Team Fortress 2 was recently updated with a proper competitive mode, a feature that has taken Valve around 7 years to finally complete, but a welcome feature nonetheless. However, while the competitive side got some much needed improvements, the bread and butter of TF2, the insanity-fueled Casual Mode, ended up not only getting the short end of the stick, but the stick was also on fire.

Queue times went sky-high, a leaver penalty was implemented, players could no longer join matches in progress to fill out slots, autobalance was disabled so an undermanned team would continue getting stomped on until they all finally left, and a whole bunch of other nasty stuff. The point is, Casual Mode turned out to be neither casual, nor fun!

Thankfully, it does appear that Valve is well aware of these complaints and that they are currently working on correcting every single one.

If you're interested in the full details, you can read all about the planned changes in the latest blog post. For the lazy ones among you, here's a short summary of what to expect:

• You can now specify which game mode you want to play before queuing (this should already be live)

• Leaver penalties have been removed (this should already be live)

• You will soon be able to choose the maps you will be matched into

• Queue times are getting fixed

• Once the queue times are fixed, matches should once again feature balanced sides

And finally, here's a brief quote from Valve that you might be interested in:

"We wanted to note that we value the role the community plays in the development of this game, and do in fact read all the feedback sent to us, as well as through reddit, the forums, streams, and more. We are not always as talkative as we perhaps should be, but we are listening."

With the "end of days" crisis now mostly averted, its time for everyone to go back to what's truly important - trying to taunt kill enemy snipers!