- female of gender
- lover of goats
- eater of ham
- winner of checkers
- one day people will remember me for something funny i hope



- i am the founder of the Fortress Faceoffs community! [discord.gg]
- i make art! i draw pictures! i model things in blender! ask me about it, maybe!
- i made unusual effects for Team Fortress 2! i even got the effect Psycho-delic in the game! i'm "working" on making a series of guides from what i've learned as a creator and what i want to teach people about making effects!
- i'll accept some random adds but will of course need a good reason for it. if you don't provide a decent reason to why i've been added, then you'll be removed.
- my trade link! drop me something off and i'll do a funny dance



As it currently stands, there's a distinct lack of clarity in how the workshop operates. What the community has learned is 1 . what updates to expect each year, and 2 . what content is likely to arrive in each one. To the average player, this seemingly poses no issue. These two factors primarily affect all the workshop contributors involved with the game. No creator is ever certain as to what standards the TF Team expects from their new submissions. Some of these problems are subjective in detail, but can be listed out as objective misunderstandings and flaws with the current system.


- We do not know who actively curates the workshop and makes the final call on what is added as new content - this might be done by multiple people, but such information has not been disclosed before. Depending on who curates the workshop and makes the choice on what is added to the game, there might be different preferences on what is acceptable and what is not. This choice can cause confusion to creators, and the "expectation" for what is most likely to get accepted next changes. TF2 may then lose its sense for what its characters should look like in relation to the world's setting, making an incoherent experience for new players.

- We do not know where the expectation for quality lies. Common sense is always used to separate brand-new Blender users from experienced modelers, but what about the game's art style ? There is an ever-expanding blur being made of the new content that gets added each year, ranging from cosmetics that fit the world setting of TF2 and the characters wearing them to confusing prop objects that have no relation to anything in the game, but still take priority for acceptance over other submissions.
-> On that note, quality is not monitored on the workshop, though the reasoning for this is expected. Poor quality submissions are an absolute given and cannot be moderated if they do not blatantly break any rules. However, this still poses a problem for some. Submissions that clearly do not meet quality requirements can still be uploaded in significant amounts across a long period of time. Creators who do not upload as much may have their submissions completely obstructed by the overwhelming amount of other content being produced. For the team, this makes it harder for them to find good submissions. For the average user, they may begin to generalize or stereotype these submissions which can cause an unfair judgment towards other creators and their submissions.

- We do not know how far the team searches for submissions or what methods are used to do so (using workshop filters like "Most Popular" & "Most Recent" or by type of submission like "Map" or "Headgear"). The workshop has a period of time where brand new submissions are kept on the "Most Popular" page regardless of received rating. After this time, the submission is sorted by its rating percentages (unless the filter is changed). How does the team go about looking for submissions? Has this not been disclosed out of fear that creators may "give up" on submissions after they approach a potential "dead zone"?

- There is a prominent bias of already accepted creators having their content from any period of time being used in the game over other users, closing off the opportunities given to players new to the workshop. Depending on what type of submission is being discussed (cosmetics, Unusual effects, and so on), there's a varying amount of new users that have their content accepted into the game. From my personal experience, I have witnessed accepted Unusual effects often having between one to three brand new creators, followed by the same users who have made content for years and seem to be used as a reliable option if no submissions that meet the mysterious quality requirement can be found. On occasion, it feels like this reliance on older creators weighs over the potential for new creators to be considered.

- Content (and the amount of it) is changed without notice . Items such as War Paints make spotty appearances throughout the years, which becomes very troubling for these creators whose efforts may feel wasted if they suddenly do not get put to use. There is no standard or estimate for how many cosmetics, Unusual effects, or maps may be added in an update. This can cause new seasonal cases to feel overwhelming or lackluster depending on how much is put into them, and can also further distort the level of quality and theme that items have when many different concepts are added alongside one another.


The workshop is already a difficult place to share content as a community-built system has its flaws. Some submissions show clear evidence of good quality, yet fail to see positive vote rating greater than 65%. Most users have no motivation to leave comments on submissions, thus nothing is gained by the creator. The current system is more akin to playing the lottery than an extensive reviewing and decision-making process. Once again, while it may not be a high priority to the team whatsoever, this information proves incredibly valuable to creators of all experience levels. Knowing more about who and what we are making for could significantly improve what is published and what is expected from the TF team