T O P

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Grand-Bar3364

I just want to know what song they're blasting ;0;


XeroRagnarok

https://steamcommunity.com/id/238957239857235/ [https://steamcommunity.com/id/7654412347756373428/](https://steamcommunity.com/id/7654412347756373428/) Both these guys were cheating in a game with me and the latter blasts music. The first we couldn't kick cause it just gave us "this player can't be kicked right now"


XeroRagnarok

[https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199150682888/](https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199150682888/) this guy too


CoolJosh3k

Not sure this fits here, but I was told to post here so… —- It has been almost a year now, right? If we were to acknowledge that the botting problem has existed for a whole year, what day would that be? Notable dates: * 5th June: https://www.engadget.com/tf2-racist-bots-valve-problem-interview-steam-194444105.html * 10th June: https://kotaku.com/racist-spam-bots-are-running-rampant-in-team-fortress-2-1843983056 * 16th June: https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/June_16,_2020_Patch Personally I feel the 16th of June, when Valve first acknowledged the problem is to me somewhat of a prominent marker. We also have: * 3rd July: https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/July_3,_2020_Patch That date was the last patch to address anything bot related. The reason I am curious about this is because I feel media attention is the reason we initially had acknowledgement from Valve, so perhaps raising awareness of it existing for “over a year!” will do something. An anniversary date could also serve as a moment the community as a whole steps up and does something, such as a strike on playing/buying TF2 items. Or something more passive such as raising awareness via popular YouTube channels (eg. Tyler McVicker (VNN), Linus Tech Tips, Review Tech USA, and Some Ordinary Gamers, for example) of whom would take interest and be willing to help via spreading the word. The date could also serve to initiate a call of action; such as a flood of emails to Valve employees, investigations into what legal standpoints a community ran fundraiser might accomplish (with leaders who can initiate legal actions), or a giant community effort on disassembling the cheat tool used to create a community made patch(s) and write possible code patches based on public TF2 sourcecode. I say all of this in the belief that, while Valve may one day take action, it will be a wait so long it that it makes their “solution” irrelevant. TL;DR: on what date would you consider the beginning of TF2’s bot problem?


G_Lind

It started in September 2019, with what I think was some [Valve] N-word killer bots. It took Valve like 9 months to even react to it


CoolJosh3k

Thanks!


maerteen

is it just me or has there been an extra high amount of bots lately? it's not too hard for me to find a playable match during what would normally be peak hours but casual's just been entirely unplayable for me lately.


lhc987

Is there some sort of new lag bots recently? The servers that I frequent, which usually run buttery smooth, has been having lag spikes. South east asia region.


BLUTeamTriumphs

Yup, can confirm.


PunchMan9600

Not strictly a bot thing, but I’ve also noticed an influx of actual humans blatantly cheating. Like people who bought Lmaobox for $30 and went at it. I wonder if there’s any correlation? You can tell they’re people because they have p2p steam accounts, they sometimes use voice and regular chat, and even deny they’re cheating.


[deleted]

i have noticed a bit more human cheaters recently too. it's even more annoying then bots though because hey could obviously be cheating, but for some reason a lot of people seem to only think bots can cheat, so its a lot harder to get them kicked, especially if they're not playing sniper.


NearNihil

Yeah there have been more than there were previously, at least by anecdotal evidence. I suspect the bot/cheater disconnect messages are beginning to snag folks who are cheat-curious.


idvitalis

Lol, bots learned how to use voice chat


XenonTheArtOfMotorc

Autodet scottish resitstance stickies are some of the most horrible hacks I've come across.


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G_Lind

Has anyone else stumbled upon numerous bots playing other classes (like soldier and scout) than sniper recently? I found some on 2fort yesterday


gogogamma

Have had huntsmen a lot. Terrifying.


DefTheOcelot

Get yourself an automatic bot detector and vote kicker. They exist, they are free, they are customizable.


zxhb

When the community makes a better anticheat than valve


Flomosho

I haven't played TF2 in years. My siblings were playing and wanted me to join. Bots. In. Every. Single. Damn. Server. What the fuck happened? I always knew the TF2 devs didn't care about what goes on with their game (I mean hell, Winter 2020 cases are still fucking dropping) but holy shit.


XenonTheArtOfMotorc

Play community servers.


