TF2 game improvement suggestions for TF Team

My guide/manifesto of TF2 game balance for Valve's TF Team.
This is not a guide to improve your gameplay.
These suggestions are subject to change as I play and learn about the game.

Started playing TF2 from 2012. I mostly play on Uncletopia[uncletopia.com], so I will have a more balanced and bot-free experience (compared to Valve's Casual) affecting this document. Regardless, some issues of Valve's Casual servers will be brought up.

Disclaimer: These are suggestions, not gospel. I'm just one player out of hundreds of thousands[steamcharts.com].
I don't know if these suggestions will be considered or be useful to TF Team but I do want to see this game last as long as it can – it's a solid multiplayer game.
If this guide helps spark any dialogue or ideas as to how the game can be updated to make it more fair & fresh, that is good.

Bots & Cheater Infestation

Excluding the useful item trading bots and HvH gamers

I haven't played on a Valve Casual server for years for normal enjoyable TF2 gameplay. The last time I entered was when I wanted to try out that new infection gamemode, but most of the server was infested with bots with cheats (2023-10-25).

Top priority for Valve's Casual: Bots & Cheater infestation

An issue of anti-cheat and personal restraint
Valve's Anti Cheat in its current state is not enough to stop the bot infestation.
This is also a societal/community problem of people feeling somehow obligated to cheat, continually improve aimbot/botting software and let bots run rampart to cause grief and waste people's time rather than adding value to society, community or their own life.

Isn't Valve worth billions? Why hasn't this been fixed already?

I can't speak for Valve. Based on some surface level research, Valve doesn't seem to have many employees (~360) and are drastically understaffed compared to companies such as Nintendo and Ubisoft and probably even less people working on and maintaining TF2 and maybe less who know about updating the anti-cheat. Logistics? Incompetence? Priorities? Are all those billions reserved for legal funds? I don't know for sure as I don't have enough information, but you can do more research and also keep an eye on other multiplayer games with how frequent you can encounter cheaters on their official servers and how well maintained they are for your opinion. Maybe observing other multiplayer Valve games such as CS:GO and DotA2 would be more relevant.

Why cheat?

To help you understand why people cheat, here is an attempt of explaining the justifications/rationalizations/reasons they may have:
Cheat users:

• "Internet anonymity" lowering inhibitions, feeling as if you can "get away with it"
  
• Apathy towards people on the internet, easier to dehumanize others behind a screen for "fun" or "it's funny", but they are human enough to pick on (humans preferred to farm grief over bots who don't react)
  
• A way at getting back at others/form of escapism/illusion of power or control. But others especially play online games, including TF2 to take a break from a hard reality and connect with others – this is sad betrayal.
  
• Unwarranted attention, watching people react to them cheating.
  
• "Balancing" a game they're losing
  
• They believe cheating is the only way you can perform well in the game rather than to go through a learning curve
  
• People who have yet to learn bare minimum sportsmanship for online gaming (just don't cheat)
  
• Underdeveloped morality/philosophy (usually due to young age)
  
• Extremely illogical and ineffective way of "protesting" TF2 to change or get an update. If anything, this would delay updates further due to resources being drained by needing to work on the anti-cheat more.
  
• Some may use "silent hacks" (stealth cheat that's harder to tell if you're cheating) to win at a tournament.

Why people make the cheats:

• May include same reasons above
  
• Money
  
• The rush of beating a big corporation at something and getting away with it (inflicting cyber-security related damage on bad people is too scary and risky for them)

Automated bot users:

• Is ok with their increased electricity bill to cause grief with minimal effort.
  
• They can run multiple virtual machines on a single PC (they can use multiple PCs), running an absurb amount of TF2 instances – a whole botnet just to annoy people and deny them of playing TF2. And if those Steam accounts get banned from TF2, they can just generate new accounts and can generate them faster with automated methods, depending on their vastly misled dedication.

