Man, its really going to suck if this stuff doesn't make to the 360... But in the mean time, this sounds awesome.

It's a good and bad thing.

Good: New content to older users

Bad: I still don't fully understand TF2 and now they're going to confuse me even more. :(

console:hit F10 to access unlockable weapons menu.

No crit rocket fix yet?
Soldier = Easy mode. Holy crap.

No 360 love?

GAY.

@Wuffles:

Just take a crash course and dive into deep water by playing the game for a few days straight :P Should give you enough experience to duke it out evenly.

Anyway! First things first--this sounds f'ng awesome.. I was expecting a small tweak here and there for the new updates, not new weapons/abilities. Now... just crossing my fingers the game doesn't get BROKEN when someone has all the achievements and another player doesn't. I could see potential "WTF'S" and gamebreakers coming from this one.

Wow, very interesting. It's like the unlock system of CoD 4. Too bad it is based on achievements earned rather than points. The leaked medic achievements did not seem terribly interesting.

This is certainly going to mix things up. I wonder what the other classes will get, especially the spy.

Great Updates for a great game

yeah I love the idea but I am scared of breaking the balance. I guess it is a good thing they are doing medic first. Unlocking all the achievements is going to be tough but at least it will get more people playing medic for awhile which is always a problem. Can't wait to see what they do with demoman. I loves me some sticky nades.

@September:

I'm sure Valve's going to take the time to balance it. Perhaps not in the first update, but they'll keep tweaking until they get it right.

Does no one play on the 360 anymore? I prefer playing there to PC. If anyone feels like getting a game going, My tag is CrimzinD.

@Dontdrop: Imagine a Heavy with 600 health instead of the boosted 450. Sure it may not seem like much but with two medics running around, one with uber charging and the other with boosted health it could change the way you play a given class.

I would be curious to see what they do for the Engineer as that is my bread and butter class. Hopefully it will be better than what they give the Spy as his sapper is seriously annoying without any cooldown.

UNRELENTING JOY!

@Hiero Glyph:

Yes, it will really shake things up. When you add 2 medics to the equation, it does seem rather imbalanced, wonder how Valve going to balance it all out.

@Hiero Glyph: And then when the third medic shows up to *heavy dies*

Wait! That wasn't a medic at all! SPY!

Crossing my finger for Incendiary Grenades (Leaves a pool of flames on the ground igniting enemies who walk through) and a fire extinguisher (puts out allies, slows down and freezes enemies) for the Pyro. And maybe a det pack for the Demo man and land mines for the Engi...

The mind wanders...

@Hiero Glyph: engineer is EVERYONES bread and butter class. Feel like taking a break from playing try out a turret. I go to the bathroom playing as an engineer

Sweet, I love some new guns :)'

This game kicks ass on Steam.

console Press F10 to access unlockable weapon menu

@CrimzinD: Yeah I love playing on 360. My tag is TheAmazingGlaze feel free to shoot me a friend request.

Unlockables are a shit idea to artificially increase the depth of a game. The weapons should be available by default.

@NotAZombie: Yeah no 360 lovin' what gives also my Tag is Deadeye207 if you guys want to play sometime.

what's up? is this going to be included in the rumored PS3 fix/patch?

@hahnchen:

They're great as a goal to work towards. Allow to set goals for stuff and get hot lewtz.

Basically turn your dear multiplayer shooter, into a RPG.

I'd like to request that when a blue team member is on fire the flames are blue not red...

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

@CrimzinD: I play sometimes. Tag is Dunanerz.

Anyone else down here feel free to add me. I got all kinds of multiplayer games.

Hunted was always good fun so I'm looking forward to the Gold Rush map.

Not so hot on the unlockable weapons. Would have preferred an overall rebalance with some tinkering and new weapons.

Valve is my hero :)

This update will bring me back to the game for sure, hopefully they are able to keep the balance of the game in check.

Am I the only one who doesn't like the sound of this... Maybe change scares me, or maybe its because Valve has really let me down update wise. For those of the Steam PC gaming scene, happen to recall the 6 TF2 updates right after another that were meant to fix something that was fine to begin with, and ruined the game for about a week. Pretty irritating. Even if Valve gets it to work (great game company and all, I just don't like their updates) I've been playing this pretty hard since Beta and I've still yet to really tire of the basic gameplay, throw in a custom map or two in the rotation and its fun, the gameplay is beside perfection we just need more areas to use it in. Meh, well, they did so well with TF2 I guess I'll have to believe that they have the right idea in doing this, or maybe I'm misreading it, but as of now I still don't really like the sound of this.
Also, if your playing on PC: Yabitt.net - OC TF2 Server. Most fun I've had on TF2 ^_^

Cant wait!

Holy shit, awesome.
Maybe for spy, something like a silenced revolver? One that doesn't uncloak?
And for engies, how about turrets that can move? Not run around, but I mean just point at the ground and a turret that you've already built can move there?

THIS IS VERY EXCITING.

I AM EXCITED.

Hopefully they can balance the soldier again since he is pretty much an unstoppable killing machine ...

Some of the predicted achievement requirements seem ridiculous though in a real game... "heal a spy and then kill them"? Looks like a lot of people will be cheating for their achievements after this update is released.

When are Valve going to announce a successor to the Source Engine. Surely it must be time to build another one of those babies from scratch that handles proper multi-core/cpu systems natively with out the hack job that was OB for PS3. I bet they could build a better and faster engine than the Unreal 3 Engine.