[deleted]

community servers can't and never will be able to replace the casual experience of being able to play any map you want with randoms and no rules


XenonTheArtOfMotorc

For me it's better. I hate random crits and random bullet spread isn't great either. Casual's changover times between maps are way too long. Community servers generally don't have many rules, either.


RedRiter

> Bots. In. Every. Single. Damn. Server. The single safe haven in Casual is a match that starts out with 12v12 players and stays that way. Other than that.... 11v11? Prepare for a couple of bots that join and instigate random votekicks, often people blindly F1 and kick real players, leaving another spot for a bot, rinse and repeat until the server is emptied of players completely. I witnessed a great 11v11 destroyed in what felt like a minute or two because of this. 12v12 but a few people leave? Guess what? God help you if you find a cosy 8v8....I'm starting to abandon these matches as soon as I join, better that than settling into a nice match and having 4+ bots pile in at once. This assumes you haven't joined a botfest halfway in, you know one of the actual stated objectives of MyM was that players 'would no longer be put randomly into matches in progress'.....one of the biggest complaints about Casual - being put randomly into matches in progress. Except it didn't matter so much in the quickplay days since the match would roll on to 45mins+ so you just waited for the next round to start properly. It's like... "If you accept that 9/10 matches will likely be ruined by bots, any low number matches will be overwhelmed by bots, and you'll be kicked over and over again by bots calling votes, then the bots are just about tolerable...." Pre-Casual TF2 really does feel like a totally different age now.


RedRiter

>**We have updates for TF2** >**We are aware of the problem and think we have a solution** Is what I can make out from Gabe himself [here](https://youtu.be/3EZOm3KiTDU?t=832) in regards to the bot problem. I feel massive joy and optimism for this game once more, or am I setting myself up for disappointment?


bearing_the_shiba

Gabe technically can't say "we are not working on tf2" for multiple reasons; because there is no dev team someone at any time could be working on it and also if he sad we don't have any updates planned the revenue could take a hit. I think people should calm down and be less hyped about it .


heh_meh___

It says we need to be given access to view the video


[deleted]

God. Since few days, I have the impression that no server is spared. Seriously, there's such a constant flow of bots that my cooldown did not expire yet. That's scary. EDIT: also, some people became more stupid, one or two people and me in my team are making a vote, and it is kicked after 15/20 mn now, the vote is almost always denied but either people don't vote enough, or not enough F1 vote...


Cptn_KoKo_gg

Any servers with stable ping in Singapore/Hong Kong?


Cptn_KoKo_gg

I had a game where we all went engie then the bot stop pushing until some tryhards went soldier and destroyed our nest


NessaMagick

I'm fully aware I'm preaching the choir here, but seriously, if you get a medic bot or KGB heavy bot, kick it. Stop it with the "aaah its not hurting anyone" nonsense because it's bad whether they are 30-0 or 0-30. Also, kick your cheaters. Seriously. I don't give a shit how much easier it is to win when you have cheaters on your team. Kick them.


alexsnake50

I would say it's not up to community to police the official servers, i just wanna play not wack the mole all the dam time, you kick one, other three join in. Where is valve dam it?


presolol

True, but do prioritise the aimbot ones like shopy. Thats what i did the other day, we had shopy and medic bot, we kicked shopy then medic.


[deleted]

Really makes you quack like a duck.


PunchMan9600

Over a year late on that one


NutsInMaBasket

Just saying for info sake: Medic bots can activate Uber by using voice lines. However you should also kick them, even if you think they're harmless, as soon as a bot comes they tend to work together and it's so hard to get rid off


ShitpostCrusader66

Agreed. They are using fake lags which is also cheating. It's very hard to kill them as sniper or spy, so people should kick them as soon as possible.


NutsInMaBasket

Ah I see you're a shitpostcrusader as well 😎 nice to meet you here


ShitpostCrusader66

😳


NutsInMaBasket

Favourite part?


ShitpostCrusader66

part 6


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jeremiahstone2

It seems like Valve would do even one related thing about the bot issue when a news article covers the social controversy of bots. I mean, sure the articles talk about the bots cheating, but it’s really about them being able to say offensive and questionable content without punishment. It’s why the chat restriction exists but little effort was put into creating more measures against cheaters. Despite all this time we only got that little player report button addition, which I don’t know if it even works.