If you're a Hack vs Hack player, ignore the above, you're fine with consenting players in your own servers. Be very careful who you share your cheats with – especially if they are VAC-resistant – you don't want to introduce yet another wave of malicious cheaters to this game.
In an ideal world, legit players play with each other to see who's the best and cheaters play with each other to see who has the superior cheat. But that's a pipe dream. The power of temptation is too strong. Don't remain weak to it.

What can you do?

Thirdparty anti-cheat servermods

• Little Anti-Cheat[www.littleanticheat.com] - a free and open-source anti-cheat solution for user-hosted/community servers. Once saw it in action banning a cheater on a community server. Don't really know of any other anti-cheats. Could be useful to supplement modding server to include an anti-cheat of some kind especially if server has enough popularity that someone feels compelled to take time out of their day to cheat with a VAC-resistant cheat.

Disabling text chat/voice chat

If you want to stay in the game and there's hope of the cheater/bot being kicked, temporarily disable text chat/voice chat with the following commands in console:

hud_saytext_time 0 (default 6)
voice_enable 0 (default 1)
or
voice_scale 0 (default 1)

Change values back to defaults when done.

Vote-kicking and moderation

If the anti-cheat fails, you may have to votekick or get your server's admin if in community server to ban. This becomes less viable method if dealing with a constant bot attack with a bot joining every few seconds/minutes because you are spending too much time modding than playing the game. Some community servers have votekick disabled and you may have a to use a !calladmin command (varies between servers) or use their website or steam group chat/forum to call for an admin or file a report.

Play in moderated community servers

Especially ones that have anti-cheat servermods installed on top of being VAC-secured.
It seems to be more likely to encounter rare to occasional single cheaters in community servers compared to constant bot swarms as seen in Valve's official Casual servers.
If you want a vanilla casual experience, try Uncletopia[uncletopia.com] servers. It's more balanced that Valve's Casual (no random crits and class limits of 3). If you encounter a cheater, you can file a report against them.[uncletopia.com]
Try to record and include as much evidence as you can especially when cheater leaves before moderator joins server (steam profile links/IDs, screenshots, footage) when reporting for a community server to make a ban more likely. Helping keep community servers clean.

Bots & Cheater Infestation Pt.2

Closing

There are all sorts of colorful names you could call these people (malicious cheat/bot users), but that encourages them further. Give them as little attention as possible, mostly for your sake (they may not even be reading it because it's an automated bot).
Ultimately, if you unluckily keep encountering bots/cheaters in a day, consider joining a community server like Uncletopia[uncletopia.com] or closing the game and doing anything else, such as playing another game that doesn't have bots/cheaters or spending time with your family or friends.

To those unethical cheaters, why not put that deep commitment in overcoming technological blocks into cybersecurity as a business or build an anti-cheat? Why not leak the VAC-resistant cheats' source code to valve?
Do anything more useful to spend your time on, as you only live once.

Put the cheats down and play the game normally (or abnormally), and experience real gameplay. Make stupid mistakes and learn from them. Maybe don't walk into to heavy and attack from a safer range.
Reclaim your humanity quickly, before you grow too old and stubborn. Just because you can get away with something doesn't necessarily mean you should do it.

Cheating is uncool. However, legitimate play is where it's at (very cool). To die and know that you made a poor decision is great. An experience to learn from and take with you on your next respawn. Repeat. And become decent at the game, possibly even good. You miss a spiritual transformation with your cheats.

Further reading

Bot crisis explanation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-m9YPNjCMI
Overview and suggestions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgkgsgaBBCA
Cheat types and cheater interviews:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyI5u-SQUYc

General game balance

Major balance

After this section, random crits will NOT be considered in this guide as they shouldn't be in the game in the first place.

