I like this game. Honestly, for all my complaints about it, I really and truly love this game. Sadly, it's a sinking ship. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot good with it. Tons of ways to play, loads of weapons, a large selection of maps, and it's easy enough to learn. On the other hand though, it has more than it's fair share of issues.

The community is easily the main problem. Ever since Valve made the game free, hordes of idiots no longer hindered by the issue of paying for the game joined the bandwagon, meaning that people who ideally shouldn't be allowed to contribute to the experience now can. Through this, any potentially good new players see the way that the masses play, and adopt playstyles that are objectively wrong {W+M1'ing as Pyro, wildly spamming grenades as Demoman, healing only Heavies and ignoring the rest of the team as Medic, etc.} as their own, leading to an endless spiral of stupidity. With regards to balancing, almost every time SPUF throws a tantrum over something being 'unbalanced' {OMG vlve git rd of sandman!!1!}, Valve caves in and nerfs the offending material, so expect to have to relearn to use your favorite weapons every now and then. The awful matchmaking system rounds out the experience, making absolute certain you're guaranteed to see the worst of the playerbase. Almost every official server you visit will be a mishmash of f2p's who should still be training in singleplayer mode, 5k+ hour veterans who are leagues better than you and only there to power grind stranges while spamming stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and ''''''''ironic'''''''' racism in chat, 'friendly players' who are only there to attention ♥♥♥♥♥ and go ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ if you actually play the game, and the occasional script kiddie/bot-swarm. Very rarely will you find a server where everyone on both teams are actively putting in effort and more or less on your skill level. These issues also plague the co-op mode Mann-Up, even more so than pvp. You'd expect to see the usual pub filth in Boot Camp, but not in Tour of Duty mode, which is pay-walled. Sadly, ToD is unplayable in all but the literal sense, with most of the servers full of players who have no skill and refuse to read guides or even learn through experience {again, in a mode that costs real world money in order to access}.

After the community, I'd say Valve themselves are the next biggest problem. Every time you turn around, there's a new hat, a new misc item, a new kit to make your weapon fire glowing pumpkins or set your head on fire after a few kills, and so on and so forth. New weapons though, which one would think would be the core of an online fps, are rarely released, with multi-year periods between weapon packs. There are loads of weapon reskins though, including slightly differently colored ones, scratched up ones, ones with blinking Christmas lights, the insanely rare golden ones, and that stupid frying pan that goes for over $4K {in a f2p game, no less}. This game has gone from "Capture the point and kill all enemies in your way" to "holy wow guise stout shako 3 ref trade me up!". It's no longer an fps, it's a dress up game with murder and the map objectives as optional side-quests. Valve sadly seems to longer care about making the game fun as much as they do fattening their wallets. For objective proof of this, one need look no further than the Halloween events of the last 7 years, where the new gameplay elements more or less amounted to "pick up this item and mindlessly spam instant death beams". Nowadays, Valve can't even be bothered to make new items themselves, with most new cosmetics being outsourced from the workshop, and then being released in crates by the hundreds.

Valve remains either unable or unwilling to compete with Blizzard {who despite all the drama going on over there, are somehow still their main competition with Overwatch} in any meaningful way, and seem perfectly content to just let their game lose more and more players. As of this writing, the playerbase is getting increasingly terrible, with clueless f2p's that refuse to properly learn the game having outnumbered the die hard veterans and newbies who genuinely want to learn. On top of this, the game is currently being attacked by multiple botnets, all of which have the goal of forcing Valve to pull the plug on the game. Said botnets have been going strong since the start of the 2020 covid lockdowns, alternating between sending out waves of bot players to ruin matches and ddosing the servers to make the game literally unplayable. Unfortunately, Valve has only put forth token effort to deal with them, letting them get away with the majority of their nonsense. Truly, the golden age of this game is over, with any competent players bound to permanently rage-quit sooner or later, and head for new shores.

Now, with all this said, you might notice I recommend the game. Despite it's many, many flaws, TF2 is well worth the time and effort required to git gud. From screwing around on wacky meme servers, doing 6+ hour marathon sessions on 24/7 Dustbowl servers, the 105 tours in MVM I've gone through with friends, earning my first Hales Own ranked weapon, and everything in between, I've had some of the best experiences in any video game here. TF2 is an amazing game, and while it's definitely no longer in it's prime, I still highly encourage it to anyone that's willing to look past it's flaws and get into it.