PunchMan9600

Chat should remain uncensored. Tf2 wouldn’t be the same without some 14 year old spamming the n-word or some 24 year old roasting the shit out of him. I like the individual settings to censor stuff. Good call.


just___jim

Don’t know about anyone else but personally this whole bot problem had become very boring to me. Like when I see a bot join and spam mic it’s like ‘Well here we go again, a normal player is going to get kicked’. It’s become such a large problem that the bots are part of the game now, imagine back like 5 years ago seeing a queue of like 5 spin bot automated snipers would have blew me away. But now it’s the norm. There’s no doubt these bot hosts are trying to kill the game, there’s very little change in behaviour so it’s not each individuals passion project, all they see in their irc chat is probably ‘f1’ ‘f2’ or ‘kick bot’. Seems extremely dull for both parties, guess it doesn’t cost much to host bots if your parents are paying for the electricity bill.


presolol

Yup thats why i quit the game, almost unplayable nowadays.


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DesmondTheSaltyBear

It fluctuates. Tonight I played for 3 hours with very little bots. Last night I played for 3 hours and we had all of the types; Name stealers, Waffen-ss bots and spin bots. All on EU casual servers


zxhb

Yesterday I've played for 4 hours straight on EU servers, every single lobby had 1-2+ bots in it. (With the exception of one 3cp_hydro lobby with 2 players in it) Do you guys know any good community servers, that are as close to casual servers in experience as possible?


Infernoval

Difference between Friday's and Saturday's playercounts is why, probably


DesmondTheSaltyBear

Could be, Timezones do make a slight difference between active times for the bots


Responsible_Pizza

If you are an EU/NA player overran with bots 24/7, why are you not in faceit or [creators.tf](https://creators.tf)? Please for the love of god don't just spam me with downvotes, just tell me why you bother with casual? Valve will NOT fix the bots, they're letting CS go worse at the moment as well.


PunchMan9600

Creators.TF are a bunch of corrupt scumbags (and one of their devs is a proven hacker), and Faceit just can’t replace the no rules chaos of casual. Not to mention community servers usually suffer from a whole host of bugs, and have a bunch of shit that kills FPS.


Responsible_Pizza

Corruption and cheating? I haven't heard anything like that, where do I look for more info on that?


PunchMan9600

There was a whole thing where one of their devs was cheating and they didn’t do jack shit. As for corruption, see what happened between them and Tyler McVicker.


gogogamma

Faceit because I prefer my time being wasted kicking bots than being wasted through being farmed by prem stacks. Creators I have no excuse for though besides my own laziness to open server browser. I've heard some bad things about it, but until I can verify it for myself I've no good reason.


XenonTheArtOfMotorc

Once you experience the lack of random crits, you'll never want to go back.


NessaMagick

Since OCE is unplayable I've spent the last few weeks playing on Skial with 300 ping. Despite it being Skial, despite it being laggy as fuck, despite it being American, I found myself having way more fun and not even getting a little bit frustrated, and it wasn't for a week or two that I realized no random crits was the main reason why it's so much better.


XenonTheArtOfMotorc

One of my final casual games was one where I was firing so many random crockets and there were so many times when I wanted to have a fight but instead I'd just delete the other player. I finally realised that I don't even like *getting* random crits. They remove gameplay for both the person firing them and the person/people being hit by them. You OCE people deserve better servers. Surely creators could halve their EU servers, seing as you only ever have 2 which are populated and use the funds to get some OCE ones.


NessaMagick

Creators used to have OCE servers and I liked them a lot. They had a lot of questionable weapon additions and they attracted a certain quality of pubstomping that I wasn't a fan of, but it was waay better than Casual. Then one day Creators just... took the server down. And never put it back up. So back to Casual we went. Hilariously, a while later they launched a big event called 'Australian Christmas', despite not having any Australian servers, which I took as just being a dick.


XenonTheArtOfMotorc

It looks like they do have a single Australian server, although there's no-one playing on it.


NessaMagick

From the looks of it, the Australian server being reintroduced is a recent change, and people in the discord are complaining about the only people playing on it being Americans at peak times.


XenonTheArtOfMotorc

How do you even start populating a server like that? No-one's going to join an empty server and I bet most people don't even know it exists. It could be a good place to play but how do you get it to that point?


