Valve rethinking weapon drops in TF2

Valve, aware that casual players and newcomers to Team Fortress 2 were getting put off by the idea of having to grind a certain number of achievements in order to unlock new weapons, introduced the idea of random weapon drops in standard games.

Now, having found that most players don't enjoy the idea of rare weapons suddenly dropping on the floor, Valve is considering removing the idea of weapon drops from the game once more.

"I think we've learned that the random drop system is only good for some types of things, like the rare cosmetic hats", said Valve's Robin Walker in an interview with fansite CommunityFortress.

"It's good for delivering items to newer players over time so they're not swamped with choices when they're starting out, and they're not required to grind achievements to get them once they reach the point where they want to start making strategic choices. For competitive players, it's obviously a bad way to deliver items."

"At the very least future packs will allow you to use achievements to get the new items," Walker continued "but we might move to a mode where we just give them to you. As part of our goal of supporting tournaments more, I think we'll probably add better tools for them to control exactly what players can and can't use within matches."

Personally, we favour the idea where the new weapons are just given to players - or given to players who have played as a certain class for a set length of time, perhaps? As it is, grinding achievements to get a new unlock results only in joyless achievement maps and the fact that those who return to the game after a period of absence (like, say, me) are left miles behind everyone else.

Let us know your thoughts about how Valve could make weapon distribution a bit better in the forums.