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⠸⡸⠜⠕⠕⠁⢁⢇⢏⢽⢺⣪⡳⡝⣎⣏⢯⢞⡿⣟⣷⣳⢯⡷⣽⢽⢯⣳⣫⠇
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⠀⠪⡪⡪⣪⢪⢺⢸⢢⢓⢆⢤⢀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⢊⢞⡾⣿⡯⣏⢮⠷⠁
⠀⠀⠀⠈⠊⠆⡃⠕⢕⢇⢇⢇⢇⢇⢏⢎⢎⢆⢄⠀⢑⣽⣿⢝⠲⠉
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⠀⠀⠀⣴⣿⣾⣿⣿⣿⡿⡽⡑⢌⠪⡢⡣⣣⡟
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⠀⠀⠀⠀⠁⠇⠡⠩⡫⢿⣝⡻⡮⣒⢽⠋

9 years, 5 months, 30 days from the date Meet your Match released to the date i reached max rank in Casual Mode;

Sanity degrading, countless frustrating moments, a very unforgiving, unfun, and grindy EXP system gone through for months and months, and members of this videogame making things worse each day, just so i could reach this meaningless medal;

A medal that once obtained doesn't give you any congratulatory messages (neither offline with a simplistic pop-up window ala' Cheater's Lament displayed exclusively for you, nor with an in-game message ala' Something Special for Someone Special or Gold Pan drops displayed for everyone to see,) no cosmetics tied to your general progress with the medal (retroactively showing off your achievement, which can be displayed either in your backpack or even in your class(es) of choice as something you can wear), no extra particles (like the unusual effect Sunbeams sitting right behind the max rank's medal,) shine, or even a symbol next to the rank or EXP gauge to symbolize your achievement, and no meaningful changes to the matchmaker (because Valve, ever since the Blue Moon update in 2018, butchered the MMR system to the point that someone's rank means nothing when it comes to a balanced team and match.)
Absolutely nothing.

But at least i can say that this miserable journey was worth it just to prove a point (from the point of view of someone that began playing this game since August of 2011) on how much TF2 and its community degraded ever since Valve butchered the game with awful balances and a matchmaker to the casual experience nobody asked for since Meet Your Match and Jungle Inferno released (balance-wise we can also argue things started getting worse since Gun Mettle in 2015,) and how this neglect retroactively made the community more hostile, depraved, degenerate, unlikable, selfish, and generally annoying to be around or endure, filled to the brim with countless in-fights and drama between two groups of people in said community that are equally obnoxious, loud, unlikable, disgusting, and unagreeable, a situation where there's no heroes nor victors, just one group of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ people against a different group of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ people that refuse to do anything concrete or productive even if you given them solutions with crystal clear guidance like hosting and playing community servers (both parties will ♥♥♥♥♥ at you that "it's too hard" or "Is not the intended way to play the game" or whatever other weak excuses they wanna pull out of their asses,) which somehow both parties manage to grow the number of supporters day by day, by deceiving either newbies that just installed this game in the last two or three years or crusty old veterans that haven't touched this game in over a decade and just passively remember the game exclusively by the good old memories they had in 2008 or 2014, not knowing how truly horrid this game and community got deep inside in this last decade;
The players in this game are truly a breed of their own, and not in a good way, as you find all sorts of obnoxious, insincere, and downright unfunny sad excuses of human beings, if it isn't the downright racist 4chan-tier cavemens that can't think straight or back up their trashtalk by being useful or good, it's people that do roleplays in chat, faking themselves to be femboys, couples, "puppydogs" or any crap of the sorts as an overly played out joke, like any other jokes the community ran to the ground for more than a decade (HAHA POOTIS, HAHA LENNY FAEC XD) while still being as ass as the former kind of players;
All players in Casual Mode either are the dumbest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around that are completely unaware of their surroundings, or the cheesiest, greasiest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ abusing every inch of the game and engine that exists on top of abusing the most annoying weapons in the game (looking at you, Kunai + Dead Ringer, Vaccinator, and either Razorback or Darwin's Danger Shield, those are the more egregious examples), and it surprises me how people in this game don't find these kinds of players as obnoxious as the bots were years back, but i guess anything that "requires skill" is somehow a-ok, who cares if it sucks the fun out of everyone else in a lobby as much as the bots or players did with "illegitimate" kills via cheats? (While you're at it, harass a coder fixing an exploit because "it patched out a way to farm clip dumps with the stomp ability on the Detonator," all because you're all sad virgins.)

I could go on with the game and community, like how trading essentially died because of a monopoly between the same couple trading sites and 20 or so people that are into high tier trading with their hoard of trade bots sucking all fun, sociability, and competition out of the side-hobby the game once had, the workshop having its own monopoly as well in the form of the TF2 Emporium, or how the community server situation became so dire with the presence of FastPath poisoning the well with fake redirects to their crappy server or how the only popular picks are all ran by ♥♥♥♥♥♥ people (one of which, Castaway.tf, had its cronies harass and ruin a movement and its Discord server centered around reviving quickplay with the newly added Steam Networking feature by having people host and share their servers around, just by gaining trust of the founder to the point of becoming mods only to cause drama and ban people left and right with their newly acquired mod powers,) but the gist of this entire review is this:

I absolutely do not recommend playing this game at all, unless you distance yourself from Casual Mode and play in curated community servers ran and populated by decent people (like TF2Maps' servers,) or at least have friends to play with to soften the blow Casual Mode gives you (or you know, you can wait a month and play Team Fortress 2 Classified instead, or spice up your experience with Open Fortress when that releases too;) This game fell from grace so hard since Meet Your Match released that enjoying it in its official, intended way is abysmal, and considering the state of the community, i don't think it'll ever improve no matter what.
As for me i might still play this game from time to time in community servers or Mann vs Machine, but you'll never see me touch Casual Mode ever again unless i'm being forced to when playing with friends.

Tf2 is a game. one of the games. funny ragdolls, guns, overpriced hats, more guns, and pootis