Team Fortress 2 Gets a Competitive Mode

It's no surprise to anyone that Overwatch is a horrible mash-up of MOBA and FPS, and it's borrowed more than a few things from its big brother Team Fortress 2. But that doesn't mean the line of inspiration has to go one way--it seems like big brother TF2 is taking a cue from Overwatch, and is announcing its own competitive mode.


 

“Designed as a new challenge for experienced TF2 players, Competitive Mode lets you rank up, track progress, earn medals and record your accomplishments in a results-based competitive experience.”

“With Competitive Mode, every win (and every loss) counts. You’ll be competing against opponents of similar skill level in structured and progressive play. Your match-to-match performance will determine how you rank up (or down). And because you’ll be working hard to earn your ranks, we’ll be working hard to protect their value.”

 
The competitive mode, much like in the game that likely inspired it, will have a few different rules and operate differently from your standard, chaotically, barely-balanced game of TF2. Things like shotgun spreads will be normalized, there will be no mini-crits, and other RNG elements will be stripped from the game to empathize skill.

On the other hand, you can't just play competitive mode: to unlock that ability, you have to either have purchased an in-game item and linked your account to a phone number, or you have to purchase a Competitive Access Pass, which is sitting at $9.99. A fairly high barrier of entry, but I imagine that will help prevent common jerks from joining competitive games just to f*** around and ruin their teammates score.

In addition to the new competitive mode, there's also going to be some tweaks to your standard quick-play option, to make matchmaking fairer, and, supposedly, put a stop to joining games in the middle, so you'll be playing more games start-to-finish than before.

A much needed technical update to the game, although it does come a bit late. A competitive TF2 was never something I'd imagine I'd see in my lifetime, and while I don't expect we'll see a massively popular pro TF2 league anytime soon, it's still cool to see new options and some tuning under the hood. Maybe it's enough to inject new life into the game? Maybe not. We'll have to see.