Team Fortress 2 Update Thread

An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Team Fortress 2. The major changes include:

Fixed an exploit related to not respawning in the spawn room at the beginning of Casual and Competitive matches
Fixed Pyros griefing teammates by attacking them with the flamethrower
Fixed Medics getting a permanent speed boost after healing a charging Demoman
Fixed Medics getting the Demoman's charging speed when using Mediguns other than The Quick-Fix
Fixed the Strange Razorback double-counting the number Spies
Fixed a bug related to the Sniper's zoom and taunting
Fixed players being able to pick-up the PASS Time jack while they are stunned
Increased the matchmaking system's preference for matching large pre-made parties against each other in Casual Mode. This should result in more balanced matches, but may cause a slight increase in queue times for larger parties.

September 27, 2016 - TF2 Team

An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Team Fortress 2. The major changes include:

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

Scream Fortress VIII has arrived!
- Featuring 3 new community maps: Brimstone, Pit of Death, and Maple Ridge Event

Added the Creepy Crawly Case
- Contains 22 new community-created items that make-up the Creepy Crawly Collection
- Has a chance to give one of 3 community-created Halloween-restricted items as a bonus item
- Has a chance to give a taunt Unusualifier as a bonus item

Added a taunt Unusualifier
- A new tool that will Unusualify the specified taunt with the Unusual effect listed in the tool's description
- Can be found as a random bonus item when opening a Creepy Crawly Case

Added two new taunts to the Mann Co. Store
- Taunt: The Victory Lap
- Taunt: Second Rate Sorcery (community-created)

Added 8 new community-created Unusual effects
- 4 new effects for Unusual hats
- 4 new effects for Unusual taunts

- Continue last year's event by collecting the souls of dead players for your Soul Gargoyle by killing enemies, doing map objectives, or collecting the Soul Gargoyles that spawn in the maps
- Join Halloween matches by selecting the "Halloween" category in Casual
- Scream Fortress VIII runs through November 9th, 2016

During Scream Fortress VIII
- All players who launch the game will receive a Soul Gargoyle if they don't already have one from last year's event
- Grants access to Merasmissions and Halloween item transmutations
- Tracks Merasmissions completed and souls collected
- Added 3 new Merasmissions for the featured maps
- Completing a Merasmission will give players a classic Halloween item and the chance for a Creepy Crawly Case
- The chance to receive an Unusual item from a case opening has been increased during the event
- All cases and Mann Co. Supply Crates will grant Halloween 2016 Unusual effects instead of their normal Unusual effects

Matchmaking
- The Competitive maps list has been updated
- Added pl_badwater and ctf_turbine
- Disabled cp_granary and cp_badlands
- Maps will continue to enter and exit this list over time
- Added "Load Saved Settings" and "Save Current Settings" buttons to the Casual mode Map Selection menu
- Search criteria is now manually saved to give players more control over the default settings when the game is launched
- XP earned in Casual matches has been adjusted to reward players more for their personal contribution to the match
- XP per point has returned to 6.5 XP per point
- XP earned for match completion and objective completion now scales based on your score relative to total amount of points scored by everyone in the match
- Increased the matchmaker's priority of matches with imbalanced teams (Much needed...)
- This should reduce the occurrence of extended imbalanced matches when multiple players leave

General
- Added the AsiaFortress Cup Season 10 tournament medals
- Added LBTF2 6v6 Season 13 tournament medals
- Improved several aspects of texture handling for OS X and Linux clients
- This should reduce the rate of "Out of memory" errors for players on high texture settings, especially on level change
- Players still encountering this error can reduce texture quality to medium or lower to greatly improve stability pending further improvements
- Fixed a missing material issue on cp_sunshine
- Fixed players not taking damage when exploding as a bombhead without stunning Merasmus
- Fixed Mann vs. Machine zombies not using the correct skin in Ghost Town outside of the Halloween event
- Fixed a bug with the vote-kick timer in Mann vs. Machine mode
- Fixed taunts not restoring the proper weapon when the taunts are finished
- Fixed the Pomson 6000 playing the shotgun reload sound
- Updated the sounds made when the Scout shoves someone while using the Shortstop
- Updated some Merasmus audio files that weren't playing properly
- Updated the localization files

Fixed spooky OS X crash upon joining a server
Fixed not being able to gain progress on Merasmissions

An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Team Fortress 2. The major changes include:

Added the GA'lloween 2016 community event medals

Fixed sv_shutdown not working for community dedicated servers
All servers now enter hibernation state when they are empty and have no remaining work, which informs commands such as sv_shutdown
Added tf_allow_server_hibernation (default: 1) to allow disabling hibernation state
This should generally only be necessary if running server plugins that are not compatible with hibernation
Added sv_shutdown_cancel to cancel a pending shutdown

Updated the truce period during Halloween boss fights
Players are no longer affected by the truce when in their spawn room, allowing them to fight their way out if necessary
Sappers can no longer be used while a truce is active

Updated the "tiny" spellbook spell
Fixed a case where players could get outside the world
Fixed not switching Heavies to their melee weapon

Updated player destruction mode so the "Team Leader" does not heal teammates while in the Underworld
Fixed Halloween contract reward items not being craftable
Fixed Strange Human Cannonballs and Strange Battery Canteens not tracking stats
Fixed Casual search criteria being saved automatically while connecting to a server
Fixed a case where players could suicide on a pumpkin bomb to gain progress on certain Merasmissions
Updated the equip region for the Spine-Chilling Skull

Updated pl_fifthcurve_event (Brimstone)
Fixed exploit where players could get under the map near BLU starting area
Fixed exploit where players could get out of the map near graveyard
Fixed exploit where players could enter RED base as BLU
Fixed some skeletons running into lava when there are no enemies in Hell
Fixed medieval tiny spell & other Merasmus voice spells lasting too long for some players
Fixed big ghost getting stuck when map ends
Fixed a spot where players could get stuck if entering it under Tiny spell
Fixed another case of non-solid pumpkin [But why are they solid.... I don't want to get stuck inside of them when they spawn.....]
Tuned respawn time for RED team at last area

Updated cp_sunshine_event (Sinshine)
Fixed multiple visible nodraws and other texture bugs
Fixed nonsolid pumpkin in lobby [Why?....]
Fixed trigger bounds in RED spawn
Various lighting changes