Achievements or random drops – pick your poison. For many Team Fortress 2 players, both methods of unlocking unfortunately miss the sweet spot, and for some, they miss the sweet spot, swerve off a cliff, and end up in a hospital where Hannah Montana’s the only thing on TV ever. Valve, of course, knows this, and is working to placate its players – even if that means just handing them weapons with no strings attached.

"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," Valve’s Robin Walker said. "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, 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."

So, would you rather receive free items than deal with TF2’s increasingly convoluted unlock system?

Things recently dropped by Valve’s new TF2 item system, according to players: duplicates, duplicates, and the ball. And while jumping through achievement-based hoops in order to earn new gear may not have been optimal, at least it made sense. The same couldn’t be said for random drops – at least initially. Thankfully, Valve has decided to pull back the curtain and give us the nitty-gritty on the little orange men who run its drop system. Here’s what the developer said:

"[The] new system watches the amount of time that players are playing TF2, and gives them a chance to find items at regular intervals," wrote Valve's Erik Johnson. "They aren't guaranteed to get the item at those points, but they have a pretty good chance."  
 
How are these “regular intervals” decided upon, though? Johnson explained:

“When we were tuning this system we first looked at the average amount of time that players spend playing TF2 daily. From there, we set the goal of most players having around 20 items in their inventory after a couple of weeks of play. If you're someone who plays a lot of TF2, you're going to get items a lot faster than that.”

Also, if you thought Valve’s hot streak had finally ended with the drop system’s shaky start, fear not. As usual, Valve plans on tinkering with the thing’s inner workings until every rusty bit is replaced with solid gold. Planned improvements include item trading (bye bye duplicate items), more rare items, and some kind of way for players to “influence the system so they can work directly toward getting specific items” that’s not called achievement-grinding. Currently, Valve’s goal is to bring all of those upgrades into the mix before the next class pack.

Well, sounds like there’s no longer anything to complain about here. Back to pacing a hole in the floor and muttering about Half-Life 2: Episode 3, then.

Tread softly and carry a big stick seems to be the motif of the Spy’s latest implement, and the self-described “cannon” sure seems to fit the bill. Nope – no subtlety here. Just big, loud, accurate lead. Oh, and your mom.
 
“There are two sorts of men in this world: the sort with blood pouring out of a hole in their heads, and the sort holding the Ambassador [hand cannon]. It has the ammo count of a revolver and the pinpoint accuracy of a sniper rifle, even at long range. (But remember, a gun that packs this much heat needs to cool off between shots, so make every shot count.),” says the Team Fortress blog.
 
The gun’s barrel – in keeping with Meet the Spy’s risqué twist – initiates its potent humiliation-death combo with an engraved picture of your enemy’s mother. And if your mom doesn’t (ahem) have it going on, well, the image actually can be unseen. The death part tends to take care of that.

Shooting people in the head for a living comes with quite a suite of occupational hazards (people trying to murder you quickly comes to mind), but luckily, Valve takes great care of its employees. This time around, as part of its Sniper update blowout, Valve hasn’t quite given the Sniper eyes in the back of his head, but don’t think the developer doesn’t have their favorite sociopath’s back. With his brand new tribal shield that’s apparently older than “recorded time,” the Sniper won’t ever have to worry about pesky backstabbing Spies again.
    
Well, until the priceless heirloom takes one – and only one – for the team and explodes into itty-bitty pieces, that is. Fortunately, Valve’s expert squad of fun-gineers has a backup plan.
 
“All the tribal craftsmanship in the world, it turns out, cannot stop a modern butter knife. So we taped a car battery to it. Sure, the added weight of the redesigned Razorback’ll slow you down a little. But any poor sap dumb enough to backstab you while you’re sporting one is getting a surprise to the tune of 10,000 volts. Plus, if they want to stab you again, they’ll have to wait until their knife cools down. Which is lucky for you, since the Razorback collapses into a million finely crafted pieces after a single stab,” reads the Team Fortress 2 blog.
 
Also coming in the Sniper update is a new mode called Payload Race. The mode, described as “Gladiatorial Cart Combat,” sees both sides attempting to push a cart into enemy territory, while also keeping each other’s carts off their respective lawns. And, on top of that, if you end up too dead to continue pushing your cart, it hurdles back downhill. Them’s the breaks, you might say – until you realize that the cart doesn’t have any. Then you’ll just say some other, less publically acceptable words.

Expect the Sniper update, which also includes head slot items, the Huntsman hunting bow, and new arena maps within the coming days.