TF2: The F2P Conspiracy

free to plays are the hardened solo Team Fortress 2. as much as we love to poke fun at them for being mainly new to the game or for being unwilling to drop loads of money into something that is literally free they experience TF2 in what is arguably its purest form no flashy unusual hats no wacky killstreak Sheen's or eye effects no strangers to track their points or kills and most importantly no funny taunts the only things that reside within their inventories are unlockable items received via the random drop system achievements limited crafting system and the occasional Smith stocking and to these new players it's honestly quite exciting obtaining brand new stuff whenever given how little options they already have and then ultimately being disappointed when you realize it's a goddamn eviction notice but I know what you might be thinking why do I care so much about free to plays well let me put it this way a generous majority of players who continue to play TF2 to this very day started playing after the Uber update now why is this specific update relevant why that's because the Uber update was in the long run one of the most influential updates in tf2's history but not because it added staple weapons like the Tommy slav or the funny spoon instead it's simply because from that point forward TF2 was officially a free-to-play game before then the game was priced at twenty dollars and as you would imagine removing that cost of Entry open the floodgates to many more people wanting to at the very least try out TF2 and I guarantee that there's a bunch of you guys out there watching this video who only got into TF2 because it was a free game take me for example I remember getting my first actual desktop machine back in 2017 and installing TF2 shortly after and even though the game wasn't running the best without a config it was a legitimately fun experience collecting new weapons to use slowly figuring out what weapons would work best with others slamming achievements left and right just to receive even more weapons to use and you cannot imagine the roller coaster of emotions I felt after getting the haunted scrap totally legit by the way and wanting to craft it but quickly realizing it was deemed a premium crafting recipe but then of course course I became premium crafted it and well if pixels could collect dust this thing would be covered but I'm getting off track I genuinely feel like Frida plays keep TF2 is alive as it will forever be for every single player finally deciding to move on for good there's at least one person looking around on Steam hearing about it from a friend or even wanting to play it after seeing videos on the game all leading to new people potentially getting into TF2 I mean why wouldn't they TF2 is a fun and goofy little game which just so happens to be free and given its age it should be able to run on basically any relatively modern machine keyword should however the unfortunate truth is that new Frida plays just will not be able to enjoy quite the same experience that most of us had in the past and before you even ask this isn't some Boomer rant about how skillful a combo was before it was nerfed into the ground or about how the game hasn't received a major content update in quite a few years absolutely nothing that selfish this is about the changes that took place against free to place tell me when was the last time you heard a free-to-play talk in a game of TF2 now I understand there's a few factors you might not play with voice chat on I get you plus you could just as easily not know who is a free to play just from the HUD indicator that someone is talking but anyways if you're someone who mainly plays on community servers honestly it's probably been business as usual item but if you frequent official servers you'll notice something very different you hear that it's silence why is that 2020 was quite a bizarre year we all remember how absolutely insane things were and at a place like valve HQ things were no different I could only begin to imagine the pain that that poor goddamn plant went through without being watered for months but somehow in some way during this time of uncertainty valve had released two updates to TF2 that would go on to change the way free to play accounts interact with the game with the first of the two taking place at the tail end of Springtime this was your typical TF2 maintenance update it fixed a few Cosmetics from being broken in some goddamn way it added some medals and for some reason they updated the potassium bonnet by renaming it to the potassium Bonnet and for some reason it ain't documented nonetheless there was one pretty massive change that came with this particular update to quote the patch notes released they restricted certain new accounts from using Chad and official matchmaking modes which was followed by the note that work is ongoing to mitigate the use of new and free accounts for abusive purposes I'm not even gonna bother trying to to beat around the bush this was a clear attempt to try to do something about the ever-growing bot crisis which during this time was very likely full of free-to-play accounts but it also had the unfortunate side effect that all free to play accounts regardless if they're being used to cheats or just to be a goofy little putus were officially restricted from communicating via in-game text chat within official servers and in theory this doesn't sound like it would be that bad of a change I mean chattering this time was being utterly spammed with messages and fake clearings to make using it kinda impossible but due to this affecting every single free to play it meant that if you were one and just wanted to use chat to share your hilarious and original binds compliment someone for a kill or God forbid just talking to another player you just wouldn't be able to do that in the game itself unless you decided to pay the fee to upgrade your account to premium or just exclusively play on community servers but you know tax chat isn't the only type of communication within TF2 and if one option can no longer be used for abuse you could imagine that the other was bound to become the the next Target and it didn't take valve too long to work on that as well less than one whole month later another maintenance update was released this unsurprisingly includes more of the same they updated the sexy added even more medals and funnily enough another cosmetic was renamed but this time it was simply just add an apostrophe to The Eliminator Safeguard once again being undocumented but as expected from the note in the June 16th update action against bots was continued but this time focusing their attention towards voice chat with valve going on to state that accounts that are unable to chat at matchmaking are now also restricted from sending voice chat so let's break this down within the span of about two and a half weeks in an effort to mitigate the damage the bot crisis was causing valve restricted all free to play accounts including many innocent players from using text chat and now voice chat within casual or other officially supported servers plus this wasn't explicitly stated but they are also restricted from using voice commands yeah that's right free to plays from this point forward were unable to call for a goddamn medic it's undeniable that these were pretty questionable decision by Valve but within the context that the world was at stage 10 crazy during this time it's understandable why such a seemingly Small Change was implemented as opposed to something a lot more definite but regardless the reality of the situation is that these changes simply didn't do much of anything against the Bots