In the past two years, Valve decided to give a pile of gifts to every players, no matter if they are premium or not. In these gifts, there's a Tour of Duty ticket. This means that, during Smissmas, everyone got a free Mann Up mission to play, and this include players that don't play MVM.

Because it's useless to have this ticket in your backpack forever, as it is untradable, these players decide to play Mann Up, making missions unbeatable for regular players, due to the inexperience of their newly found "allies". And because these inexperienced players cannot finish a single mission, they can keep their tickets for months !

I'm sure you are going to say : "Because they don't have experience in Mann Vs Machine and they are aware of this, they are going to start by the easiest tour available, which is Oil Spill, right ?l" I have some bad news for you, they don't want to buy 5 more tickets to finish the tour. You see, when you have something you would normally pay for free, you want to make it as profitable as possible.

So let's see this from their point of view : the most profitable your would be the one I don't have to spend too much money on. In this case, this is Mecha Engine : only 3 tickets (with the free one, only 2), they won't need to spend too much money after that. Yes, they think the hardest Advanced tour is the one for them. Logic when you fail us...

Or maybe they heard about how Two Cities have Killstreak Kits and Aussies (when you can get Aussies in any Advanced/Expert mission...), so they will go there. In the tour where the MVM community is the most elitist as possible, what a great idea am I right ?

As you might guess, due to their lack of experience, these players will or never beat the mission in question, or get kicked before the first wave even start (bonus point if they come in the MVM Steam subforum and complain about it. Now that I say this, I just imagine the hell that will fall in the forums after that...) And because of the two situations above, they will not finish their mission, keep having their Tour of Duty ticket, try again, and fail on the same 2 situations above in repeat until a good team is generous enough to carry him and lose his ticket once and for all.

What about Expert ? What about Gear Grinder ? Well, because you need to finish one Advanced tour before going to Expert, and because these inexperienced players never finished an Advanced tour (in Mann Up at least), they cannot access Expert. If you still want to have a challenge without having to deal with a team of clueless players, Gear Grinder is your best bet.

But I'm sure you don't want to restrict yourself to Expert on Smissmas. Even now, it's hard to find a good team with randoms. And I'm sure yourself you still want your loot robot parts, or don't think you can go for Expert yet. After you can go on Oil Spill or Steel Trap as these players won't go there, but I'm sure yourself don't want to spend 6 tickets for easy missions and bad loots. This is a normal feeling you have, and I can't go against this. So let's see what will happen during a typical game during Smissmas.

Your team will be composed of you and 5 inexperienced players. That's it. You might be lucky to find an other regular MVM in your team, and you have as much chance to find a full experienced team as you have to get an Australium. And in such situation, your chances to beat this mission will be close to none : one good/veteran/expert MVM player cannot compensate the lack of experience of 5 clueless/noob/oblivious players.

I'm sure the most generous of you will say "Why not teach them how to play MVM ? We are on Advanced so it is possible !" and I'm like you : always the first to help a lost soul to get on the right path (even if our definition of the right path is relative, our intention stays noble). But when you want to teach someone to get better, you have 3 problems to face :

• The player refuse to communicate : The most common barrier in learning. The player is so inexperienced in TF2 they are not aware a chatbox exist. The player can also not be able to speak the most common language on the internet, which is English. As teaching is shared by communication of any form, this player is a lost cause.
  
• The player think he don't need to learn : More common as you might think, and can also be witnessed on more experienced players. The player decided himself what is good or bad, without taking in account the strategies already in place, and refuse to admit his lack of skills and experience. This is also know as the Dunning-Kruger effect.[en.wikipedia.org] When someone refuse to acknowledge they need help, teaching is useless.
  
• The player badly apply what is taught to him : If you teach someone to drive a car, he won't be the best driver in the world. In MVM, this is the same thing. These players will still make mistakes even if you give them step-by-step what to do. It's not his fault, he's human. He need first to train like anyone else. He won't play better with you, but you will set him on the right path.

Now multiply these problems by 5. It's pretty easy to conclude this is a hopeless cause. By the time you beat the whole tour, a year would have passed and more players will start MVM by advanced.

The solution to play on Mecha Engie and Two Cities (and in Gear Grinder by extension), is to reduce the number of inexperienced players. You can do this by having a lobby with other regular MVM players. All you need to do, is to cover these basic roles : money collector, medic killer, and engineer. Why these ? Because :

• More money means your clueless players will have more money to eventually spend their money on the needed upgrades, and be stronger. And also, you and your friends carrying them will have an easier time doing so.
  
• If there's no Uber medics, then there's no Ubercharge. It's always easier to kill a robot when they are not invincible.
  
• A good engie will always know how to keep his dispenser up. That way, your friends can get ammo to do all the carrying.

For the rest, it's not rocket science to shoot at robots. Even the less experienced player can do that (I guess ?). I recommend having at least 2 good players with you to do this, less might be a pretty big challenge. The list above can change depending on what your team have problem with tho (Giants, Tanks, or crowd control)

There's also a concept of "Carry classes" that exist which mostly depends on the mission and tour. But this tends to be either Sniper or Tap Beggar. If you know which classes are the Carry classes of the mission you are on, go for it !

Tl;dr : play with experienced friends.

I wish you a Merry Smissmas to all and hope you won't kill yourself when facing the army of clueless and inexperienced players in your favourite missions ! If you have any questions or remarks to do, don't forget to leave a comment !

If you want to know more about MVM, don't hesitate to read these guides too :

http://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=561054554
http://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=519202127
http://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=386948630