TF2: Examining Quickplay vs Casual (also, community servers)

Is Quickplay or Casual better? Should Quickplay return? Maybe Casual should be improved instead? But does that effectively turn it into Quickplay? The goal of this video is to examine Quickplay and Casual, their history, upsides and flaws, then present broad paths for the future, and additionally, suggest ways to better integrate community servers into the game. Check the pinned comment for corrections, clarifications & additional thoughts. Notes I mention links being on the screen, because I planned to put them in cards. Turns out this feature is only available when you're a YouTube Partner. Moderation on the comment section is set to "None". If your comment is deleted, that's thanks to our machine overlords. Some screenshots are crusty, because they come from 10+ year old livestreams. It's surprisingly difficult to find old screenshots of the TF2 UI. If you want to dig deeper, I highly recommend checking out the sources spreadsheet and reading through especially the emails, very interesting stuff. Thanks to everyone that discussed these topics with me during my not-so-secret research. You know who you are :) Quick links Quickplay vs Casual feature comparison & Full update history: https://theothertored.github.io/tf2-q... Sources (livestreams, posts, emails): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/... Team Comtress 2: https://teamcomtress.com My server browser version: https://theothertored.github.io/tf2-s... Vanilla Fortress (community server sessions): https://vanillafortress.github.io/ Section timestamps 00:00 - Intro, About me, Goals 01:32 - Brief update timeline 03:09 - Quickplay vs Casual comparison 11:03 - Skill-based matchmaking explanation 14:56 - Casual's variance reduction 16:41 - Simple Casual improvements 18:01 - Rollback (drop SBMM) 25:26 - Redesign (improve SBMM) 30:41 - Community servers 42:25 - What should be? (conclusion) Sources 03:02 - Quickplay vs Casual feature comparison & full update history: https://theothertored.github.io/tf2-q... 05:24 - Livestreams, Steam Community and Reddit posts, emails between Valve and community server operators (from the HLDS mailing list): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/... 18:25 - "Play now" high ping screenshots: Top left: https://steamcommunity.com/app/440/di... Top right: https://steamcommunity.com/app/440/di... Bottom left: https://redd.it/3xz71a Bottom right: https://redd.it/3xouof 18:31 - "Show servers" 200+ ping list: https://redd.it/3c3l4l 18:39 - Quickplay Styled Gamemode Portraits mod (multi-gamemode search slide uses the original version): https://gamebanana.com/mods/27053 22:53 - Quickplay Beta email: https://www.mail-archive.com/hlds@lis... 29:39 - Team Comtress 2: https://teamcomtress.com 32:08 - "Losing traffic since Quickplay started" email: https://www.mail-archive.com/hlds@lis... (Note: I am aware this is a 2014 email, earlier complaints in the Google Sheet) 33:12 - "Rethinking the community quickplay ban" email: https://www.mail-archive.com/hlds@lis... 33:50 - "A look at our small community server stats since the quickplay update": https://redd.it/1wx9zu 40:19 - My server browser version: https://theothertored.github.io/tf2-s... 47:55 - Vanilla Fortress (community server sessions): https://vanillafortress.github.io/ Software & assets Brainstorming/diagramming: diagrams.net Scriptwriting: VSCodium Audio processing: Voicemeeter Audio editing: Audacity Screen & audio recording: OBS Slides & graphic design: Figma Video editing: Blender Title card screenshots: Team Fortress 2: Gold Rush :) TGA conversion: ImageMagick Thumbnail drawing: Krita Font: Tahoma Icons: Material Design Icons Shoutouts to you for getting to the end of the description!