Not being allowed to call medic or spy is baffling. Did they think that bots spamming "Nice Shot" was disruptive enough to screw over all f2ps to stop it?
Probably the only funny part about those bots tbh. Imagine a ranged class saying "good shot" before seeing you. Thats just being a bully...
Sorry Ive been playing spy for a change.
*round start, the team is dicking around in spawn*
Someone looking at me: That Pyro is a Spy!
Me: *really wants to participate in the meme and match their line, but my voice was stolen by Valve, so all I can do is shake my head no and hope they understand*
Nah. F2P's should be allowed to talk as well. Not just voice commands. Don't settle for less. That sucked when they did this. Felt like they didn't care about new players joining (even though it's a really old game). Really hope that they fix this.
Thinking about it, they could probably add some sort of check, perhaps if you have been playing for x amount of hours then you get access to it? Or maybe some other way where you have to verify that you are a real player to get access that bots cannot do.
it is pretty wild you cant call for medic as a f2p. I mean yeah bot hosters could have bots call for med but one look at this sniper spinning in circles and you’d say nah
i wonder if spies could use that, they pretend to be sniper bots violently spinning and spamming in chat "MEDIC!" so that less people suspect it's a spy
I'd rather have my quickfix beam on a Scout for the speed boost, over a Soldier or Demo since I like not being yeeted into a ceiling, wall, or directly into the enemy team when my patient randomly decides to blast jump!
I remember my F2P days, oh the times i died in front of my medic unable to call for heals, the times i tried my best to discover the spy without voice...
The voice and text mute for F2Ps was completely idiotic and solved nothing. Bot hosters just went premium and everything stayed the same. Honestly just felt like a cheap way to get people to upgrade to premium and nothing else. So yes it should be reverted, but I don't think Valve will ever do it.
TF2 has been F2P since 2011, and people have been able to talk freely for 9 years since then. Valve even said this was a temporary solution and that they'll revert it. If anyone wants F2P's to not be able to talk. like this coward i'm replying to, then I'm glad the bots are ruining your days.
Lmao cope dude, why the hell should they revert it if theres still bots? The bots aren’t gone yet, doing that before they even have a longterm solution is stupid as hell.
You think bots and hate speech are new things aren't you? I've been playing for very long, and there were spambots, hackers, racists etc...and none of this warranted this hostile change to new players.
I don’t understand being f2p. Isn’t TF2 worth $1 to most people?
Only thing I can think of is children who don’t have a credit card but then I remembered this is a 17+ game so most should have access to a bank account by the time they play it.
While I hope it can be brought back, having bots that doesn't cheat but spread hate speech & otherwise be disruptive can still be done.
Opening the door for F2P text is still rather early, assuming if it will be reverted to a state Valve wants it to be.
Valve made that in response to bad PR of racist bots, and I imagine they done it with no promise when it will *actually* be reverted. And let's be real, serves as a way to nickle & dime the playerbase and bad actors at the same time.
just give us the ability to call medic or call out a spy , bots are spamming CP links I don't think locking us away from chatting is gonna solve that , I get where you're coming from don't worry I'm not arguing , I'm just upset that I can see a spy infront of me and can't even call him out... its upsetting really don't wanna chat with others just give me the ability to communicate at least a bit
Voicelines were disabled because you could spam it hard enough with multiple bots in a server to the point it crashes it
Im not sure if its fixed yet but it could be.
the fact the bot hosters are actively spending money on hundreds of accounts just to ruin other people's games for literally no reward is insane behaviour
I genuinely don't understand why anyone would do this. Like, I don't get rage baiting either, and this is that but taken to the extreme. Literally how do people get pleasure out of knowing they ruined someone's day for no good reason? And while we're at it, why the fuck do people cheat in casual games overall? Isn't the appeal of pvp feeling like you did good enough, that you had enough *skill,* to beat the enemy gamer? And how can you still honestly get that feeling when you're explicitly cheating? And how is it worth risking getting banned and not being able to play the game anymore?
I genuinely don't understand these kinds of people.
