I just watched this video and my thoughts resonated with what he says about TF2. It started out as a challenging game to learn and perfect, but it's evolved to be so much more. This game has evolved (which is good, obviously), but the hurdle for new players has been getting increasingly higher, without any way of helping them get over it.

The core gameplay is the same as it used to be, with next to no hand holding. This is fine when it comes to the base game since it's easy enough to grasp, but with the addition of all those new weapons, maps, gamemodes, and cosmetics it's an overload of information for any new player. The tutorial is ass, there's no explanation for how weapons work if you don't have them yet, and the Perfect Storm of a 12v12 pub is not exactly the best learning environment.

As veterans, we tend to overlook this. If you're a beginner and coming into this game with a casual attitude, you're going to have to put a lot more effort into this than you're probably willing to. And that's just to play Casual mode. No wonder nobody is playing Competitive! Jumping into a normal game after the abysmal tutorial does not prepare you for the clusterfuck that is a Casual server. Watching people play TF2 for the first time or coming back after a couple of years makes you realize that the core gameplay is not the hurdle for most people. It's experiencing the core gameplay that discourages people. There's no skill bracket for casual matches, so you're getting put in with experts in your first games who are flying towards you or killing you out of nowhere using weapons and strategies you've never seen or even imagined.

In addition to this, learning Casual takes such a long time and so much effort already that having to unlearn that and teach yourself to optimize one class (and maybe even another as a trump card), new ways to play gamemodes, new ways to play with your team, new ways to practice (Jumping/Surfing/MGE), and even ways to optimize your game at its core (configs, scripts, HUDs etc.) requires an entirely different level of effort and passion. Both hurdles are so high that the sunken cost fallacy applies twice in one game.

I came up with some improvements. Now, I know none of this is going to happen. Valve has been in "crucial bugfixes only -mode" since before MYM (apart from large, money-making updates), so there's no way they'd implement this on a whim. Otherwise we'd have proper flamethrower mechanics by now. Anyway, here goes...

• Put every weapon in new players' backpacks, but lock them until they drop.
  

This way, players can look up the stats of the weapons they will be playing against. It will act as an extra incentive to go out and get certain achievements, to trade (or even buy), and to just play. However, the main thing this will do is to counter discouragement, since they will see the stats of weapons that seem overpowered when they get killed by them. It's both a goal and a resource.

• Create or link optimization tools in-game

In my and probably a lot of others' opinions, the stock HUD pretty shit. The aesthetic fits with the feel of the game, but it does a bad job at conveying information. Stock crosshairs are one colour and don't stand out against certain backgrounds no matter which colour or shape you choose. There are ways to reduce clutter by optimizing graphical settings (I personally haven't seen a rag doll in years because I confused them with normal players), getting rid of cosmetics, smoke trails, dust, explosions, all kinds of stuff. The solutions to all these issues are widely available, but only to those who actively search (just another hurdle to play the game the way you want to). Making these mods available in a separate options menu that links you to a trusted site to download these mods could improve understanding in and satisfaction with the game.

• Silent Tutorial Servers

What I mean by this is basically that the first few games you play are restricted to players with a low amount of playtime, let's say <100. The player doesn't know this is the case, it's just another matchmaking server. Once you get to ~50 hours of playtime you get to experience the real deal. Of course this experience is skewed by Smurf accounts, but it would still be less of a clusterfuck compared to the current system. This again battles the discouragement new players get when being shat upon by experienced players.

• Training Modes

Want to get better? Want to increase your skills to stomp pubs and even get the skills to play Competitively? This tab is basically a server browser with some extra info about three major ways of training: Jumping, Surfing, and MGE. Clicking "Jumping" just lists a couple of community Jump servers, with some info about why it's useful, what the basic mechanics are (don't press W!) and some explanations of certain types of jumps (walljump, pogo, speedshot etc.). It gives you more understanding and incentive to get better. Same for the other modes mentioned.

• Casual Competitive

The current Competitive Mode is a joke. It's Matchmaking with a bad map pool, no metagame, and a terrible balancing algorithm. Get rid of it, split it into two. Casual Competitive could just be a box you tick in the Casual tab above all the maps. It will send you to servers that are 6v6, with the same lack of balancing as you currently get in Competitive, but with a limited map pool. Play whatever you want, in whatever composition you want to play it in. However, there's no Payload, A/D, or CTF (or alternative gamemodes). It's the no meta, no restrictions, do-whatever-the-fuck-you-like version of Competitive. No ranks, so it's an ideal playground to test out new strats, classes or loadouts. Or just to have fun in a 6v6 setting. Maybe there will be new metas originated here for use in ETF2L, ESEA, or OzFortress!

• Competitive Mode

This mode is basically the Community Competitive version of the game, with map pools and whitelists adapted accordingly. The end game for the most serious players and the ranked mode that actually works.

So yeah, that's what I think should happen. Or rather, what should have happened years ago when we started asking for it. Or what should happen in TF3 (keep dreaming). Any thoughts?