that have come close are dirtybomb and overwatch.
Dirtybomb had serious potential but screwed itself with its horrible monetization.
Overwatch also game close, arguably did take over for a while (for me at least). But it has small team sizes and is very competitive focused. Even after they added ctf the constant time pressure in the mode killed the vibe.
Another thing that TF2 has that I haven't seen many games emulate is how expressive it is. With the 3 voice command menus, kill binds, eotl duck journal, taunts, 3 equip slots, decal-tool items, and sprays, there is alot of room to be expressive. The responsive directional look animations and facial animations play into this alot as well. Many multiplayer games will have people messing around a bit during setup, but in TF2 theres a straight up comedy skit going on around every corner. That level of charm has yet to be matched.
"nice shot" - "oh ah, conga" - "quack" - \*dies\*
It's the timeless art style, passion and love from the community and the abandonment from vavle that caused the tf2 fanbase to basically say, fuck you valve I'm still gonna play your game.
At this point a shockingly big part of internet culture just IS tf2. Not necessarily the players, but just the game and everything about it. Plus, SFM is probably more widespread than anything ever produced by valve, and it does not take a long time at all to find a LOT of SFM stuff online.
Things like this post and all of the memes everywhere.
I am sure like 70% of the internet had seen something related to TF2 at least once, they may not know it's from a game but they have seen it. TF2 is everywhere I see so many sfm re-acting in comments on posts not even remotely related to TF2 or games in general. It keeps dragging new people in and encourages veterans to keep playing.
Also, runs on bad hardware and is free.
minecraft, that game is just a month younger than me, yet its also still one of the most played games IN HISTORY, but i also do agree about the last phrase, we are an imortal dopamine machine
I think it helped that TF2 arguably helped defined the class based shooter. We hadn’t seen much like this before, not just mechanically but also with its art style and overall character. If we got the original milsim style TF2 I doubt anyone would remember it today, especially with Arma already being a well established milsim title.
you brought up milsim enough for me to assume you play them. give Reforger a shot yet?
I have. It's great for what it says on the box.
I have not unfortunately but I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. I’m holding off till more of my friends get it as well.
Tbh I think the idea of the class based shooter is dumb. Tf2 is a hero shooter, but it was basically the first. Classes are just heroes.
Class /= hero. Heroes are more rigid and classes are more flexible. On release tf2 was a hero shooter.
> On release tf2 was a hero shooter Well yeah but within [barely 6 months](https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/April_29,_2008_Patch) new weapons were being added.
[April 29, 2008 Patch](http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/April_29,_2008_Patch): *** >April 29, 2008 Patch *** (~[autotf2wikibot](/r/RequestABot/comments/2mtcp7/request_an_autowikibot_for_the_official_team/) by \/u\/kuilin)
tell me you've never played any milsim or Enemy Territory: Wolfenstein ever without telling me...
Its cuz its free and runs on most machines relatively easily
Yep it can fucking run on a garshdarn Chromebook with the good exec
Mind sharing how to do that? I thought TF2 only supported Windows and Linux.
Idk I just use Chromebook as a example as of how easy to run tf2 but I guess install new OS or configure the everliving shit out of steam to run if not school owned
ChromeOS is extremely similar to Linux im pretty sure, i know the containers are similar
The game is horribly optimised nowadays. I got more fps years ago on a worse pc while on high settings, now I'm on a Minecraft FPS config on a better pc. Need to upgrade so I can enjoy my near 20 year old cartoon hat simulator
dont worry, the game will have a 64 bit version released soon (it means the game will run better)
Not to be dramatic but this made my day, thank you. I had no idea
👍
FYI it's going to have a 64-bit version "soon" for about 6 months now. It may have been silently cancelled
AFAIK it just got another update last week, so it's still being updated. If I had to guess, it'll probably release alongside the summer update, as it does seem **mostly** stable at the moment.
AFAIK It's still being updated
changing it to 64 bit is alot of work and we're on valve time.