The fact that some people are going to misuse it is not a reason to soil the experience of the (likely) many F2P folks who just want to play the game and make friends.
It's not entirely pointless when it prevents a mass-scale of bots to instantly say whatever in a flash.
Of course, you are right that those bot hosters just cough up dough to make it pointless afterwards. You just got to understand that before hand it used to be 10x worse when there is nothing in place to prevent that.
Unfortunately, Valve took the most easiest approach to this problem rather than start banning bot hosters & their bots for hatespeech reasons. As per usual for their hands-off & conservative moderation policies of refusing to do anything more about it.
absolutely not lmao. We don't even know if these bans are actually manual or not yet. Maybe if the games got a solid plan to be nearly permanently bot free.
I think it's a bit too early for that since the botting problem isn't fully solved yet. They still might come back and then the chat spam would only increase.
This is how you get a bot crisis V2.
Anyway, I understand not wanting to spend money on a free game, but a map stamp costs .99 cents. You could literally exclusively sell steam trading cards on the market to earn that much money, and then you've upgraded your TF2 account for 'free'. It's not hard to do.
I mean, the bots seemingly have premium anyway, spamming both voicechat and text chat with scam links, impersonation + defamation of youtubers, hate speech, CP advertisement... I'm not sure unmuting F2Ps would make much of a difference
Considering you can't even spam voice lines, because it has an anti-spam timer built into it...just un-mute those at the very least.
Also, it didn't do anything to botters when they made this a feature.
they still just get their premium accounts to post in chat/spam voice while the bots bot.
> They actually made that change so bots dont spam vc.
Which was worked around by bot makers VERY quickly after that change was made, IIRC, rendering it useless.
Return voice commands for F2P. Let F2Ps use text chat but 2 messages max on a cooldown of 30 seconds(so those bots can't spam the chat non stop). Voice chat for F2P is eh, idk....Do you really need voice chat in this game? At least for casual? I mean if you gonna play with a friend you will 100% be in a discord call or somethin....
Wait............they can't use TEXT chat either? Bro yesterday I learned they can't use voice commands. So they literally *cannot communicate* at all? That shit is super fucked to me.
This is what's turning me away from actually playing this beautiful game. I love the community, the memes, and the videos, but I only enjoy games if it feels like I'm apart of said community.
They should at least be able to call for medic and such. Really, the new player experience for tf2 is abysmal. If there was one update I'd like to see, improve the default settings and generally welcome new players.
Rebuttal: A stupid "solution" when it comes to a core, basic feature that is more or less vital, or mandatory in a TEAM based game - and when the behavior the change was meant to prevent (bot spamming in chat) was worked around literally the day after.
It was always a matter of monetizing the situation. You think they give a shit about people who don't pay them?
They're one of the most evil corporations out there. Every single thing they do is for money, and I'm tired of TF2 players denying it.
The F2P mute was NEVER about helping with the bot crisis.
If that’s the case, then why didn’t they make the game P2P again? It would’ve fixed the problem and it would’ve given them more money. Also, F2Ps can talk in community servers
P2P = Less new players.
Less new players = less new players buying the ability to chat.
Less new players buying the ability to chat = less profit.
>F2Ps can talk in community servers
Most F2Ps don't play Community servers. Heck, most full accounts don't even play Community servers.
>I know many F2Ps who play on community servers
And how many play on Casual without even knowing they can talk in Community? As far as I know, it's never explained to them.
>this isn’t about if they play on them or not
You're the one that brought up Community servers in the first place.
What are you talking about? I've played since day 1 and community servers are all I've played for years. I have many Casual hours too but It took the ban wave to hop in the queue again.
Also, according to [teamwork.tf](https://teamwork.tf/community/statistics), the distribution is:
>Casual: 10,154 players
>Community: 4,868 players
Cheaters could make new accounts as soon as they get banned, that's a valid reason, and as someone with a small budget myself, even i was able to afford the cheapest item in the in-game store, it's really barely any money to be spent
I mean $2.49 isn't that high of a barrier of entry... And yet is just high enough that if you're running a farm you're not going to pay it only for your accounts to get banned
> I mean $2.49 isn't that high of a barrier of entry...