themselves listen reducing the amount of slurs being slung in text and voice chat is by all means a good change plus the addition of an actual option to disable text and voice communication even though it's pretty easy to do on your own but changes like these can't do anything to stop the Bots all they can do is simply make them silent which may make it harder to notice bots on your own team right away and because these changes were mainly just to clean up foul stuff that was being said by malicious accounts free to plays took quite the hit for something that could have been somewhat maintained via some decent chat moderation but there's another factor I want to go over while these players certainly can play without having the ability to communicate freely or even use voice commands their experience within the easiest way to play the game is by definition limited this sucks if you're just a decent player who just had no interest in giving valve money to have fun with the game you cannot call for spies use team chat to share some secret intelligence or say literally goddamn anything it upsets me that regaining access to such basic features that have been part of the game forever requires paying money or getting someone to give you an upgrade to premium which kind of brings into question that maybe just maybe TF2 is now leaning slightly towards pay to win I understand that this is a very bold claim to make and it's overarguably one of the smallest things in the game but nonetheless it is a part of TF2 communication is what makes a team an actual team why do you think competitive matches are filled with players doing call outs to each other because sharing your knowledge with your team and vice versa can make a team do better if they can take advantage of it but even within casual settings being able to quickly hit a couple buttons to call out a nearby spy pop tuber Camp teleporter by stabbing with your Eternal reward or just some Demo Man camping spot on door communication is a very beneficial part of the game as it takes a team from being just a group of idiots fighting together to an actual unit of cooperating players set on winning a match or making a conga line so I must ask does it feel Fair towards these players to be restricted like this while I understand that valve has always prioritized its premium players in some way all the features that are locked for free to play accounts are designed to be cosmetic or otherwise optional with anything relating to actual gameplay being accessible to all players having extra backpack slots the ability to craft items with rare Blueprints and being able to use your own items to trade are completely optional to actually playing the game I know TF2 is a war themed game address-up but you don't need fancy Cosmetics to play the game whereas being able to communicate with others directly within the match itself is a gameplay mechanic is it a particularly active one God no but it's still something that can be used to give an advantage as long as it's being used correctly which makes it something that should be accessible to all but let's move on from the past and talk about how things are now a little under three years later of course Bots are still around which I know sounds incredibly negative but I understand how difficult it is to tackle this issue effectively and hey credit where credit's due especially since safe TF2 we've gotten quite a lot of progress towards eliminating Bots through quality of life improvements but hold on aren't the Bots actively communicating again what gives the original reason for disabling chat access on free accounts was to prevent these Bots from abusing them but given vac being old as hell as well as their being bypasses for it the fear of these Bots actually getting banned were pretty low so if you're wondering why most of the Bots you see today are still incredibly talkative it's simply because they are not free to play yeah they are Premium Accounts making these changes way back in 2020 essentially irrelevant which leaves free to plays to not only take a pretty major hit but also without any of the benefits that such a change was originally meant to have I understand it sounds like I'm making a big deal over something that only affects so many players and even more so only on official servers you could just as easily boot up a local style server Uncle Topia or God forbid a furry pound server and be able to play the game without losing out on the ability to chat but that discredits the value of casual most new players when starting out will look at their options in queue for casual since it's designed to be the easiest way to play the game and because of that I feel that need to vouch for these players since as easy as it is to forget about free to plays when you don't hear them they deserve to be able to talk especially within the environment that is meant to be run by the company that owns the game so why hasn't Val reverted this decision it could honestly be for a lot of reasons for one it could be as simple as they just simply forgot to revert it but honestly I don't think it would be that simple here's the thing restricting access is something that in theory doesn't make a major effect on the game for the sake of dealing with an ongoing problem makes sense but it also has the effect that it would make some of the actual players who are free to play upgrade to premium which for valve means more money and yes this can be seen as pretty scummy and I hope that's not the case but it feels like a realistic reason to keep things the way they are but alternatively they could still just maintain the belief that it's to prevent Bots from spreading malicious content but as we've seen that was pretty easily bypassed but enough about my conspiracy theories regarding this we have gotten some serious improvements in the years since from giving us the option to censor in-game text chat or as previously mentioned disabling it entirely from Advanced options as well as it being impossible for Bots to copy other people's names and icons to blend in plus the updates towards the voting system which comes with ups and downs but is much better than how it was a long time ago so as gloomy as it may be to still see bots roaming around it's definitely not as bad as it once was now that we've got a more permanent Solutions and if we continue to receive this kind of Maintenance I feel like it can only get better but with that said I hope that one day this decision against free to plays can be reversed it doesn't feel fair to restrict them from using functions that despite being pretty small in the grand scheme of things still have an impact on the game and perhaps I'd feel differently if the original decision back in 2020 made an actual impact on the situation but due to it changing basically nothing I feel like free to plays deserve to be able to talk again within official servers and maybe one of these days it will happen and I'll get hundreds of comments telling me that they can talk again but then again time will tell [Applause] [Music]

Channel: UnusualSandwich

Views: 473,270

Keywords: tf2, team, team fortress, team fortress 2, team fortress two, team fortress classic, valve, valve tf2, valve team fortress 2, tf2 gameplay, gameplay, commentary, casual tf2, tf2 casual, unusualsandwich, unusualsandwich tf2, tf2 unusualsandwich, f2p, free-to-play, free 2 play, free to play, free2play, f2p tf2, tf2 free to play, tf2 f2p, tf2 bot crisis, bot crisis, tf2 bot, free to play mute, muted, voice communication, text communication, valve bots, casual bot, casual mode f2p

Id: 86X5aRHUXs4

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 23 2023