Valve Still Experimenting with Team Fortress 2 Items, May Eliminate Unlock System

Team Fortress 2 lead Robin Walker says that Valve is not entirely happy with its new method of random weapon drops, and could eliminate the unlock system entirely.

"I think we've learned that the random drop system is only good for some types of things, like the rare cosmetic hats," said Walker to 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," he said. "For competitive players, it's obviously a bad way to deliver items."

The solution may be to simply skip the fuss and hand over the weapons nice and quick.

"At the very least, future packs will allow you to use achievements to get the new items, but we might move to a mode where we just give them to you," he added. "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."

Walker also said that his team is not happy with the trend of competitive players flocking to smaller maps that public players typically do not prefer.

"We've got a map where we're trying out areas that modify themselves based on the number of players in the game, in the hopes that both public and competitive players can use it," he added.