Remove random crits (from casual) and random bullet spread for consistent, fair and balanced interactions
server command defaults in question:

tf_weapon_criticals 1 ----> tf_weapon_criticals 0
tf_use_fixed_weaponspreads 0 ----> tf_use_fixed_weaponspreads 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHvwijT2ss8
Class limits (for casual) for more balanced team compositions and eliminate class stacking.
Good example of this in action: Go play in an Uncletopia server[uncletopia.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0mE34Osrts

Various

• The game could use more build diversity. Maybe the less used weapons aren't balanced enough or way too situational to justify using them. See class sections below.
  
• Remove intelligence cap crits. Isn't capping enough? Less gameplay due to 1 team winning more due to granted crits, enabling more caps for that team.
  
• Make active Damage over Time effects from enemy team (bleed, fire) prevent class/loadout changes at spawn? So enemy that is about to die from fire dies before reaching spawn (must touch lockers to get healed). Or general damage sets ~3 second timer to prevent respawn.
  
• Votekicking:
  
  • Fix kick bullying: consider a trust system for Valve servers (casual, MvM). Kick abusers get kicked and a matchmaking cooldown. But this may be too difficult to implement and somehow may make things worse. Maybe more a community mentality problem. A player being bad at the game is not a valid reason to kick someone, especially in a casual game/server. It's apathetic and gross of people to do this. Example: you maybe doing good at an MvM tour, but 3 of your teammates are partied up together. Just as you're about to win and claim your drops, you get votekicked out because 1 player of that party of three didn't like you, so they told their 2 friends to vote yes on the votekick and now you're kicked from the game, without your drops. You have no recourse or compensation for the time you spent helping them.
    
  • Add more kick reasons other than "Player is Cheating", "Player is Idle", or "Player is Scamming". Add "Abusive" for players abusing text/voice chat.

Readability

• Revise color design of cosmetics to have no doubt of what team you're dealing with. Proper team-coloring is important.
  
• Some cosmetics' paintable regions are too big. Add restriction to for team-color only paints on those certain cosmetics or revise their paintable regions.
  
• ALL warpaints must have a RED and BLU variant. Single-skinned warpaints breaks readability.
  Warpaint info:
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2331860596
  
• Don't stray too far from TF2's artstyle when accepting workshop items. Style consistency, immersion and readability. Set existing offenders to halloween/full moon only.
  
• Example of a green pyro on RED team (imagine if the cosmetics were painted blue with a blue warpaint)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WUsTEm0UEw

Classes and their weapons:

The following sections will detail how classes, mainly their weapons can be improved/adjusted.

• 1. Scout

General

Weapons

Flying Guillotine

TF Wiki Page

Re-implement crit mechanic, choices:
• Deal mini-crits on slowed enemies (status effect). Affects enemies slowed by sandman, natascha, bonk (after taking damage during invuln), pyro using thermal thruster (the initial jump before the thrust). This partially brings back the Sandman-Flying Guillotine combo, abeit weaker.
  
• Bring back mini-crits for long range hits (at least ~1408 HU like wrap assassin)
• Increase flying guillotine max flight time (can't go for ultra long shots)

Force-A-Nature

TF Wiki Page

• Add alternate animation when reloading with 1 remaining bullet in clip. Cosmetic-only change.

Sandman

TF Wiki Page
Hasn't been the same since pre-cleaver sandman combo nerfs. In it's current state, not worth that -15 HP to justify the near-useless nerfed ball.

• Give sandman ball better distance-based damage ramp. From 15-23 damage to 15-50 damage.
  
• Sandman ball damage/status effect distance scaling.
  
• Change slow duration range from 1-7 seconds to 2-10 seconds.
  
• Moonshots inflict a true stun like before (pre-WAR! Update)

• 2. Soldier

General

Weapons

• 3. Pyro

General

• Remove granted mini-crits on flamethrower reflect. Projectiles previously mini-crit/critical reflected in their same critical status as expected.

Weapons

Hot Hand

TF Wiki Page
This weapon could be more useful.

• Super slap: Have a special charged attack where you hold primary fire for 1 second (like huntsman) and you deal a minicrit single slap which knocks back the enemy with the force of an airblast, gaining the same amout of speedboost from a single normal slap. Any slap under 100% results in a normal double slap. Alt-fire cancels the charge (like huntsman). Specific animation shows when charging (like huntsman).

