Consider this a beta release. If you want something addressed, please let me know.
To do: Explain why console is necessary and what can be done with it

Firstly, navigate to mouse settings. The quickest way to do this is to hit Windows key + R, type "control mouse" and enter.



You'll want to set mouse sensitivity to 6th notch from the left out of 11. The 6th is the "1:1" mouse sensitivity, more or less and it will artificially slow or speed up the cursor movement every couple of frames.

What they call "enhanced mouse precision" is anything but that. Switch that one off. Actually it's mouse acceleration which changes the speed of your cursor based on how fast you move the mouse. In games requiring mouse accuracy it's very likely to cause you issues because if the action heats up and you need to do the same moves faster, the cursor will move unpredictably far.

Right click Team Fortress 2 in your Library to get started


"-console": First and foremost you'll be needing the Console in your travels.
"-novid": Removes the intro video. Ain't nobody got time for dat.

"-sw -noborder": This makes TF2 run in "borderless windowed" mode. Practically it means you can alt + tab in and out of TF2 instantly, without any crashing, stuttering or bugging out. Side effects being, since it's technically windowed you can't run TF2 with a lower, upscaled resolution. It may also be a little bit harder for your computer to run. HOWEVER it will give a little bit of input lag. I stopped using it once I discovered this fact. It's still convenient though, so up to preference.

So, now you have the console. It'll be blocking a big part of the UI though. Let's shrink it gently to a reasonable size.
Now it won't block notification pop-ups. Make sure not to close the console because you'll have to restart the game to get it back. Or, you can bind a key to "toggleconsole" such as "bind p toggleconsole", but that's not necessary as you can get by without ever closing it.

Intermission: please do yourself a favor and change Steam to English if it does not already be that way. It'll make communication difficult if you aren't speaking about settings and items using the same names as others.

Now would be a good time to disable HTML MoTDs for good. What that means is when you join a server, the server can give you a pop-up window containing text, or an entire website. They'll sometimes do this to pester for donations, leech ad money off of you, serve you viruses or any combination of the former. This command will keep you safe.

Make sure that acceleration and smoothing/filtering are off here. The less applications mess with your mouse input the better.

Raw input makes the game read input data directly from the mouse, skipping unnecessary layers. It might ignore whatever settings windows applies to the mouse but it's good to keep windows from messing with the settings regardless, for games that don't support raw input.

If you want to change your mouse sensitivity to your preference, do it here rather than from windows. Ideally you'll only want to change mouse sensitivity in your mouse's DPI setting, but since ordinary mice rarely support that, the next best option is to change sensitivity in the game's settings.

What follows is settings that can be ignored if you're not interested in changing the user interface's finer details. However, even if you're only started with the game recently, you might appreciate these settings because they help you get a better understanding of what's going on exactly. Still though these are only my recommendations and up to preference.

●Auto-reload keeps your weapon ready for firing, but some users find it jarring when the reload animation plays each time they fire
●With fast weapon switch pressing a number key or scrolling switches weapon instantly, rather than prompting you if you want to or not. A big bonus for your combat reactiveness.
●Hit sounds make a world of difference in informing you if your aim is on point. It might take tinkering to find the preferable settings for you though, or you could just steal mine pictured here :3

●Last hit sound plays when you kill someone. More feedback is always good!
●Damage as text lets you learn what kind of damage you're dealing and predict how close to death enemies are

●Just more feedback stuff

●Teammates auto-calling does a lot of good, not only allowing you to find teammates when they are hurt, but knowing where they are helps just as much when you're in need of help yourself. Setting the health threshold right is a bit tricky though, too high and you'll be overwhelmed, too little and it won't do much.
●Colorblind mode is useful for everyone. Makes a jar/bottle icon appear over players who are under jarate or mad milk.
●Glow effects let you find objectives quickly, and immediately get to know where your teammates are and how they're doing

●Disabling floating healthbar means when you point at a teammate, the health bar will show up in your crosshair instead of on their heads. Much easier on the brain and eyes since it's not moving.
●Definitely have pings as numbers. The new bar system is nigh useless. A ping of 90 is unacceptably high, but with bars will show up as three green bars, the best possible.

●Weather effects look quite nice but disabling them is a nice boost to performance.
●HTML MoTDs should be off but we took care of that already.
●The last two are just for convenience's sake. I tend to switch class mid-life sometimes and the automatic respawning makes switching weapons quicker.