Just a quick info:
In an interview with ShackNews Robin Walker comments on the new ItemDrops, the Backpack and a few other things.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff in that Interview, so head over and read it for yourself. And apparently the world doesn’t end after all. Bugger
I will add some thoughts about the interview a little later, so stay tuned.
And thanks to Hzza for pointing me towards the Interview.
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Okay, let’s try to assess what’s going on here.
Obviously Valve is starting to experiment on a greater scale (that will be a great relief for all the doomsayers ).
One aspect is to give the players means to customize the models with alternative designs provided by Valve. That way Valve can still control the overall integrity of the model (“ensure we don’t break our silhouette based class identification”). Since this is more along the lines of eye candy I see no problems with that.
Apparently the head-slots are purely cosmetic (for the moment?), but the bonus items will have impact on the gameplay (which seems quite logical).
I gather that one of the motivations behind the backpack (etc.) is to create a new way to deploy items to the players, offering an alternative road to achievements (“The primary change here is simply the decoupling of achievements and unlockables”).
Basically I think this is a good idea, since the concept of achievements – at least as implemented right now – is pretty stupid. So I’m looking forward that a player can get his hands on bonus items without running through a silly obstacle course (or spend an hour on an achievement server, which renders the issue pointless anyway). If Valve comes up with a way to earn bonus items which is non-obtrusive or even in spirit of the game (which “Kill 6 enemies with your axe in a single life”, “In a single life, get shot, burned, bludgeoned, and receive explosive damage” or “Have 2 enemy Scouts on fire at the same time” is not, not to mention crap like “Cause a dominated player to leave the server” – PUKE).
As far as these new bonus items are concerned we will have to wait and see what Valve comes up with. As I’ve mused before I suspect that at least some of those items will be class-spanning (e.g. fire-proof underwear . This hasn’t necessarily to be a bad thing as long as it’s balanced properly (e.g. fire-proof underwear replacing the melee weapon).
So far I think Valve has done far more things right than wrong, so I’m open to see what they come up with and how they implement these new features. And once they have done that I will wait a little longer to see them correcting some of the aspects which they have gotten wrong. Because whatever you might think of new content, Steam offers Valve a good tool to correct and fine-tune any changes made to the game (as they have done a number of times before).
And, truth to be told, so far I like and approve of many of the new features Valve added to the game with the previous class updates (just to mention a few: Natasha, lvl3 buildings, Kritzkrieg). Many of these items added different layers to the game and enabled alternative, even innovative strategies.
So I’m willing to give Valve the benefit of the doubt …