This one's ours now!
August 11, 2009 - Robin Walker
After setting a new standard for Lack of Class in an FPS with the addition of Jarate (the jar-based Karate), we've raised the bar on lowering the tone even further with the first ever Classless Update!
Also, if you haven't seen them yet, ubercharged.net is currently up to part three in a nine-part series covering how each TF2 class is used in competitive matches. It's a fantastic read if you want to get some insight into the strategies of TF2's most skilled players.
Blog Pages:
Update Links:
http://www.teamfortress.com/classless/day01.phphttp://www.teamfortress.com/classless/day02.phphttp://www.teamfortress.com/classless/Hidden Links:
http://www.teamfortress.com/classless/hidden/hats/http://www.teamfortress.com/classless/hidden/enigmatical/http://www.teamfortress.com/classless/hidden/barbary/http://www.teamfortress.com/classless/hidden/advertisement/http://www.teamfortress.com/classless/hidden/geographic_lumps/http://www.teamfortress.com/classless/hidden/war/http://www.teamfortress.com/classless/hidden/coward_mound/http://www.teamfortress.com/classless/hidden/populace/http://www.teamfortress.com/classless/hidden/today_is_a_good_day/
New Content:
King of the Hill:
Probably the most looked-forward-to featured of this short update, after its announcement on day two. This gamemode involves two teams fighting to have control of a center capture point for a cumulative total of three minutes. Along with creating new versions of two old maps, Nucleus and Sawmill, Valve also released a new map set in a snowy scene for this gamemode: Viaduct. I'm not going to go into detail on the maps' structures, but I noticed in the first Viaduct match I played, it all depended on how many Engineers you had after the first capture. Yes, the enemy team DID have spies and medics, but if they need to take out a sentry before they can cap the point, they need to do it very quickly.
New Hats:
As everyone figured out as of the last update, hats are pointless gameplay-wise, but are tokens to show that you played the game (or idled) enough to get lucky and get one. With eighteen new hats now out there to get, I feel that the complaining of "I don't even have ONE yet..." is just going to become more common. Ah well, some of them do look quite nifty, as can be seen
here. Also, some of the content in the hidden links suggest that the trading system is going to be released in a not-so-distant update, so these new hats will provide more trade-worthy meat for that system.
Misc. Modifications:
If you want to see the complete list of changes, click the third day link and scroll down a bit. Yet there are a few of these changes that really bug me, and assumably others as well, due to how they seem to unbalance the game. This includes the 10 second team-wide critboost for capturing the intel, the teleporter link up, and the block on stunning ubered players. Sure, the teleporter update can be helpful at times, but it gets pretty annoying trying to out-repair a spy you can't even beat down due to how far away your entrance most likely is.
