The ninth day of the Sniper vs Spy update has arrived courtesy of the Team Fortress 2 blog. This blog entry shows off some new Spy and Sniper merchandise (now available in the Valve store), the announcement of the hats and Hoodoo, and exactly what the deal is with the new unlock system!
What did we do?
For the last number of months we've been working on using the Steam Cloud to store a player's inventory. With that finally in place, we were able to deploy a new system focused on the giving of items to players. That new system watches the amount of time that players are playing TF2, and gives them a chance to find items at regular intervals. They aren't guaranteed to get the item at those points, but they have a pretty good chance. We based the system on granting items on the amount of time played because we don't want players to have to do weird things like join achievement grinding servers to get new content. Basing it off time also has the benefit of ensuring that if you play a lot of TF2, you're going to get more items than players who don't.
How long do I have to play to get an item?
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. In the first few hours after the release yesterday, we had some issues that prevented the system from working properly, so that timeframe was not indicative of the system as it's designed.
Is this the way we'll find items from now on?
Like everything else we build, we'll be iterating on this system for a while, and have a lot of features planned. Some of the next things we have planned are:
- Item trading. This is why you're finding duplicates.
- Giving players a method to influence the system so they can work directly toward getting specific items.
- Adding more rare items like the hats.
We're going to be working on and rolling these out while we're also working on the next class pack, with the goal being to get it all released before then.
For the last number of months we've been working on using the Steam Cloud to store a player's inventory. With that finally in place, we were able to deploy a new system focused on the giving of items to players. That new system watches the amount of time that players are playing TF2, and gives them a chance to find items at regular intervals. They aren't guaranteed to get the item at those points, but they have a pretty good chance. We based the system on granting items on the amount of time played because we don't want players to have to do weird things like join achievement grinding servers to get new content. Basing it off time also has the benefit of ensuring that if you play a lot of TF2, you're going to get more items than players who don't.
How long do I have to play to get an item?
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. In the first few hours after the release yesterday, we had some issues that prevented the system from working properly, so that timeframe was not indicative of the system as it's designed.
Is this the way we'll find items from now on?
Like everything else we build, we'll be iterating on this system for a while, and have a lot of features planned. Some of the next things we have planned are:
- Item trading. This is why you're finding duplicates.
- Giving players a method to influence the system so they can work directly toward getting specific items.
- Adding more rare items like the hats.
We're going to be working on and rolling these out while we're also working on the next class pack, with the goal being to get it all released before then.
Item trading was already discovered by a number of users already. The template was included but it is not yet ready to go live. There is more to the blog than what we shared, so be sure and head on over to the TF2 blog for the full details. Also, don't pass up any of the new Team Fortress 2 merchandise at the Valve store.
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