While the item drop system Valve introduced in its class-based shooter Team Fotress 2 is great in theory, it does not appeal to the entire player base. In a boon to newcomers, the switch eliminated the issue of those hopping on servers for the sake of attaining achievements. On the flipside, however, it has agitated competitive players due to not having a clear cut way of obtaining these items.

Leaving the process of picking up items to chance has its issues and Valve realizes it, with TF2 co-creator Robin Walker mentioning of possible adjustments to this system in a recent interview with fansite CommunityFortress:

I think we’ve learned that the random drop system is only good for some types of things, like the rare cosmetic hats. 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, 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 & can’t use within matches.

Tools to control which items can and cannot be used in competitive matches is a sound idea to us.

Exclusive Interview with Valve’s Robin Walker [CommunityFortress]

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