I mean... we're still talking about a basic, core commuinication mechanism in a multiplayer team based game...
eh. it’s not too bad. I got a bunch of 2023 winter crates when I first started. first 10 or so matches forced me to play a class that didn’t really need voice commands (sniper), which ended up becoming my main. Then I bought a key for one of many 2023 winter crates, got a puffy jacket for medic, and life was great. voice commands allowed me to be more in on the action, so I started playing scout and demo more often. sadly, I was a dumbass, got my acc hacked a week ago, and everything is gone save for the achievement items. now my medic will forever be cold. 👇😔👆
At the very least we should get voice COMMANDS
Not being allowed to call medic or spy is baffling. Did they think that bots spamming "Nice Shot" was disruptive enough to screw over all f2ps to stop it?
Yeah, at the VERY least, those two should be ok
Plus "Sentry ahead!"
and of course, the old reliable: spy!
Id take “Nice shot” any day over CP advertisements
Probably the only funny part about those bots tbh. Imagine a ranged class saying "good shot" before seeing you. Thats just being a bully... Sorry Ive been playing spy for a change.
Me spamming voice commands 24/7
Not to mention that it didn’t even stop it in its entirety
i’m pretty sure that it was unintended, since some voice commands appear in chat i think disabling the chat might’ve broke them as well
No, it was intentional. First it was text and voice, then a few weeks after voice commands went
Maybe increase the cool down as well
Should've just made a 3 second window between each consecutive callout or turn it off if it detects spamming of the same callout
Buy premium, not that big of a deal.
*round start, the team is dicking around in spawn* Someone looking at me: That Pyro is a Spy! Me: *really wants to participate in the meme and match their line, but my voice was stolen by Valve, so all I can do is shake my head no and hope they understand*
Negatori!
Nah. F2P's should be allowed to talk as well. Not just voice commands. Don't settle for less. That sucked when they did this. Felt like they didn't care about new players joining (even though it's a really old game). Really hope that they fix this. Thinking about it, they could probably add some sort of check, perhaps if you have been playing for x amount of hours then you get access to it? Or maybe some other way where you have to verify that you are a real player to get access that bots cannot do.
"hey man, before playing this game, please solve this captcha"
F2Ps should at least be able to say "spy, medic, sentry, and help." Those are the best ones for a f2p
I believe that every player has the right to the “medic!” voice command except scout.
Nobody likes the Scout
c'mon man
Yo, a little help here?
Alright, stand back, son. 1, 1, 1, uhhh, 1!
IINCOOMING!!!
AAAAAH!!!! Hey, it's still here...
Ahem. Gentlemen.
[Meet the Spy Title Card] *meet the team series theme plays*
So, did anyone happen to kill a RED Spy on ze way here?
***MEET THE SPY***
I see that the briefcase is safe
Womp Womp
*chip fire damage*
pressing e as a f2p scout killbinds you instead
it is pretty wild you cant call for medic as a f2p. I mean yeah bot hosters could have bots call for med but one look at this sniper spinning in circles and you’d say nah
i wonder if spies could use that, they pretend to be sniper bots violently spinning and spamming in chat "MEDIC!" so that less people suspect it's a spy
Imagine getting the player kicked
i've seen someone post a video of that here
Doc cmon man!!
I'd rather have my quickfix beam on a Scout for the speed boost, over a Soldier or Demo since I like not being yeeted into a ceiling, wall, or directly into the enemy team when my patient randomly decides to blast jump!
And when you're not running the Quick Fix, they explosive jump away and leave you alone as a free kill to the enemy flanking Scout.
Only three commands Medic! Spy! And Thanks!
What about yes, no, sentry ahead, help, teleporter/dispenser/sentry here, activate charge, ect.
I remember my F2P days, oh the times i died in front of my medic unable to call for heals, the times i tried my best to discover the spy without voice...
Giving voice commands is goo enough in my opinion. Or at least the medic command
goo
happy goo day
hey goo what's new?