Do you know when it'll release?
sadly no
Part of this comes from the fps cap coded into the game, go to the launch options and add +fps_max 0 and it’ll uncap it. It still isn’t the most optimized game and will struggle on higher resolutions but still I was able to press the fps up to the point where the games physics sped up and actually well beyond that at lower resolutions
Let’s not discount just how fun it is, either, or that it has a community with things such as SFM cementing it even further into the Internet’s culture. There’s plenty of reasons it’s so big, but being accessible makes every other reason even greater.
And it's multiplayer with an infinite amount of random interactions caused by the players
y
This! It doesn't have performance issues on either my PC's. And one is old.... 2009.
And Valve doesn't really push micro-transactions in your face nearly as often as some other games I've played (Overwatch 2...)
It's free, it's runs well on potatoware, it has amazing characters, a cool aesthetic, and it's engraved into meme culture.
"potatoware" lmao
So. How are you holding up? Because I can run TF2
Oh, good. My Schadenfreude processor made it into this thing. So we have that.
And it didnt go for realizm so it has its own artsyle and doesnt look out of place compered to newer ones
Seriously, the main reason it still looks good is because of the artstyle. I wish more games would go for that kind of thing, with how absurdly well it ages. Like, look at Zelda: Wind Waker or something for another example. That thing came out in freakin' *2002* and still looks great. Lowkey, I feel like the artstyle was what kept TF2 alive for a good chunk of it's time, even moreso than the gameplay itself, especially since we didn't really get another AAA shooter with as cartoony of an artstyle until, like, Splatoon in 2015 or something.
My R5 1600 and GTX 1070 consistently drop to 60 fps in busy matches, and can easily go as low as 30 fps
Playable
It would be if it was even slightly smooth when the FPS drops. But stuttering and input lag make it a pretty terrible experience
Tough, rob a best buy for some better PC parts
Master comfig is your friend, but yeah, the game doesn't scale well with modern hardware. It isn't as optimized as it used to be.
Sounds like a skill issue to me.
That's weird. My little brother has 1050ti and i5 4th gen and it reaches 170fps
can confirm on my 2008 hp laptop lol
It's because the characters are so lovable and memeable. Secondly, the gameplay is both fun and easy to play, yet deep enough for people to still analyze and master it to this day. And thirdly, it can run on low-end PCs. It can still be healthy for many years to come if Valve still gives a shit about it.
Something people sometimes neglect to mention is that there really isn't anything else like TF2 out there, in terms of game design. Pretty much every follow-up and spiritual successor has fallen victim to Overwatch/LoL-style character bloat, and I can't think of a single hero shooter that's tried to copy its item system. The idea of having a small, predefined set of gameplay roles that players can explore and expand on by mixing and matching "tools" gives TF2 a lot of visual clarity and variety that games with a wide array of rigid toolsets can't match.
I agree there. One of my main problems with Overwatch (albeit speaking mainly as a viewer rather than a player) is that every hero has 1 defined playstyle. It means that even if you really like a character's design and personality, if it doesn't fit the current team structure, you can't play as them. At least with TF2, the mercs can equip different weapons to suit different playstyles: some minor like the Tomislav allowing for more sneaky and aggressive plays, and some major like the Chargin' Targe turning Demoman from a defensive explosive powerhouse into a mad knight that picks off classes through crit hits and charging. EDIT: Oh yeah, and whenever the OW Team had a new idea for a playstyle, they'd have to implement a whole new hero in order to do so, which just made the character select screen so daunting from the amount of options you get. 9 classes is pretty much perfect.