Phlogistinator

TF Wiki Page

• No overheal, like razorback: Can't be babysat by medic as effectively but can still be ubered.
  
• (less sure) Reduce Mmmph duration from 10 to 8 seconds or increase damage required to execute Mmmph.
  
• DO NOT remove phlog canceling: requires planning and precise positioning/timing to execute, adds more live preservation gameplay/risk holding your stored phlog for this technique. Seeing a pyro without his primary being primarily out can open opportunity to pick that pyro or force a sub-optimal Mmmph, possibly being completely wasted.

• 4. Demoman

General

Weapons

Ullapool Caber

TF Wiki Page

Major balance change idea #1

• Restore the caber to its former glory, pre-Gun Mettle. This can justify going back to resupply to replenish the caber. Restores increased gameplay element of teammates spreading out when they know a caber bomber is on the loose.

Major balance change idea #2

• Caber recharge, maybe situational recharge like deal enough damage with broken caber (risk and reward element) and you use alt-fire or taunt to regenerate your used caber, maybe taunt plays or unique taunt (like Pyro's Phlogistinator "Mmmph" that needs fire damage to charge and needs taunt to activate)

Miscellaneous

• Caber killtaunt: make the taunt finally do something, the existing animation and voicelines already begs for it. A successful hit should cancel the remaining taunt and damage + launch you up like the caber normally does when hitting something.
  
• Possible choices for the nature of killtaunt:
  
  • Make it behave exactly like swinging the caber normally, not necessarily a kill taunt. This is probably the most safe choice here.
    
  • Make it behave exactly like swinging the caber normally, but deals fatal damage to a single target and dealing the normal explosive damage to you and other enemies. Broken caber can also kill taunt but without any explosive damage or animation canceling.
    
  • Make it behave exactly like the Soldier's kamikaze killtaunt (equalizer/escape plan), damage and self-damage included, but the caber can only detonate when hitting a wall or enemy

Fixed Weapons

• Fix Iron Bomber hitbox (too big): Pill hitbox used to be bigger than it normally should. Now consistent with pills from other grenade launchers. Did you refrain from using the Iron Bomber when aware of the advantage?

• 5. Heavy

General

• Heavy lost the Heavy vs. Pyro war, with the Pyro getting a refresh instead in Jungle Inferno Update. Where is Heavy's update to freshen him up?

Weapons

Community Ideas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYj7OAFlRWU

• 6. Engineer

General

Weapons

Rescue Ranger

TF Wiki Page

• 25% Sentry blast jump resistance: Balances weapon's poor damage capability and marked-for-death, reinforces utility element of weapon and encourages sentry jumping via explosions from your LVL 3 sentry, which you would usually have this weapon equipped anyway to prolong your high level buildings more effectively.

Short Circuit

TF Wiki Page

• Primary fire hit registration is very inconsistent. Consider making primary fire act exactly like Pyro's flamethrower with much shorter range (projectiles) with a flame instance – in this case, a spark – spawning each time metal is spent, as it should.
  
• No metal from carts while active: like beggars no ammo from dispensers and carts while active, prevent you from endlessly spamming which forces you to have downtime, encouraging you to plan your shots more. Since you can't spam as fast and consistently with a dispenser's metal compared to constant metal from the cart and that there's a choice of whether to fire short circuit energy balls or heal buildings, it may not be necessary to disable metal collection from dispensers while active.
  
• DO NOT remove short circuit jumping (alt fire): it's already balanced – risk of being in close range with short circuit out, self-damage dealt from jump, very situational being only able to be performed on an enemy.

Wrangler

TF Wiki Page

• Remove wrangler sentry damage resistance: The manual control is just fine. The damage resistance makes turtling too effective and tanky for a simple weapon switch, being able to stand up to hard counters of sentries (snipers, LnL, Direct Hit).
  
