Quickplay

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Pictogram question.png“Ok guys, bad news: we lost that last one.”
This article documents content for Team Fortress 2 that was removed from the game. It may contain speculation, broken links or errors.
“
The hand is quicker than the eye!
Click to listen
— The Engineer on jumping into servers
 ”
The "random gamemode" Quickplay illustration.

Quickplay was an automated game-connection system in Team Fortress 2. It allowed players to leave finding a server to the computer; it was most notable for permitting "ad-hoc" connections to servers, as well as shining a de facto spotlight on community servers. It was ultimately replaced in the Meet Your Match Update with Casual Mode.

Using Quickplay

Quickplay was accessed from the main menu of the game. The button "Start Playing" would open the quickplay dialog. The quickplay dialog allowed the player to specify roughly what they are looking for by selecting the game mode they wanted to play.

Additionally, there was the option to filter based on server owner; Valve and/or the community. Valve servers provided a more vanilla game experience, while community servers usually run some sort of set of modifications, ranging from custom maps to new game modes.

Finally, there was the option to play community maps from the workshop as well as beta maps.

The Quickplay algorithm

Valve has not officially documented the exact game-connection algorithm. However, they have noted that it involved servers building up a reputation from how long players are connected to them on average. In general, the system took into account a variety of factors such as: the latency of the player, the player’s number of hours played, map, current number of players, maximum number of players, and the server reputation score.

Requirements

Servers had to satisfy several requirements in order to qualify for quickplay, although there may have been more unknown criteria:

  • sv_cheats must be off.
  • The map must be one of the approved quickplay maps.
  • Friendly fire must be disabled.
  • Random Crits must be enabled.
  • The maxplayers setting must be 24, the default setting. 32 always makes the server ineligible, while values in between apply a gradual penalty.
  • The server must have a registered server account.
  • Highlander mode must be disabled.
  • VAC must be enabled.
  • The server must not require a password.
  • No messing with the MotD such as forcing players to view it, forcing HTML on and so on.
  • No selling of gameplay advantages.
  • The server must not attempt to disguise its Bots as human players, as in giving the bots a ping and/or custom avatar on the scoreboard.

Policy of Truth

Quickplay servers were required to be honest about metadata. Player counts, players being identified as bots and server tags must have had accurately reflected the server configuration.

Update history

June 23, 2011 Patch (Über Update)
  • The Main menu now has a "Start Playing" option which presents users with various game modes to choose from. Once selected, the game matches the player into the best available server for that mode.

June 27, 2011 Patch

  • Added a server console message when a player is sent to the server via the matchmaking system

July 7, 2011 Patch

  • Improved matchmaking logic

July 8, 2011 Patch

  • [Undocumented] Fixed quickplay sending people to the wrong game mode.

July 18, 2011 Patch

  • Updated Matchmaking:
    • Added a progress bar and server count during the matchmaking search
    • Added more filtering on the master server to avoid pinging non-matching servers
  • [Undocumented] Fixed the Matchmaking menu not completely darkening the background when clicked.
  • [Undocumented] Fixed the Matchmaking menu from letter boxing while searching for a server.

September 15, 2011 Patch

  • Updated the matchmaking filtering to speed up searches and reduce the number of pinged servers

November 16, 2011 Patch

  • Fixed a bug preventing some server-side quickplay filtering from working, causing clients to ping too many servers

May 17, 2012 Patch

July 20, 2012 Patch

  • [Undocumented] Started beta of new quickplay lobby system, accessible via the OpenMatchmakingLobby console command.

July 23, 2012 Patch

  • Fixed Replay/SourceTV clients getting kicked when quickplay servers hibernate

August 2, 2012 Patch (Triad Pack)

  • Quickplay beta: Fixed bug causing game servers to sometimes stop receiving traffic upon victory condition
  • Quickplay beta: Added more status information while in the matchmaking queue

August 17, 2012 Patch

  • Updated the matchmaking ConVar tf_mm_strict
    • A value of 2 will hide the server from the server browser but will still allow direct connections

August 21, 2012 Patch

  • Fixed matchmaking sending players to out-of-date servers

September 21, 2012 Patch #2

  • Fixed bug causing gameservers to report themselves as full to the matchmaking system

February 1, 2013 Patch

  • Fixed Gullywash being in the wrong matchmaking category

March 12, 2013 Patch

  • Fixed Gullywash being in the wrong quickplay mapcycle.

April 3, 2013 Patch

  • Prevent game servers from opening the MOTD panel more than once if the player connected through matchmaking or quickplay

October 29, 2013 Patch (Scream Fortress V)

  • Enabled Halloween event maps in quick play
  • Removed some servers that forged player counts from quickplay and the server browser

November 6, 2013 Patch

  • HTML MOTDs will no longer be shown when connecting via quickplay
  • Removed the prompt to opt-in to quickplay beta

January 23, 2014 Patch

  • Add quickplay option to only connect to official Valve servers
  • Prevent game servers from redirecting players to alternate servers when players connect through quickplay

February 7, 2014 Patch #1 (Strongbox Pack)

  • Added advanced options page, which allows you to search for a few commonly-requested non-vanilla options: 32-player servers, nocrits, and instant/modified respawn times
  • Added "Show Servers" button to quickplay. This will run the normal quickplay search, but instead of joining the "best" server, it will present a list of about 20 servers and let you pick.

February 7, 2014 Patch #2

  • Fixed a client crash related to the Quickplay menu

February 11, 2014 Patch

  • Fixed a Quickplay crash for Linux clients
  • Quickplay: Added option to search for "nodmgspread" servers
  • Quickplay: Removed disabling of non-vanilla option radio buttons when official servers are selected

July 8, 2014 Patch

July 17, 2014 Patch

  • Fixed the quickplay menu not remembering the Advanced Options settings after using the Play Beta Maps option

February 11, 2015 Patch

  • Added "redirect" client command that can be used to send clients to a different server. Does not function for clients that came from matchmaking or certain server browser tabs.

March 18, 2015 Patch

July 3, 2015 Patch

  • Valve official quickplay and matchmaking servers are no longer listed in the server browser

July 4, 2015 Patch #2

  • Temporarily reverted Valve official quickplay and matchmaking servers not being listed in the server browser while we look into this further

October 29, 2015 Patch

  • Fixed missing Quickplay images for Mannpower maps Gorge and Thunder Mountain

November 3, 2015 Patch

  • Fixed the Quickplay server list sometimes displaying the map filename instead of the proper name
  • Updated Merasmissions to include a Quickplay button that will automatically join the required map or open the Quickplay menu if any map can be used

November 13, 2015 Patch

November 25, 2015 Patch

  • Mannpower is no longer the first option in quickplay.

April 25, 2016 Patch #1

April 25, 2016 Patch #2

  • Updated the Quickplay category for Alternative game modes to include Medieval maps

June 22, 2016 Patch #2

  • Fixed Mannpower and PASS Time game modes showing up in the wrong quickplay UI categories.

July 7, 2016 Patch (Meet Your Match Update)

See also

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