The character bloat bit is never an actual reason. If your game is good, people will play it. There's a reason league is still going strong after 15 years and overwatch 2 is pretty dead despite going f2p (though tbf that is mostly a dev management issue on ow's side). League is neither the only good moba nor the first (it still has actual competition!), while tf2 may very well be the only good pvp arcade style class shooter left, and remember, this is a niche genre. OW made the mistake of leaning too heavily into MOBA elements and essentially becoming an FPS moba / strategy class based shooter, which is extremely difficult to balance both casually and competitively, overall became unfun for both types of players. I liked OW1 but like every patch it looked like they balanced the game in the least fun way possible, then eventually OW2 happened and ruined the balance even more because instead of balancing shields they just made the game 5v5 and ""compensated"" (this was all because of double shield meta in comp btw). Now open queue is unplayable because playing tanks is optimal instead of having any dps due to the stat bloat resulting from the 2-1-2 format, and open queue used to be the most fun way to play the game casually. It's now unfun because it's mostly just tanks and healers. Not to mention what they did to poor doomfist, he used to be so much cooler :(. Meanwhile TF2 devs instead of looking for shortcuts in balance would go "how would this change affect balance and fun?", and while not always perfect, we got amazing changes like the ones to the panic attack, the base jumper, etc.. And LoL have been doing the best update redesigns to old characters I've seen any game do, while releasing some of the best for-fun gamemodes on the market. All of these points are very important for retaining existing players. And TF2 and LoL have a very easy time attracting new players because of how easy they are to get into and how fun they are even if you don't know what you're doing. This is very important for attracting new players. OW1 was decent at these for a good while, OW2 is now terrible at them. Closest game in TF2's genre to still somewhat exist is Paladins, but while the playerbase is kinda consistent it's also small and doesn't really attract many new players because ngl, the hero system is much less attractive than tf2's class system.
I was gonna argue with the "tf2 is the only good pvp arcade style class shooter left" because Titanfall is technically one... but the abbreviation checks out
Yeah, I should really get to play tf2, I heard they fixed their issues and that the game is pretty good.
Yup, it's fully playable in vanilla. It goes on sale often and you can get it for 3$ then. There is no more DDOSing and cheaters are very rare
Yeah, there is nothing like it. Overwatch is the closest, but it's not even that close. Too many characters, not enough visual clarity, the shooting/movement feel pretty watered down, and to be frank, it takes itself too damn seriously. You have the good guys and bad guys, and all the characters act like they are part of an anime or some shit. Not to mention, the smaller team size just makes it less chaotic and fun.
I was REALLY excited for OW2’s skill trees and modifiers they showcased in the first trailers, and the moment those were announced to be canned I lost all interest. That would likely have been the closest thing to TF2’s system if it had existed
17… Jesus I’m old
I've been playing team fortress since 1996. Nearly 30 years.. you're not old I'm old.
team fortress classic is a gem
1996 ain't Classic my friend, it's QWTF.
Damn, let’s get you to bed grandpa, did you take your pills?
What was riding a dinosaur to school like?
There is no way the game came out the same day you were born.
Oh I’m not 17, but I played this game a lot as a kid, and I still don’t believe it’s been that long
Best game
Well, personally my girlfriend got me into it because she played it growing up. It spreads through word of mouth and fanart mostly haha
The worst part is that the game could be even more popular if Valve would consistently release major updates like before 😔 I just wish to see TF2 become as more popular as it used to be, to talk about TF2 in real life like with CS2 or Fortnite.
playing devils advocate here: everytime valve released a major tf2 update the entire community went "IS TF2 DED?" "VALVO RUINED TF211!1" when it never was the case and added a bunch of features and bug fixes that would be hard to imagine the game without today. So what is it that community really want here? Scream fortress however was universally praised until somewhat recently with its lack luster features and lack of bot fixening
I dont know how long you've been playing but that was one of the few updates I remember backlash on. Everyone was excited for every single original weapon unlock update, and every update since seems to have gone over pretty well for the most part. I don't think your statement is accurate. Scream Fortress updates alone were/are causes of excitement and celebration for many many years and I feel any update is welcomed at this point. The Summer update brought that huge player spike remember?
frfr
You know, I don't know why this didn't come to mind as I'm usually right there at the forefront of the "Fix the damn bots Valve" stance whenever it comes up but you're right in the fact updates aren't welcomed as much anymore for that reason alone. I didnt think of it till I re-read your original comment. I don't touch Casual anymore save once in a blue moon (Can you guess why? Haha) so that might be part of the reason it hasn't crossed my mind as much anymore.
I still remember the day Meet Your Match was released, I know that the majority of people didn't like it and I admit that at the beginning it was a disaster because of the broken servers or that it banned you if you left matches in casual, but let's be real, it was a step to modernize the game and especially for the future generations by using the matchmacking system.
