TF2 Sniper UpdateFollow

http://www.teamfortress.com/sniperupdate/

Certainly an entertaining weapon, but I'm thinking this will be relegated to a gimmicky status with the old sniper rifle as clearly the superior weapon.

My poor 360 version feels so left out.

I think the bow could be fun, the have just released information about a shield that protects your back for 1 backstab from a spy. I think that will be pretty useful actually. I just hope it doesn't take the place of the machine gun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN4cRDEYalw

Meet the Spy.

I've just lost faith in the TF2 team. I still admit they had some good ideas, but now it seems that--rather than by design--everything good about TF2 was/is an accident. I had honestly thought before that the TF2 team was an example of excellent design philosophy, but now I understand they're as clueless as all the other developers.

The new update changed how unlockables work. Now instead of being tied to earning a certain number of achievements the unlockables are dropped at random. At first this may not seem like an incredibly, utterly terrible idea that it is. Under the old system people would go farm achievements. They'd agree to help each other complete the achievements, and in an hour or two you could have all the unlocks. It may no be what the team originally wanted, but it was an acceptable enough system. Valve would release new items, and in a few hours players would get to enjoy those new items.

The problem with the old system was that some of the achievements can be difficult to get under normal circumstances, so anyone not farming took longer to get them. It was nowhere near impossible though. I got all my scout items legitimately within about 6 hours of play time. I was playing on normal servers where people were actually trying to kill each other. IT took longer, but it wasn't impossible and it wasn't frustrating.

The new system decouples unlocks from achievements. It decouples them from player involvement completely. You simply get them while in game. Not while killing people. Not while gaining points. Just while in game. There is nothing you can do to affect the drop rate other than play more.

This, in combination with other choices by the team, creates many severe problems.

1. It now averages out much longer to get the new items. Players have gone 6 or more hours without seeing a single drop.
2. There's no connection between a release and when a player actually experiences that content for themselves. Under the old system when a new release hit most players would get at least 2 new items within a day. A new release meant cool new stuff. That is no longer true. Why should anyone care about a release when he may not see any of those items for two weeks?
3. You can get items while spectating. You don't even need to play the game, you just need to be in the game.
4. People still farm, but the farming is much worse now. People farm by simply idling in public or private servers, afk while they get drops.
5. You can get items you already have. I played for four hours, actually playing, and the only drop I got was teh KGB which I already had.

It's stupid. People still farm, only now farming is much more annoying and takes far longer. The system is entirely an act of god. Some players already have all the new items. Some players have none of the new items. At least before the players who wanted items the most got them, and those who didn't really care didn't get them. Now it's luck entirely.

So I've been reading the TF2 forums while I afk on a server, like everyone else. The new system is nearly universally scorned. Only a very few actually say they like it, and most of the time they have flawed reasons, not understanding how their reasons actually logically conclude the old system is better.

There seems to be more anticipation of a fix for this update than there was for the update, which says loads.

After idling some more I finally received teh Huntsman, which is a hilarious weapon that I'm enjoying much more than the rifle. Too bad most players haven't gotten to experience it yet.

On the plus side, nice songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOhcUT0Ir_o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYBZrRCCrXE

The only complaint I have about the huntsman is that it's slower to reach its target...but the upswing of that is that you can cheapshot lame peekaboo snipers with it just by firing idly into where their head routinely will be.

Jarate = freaking hilarious. Though I think it should have some kind of negative effect on pyros directly, like double ammo cost when firing flamethrower for the duration or something.

I want hats. No luck yet