• With the sentry damage resistance gone, you can add a more fair upside:
  
  • 33% Self-inflicted sentry bullet damage resistance: Encourages bullet jumping. More useful overall than self-inflicted sentry rocket explosion damage (see rescue ranger section).

• 7. Medic

General

• New primary or melee that slows a dropped (from death) medigun's uber decay rate, signaling other medics of your dropped medigun. This weapon would have appropriate downsides to justify this.

Weapons

Vita-Saw

TF Wiki Page
Too risky for too little reward for -10 max HP.

• +1 HP regen per second

• 8. Sniper

General

• In every sniper rifle's current unbalanced state, they should give sniper a max HP penalty. Maybe 70 HP like kunai spy. It would them focus more on their positioning and surroundings, a cost for such high damage. Long range harassment from classes such as soldier and pyro becomes an actual fatal threat.

Weapons

Darwin's Danger Shield

TF Wiki Page
Hard-counters Pyro's fire weapons with too little downsides.

• Implement damage vulnerability to other damage types:
  
  • 15% bullet damage vulnerability on wearer. (inverse of previous bullet resist)
    
  • 20% explosive damage vulnerability on wearer. (re-instate previous explosive vuln)
• Remove afterburn immunity: afterburn damage is halved (NOT duration), based on existing 50% fire damage resistance.

[/list]

Razorback

TF Wiki Page

• Remove razorback recharge: It's already too good to directly counter spy's backstab. Make going back to resupply the only way to replenish the razorback, introducing more gameplay deciding whether to stay in battle or going back to spawn, with respawn time and whether enemy is capping being deciding factors.
  
• Possibly more downsides needed to balance this item. Various choices:
  
  • Dual-shock: Disable weapon switching and ability to attack for 2 seconds (like how spy can't switch and attack). Introduces more balance and gameplay, both aware of each other and time to react to each other's movement. Sniper would still want to watch their back since backstabbing can still drastically affect them (albeit not as effective as an instant-killing backstab).
    
  • Electrical feedback I: Recieve 25 damage
    
  • Electrical feedback II: 1 second of stun when backstabbed with active razorback
    
  • Electrical feedback III: 2 seconds of slowdown when backstabbed with active razorback

(revise later)

• Sniper rifles overhaul/refresh
  Why? Too powerful for too little effort/lack of risk, too oppressive and bottlenecks playstyle/class/weapon choices too heavily to address sniper if you do mind getting instantly killed as non-spy/non-vaccinator medic across map. Focused too much on high damage and headshots and less on helping team with possible unique effects like slowdown when shooting legs if the charge was more balanced (low charge not enough for instant slowdown but you can make another choice to support and slow down).
  For me, a game becomes noticably less engaging especially when an experienced hitscan sniper is present as the gameplay balance is thrown off. Like how random critical hits ruin interactions but more consistent.
  Huntsman is a good example of a balanced weapon: variable speed, arc, travel time, enemy movement, lots can go wrong compared to security of long range high damage hitscan. Usually requires you to go closer to the more dangerous frontline to be more reliable/effective.
  This document gets revised time to time, maybe better explanation. See for yourself. Would you prefer an interaction like: pyro vs soldier, a mindgaming and mechanical skill battle, one could easily kill the other?
  or
  huntsman vs huntsman, both trying doing evasive manuvers and deciding head/body shots, making/closing distance
  or
  demoman vs retreating medic, demoman is stickyjumping looking to get that medic pick, sacrificing some health using stock stickybomber to kill that fleeing medic but the medic has 78% uber and an ubersaw, what will happen? will the demoman get stuck on something, miscalculate the jump?
  or
  phlog pyro taunting but there is a spy and a FaN scout next to him, will spy get the timing right and backstab the phlog pyro in time? will the scout run in case spy fails or possibly attempt to kill the pyro and in that attempt knock the pyro away from the spy's backstab attempt, missing the second FaN shot, dooming both scout and spy and possibly everyone pushing the cart
  or
  a competent sniper walking a few steps out of spawn in a map with huge sightlines vs you who walked all the way out of your spawn just to die, now you must choose to remain cannon fodder, default taunt to corner peek every sightline, play spy/vaccinator medic, attempt rocket/sticky jumping at them (to most likely die since vs instant hitscan) or prioritize objective less and support/go for non-hitscan enemies for your battle interations or quit.
  or
  epic close battle with a non-hitscan sniper enemy then a sniper on either team kills one of you, they have that instant high damage, so why not use it but you feel robbed, subjective? team game, etc.
  
