Valve Answers Questions About New Item Drop System

Team Fortress 2 has been in the media spotlight these past few weeks as the latest and biggest update has appeared for it, together with a free extended weekend in which players could experience the game free of charge and buy it at a lower price.

But with all of the new features for the Sniper and the Spy classes, Valve also introduced a new way to get the new weapons, in the form of an item dropping system, similar to Role Playing Games, which, after a certain amount of time and based on complex algorithms, will reward the player with an unlockable weapon.

This new change has generated a couple of complaints from TF2 users, but now Valve has decided to clear things up and has released a FAQ page in which the main reasons behind this new system and what features players should expect in the near future to be added to the game have been explained.

The main reason behind this change is to prevent achievement grinding and the flood of certain classes being played once a new update arrives for the game. “With our first four class updates we were tying the new weapons for each class to a set of achievements. Our intention was to make a set of achievements that eventually all players would get, and would be fun to get along the way. In some cases we did a good job at this (Scout), and in some cases we did a bad one (Medic). Across all of the class packs we were disappointed in the number of people that got to play with the new weapons, and feedback from the community was generally not favorable with this approach.”

But the new system will allow players to get around 20 items in a few weeks of normal play, according to the statistics researched by Valve. Also, new features like the ability to swap items, to influence the system into getting a specific object or weapon or to add rarer items like hats will be implemented, according to the company.

What do you think? Is this new system better than the old one, which made players unlock achievements in order to get new items? Leave us a comment with your thoughts.