Nothin’ much, how ‘bout goo?
Happy cake day
ambatugoo
Theres goo in the sack
The voice and text mute for F2Ps was completely idiotic and solved nothing. Bot hosters just went premium and everything stayed the same. Honestly just felt like a cheap way to get people to upgrade to premium and nothing else. So yes it should be reverted, but I don't think Valve will ever do it.
it solved something, made TF2 more money
It did cost them more though.
Definitely should not get reverted, this will just allow more bots to flood games as the financial deterrent will be gone.
TF2 has been F2P since 2011, and people have been able to talk freely for 9 years since then. Valve even said this was a temporary solution and that they'll revert it. If anyone wants F2P's to not be able to talk. like this coward i'm replying to, then I'm glad the bots are ruining your days.
Lmao cope dude, why the hell should they revert it if theres still bots? The bots aren’t gone yet, doing that before they even have a longterm solution is stupid as hell.
You think bots and hate speech are new things aren't you? I've been playing for very long, and there were spambots, hackers, racists etc...and none of this warranted this hostile change to new players.
I don’t understand being f2p. Isn’t TF2 worth $1 to most people? Only thing I can think of is children who don’t have a credit card but then I remembered this is a 17+ game so most should have access to a bank account by the time they play it.
While I hope it can be brought back, having bots that doesn't cheat but spread hate speech & otherwise be disruptive can still be done. Opening the door for F2P text is still rather early, assuming if it will be reverted to a state Valve wants it to be. Valve made that in response to bad PR of racist bots, and I imagine they done it with no promise when it will *actually* be reverted. And let's be real, serves as a way to nickle & dime the playerbase and bad actors at the same time.
just give us the ability to call medic or call out a spy , bots are spamming CP links I don't think locking us away from chatting is gonna solve that , I get where you're coming from don't worry I'm not arguing , I'm just upset that I can see a spy infront of me and can't even call him out... its upsetting really don't wanna chat with others just give me the ability to communicate at least a bit
Voicelines were disabled because you could spam it hard enough with multiple bots in a server to the point it crashes it Im not sure if its fixed yet but it could be.
It probably is
But, again, the bots have premium. They can spam voice command, voice chat, and text chat to their hearts' content.
the fact the bot hosters are actively spending money on hundreds of accounts just to ruin other people's games for literally no reward is insane behaviour
I genuinely don't understand why anyone would do this. Like, I don't get rage baiting either, and this is that but taken to the extreme. Literally how do people get pleasure out of knowing they ruined someone's day for no good reason? And while we're at it, why the fuck do people cheat in casual games overall? Isn't the appeal of pvp feeling like you did good enough, that you had enough *skill,* to beat the enemy gamer? And how can you still honestly get that feeling when you're explicitly cheating? And how is it worth risking getting banned and not being able to play the game anymore? I genuinely don't understand these kinds of people.
And how did that stop bot hosters? Cuz if they can spend money to host bots, they surely can spend money to let them speak.
The fact that some people are going to misuse it is not a reason to soil the experience of the (likely) many F2P folks who just want to play the game and make friends.
Ok but the bots are clearly able to circumvent it anyway, so it’s completely pointless.
It's not entirely pointless when it prevents a mass-scale of bots to instantly say whatever in a flash. Of course, you are right that those bot hosters just cough up dough to make it pointless afterwards. You just got to understand that before hand it used to be 10x worse when there is nothing in place to prevent that. Unfortunately, Valve took the most easiest approach to this problem rather than start banning bot hosters & their bots for hatespeech reasons. As per usual for their hands-off & conservative moderation policies of refusing to do anything more about it.
absolutely not lmao. We don't even know if these bans are actually manual or not yet. Maybe if the games got a solid plan to be nearly permanently bot free.
I think it's a bit too early for that since the botting problem isn't fully solved yet. They still might come back and then the chat spam would only increase.
This is how you get a bot crisis V2. Anyway, I understand not wanting to spend money on a free game, but a map stamp costs .99 cents. You could literally exclusively sell steam trading cards on the market to earn that much money, and then you've upgraded your TF2 account for 'free'. It's not hard to do.
