When I first started playing pickups the pub play was very similar to pickup play, yes I’m going to say it pub play back then actually had some tactics and worthwhile speaking.

That, I think is why it was so easy to move from pub to pickups. Nowadays the pubs are so different from the competitive side I think some people see it as not the same game. I think they see pubs with all these different weapons and then pickup’s as very bland. There’s almost no similarity’s between pubs and pickups anymore and this may be one reason some pubbers “fear” or ignore competitive tf2.

This is why I personally don’t like so many updates, yes it’s awesome to see Valve supporting this game, but seriously the split between pubs and pickups is just going to get bigger as they get more weapons and maps and we cut out more weapons and maps.(which is not a bad thing)

Anywho to end off, im packing up my pc 🙁 gonna be so bored without internet 😛 once again have a good one! Cheerios 🙂

The reason I feel players like me are critical of these updates is because we’ve played this game for so long and, number one, taken Valve’s continued support and attention for their game for granted and, two, have grown to love and hate certain aspects of the game, and both of those sides continue to grow in opposite directions.

The reason I love the game is because it is so dynamic, yet still perfectly balanced. In fact, it’s probably stretched the dynamic vs balance spectrum so far that the balance of the game is very delicate. So when new game-play content is so readily produced and released, it’s almost non-essential to the core-gameplay, and often times is detrimental.
Even if Valve are still releasing balances for the game and taking a step forward, it still is boggling how quickly they’re releasing new game content that is potentially ruining their balance, and they end up taking two steps back.

Ironically, this update, specifically, has been more beneficial for 6v6 balance than any update in quite a while. And the stuff that has been recently released doesn’t do the game harm, and the “silly stuff” that has been released in the past year has yet to interfere with the core-gameplay. So for that, I’m grateful.

What saddens me is how synthetically cosmetic the game and its players are slowly becoming. Few people marvel at how great this game’s balance really is in 6v6. What I hope is that Valve realise this, and focus their valiant efforts to improve this balance while adding new content to compliment this balance, and realise new players, players that will add real value to this game, will still be enticed to play their game.

I also understand your point about playing the game for fun. Fun, however, is just a very subjective experience, especially in a game like this. While a casual player can consider fun to be the collecting of hats, crafting items and messing around on a public server, what is fun for me is to watch my demos and realise that I’ve improved a certain aspect of my gameplay, or improved as a player in general, be it strategy, skill or co-ordination. I don’t mean to imply that one experience of fun is more worthy than the other, but I do believe they are two very different experiences.

I, personally, used to only play and enjoy public play just for the fun of the game itself, regardless of its cosmetic value, and I still do.
So fear not, I still do play this game for both those different experiences of “fun”, I just particularly enjoy the latter, and hope future updates don’t steer too far from either with this brave new direction that it has taken.

Enjoy your New Year’s, and I’ll see you on the other side.

And yes their aim of creating this mad updates with crazy stuff always bring new people to the game, then is the filtering process where those gamers that would like something more organized will go after competitive scene so yeh it’s part of the cycle as normal.