Artstyle
Note (2024-12): This document was toned down because I first wrote it when I still cared a fair bit about this whole thing. I still stand by what's written here, but the "passion" that made me write snarky comments is gone.
TF2's artstyle has evolved throughout the years, there's no doubt about that. What was once a cartoon-ish 60s and 70s industrial setting became more and more colorful over the years, always drifting further away from the original style. And these days, every time a seasonal cosmetic crate is released, more "drama" occurs.
Here's my point of view of the situation: currently, most creators are mass-producing cosmetics that require the least amount of effort in the hope of a quick buck or a self-made item. (That or they want to spread their kinks, though I admit that this happens less often.) This and poor quality control has led us down this road. Most items that get in the game nowadays are pretty ugly and there's no excuse for that.
And on top of that: the fact that creators feel entitled to create whatever they want as long as it gets accepted or that some users lash out at whoever creates something not quite to their taste has probably forever corrupted the interactions between the creators and the players. Criticizing is often taken as a threat, either because it is or because some Pavlovian conditioning kicks in. "Dramas" on cosmetics can often be rooted back to item makers being stuck up or randoms leaving graffitis on a submission's comment section.
Because yes, the artstyle really is something a portion of the playerbase cares about, very vocally sometimes. The source of their worries is pretty simple to understand: with other games always becoming more colorful to monopolize the forever shrinking attention span of gen-Z/Alpha, of course there's going to be some resistance. Although it often doesn't take on a pretty form, and that's regrettable.
If the situation had to be changed, I believe the first action to take would be to remove any incentive to create content: no more money, no more self-made items. This way workshoppers like Square and Neodement would stop making items, bad cosmetics would appear less often, and it would lessen the paranoia of a portion of users who currently think there's an evil, greedy world order out to destroy the game. But this is wishful thinking.
Anyway, if people (like me) complain about the game's artstyle now, it means there's sadly no going back. The added items cannot be removed, so the only real sensible choices are to either mentally "log out" of all this (remember it's just a video game?), or dilute the nonsense with submissions befitting the standards we've known before the game's infantilization. It's sad to see that those two options are seldom taken.
The TF2 "community" would be so much better if creators stopped taking themselves as an oppressed minority and users just ignored the stains on the workshop...