Come on Valve you know you can do it and you know you want to.

I'm just hoping Demo-man gets his dynamite back.

i have a confession... i have never played TF2!!! sadly i only have it for the 360, and my Gold subscription ran out before i got a chance to play, and i just started playing other games (single player) instead of renewing it. but this all sounds cool... i suppose

Honestly I am not very enthused by the news.

A whole new weapon arsenal sounds like a nightmare to balance out. Part of the amazing appeal of TF2 right now is that each class has a well-defined and balanced role on the team.

I subscribe to the "it's fucking pefect, leave it alone" doctrine. Add some new maps and call it good.

@keithris: I completely agree with that. Or they add a haloing effect for red and blue around the flame.

@sauvage: Well, they seem to be focusing on enhancing the Source engine over time. Episode 2 had the new cinematic physics in it, Episode I had the lighting effects from Lost coast. I think they'll make a new engine eventually, but it'll essentially be Source v2.0

I'm praying for proximity sticky bombs for the demoman.

They are going to do this very slowly it seems. First patch: maps and overhealer.
Next patch: another class get their modification.

Ample time for playtesting in between. Giving more options to players is usually a good thing, especially as TF2 is quite dumbed down compared to TFC.

At least there will be more medics. Every other class outside of medic seems to be played quite a bit (at least on PC). I know I don't play medic as much as I used to, but I play it more than most of the other classes (Demoman, Heavy, Soldier, Pyro, and Scout).

@deadeyereborn: I hate to break this to you but most Engineers have no idea how to properly support their team. Most fo them are either playing defense alone or just trying to get easy kills. This is not how an Engineer is intended.

So sure, most player play an Engineer as the easy option, but the majority of them have no idea what they are doing. I have been playing since the TFC days and a sentry gun is the least of your abilities. The Engy is a the most versatile class and should not be limited to defense alone.

So take a break while your sentry gun is doing all the work and you are missing out on over half of what a quality Engy can manage. I would rather spend my down time waiting to respawn.

i'm glad they're introducing gameplay features in patches, instead of just adding new maps like they have with cs:s. i play the game every day and it's just getting boring now - the same 5 maps, only two of which are any good (dustbowl and hydro), and the same outcome every time - stalemate or one team being completely owned by the other and defeated within minutes.

I really hope they fix the damage though, which at the moment is just completely random. a pyro can kill a medic literally in under half a second, or you can stand there flaming them for 10 seconds and they just keep running. pipe bombs sometimes kill with one hit, except when they don't, scouts and spies can kill with a single non-crit shot from 30 yards, and because of a random calculation, a soldier you've got down to 50hp can kill you with a crit. every valve game is exactly the same, and i don't know why they think randomising gameplay so much is even remotely fun when it makes player skill more and more irrelevant.

I haven't played TF2 in a while because it got boring. This might bring me back to it. It sounds like they're trying to compensate for the lack of VIP action. I can't remember the map name, but escorting that VIP from the tunnel to the chopper in TFC was one of my favourite maps. The new mode sounds intruiging.

Well, to those complaining that releasing patches to add to gameplay is stupid: Sure, When you are paying for it and it was planned from release. Such as the Oblivion add-ons (Which weren't worth the price, and are STILL not Vista compliant. Despite them saying there would be a fix way back when Vista was released.) This is something they just started working on! They are tweaking the game to keep it interesting.

@bluecell: TF2? boring?

I think this may be the last straw. I've felt abandoned on my 360 version with no new updates, bad server connections, lack of new maps, and a poor community. I'm going to bootcamp my Mac JUST to play TF2 in it's full power.

Alright! Damn this is awesome news! What do you think scouts will get? Also to 360 people, i dont see why this cant be patched into the console version aswell, unless if m$ decides to charge people for it which would totally suck. thats why i prefer to play shooters on PC anyways and not to mention i prefer the mouse & keyboard setup.

I think the pyro may be a little too powerful and the spy gun needs to take more damage but slower reload time, that would even it out a little.

Goldrush sounds fucking fantastic. Can't wait to see what mappers do with the concept and mechanics.

@Rockstar Ghede: I agree that a multiplayer online based game like TF2 should definitely benefit from patches, both to keep the game interesting and to help balance it (although it seems pretty damn perfectly balanced as is). Nobody's going to be playing TF2 without internet access anyway, so who cares if they release a patch every single day? Everyone will at least have the right version.

@BryanGuitarDude: Can't be patched in because there isn't a dedicated harddrive; people without the update would not be able to play properly with people who have the update, at all. This is what Valve was complaining about from the start.

Unlockable weapons? Are you fucking kidding me?

This is both exciting and worrying. If they don't get it just right, the beauty of the wonderfully balanced game is going to get destroyed. But the other part of me is going, "HELLS YEAH! New stuff to play with!" I just hope that the achievements can take into account if you've already done something before they were created.

I don't know how to feel about this. New content is neat and everything, but I never liked the idea of player inequity in competitive games.

This is....
surprising...

Medic Class > All?

I for one am glad this isn't coming to the 3-Six, TF2 is perfect as-is.

I just thought of this scheme. It involves either a) running an achievements farming server and charging people to come on or b) buying a few copies of TF2, farming he achievements, and selling them on eBay. Or maybe a combination of the two.

It's already proven to make the monies. Just look at WoW gold farmers and power levelers. We'll be rich I say, rich!

Holy crap, more weapons? Color me excited.

Hahaha, I play Medic for 20+ hours and this happens? Argh.