There’s a new bot wave going on in TF2, bots are now sending reservation messages to the matchmaking service without joining the server, which leaves empty slots on the server. While Valve has fixed this issue relatively quickly this time, I don’t think TF2 players (myself included) can handle yet an another server fuck up like this.
Valve has clearly given up on TF2 when they made the game source-available. I mean, if the game is still of any value to them, they would’ve kept the code to themselves. And to be honest, I can’t believe I am saying this, but the easiest thing Valve could’ve done about the game is ending all official server support and this will give a massive boost to community servers which have always been better than Valve servers anyways. But obviously they wouldn’t do that as doing so would generate a lot of bad press for Valve. So if Valve were to actually maintain official servers for TF2, what would a new Quickplay system look like?
TF2’s infrastructure has changed a lot since 2016, and I think these days Valve servers need a lobby from the GC to operator properly, which isn’t a bad idea since it would elimate the issues of say, 23/24 servers that could theoretically happen when the Quickplay system tries to prevent the “Server is full” error. So the new Quickplay would probably be a lobby browser instead of a server browser unlike the old system, and when you press the “Play Now” button, it would try to find a lobby that matches the search criteria and puts you into the best one. I am not sure if this is how CS2 casual functions but from my experience it seems to work that way.
A lot of people will miss seeing Valve servers on the server browser, but I don’t think Valve servers should be on the server browser. Valve servers run on SDR, and currently there’s an outstanding issue where you can’t favorite SDR servers on the server browser since their IP change all the time. Plus Valve servers would flood the server browser. The proper way to do this is to probably have a separate “Official” tab on the server browser without the favorite feature.
Other than that I don’t think community servers should be in the Quickplay system. Community server hosters nowadays simply cannot be trusted espically since the Source engine has been reverse-engineered to death. Community servers nowadays will simply do anything to lie to the master server just to make 2 more cents. Just look at L4D2 Quick Match and see how that turns out.