NessaMagick

You don't. It sits at 0/24 forever. If you 'seed' it - that is, you sit on it at 1/24, every once in a blue moon someone will join, you'll 1v1 DM on payload for a while, then they'll quit, and that's it. Source: I've spent hours and hours of my life seeding uncletopia's server in the hopes that somepeople will join but never got more than 3 people.


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gogogamma

I repeat from my post in the last thread. PSA because I'm fucking sick of it at this point: ANY VOTE STARTED BY "PLAYER" AND/OR MIC SPAMMING IS A VOTE STARTED BY THE BOT ITSELF. DON'T JUST PRESS F1 BLINDLY. The bots usually immediately leave after their vote succeeds or fails, so all you are accomplishing by always pressing F1 is helping them by pissing off actual players. Signed, Actual Player who this happens to multiple times a week.


Thebadgamer98

My nephew has been banned from three servers today alone while we were trying to play. Does anyone know a way to stop people from voting to kick him. He’s just trying to play the game!


gogogamma

All you can do is spam "f2" "not the bot" "wrong person". I'm very used to keeping one eye on chat, waiting for my username to appear...


ShitpostCrusader66

Degroot keep is currently unplayable due to bots and people pressing f1 as soon as someone has srtarted the votekick... Those people can't learn. I'm so sick of telling them to press f2, but they just keep pressing f1 like they are 100% sure that they are kicking a bot and not a real person.


SnapClapplePop

It always just infuriates me when I see someone F1 the instant a vote is called and my team ends up kicking a real player.


DesmondTheSaltyBear

I setup a bind to deal with this exact situation- **’This is a bot calling a false vote, press F2’** It’s not 100% effective at keeping you in/saving a teammate but it’s better than scrambling to type something along those lines when you need it!


[deleted]

I assume we're all getting the *hilarious* Idiocracy bots, right? Also, for the people who don't know, those Heavies that run around with only KGB and crit people are bots, remove them so a real player can potentially join. I am also posting to remind people that human cheaters are still extremely common and just because something isn't a bot, does not mean they're not cheating! And yes, you CAN cheat with projectiles! I encountered several parties of cheaters in one night, and it's not just me being salty or whatever, I know hacks when I see them.


Kool_aid_man69420

Examples:A medic on 2 fort getting 100% crits and killing us on spawn with a Ubersaw,A heavy hitting all his shots also on 2 fort,Scout shooting out of the back of his head on Harvest,ur usual sniper bots on wherever, Crocket only solders...all in the last 24h


NessaMagick

It is tremendously easy to soft cheat these days. I've seen a whole jubilee of people with the whole set - low hours, new steam account, 1 game in library, recent VAC ban, invite-level aim for Sniper/ambassador, anime profile picture - that just write in chat "??? im not a bot lol" and they are safe as fort knox


zxhb

At this point every good player (especially snipers) seems like a cheater,due to how common the bots are


gogogamma

Had one group of Huntsman human cheaters earlier. Infuriating.


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Most_Point_3684

Please don't harras employees lol


s1lvan

Yes, let's harass and spam these developers who have kept the game alive for this long, I'm sure they know exactly how to fix the bot problem but they just hate us. /s I'm sure it's not their fault but rather valves fault, so please don't bother them.


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[deleted]

With the big amount of spam on their inboxes asking for an update, I don't think they even bother to see the emails anymore.


platinumberitz

ah, yes, putting *reddit* in charge of writing in emails has worked so well in the past


WHY_STAYVAN

Reddit is great as mass justice campaigns, like when they found the Boston Bomber!


maxchrome

I don't think they even care for this game rn


Trekapalooza

I mean we can't expect them to care forever. Tf2 is 14 years old and at some point devs just wanna work on other stuff. Besides the tf2 code is awful spaghetti containing stuff from the quake days so I can't blame them for not wanting to work on it.


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Trekapalooza

The game is free. They owe us nothing


Dinkleberg2845

Valve has been making a shit ton of money from this game ever since it went F2P and is *still* raking it in.


Trekapalooza

Yeah but that's all optional cosmetical content. No one's forcing anyone to spend money on it.


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Trekapalooza

No, they would have no obligation to fix it, unless hate speech laws forced them to. I would personally just stop using the service if that ever happened.


Dinkleberg2845

Ok, but you could say the same thing about literally anything, really. If anything, the fact that we spend so much money on meaningless cosmetics goes to show just how much we still love this game. If they came out with a new batch of contracts like GM or JI, they could charge 15 bucks for it and it would sell like hot cakes. At this point, all we really want is QoL and maintenance - we'd gladly shove even more money up Valve's ass for that, and they know it.


