[hlds_announce] Mandatory Team Fortress 2 update released

2016-09-27 Thread Eric Smith
We've released a mandatory update for Team Fortress 2. The notes for the update 
are below. The new version is 3628786.

-Eric

--

Matchmaking
- Players can now form rematches at the end of a Casual match
- At the end of a Casual match, players will have 30 seconds to opt-in 
to a rematch
- If at least 6 players from BLU and 6 players from RED have chosen to 
rematch, then a rematch will begin
- A rematch will use the same teams, map and server
- Players can now re-queue into Casual Matchmaking during the end of a match
- Players who decline a rematch or simply don't vote in the rematch 
voting period will automatically be re-queued
- Updated the way XP is earned in Casual matches
- Players will now be awarded more XP based on their team's performance 
at the end of a match
- XP is no longer lost for leaving a Casual match early
- A breakdown of XP sources is now shown when your XP bar fills up
- Casual matches now more strongly prefer to distribute players to teams based 
on experience, in order to better avoid creating one-sided matches
- Casual matches are now more likely to start with fewer than 24 players in 
lower population game-modes or regions, wherein the wait time for a full match 
would become excessive
- The current minimum allowable match size in such situations is twelve 
players
- The matchmaker will still attempt to place late-joiners into these 
matches as they become available
- Competitive matches no longer terminate when any player abandons the match
- Bots will now fill in for players who have abandoned, or temporarily 
disconnected from, Competitive matches
- Matches that finish at an advantage or disadvantage (e.g. 6v5 or 5v6, 
not counting any bots) will now result in smaller or larger skill rating 
adjustments for advantaged wins or disadvantaged losses, respectively
- Competitive matches that lose more than one player per team will keep 
the current behavior of ending the match
- Players who abandon Competitive matches still receive a large skill 
rating penalty and Competitive matchmaking cooldown, regardless of whether a 
bot was allowed to take their place
- Greatly improved the reliability of client ping estimates when placing users 
into matchmaking servers
- The game client now periodically checks in with the matchmaking 
server network to estimate ping to each region, and feeds the information back 
to the matchmaking system
- This should greatly reduce cases of players being placed in regions 
to which they have poor ping, even when said regions are geographically nearby
- The scoreboard now shows the connection status for missing and connecting 
players

General
- Added tournament medals for ozfortress Season 16 and Season 17
- Fixed an exploit related to the Eureka Effect and carrying buildings
- Fixed Live Streams menu not displaying the list of streams
- Fixed the flamethrower not drawing the Halloween Spell: Spectral Flame effect 
during Halloween and Full Moon events
- Updated the localization files

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[hlds_announce] Mandatory Team Fortress 2 update coming

2016-09-27 Thread Eric Smith
We're working on a mandatory update for Team Fortress 2. The notes for the 
update are below. We should have the update ready soon.

-Eric

--

Matchmaking
- Players can now form rematches at the end of a Casual match
- At the end of a Casual match, players will have 30 seconds to opt-in 
to a rematch
- If at least 6 players from BLU and 6 players from RED have chosen to 
rematch, then a rematch will begin
- A rematch will use the same teams, map and server
- Players can now re-queue into Casual Matchmaking during the end of a match
- Players who decline a rematch or simply don't vote in the rematch 
voting period will automatically be re-queued
- Updated the way XP is earned in Casual matches
- Players will now be awarded more XP based on their team's performance 
at the end of a match
- XP is no longer lost for leaving a Casual match early
- A breakdown of XP sources is now shown when your XP bar fills up
- Casual matches now more strongly prefer to distribute players to teams based 
on experience, in order to better avoid creating one-sided matches
- Casual matches are now more likely to start with fewer than 24 players in 
lower population game-modes or regions, wherein the wait time for a full match 
would become excessive
- The current minimum allowable match size in such situations is twelve 
players
- The matchmaker will still attempt to place late-joiners into these 
matches as they become available
- Competitive matches no longer terminate when any player abandons the match
- Bots will now fill in for players who have abandoned, or temporarily 
disconnected from, Competitive matches
- Matches that finish at an advantage or disadvantage (e.g. 6v5 or 5v6, 
not counting any bots) will now result in smaller or larger skill rating 
adjustments for advantaged wins or disadvantaged losses, respectively
- Competitive matches that lose more than one player per team will keep 
the current behavior of ending the match
- Players who abandon Competitive matches still receive a large skill 
rating penalty and Competitive matchmaking cooldown, regardless of whether a 
bot was allowed to take their place
- Greatly improved the reliability of client ping estimates when placing users 
into matchmaking servers
- The game client now periodically checks in with the matchmaking 
server network to estimate ping to each region, and feeds the information back 
to the matchmaking system
- This should greatly reduce cases of players being placed in regions 
to which they have poor ping, even when said regions are geographically nearby
- The scoreboard now shows the connection status for missing and connecting 
players

General
- Added tournament medals for ozfortress Season 16 and Season 17
- Fixed an exploit related to the Eureka Effect and carrying buildings
- Fixed Live Streams menu not displaying the list of streams
- Fixed the flamethrower not drawing the Halloween Spell: Spectral Flame effect 
during Halloween and Full Moon events
- Updated the localization files

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