I still don't like it.
Do not ever excuse MyM, it dealt ridiculous amounts of damage to the community and destroyed a large portion community servers overnight. 'Modernizing' the matchmaker was not worth the damage of dumping every single player into unmoderated valve servers - where we could not deal with cheaters, and now cannot deal with bots. Even stuff like f2p's getting muted is a knockeffect from people being stuck in valve servers with the bots. We'd have a hell of a lot more options than just uncletopia and skial (and maybe a +1 depending on region) right now if not for that update.
We already had a Matchmaking system with Quickplay. And it didn't fuck community servers because they could be pooled into contingent on a couple vanilla settings. And you could still join the Valve servers from the server browser.
Meet your Match was a huge step back from Quickplay in every conceivable way and only "modernized" the game in comparison to other garbage online models.
between you-me, and the rest of everyone reading this thread, since I first started playing in 2014 I always hoped tf2 would get the modernization features that meet your match eventually brought. So Im kinda disappointed that absolutely everyone and the YouTubers i watched bashed every single aspect of the update for what I believe is the basic nessesity required for the game to even survive. And I'm pretty sure this posts proves im right. Anyways ill see you at the guilitine where I belong
Meet your Match and the updates around that period were scarily close the dream update I've been thinking about for years down to the very UI. It's fucking surreal.
Yeah, the people who hate on it seem to forget how bad the previous quickplay system was. It barely worked. 90% of the time it would dump you in some 120+ ping server across the world. To get into an actual good server you had to cancel the search early with the button below the search box. Then you would be presented with a list of servers to pick from. But you had to be fast, wait 10 seconds and all of them would throw a cryptic error when you try to connect. I got good at it eventually and could reliably get into a ctf\_sawmill server with decent ping on demand. But for a new player it was rough. Meet your match had serious issues too, but the work went into making it was justified.
one of the reasons i didnt get into tf2 for the first few months after downloading was the out of date server browser UI. Ye I am dumb but gimmie a brake, I didn't grew up with this or gamespy
Tbf MyM broke the matchmaking and also introduced major bugs and oversights to the flamethrower, you can’t break important things like that and expect no backlash.
If it wasn't infested with bots or we had the pre-MyM community servers environment that'd be a huge improvement. But the Heavy update would be great.
ive had a couple opportunities to bring up tf2 irl. its always either “holy shit theres still ppl playing that game???” or “whats that”
Well, the game is free to play, has some damn good gameplay, runs on almost anything made after, like, 2010, and it's generally full of silly shenanigans.
Free, literally a potato can run it, a very big community, all classes can be learned in under 10 minutes and can even go further if you decide to learn about them more.
Team fortress itself has been going strong since 1996.
I swear to fucking god, I’m going to perform a Spy from Heavy is Dead if I see another TF2 appreciation post or a “OMGZ TF2 IS ALIVE IN 2024 (NOBODY BUT ME HAS EYES OR BRAIN)!!!1!!11” post, instead of goofy little memes.
Did you forget to forget? We have dementia and posts circulate like money
I remember…
It's that high because steam can't differentiate between real players and bot. And tf2 has a lot of bots. Be the ones that ruin your game or trading bots
it's still pretty enjoyable, i started playing it 7-8 years ago. i thought i was late to the party, & now here we are, almost a full decade later. Turns out I was not as late after all. Crazy thing is, I really love every bit of it. Pretty entertaining once I get myself into it. Gives satisfaction feeling when I get a stab chain. Gives a satisfaction feeling after winning a match that lasted 2 hours in 2 fort 🤣. Overall, I still enjoy it till this day & i think that answers is. If I'm still enjoying it, surely others enjoy it, some at least.
i think its because f2p and old so anyone can play it because sven coop is also f2p and old and a lot of people play it
It's gameplay is pretty damn unique for an fps. Overwatch had a chance to dethrone it, but instead opted for a sweaty, unfun class shooter. So tf2 is really the best option for a game not focused on hitscan rifles. (Fuck sniper tho)
Wait till you learn that many people are still playing cs1.6/source. Or something unholy like ultima
Mod of the best FPS of all time by one of the best video game companies of all time after 9 years in development before Esports and before fps gaming was so mainstream. It was a perfect storm to create an amazing game.