  • Seems unlikely they will change much (harder thing to change esp. how long its been same)
    
  • Give the sniper rifles CS:GO AWP movement-based inaccuracy or shot
    
  • Class limits have a big role in team composition balance. Uncletopia is a great example: 3 max snipers can terrorize the battlefield (even if they are very skilled snipers, there are still only 3)
    
  • High speed projectile like Fortnite? (Hitscan remained for every other weapon due to not being long range hitscan).
    
  • Charge Rifle from Apex Legends? Visible laser that deals minor damage, with a more damaging blow for the last tick.
    
  • Projectile rules like Rust? Hitscan close range, projectile long range?
    
  • Different sniper projectile rules/speeds/arcs/etc for each sniper rifle?
    
  • Reduced damage on bodyshots; CS:GO-like rules, legs low dmg, body mid dmg, head high dmg
    
  • Add a new/separate projectile sniper rifle for those yearning for projectile-based gameplay, like how the huntsman is different/more challenging (and objectively worse;)
    
  • Give sniper rifles clip+reserve ammo reload (whole clip like smg or incremental like scattergun). Where's the downtime for this high-dmg long range weapon? Or reduce max ammo.
    
  • Lower minimum headshot dmg to 125? Increase time cost to kill heavier classes.
    
  • Laser sight to indicate scoped sniper like MvM (video on this by shounic)
    
  • Impose large max HP health penalty or damage vulnerability (like claid) for equipping any sniper rifle.
    
  • More coherent Sniper discussion by FishStickOnAStick
  
  
• Make sniper rifles "bullets" into projectiles, like a faster huntsman projectile. Currently, all sniper rifles currently work like lasers (hitscan). Make supportive than just broken laser gameplay denier class? Maybe have some status effects according to which bodypart was hit.? Arm = switchspeed penalty, legs = slow, chest = bleed. Nerf sniper damage, why instant headshot laser?
  
  [move/combine this somewhere]
  sniper rifle diversity effects
  sniper hitscan primary sniper rifle
  laser visibility correlate to damge-ability
  very visible laser with lethal headshot capability
  projectiles: huntsman exists, make projectile like fully charged huntsman
  give him a crossbow that can headshot too, balance
  mosin
  shoot pyro's back, primary ammo reduction but no damage
  shoot legs, second slowdown, scouts legs reduce to 300speed
  shoot spy disguise mask off
  shoot medic's back to -10% ubercharge but no damage
  
  give heavy head protection like razorback function for snipers/ambassador spy, introduce more supportive gameplay for hitscan sniper, shoot heavy in body with special heal reducing/slowing bullets, make sniper have more counterplay and gameplay for others, make hitscan sniper risky, glass cannon
  
  sniper long range high damage hitscan near instant 150 headshot damage
  instant 50 damage on noscope/quick zoom bodyshot
  no damage falloff
  
  https://youtu.be/cRCgxr3Gkro

• 9. Spy

General

• Fix glow outline wallhacks against enemy spies – they keep blinking, giving you a tell on who's an enemy spy. Choices:
  
  • Stop enemy spy outlines blinking. No way to tell unless you see a duplicate name or dead teammate in match status/scoreboard.
    
  • Hide the enemy spy's name and outline completely: you can instead tell the spy apart if you happen to see them just after respawning with their lack of outline. Hinders spy's spawn killing ability when disguised too close to spawn (like current state).

