Since Team Fortress 2's release, Valve have been routinely creating new content for the game and releasing it through various updates every few months or so. Each patch comes with a class upgrade, in which a designated character (there are nine) gets three new weapons/items, and a list of achievements that must be completed as the means to unlock said items. The idea was that these achievements would be something that the player would accomplish naturally through hours of experience with a single class, and hence, the items would unlock themselves. But Valve's success with this system has varied, and as a result, whenever a new update is released, we see a surge of "achievement servers" designed specifically to allow players to grind achievements and earn unlockables at a faster rate.

Just last week, Valve issued one of the biggest patches yet, the Spy vs. Sniper update, which covered two major classes by granting them a few of the most eye-opening unlockables we've seen so far: The sniper gets a spy shield and a slick bow and arrow, and the long-anticipated spy update yields two new cloaking watches, one that feigns death and one that offers potentially infinite invisibility. With this update, however, Valve reworked the system. Players were grinding for achievements but weren't earning any of the new items. Meanwhile, they kept receiving equipment for other classes that they'd already unlocked. This led to inventories overflowing with duplicates while the new goodies were nowhere in sight.

Valve issued a statement a few days ago addressing the "questions" (read: complaints) the new system has inspired. It works like this: As you play TF2, an opportunity is opened at random intervals to receive an unlockable item. You won't always get one, but you have a good chance. The random nature of the system is meant to be more friendly to new players, which makes no sense. The unlockable items were supposed to be both a reward and an incentive. They meant you were motivated enough with a particular class to deserve the best equipment that class had to offer. Now, everyone's at equal odds, and the achievements have become entirely irrelevant, except for personal glory.

Valve apparently were uncomfortable with the fact that committed players had to join achievement servers in order to earn new items at a fast, predictable rate. But their new system is broken in such a way that a variation of the same thing happens. Since item drops are distributed based on time spent in-game, players can now spectate matches and leave their computers for hours at a time and have an equal chance of earning unlockables as someone who plays TF2 obsessively. And now, in addition to the usual spy/sniper achievement servers, we see a surge of "idle" spectator-only servers designed to collect item drops while the player is away or sleeping. This is silly and counterproductive, and absolutely does not solve any problems.

And what about the countless duplicates players are earning, like the five Sandviches stashed away in my inventory? There are plans to incorporate a trading system, which, again, is absurd, because any committed TF2 player earned the old items ages ago and are only interested in the spy/sniper upgrades. It seems that in their attempts to appeal to newbies, Valve have abandoned those that have been playing TF2 since the beginning.

I did manage to find the Ambassador out of pure dumb luck, and using it has been a blast so far. I'd happily give the report on the other new items if I could, y'know, find them.