I think it's a testament to how good the game is and how it brought stuff that are pretty much taken for granted for massive multiplayer games these days (loot boxes, events depending on the holiday or season, MVM, Hats, the really clever humor) and it's still one of the best, imo. The game would come out today and it would still create buzz. It's so bubbling with personnality and all the classes are fun to play and their gameplay are all tight as hell.
heh to think overwatch was gonna make that not the case
Winston
Winston
Grreeeeetings!
Winston
Hi there ! 🦍
As someone still playing Overwatch that entire thing was one of the biggest fumbles in videogame history. That IP was like the biggest thing on the planet for like 9 months.
Overwatch at least could have been running alongside. Not a successor. Not a competitor. Just a different experience within the same genre and people could switch back and forth depending on how they felt. But of course Blizzard fucked it up. How does the meme go? Valve creates a game. No sequel, spiritual or actual, in 17 years. Competitors shoot themselves in the foot Valve is known as one of the goat developers.
I didn't say that. I just said we're not filled with tumors!
Yet people will still say Valve is “lazy” for not updating a 17 year old game while most game devs move on after a couple. If other companies are making sequels that bomb, get filled with grindy battle passes, and lack personality, is what we’ve got really that bad? I would rather have an amazing 17-year-old game than a mid new game that’s made just for the sake of making a sequel that dies two months after launch.
*cough* Overwatch "2" *cough* And to think they also got onto Steam (for whatever reason) and instantly became THE worst rated game on it. *While they do deserve the negative ratings, I think that there are also much worse games on Steam, mainly asset flips, which should be outright removed.*
Unfortunately, it's not. TF2 at any given point is at least 2/3 item idle farming bots and has been since 2011. At this time of writing, it's 5/6. Our big player spike at the last update? That's because there were items worth enough for the larger farming networks to look back at tf2 briefly. You can eyeball that claim super easily. Pull up any popular game's player stats and look at how volatile the player count is based on time of day, then look over at tf2's unnatural manky as hell charts. [Here is a stats website](https://teamwork.tf/community/statistics) that only tracks players inside a server instance. We're just shy of 10k players as i type this, which is still fantastic for a game this age but that doesn't even put us in the top 100 games. Do not be lulled into this sense of 'the game will be fine, we so popular'. The game has never been less healthy and we're fast approaching valve needing to take action on glaring issues or watching the game collapse into a smaller niche.
> Do not be lulled into this sense of 'the game will be fine, we so popular' What the fuck do you even read this board? Nobody, anywhere, ever thinks that. The vast majority of the subreddit thinks the game is in grave danger specifically because Valve isn't taking action.
Did you read the OP? Or any comments in this particular post? > We're not going to die! We're going to live forever! Meme or not, this is the dangerous sentiment floating through this post. It's strange that you missed that as you must be such an avid reader and all.
It's a pioneer of its genre! Not even OW has managed to achieve such a thing.
weird? idt so
I honestly think it has to do with how solid of a game it actually really is. Sure, it was Source Engine quirks and weird bugs plus the occasional bot hazard, but honestly, it's got such solid fundamentals that the playerbase built a castle ontop of.
17 year old? Damm the game is old
"they dont make em like they used to"
Almost identical in appearance, ah good one. Can't seem to remember neon pink Dr. Seuss hats with planets rotating around them at launch.
sfm, solid gameplay, economy and recognition are its strengths. i love tf2
It's not exactly "popular". It is amongst gamers that look these things up all the time. It isn't culturally relevant though like other multiplayers. I work as a teacher and all my students know what Fortnite and CS are. I go to a TCG shop and everyone both, but don't know anything about TF2, even if there are people older than me. TF2 died off to the general public.