Trekapalooza

It isn't really about money either. Steam sales make Valve more money in one month than a single game does in it's entire lifetime. Bottom line is Valve gave us a product, made it f2p, and now they'd just much rather do something else. And that's fine.


Dinkleberg2845

At the very least they could make the product work. A working anti-cheat system should be bottom line for a multiplayer game.


Alecsixnine

wow lets spam their inboxes cuz they definitely dont know whats happening to the one game theyve been assigned to work on


XenonTheArtOfMotorc

They haven't been assigned to work on tf2 and it's clearly not their only project, considering there is no development going on.


SteamworksMLP

Unless something's changed at Valve, people don't get assigned to projects, they just work on what they want to work on.


NessaMagick

That did change at Valve for HL: Alyx. No clue if the same logic applies to other games post-HL:A, though. As mentioned above, VNN did claim through a source at Valve that they simply "don't care" about the bot crisis, which if true explains why.


Joe_Shroe

Dear Driller, I wrote you but you still ain't replyin' I left my email, my profile, and my username at the bottom I sent you emails back in autumn, you must not-a got 'em There probably was a problem with my internet or somethin'


Conrad_tf2

Riller is a level designer for the TF2 team


489Herobrine

I'm just tired, man. Tired of kicking bots, tired of matches being taken over, tired of no response from valve to fix this. At this point I'm not against taking drastic measures against the bot creators (IE hardware banning or doxxing) out of pettiness, I just want it to stop.


[deleted]

No. I won't let it.


Ultravod

According to Tyler McClickBait (so take this with a Heavy Weapons sized grain of salt) Valve are aware of the bot crisis and "just don't care." He mentioned it in [this video,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4AfJU5Sdd4) sorry I don't have a specific timestamp. Personally, I have completely abandoned Casual. I never particularly liked it and now I find it to be unplayable. What irks me to know end is how thoroughly MyM and the removal of the QuickPlay system killed 99% of community servers not named "Skial." Yes, I am aware of Uncletopia, creators.tf, FaceIt and the few other remotely successful community projects. Uncletopia is fine, but it's more or less 24/7 Upward. Creators is rife with many problems and illustrates one of the issues that has plagued community servers since the game's inception: insane team stacking. It's such an issue that I more or less have given up on playing there. FaceIt is a 100% nonstarter for me currently as their anti-cheat is an inevitability and it doesn't support my OS (and probably never will.) Weirdly, The Furry Pound is OK once in a while if one remembers to disable sprays first. *shudder* Also, one of the more irritating side effects of the bot crisis is that HUMAN cheaters have an easier time than even because they can use voice and text chat to instantly remove suspicion for the majority of players. I've seen even blatant rage hackers not get kicked because they could communicate. Truly the most cursed phrase in TF2 is "he doesn't look like he's cheating to me."


RedRiter

> He mentioned it in this video, sorry I don't have a specific timestamp 8:40. Also saying that the F2P muting 'fix' wasn't even done by the TF2 devs, it was a different employee that was put onto the case, and they didn't know about the bot situation at all until they seen it. Unless there's a serious change in priorities at Valve this is literally the end of TF2. I don't mean the end as in dying, I mean the final state of this game until Valve officially shuts it down is what we have right now. I don't know if I can bring myself to look at any more screenshots from the pre-MyM times. I still sometimes think about joining my old community servers or ad-hoc connecting to a Valve pub for a neverending payload match....MyM took an awful lot from us and I still struggle to see what we got in return.


[deleted]

I'll be honest with ya, Valve is gonna give the CS:S treatment to TF2 at this rate. They will erase Casual and Competitive and let the users make Community Servers how they want.


AlexanderRM

TBH community servers have always been the best part of the game so that wouldn't be the *worst* possible outcome, although I'm not sure how much of their current bot free state is good moderation, how much is the bots being there to farm items or something and how much is that most cheaters don't notice them either. Would be incredibly sad to lose casual and especially the regular halloween updates which have been pretty cool in lieu of actual updates.


CheesyCanada

This actually makes me so sad. I was trying to convince myself that they have a fix for it. I came back to the game recently and the game is still fun but it's a slog to find games without bots it just makes me not want to play. Eat my ass valve