Fixed General

• Fix spy disguise bug

Weapons

Ambassador

TF Wiki Page

• Increase the headshot critical cooldown.
  
• Deal mini-crits instead of crits on headshot.
  
  

  Diamondback

  TF Wiki Page
  
  • Reduce max stored crit count to 6.
    
  • Downgrade the crits into minicrits: A critical hit too high a reward for this 6 clip capacity, fast reloading gun, for simply doing normal spy activities of backstabbing and sapping. Minicrit allows other players to have a small chance to do gameplay instead of a miniscule chance.
    
  • Downgrade the crits into minicrits, reduce the stored crit count to 6. When reaching the sixth stored crit, the stored crit count gets locked to 1 and you have 10 seconds to use it, otherwise the stored crit will be cleared.

Maps

Area of effect/splash attacks (explosives, jars) have inconsistent behavior with certain stairs, not working as expected. Examples: a rocket shot at a specific set of stairs that don't have a proper slope can deal no damage to an enemy standing further up the stairs. A jarate can somehow miss an enemy right next to them if tossed onto some stairs that don't have a proper slope.
"TF2's Stair Problem - LED"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2H3yWl2rb4

Graphics

You can mod the game to fix some of these yourself
TF2 workshop | GameBanana[gamebanana.com]

• Wrangler:
  
  • Alt-fire (rockets) shooting animation for viewmodel is static.
    
  • Wrangler world models shooting animations are completely static.
    
  • Sentry doesn't do rocket reloading animation when wrangled.
• Restore/change Grenade Launcher model to fit clipsize of 4 shots (from 4 barrels). Community mod.[gamebanana.com]
  
• More accurate Loch-n-load model to fit clipsize of 3 shots (from 3 barrels) – working community mod.[gamebanana.com]
  
• Missing killfeed icons. Includes Mini sentry, short circuit, telefrag, sentrybuster etc. Community mod.[gamebanana.com]
  
• Sniper gloves first person viewmodel doesn't match world model.
  
• Sniper's Huntsman viewmodel is still "inverted" – viewmodel mods like this[gamebanana.com] one can show this.
  
• Spy feign: be able to see fake corpses + fake killfeed of the respective teammate you disguised as. (Assuming the game does this already (clientside) + killfeed shows teammate name but not for you (clientside).
  
• Huntsman + Fortified Compound string fix. The string stretches wrong (less noticeable with FC).
  
• Make Huntsman/Fortified Compound more accurate to world model resting state (tilt 45 deg). Will also take up less space in resting state, but maybe too distracting for vision.

Communication

• Rework voice menu, make more useful and relevant.
  Concept mod of reworked voice menu.[gamebanana.com]
  
  • Add sniper warning voice lines (from MvM) to voice command menu (voice menu 2, position 9?). Used in a similar fashion to how "sentry ahead" or "spy" voice command is used (specific threat). Example (medic's line). Could help your teammates think twice before they cross a certain sightline.

• Add specific mute option for text chat: You might want that option. (blocking via profile mutes text and mic)

• Add option to disable all decals like how you can disable sprays. If you have time, add option in mute menu to mute decals from certain players.
  Method 1: mod
  https://gamebanana.com/mods/295666
  Method 2: hosts
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3049594375

✅ Added decal visibility toggle functionality in Summer 2024 update

Originally posted by TeamFortress.com:

• Added ConVar "tf_hide_custom_decals" to allow clients to disable viewing custom decals on items
  
  • Added "Hide Custom Decals" checkbox to the Advanced Options dialog in the Miscellaneous Options category

Bugs

By no means that these are all the bugs of TF2.

• Medic: Ubercharge can occassionally 'malfunction' and leave healer not invulnerable. (bandaid fix for now: switch weapon and back to medigun to fix).
  
• Taunting with pyro shotgun can trigger thriller taunt during halloween/full moons (untested in casual). Taunting with spy knife does this too, interrupts kill taunts.