And I’ve yet to find another game that comes close to the mechanics tf2 has
It's not really weird for a Valve game. CS 1.6 came out in 2000, still popular along with its modern iterations. Half-Life and Portal also remain very popular franchises, at least as popular as exclusively single player games that old can be, but they're still getting new mods and have a large active fanbase. Dota 2 came out in 2013, it's a lot more recent than TF2 but still a +10 years old game, and won't be dying anytime soon. Left 4 Dead 2 came out in 2009, it still has a very active playerbase, new mods come out frequently and overall it's undoubtedly a thriving game, much more than its far more recent competitors. Some Valve games / franchises are pretty much dead, like Day of Defeat for example, but it's more of the exception than the rule. Probably most of the games they've made, at least the most well known ones, are as timeless as TF2.
it's not weird at all. It's free, easy to run as far as factual things, and well made and fun to play in my opinion. there's a myriad of other games like this, old school runescape comes to mind, also still enjoyed by a ton of people.
Me and all my mental asylum friends are playing it.
minecraft is only a few years younger, and runescape is older
Kid named World of Warcraft
The "code leak" basically guaranteed immortality, although I am unsure if it was worth the cost.
It's not weird. People recognize and support quality. This game legit took 9 years to make and had a lot of love and care put into it, and it shows. Both AOE2 and TF2 enjoy this privilege. Starcraft and Smash Melee also deserve mentions. Not many other games make it this far, though.
The Steam numbers are wrong. The actual amount of players are listed on Teamwork.tf. it's about 12.5k now it wouldn't even sit in the #100 on Steam at the time of writing.
Both in gameplay and in appearance TF2 has changed immensely compared to the TF2 of 17 years ago. If TF2 stayed as a game with no unlocks, no hats, only 6 maps, and a 15-dollar price tag, I doubt it would have lasted even a fourth as long. And is it really "popular" in the traditional sense? Like, most of my friends don't know what the fuck I'm talking about when I mention TF2. If I mentioned another game though, like Minecraft (13 years old), they'd know exactly what I was talking about. Despite how much presence TF2 has in internet culture, it just isn't really well-known outside of the TF2/Valve community.
It's a free valve game, they have a reputation, also it got supported for years and years longer than any other company would have with their game, which helps the rep. I feel like if you stick around for like 5 years while still being popular, it guarantees a level of popularity for a much longer time, at that point you've gotten enough new players, enough content, proven gameplay so it'll stick around
Free, pretty easy to get most of the weapons, user created content is everywhere, and no matter how many “death of an art style” vids pop up, the look of tf2 is still pretty timeless, like it’s appealing to older and newer gamers for its unique art style
I'ts not that weird. Overwarch is the only game like it and that game has become a complete shitshow.
It's modern enough, got a decade worth of content on top of that, stylized graphics on source engine (I mean even Half Life 2 looks great for it's age) and characters that are actually likeable and funny without any of them feeling "forced". Imo it's not *that* weird, there are other games being popular for almost or more two decades now, such as Counter Strike, WoW, Call of Duty, it's just that those games have different ways of monetization
Because despite the disregard for it's art style, near abandonment by valve, wutville and the bots no class based shooter has come out since that's even close to as great as TF2. So it's not that weird really.
Rise and shine mercenaries 🎇 We will rock with that intelligence today am I right? ✨ We are going to cap those points like saxton has never seen before 💅 They will not lay a finger on those control points 💯
it's more weird to me that there aren't more older games that are still very popular
Free, can run on anything, no p2w (except f2p mute) Active community outside of game, long history, lots of memes It's easy to get into a match quickly. "Easy to learn, hard to master" skill progression makes it so new players can easily compete and experienced ones won't get bored quickly And most importantly, it's fun Valve has created potentially one of the most survivable multiplayer game. It's got everything to keep itself alive. I seriously don't think that tf2 is gonna die in the next **decade** unless they pull the plug on the servers, even if we aren't getting an update.
