Valve Considering Ditching TF2 Item Unlock System

Good news for the TF2 players who have complained about the game's random item drop system: Valve is considering alternative systems, and might just get rid of random unlocks altogether.

If you're sick of AFKing on 2Fort waiting for some of those shiny unlockable items in Team Fortress 2 to drop randomly, Valve has some great news for you. They might not be as openly angry as some TF2 players about the system they put in place, but they're not exactly happy about it either.

"I think we've learned that the random drop system is only good for some types of things, like the rare cosmetic hats," Valve's Robin Walker told CommunityFortress. The drops might be good for getting items to new players and avoiding achievement grinding, but for others, Walker admitted that it's less than adequate. "For competitive players, it's obviously a bad way to deliver items."

The TF2 team, then, is considering alternatives to the system. "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," Walker said. Well that would sure save me a lot of time, though I'd probably just run Achievements.exe to unlock everything anyway. "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."

So, put control of these things in the hands of the players instead of doling them out according to the arbitrary whims of invisible dice rolls? I think that makes a lot of sense.

[Via Shacknews]