Lower priority

• Make viewmodel offset a non-cheat command to work in all servers.
  workaround: https://gamebanana.com/tools/10146
  
• Extend and update viewmodels animations for at least 90 viewmodel FOV: most viewmodels start looking more disembodied (lack of arm length) on higher viewmodel FOV. Cut off arms, phantom limbs, etc.
  existing fix: https://gamebanana.com/mods/285109

Spicy/Spitballing

• Introduce a different primary weapon for scout in the same vein as Dragon's Fury (playstyle changing), with some more risk/reward focus. Supportive? A weapon for scouts that want less linear gameplay. It's nice to have choice between how much brain power you want to commit to a game with defferent playstyles while still being effective in some way.
  
• Sapper that explodes and does damage (an old TF2 idea)
  
• Make demoman's pills able to explode on collision of enemy/building after hitting a surface: Be able to pull of cool brainy plays as seen in meet the demoman. As seen in meet the demoman.
  
• Don't make auto reload, reload at 0 - mind games gameplay.
  
• Machina into delayed big laser focus weak ramping warning laser, hard coded sensitivity lock.
  
• Casual bonus dailys: item drop/xp bonus for playing in random maps to help players learn and play less popular maps?
  
• Deadringer makes another noise upon feigned death at very close range and make scoreboard display false stats temporarily.
  
• Make p2w taunts free or fix them to stand out more (example, boxtrot)
  
• Make p2w taunts free or incur firing penalty since used to peek thirdperson with instant snap back to first person. Make beggars self fire when highfive, conga, etc.
  
• shadows commands to equip certain weapons with binds/easier item menu
  
• Class round queue
  
• Sharpened volcano fragment increase afterburn damage and duration for all classes.
  
• Make sniper ammo into clips like SMG.
  
• Spy being able to disguise as buidings (probably not, unless new and different disguise kit equip)
  
• Left viewmodel non mirrored, maybe button to switch hands in gameplay dynamically, firing is affected by left right hand state (projectiles (with exception of the original) originate from right of your world model). But this would likely require overhaul, updating models, new animations and coding for projectile origin switch.
  
• TFC birthday month, port popular TFC maps in their goldsrc glory for casual pool. Maybe Quake Team Fortress too.
  
• VIP civilian mode. Mix gameplay up new/old gamemode. And 10th class will finally be there.

Highly experimental ideas probably too "out there"

Leaked content: Alternate buildings, weapons, subclass potential.

(wrote this while ago, less game-balance considered-ish)
DNA gun: As a shapeshifter/ability steal enjoyer, Bing Soy likes this concept. Has to have a unique particle effect to warn players of a DNA spy. Keep knife for all classes. Add 20% damage vulnerability attribute for as long as not true spy. Remove switch speed penalty - hunter and hunted minigame.

1. Scout: Gain secondary.
2. Soldier: Gain Primary with 2 max ammo.
3. Pyro: Gain primary 50 max ammo. Gain secondary with 2 ammo.
4. Demoman: Gain secondary with 2 max ammo.
5. Heavy: Gain secondary. Gain melee.
6. Engineer: Gain melee. Capped at 50 max metal. Primary = half max clip.
7. Medic: Gain secondary. Capped at 25% uber. 1 clip worth of primary.
8. Sniper: Gain secondary. SMG = clip's worth max ammo. Primary = 2 max shots.
9. Spy: Revert back to a spy. Gives medium health pack worth of HP that can go into overheal. Or, instead of heal, increase max HP like eyelander (limited) only when you have last killed a spy and only when you are spy. Particle effect indicator removed.

Examples

uncletopia more balanced tf2 experience
uncletopia.com

Credits

(links if not already linked above)

Closing notes

Thanks to TF Team and TF(2) community for keeping this game alive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8lfD5V3qAU

[H4R_Dy]

Hey man, nice guide. Really well put together! I agree with most of it. Could you sign my steam profile please? I am a big fan!