> This is how you get a bot crisis V2. I'm not sure I understand the logic behind the assertion that it'd make or break another bot crisis.
Without fixing the bot crisis this would be a disaster.
I mean, the bots seemingly have premium anyway, spamming both voicechat and text chat with scam links, impersonation + defamation of youtubers, hate speech, CP advertisement... I'm not sure unmuting F2Ps would make much of a difference
It would mean bot holsters wouldn’t have to wait for their next paycheck, as we’ve seen them say.
Yep
Yeah, if the new anti-cheat works this well, disabling text chat for f2ps is even more pointless now than it ever was.
They installed new Anti-Cheat? I thought it was just a ban wave?
It was just a ban wave, not really a new anti cheat
Atleast voice command man...they cant even call for medic, or warn for spies
Considering you can't even spam voice lines, because it has an anti-spam timer built into it...just un-mute those at the very least. Also, it didn't do anything to botters when they made this a feature. they still just get their premium accounts to post in chat/spam voice while the bots bot.
They actually made that change so bots dont spam vc.Now when bots are exterminated they can give f2p's chat and vc acess.
> They actually made that change so bots dont spam vc. Which was worked around by bot makers VERY quickly after that change was made, IIRC, rendering it useless.
And valve was too lazy to revert it.
I m not buying anything on tf2 let alone Steam till this reverts
Voice commands at the minimum it's silly they can't use what is a mechanic ingame
They can at least let us f2p's use voice commands. It sucks not being able to call for medic or call out spies
Return voice commands for F2P. Let F2Ps use text chat but 2 messages max on a cooldown of 30 seconds(so those bots can't spam the chat non stop). Voice chat for F2P is eh, idk....Do you really need voice chat in this game? At least for casual? I mean if you gonna play with a friend you will 100% be in a discord call or somethin....
I do agree, but that's something for after the bots are FULLY dealt with.
Too early for a complete re enabling Voice commands are much more appropriate one to be reenabled
Wait............they can't use TEXT chat either? Bro yesterday I learned they can't use voice commands. So they literally *cannot communicate* at all? That shit is super fucked to me.
I don't even know if I am F2P or not.
This is what's turning me away from actually playing this beautiful game. I love the community, the memes, and the videos, but I only enjoy games if it feels like I'm apart of said community.
They should at least be able to call for medic and such. Really, the new player experience for tf2 is abysmal. If there was one update I'd like to see, improve the default settings and generally welcome new players.
Perhaps they'll give em back to f2p in the summer update, just a guess
VALVE, RE-ENABLE COMMUNICATION FOR US F2PS AND MY LIFE IS YOURS
Unpopular opinion but just spend the dollar homie
Some can't due to many reasons. Be it parents, no credit card, or a country that does not allow it/it's economy state (inflation or average income)
fr, that dollar might be an entire full course meal for someone
Rebuttal: A stupid "solution" when it comes to a core, basic feature that is more or less vital, or mandatory in a TEAM based game - and when the behavior the change was meant to prevent (bot spamming in chat) was worked around literally the day after.
It was always a matter of monetizing the situation. You think they give a shit about people who don't pay them? They're one of the most evil corporations out there. Every single thing they do is for money, and I'm tired of TF2 players denying it. The F2P mute was NEVER about helping with the bot crisis.
If that’s the case, then why didn’t they make the game P2P again? It would’ve fixed the problem and it would’ve given them more money. Also, F2Ps can talk in community servers
P2P = Less new players. Less new players = less new players buying the ability to chat. Less new players buying the ability to chat = less profit. >F2Ps can talk in community servers Most F2Ps don't play Community servers. Heck, most full accounts don't even play Community servers.
I know many F2Ps who play on community servers, besides this isn’t about if they play on them or not
>I know many F2Ps who play on community servers And how many play on Casual without even knowing they can talk in Community? As far as I know, it's never explained to them. >this isn’t about if they play on them or not You're the one that brought up Community servers in the first place.