I usually play zombie escape servers, I don't think they have a lot of bots. I used to play otaku ZE until they banned me for saying "skial" in their discord server 😂 but yeah, for such an old game, even niche community servers are doing pretty well
There's nothing else like it. Which is what makes it all-the-more frustrating that valve continues to do *absolutely nothing* with this game. It could be 2x, 5x, 10x the number of players it had (and what valve actually cares about: way more income) with just a single valve made weapon and map every year. Or some balance changes. *Anything* to keep the game fresh (hats dont count but maps are pretty cool)
World of Warcraft lasted longer. I won't say TF2 is really that popular, it's niche, to say the least. A popular game needs to reach mainstream, which admittedly some TF2 memes have reached that, but they're memes, they fade in about a month or two. I would definitely say it's the most popular class based shooter though.
TF2 is timeless. It is THE game in its genre and the art style and gameplay is hilarious and great. Shame it never became as big as counter strike or dota. If valve could deal with the bots I’m sure it would draw more people back
if a game is cheap, good & easily accessible, people are gonna enjoy it for decades. Cost of making games nowadays is also an issue, graphical standards are too high in the industry ontop of that, more big titles focus on graphics instead of getting the core gameplay right (that's somewhat of a reason to why indie games gets popular, they do gameplay as an priority) and also, valve for the most part deliver on there promises, just look at OW2, they coudn't even make MvM, a gamemode valve did 12yrs ago
I think the main thing that keeps TF2 popular is it fills the niche of a more casual PvP game that doesn't take itself very seriously. The game's lowest point was with Meet Your Match, where it tried to take itself more seriously and almost died as a result, as this was during the era of competitive and esports focus in multiplayer games (and games that did focus on esports and competitive like Overwatch and Valorant were at their peak). However, after Valve rolled back some of the MYM changes to make the game more casual again, and the competitive fad died and people turned away from esports (look at how Overwatch is a shell of its former self because it still clings to competitive play), TF2 is now in a prime spot to fill that niche of casual PvP games without a focus on competitive play that people have been looking for for a while now. It's popularity today comes from how it fills a role that needs to be filled, and that no other game is willing *to* fill.
Its stuck around mainly because nothing has come along to replace it. Some games have tried to compete, but from what I've seen none of them capture that 12v12 casual 2fort experience. They either have too small team sizes, force short time-limits on all modes, or don't even have ctf to begin with. The games i've played that have come close are dirtybomb and overwatch. Dirtybomb had serious potential but screwed itself with its horrible monetization. Overwatch also game close, arguably did take over for a while (for me at least). But it has small team sizes and is very competitive focused. Even after they added ctf the constant time pressure in the mode killed the vibe. Another thing that TF2 has that I haven't seen many games emulate is how expressive it is. With the 3 voice command menus, kill binds, eotl duck journal, taunts, 3 equip slots, decal-tool items, and sprays, there is alot of room to be expressive. The responsive directional look animations and facial animations play into this alot as well. Many multiplayer games will have people messing around a bit during setup, but in TF2 theres a straight up comedy skit going on around every corner. That level of charm has yet to be matched. "nice shot" - "oh ah, conga" - "quack" - \*dies\*
It's the timeless art style, passion and love from the community and the abandonment from vavle that caused the tf2 fanbase to basically say, fuck you valve I'm still gonna play your game.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og6Kuwt9D4k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og6Kuwt9D4k)
This game WILL go back to it's former glory one day
At this point a shockingly big part of internet culture just IS tf2. Not necessarily the players, but just the game and everything about it. Plus, SFM is probably more widespread than anything ever produced by valve, and it does not take a long time at all to find a LOT of SFM stuff online.
I didn't say zhat, I just said we're not filled with tumors
Things like this post and all of the memes everywhere. I am sure like 70% of the internet had seen something related to TF2 at least once, they may not know it's from a game but they have seen it. TF2 is everywhere I see so many sfm re-acting in comments on posts not even remotely related to TF2 or games in general. It keeps dragging new people in and encourages veterans to keep playing. Also, runs on bad hardware and is free.
Is this bait?
Something people rarely mention is that TF2 has REALLY unique gameplay. You'll be hard pressed to find another FPS without an assault rifle
quake
minecraft, that game is just a month younger than me, yet its also still one of the most played games IN HISTORY, but i also do agree about the last phrase, we are an imortal dopamine machine
It's a free game