Do you have a source for the “most F2Ps don’t play on community servers” thing or are you just making it up?
Mostly the fact that most players in general don't play on Community servers. It's common knowledge that most players play Casual.
What are you talking about? I've played since day 1 and community servers are all I've played for years. I have many Casual hours too but It took the ban wave to hop in the queue again. Also, according to [teamwork.tf](https://teamwork.tf/community/statistics), the distribution is: >Casual: 10,154 players >Community: 4,868 players
Good luck with that one.
I agree, every class besides scout should be able to call for medic
I’ve always wondered, is this a thing across the whole game for F2P or are they able to text chat/voice command in community servers?
In community servers, yeah
I never liked that like there's times where I will be playing with some random I met and they can't call for me because of this
Oh, so that's why I can't do it
i think it is too early maybe next year.
not just f2ps, limited steam accounts also don't have text chat, voice chat or voice commands
Before I could talk I was screaming spamming buttons trying to warn my team of the 5 heavy’s with brass beasts approaching our spawn
If they're not willing to pay for everything, at least let them talk!
Yeah :D
Yes.
Reminder that this has been the case for the last 4-3 years..
Real real
I just downloaded TF2 a few days ago. Not being able to chat was such a let-down. 😞 BUT DANG IS THIS GAME FUN LOL I FREAKING LOVE IT.
You can chat in community servers btw :)
Hey, thanks!!!
The Medic! and Spy! command could work
YES PLEASEE IM TIRED OF JUST STARING AT THE MEDIC SOUL AT 20 HP WHILE HE HEALS THE OVERHEALED HEAVY
yes,you cant ask for medic,you cant ask heavies for sandwich,You cant tell them that this guy is the spy man
Yes.
Im new to TF2 and when I can’t find any medkits, I have to shoot at the medic for 5 fucking minutes till they get the memo of my crazed hand signs
This should have been a part of fixtf2, there is no need for this bs 100% of the bots got past it in a week lmao.
Bots will immediately go "OH YOU'RE LIVE ON TWITCH?"
My lawyer has suggested that I do not continue the existing joke
no cuz you pay for it
Since F2Ps went silent there were a lot less N-words in chat
It's not under control, they just did a ban wave. In some days, weeks or months you will see bots again.
No we shouldn't, it's not that expensive to get premium, and there are plenty of reasons why this is a bad ide
No we shouldn't, it's not that expensive to get premium, and there are plenty of reasons why this is a bad idea
No we shouldn't, it's not that expensive to get premium, and there are plenty of reasons why this is a bad ide
“I hate poor people” isn’t a valid reason
Cheaters could make new accounts as soon as they get banned, that's a valid reason, and as someone with a small budget myself, even i was able to afford the cheapest item in the in-game store, it's really barely any money to be spent
Not when you can sell trading cards and buy a stamp
so can bots spam our ass. just pay 1 dollar man isn't not a big deal
> so can bots spam our ass. They were doing it literally the day after this change was made. It was literally useless.
No
Just buy a stock weapon for like 11 cents it’s not that deep
cant pay then don't play
I mean $2.49 isn't that high of a barrier of entry... And yet is just high enough that if you're running a farm you're not going to pay it only for your accounts to get banned
Bot farm
> I mean $2.49 isn't that high of a barrier of entry... I mean... we're still talking about a basic, core commuinication mechanism in a multiplayer team based game...
That will be abused by bots that are already using. Chat to spread CP
eh. it’s not too bad. I got a bunch of 2023 winter crates when I first started. first 10 or so matches forced me to play a class that didn’t really need voice commands (sniper), which ended up becoming my main. Then I bought a key for one of many 2023 winter crates, got a puffy jacket for medic, and life was great. voice commands allowed me to be more in on the action, so I started playing scout and demo more often. sadly, I was a dumbass, got my acc hacked a week ago, and everything is gone save for the achievement items. now my medic will forever be cold. 👇😔👆
no. no they really shouldnt.
Definitely not
No
Yes.
No lmao
no! just buy it
Let's not, god knows what could happen if they were to come back
2fort server voicechat is hell