I feel like the contracts will be extremely fun, and the fact that you can work together with friends will mean we can lobby up and do stupid objectives with each other rather than us having to go onto different maps to do our own things (like the Halloween contracts).

I'm also a huge sucker for cosmetics lmao, and so thought the warpaint was a really cool feature. The cosmetics also look alright.

The Pyro's items gave me a lot of hope, I think the gas passer and jetpack could be really nice additions to Pyro and maybe let Pyro be more than a fucking airblast machine for aids defensive holds, but I was a bit concerned when I saw that Pyro didn't actually get any stat changes. I am hoping that in-game, people can find some insane things to do with the new Pyro items and raise the bar with what a Pyro can do, but honestly I had a ridiculous expectation that Pyro would be a constant class in 6s so I don't know if I am quite satisfied really. Even if the items are enough to make Pyro a commonly used off-class, I don't like that it will most likely rely on a full set of specific unlocks. But either way, Pyro having the option of mobility now is good to see.

I haven't looked at the Day 4 notes yet, but I assume it is similar to what the TF2 blog posted a while ago which is okay with me. Just really disappointing there seems to be nothing on matchmaking. If I wasn't such a casual player I don't think I would have been as happy with this update.

Also annoyed at what seems to be lack of Halloween boss this year. I expected the Day 4 notes to be alongside Day 3, and for Day 4 to instead have info on Scream Fortress with some stupid story that claimed Merasmus brought the Yeti back to life or something.

Just looked at day 4 notes, little things like inspecting weapons being universal on all items and being able to smash the bottle again is great for a casual guy like me.

the Reserve Shooter man, wtf, they just removed the minicrit bonus on airblast

Eh it's okay

I'm glad for all the new stuff and for the quality of life improvements to casual (and that they read my email about the ambassador changes and did what I said instead of their old idea :DDD) but it's a bit ridiculous that comp MM is still a complete joke, I hope whatever they've done so far can be finished within the next 6 months or so, the thought of waiting another 400 days for that is fucking depressing.

This is kinda good and bad...

Like it's pretty much the only weapon that EVERYONE thinks is better than shotgun for pyro and theres a gentleman's agreement not to use, and now it's probably worse.

On the other hand, it's still stupidly good at denying jumpers in comp and won't be unbanned.

And now pyro has NO way (other than maybe the new primary) to activate it. It's literally a random weapon that crushes jumpers that doesn't belong on pyro any more. ENGI WILL ACTIVATE IT MORE OFTEN FFS

The majority of what was annoying about the Reserve Shooter was how predictably airblast worked, meaning that there was no need for the pyro to actually aim to pull off an uncounterable combo. If they still decided to give it a nerf, I'm worried it means that the airblast changes re: airstrafing and such aren't as meaningful as Valve are making them out to be.

yes that's what i mean, i'm expecting some big changes to the gun, which can make it less annoying on pub and get un-banned in comp

but they just simply said "This shit is too much for us to handle, so we gonna just remove the airblast minicrit bonus so you guys can stop whining" - That's lazy

I assumed the weapon changes they posted a couple of months ago were only a few of a long list of rebalances. Was hoping to see more of them.
I've lost interest in pubs and the changes they showed looked good from a 6s perspective with the changes to the danger shield, atomizer, etc so that was really the only thing I looked forward to with this update

Aside from that it looks alright. Not the greatest, but looks like it'll be refreshing. It had more unused potential though

I'm sad they did not fix weapons like Crusader's Crossbow and Rescue Ranger that fire their bolt well in front of the player himself, causing the arrow for example to go through teammates when they are too close to the medic, or it to deal damage through ceilings (yes, it does that).

Also competitive, I want elo...

"The biggest update in tf2 history" "mammoth" 5 weapons half assed.pyro changes and 20ish unlock changes honestly i feel really bad for old players who came to see what the update would entail and its a dissapointment that couldnt even be played

Maybe they had to wait the extra day so their intern(s) could write a non-copy pasta of the blog post from months ago and there are more changes?

Yo last night I had a dream where I did the fast process rollout as pyro and got like a 4k it felt so good

Also http://www.pcgamer.com/team-fortress-2s-jungle-inferno-update-will-launch-today/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

I really like the changes and I think it was worth the wait. We got massively changed mechanics for pyro flames, afterburn and airblast which make them more skill based and consistent. Then we got 4 unlocks which are clearly going to change the metagame for pyro.

The balance changes are a really good step in the right direction and they get rid of a lot of annoyances and lots of outliers in the wacky balance of TF2.

I really love the new contracts system and the skin changes, as well as how you can inspect all weapons now.

The quality of life improvements to casual, cases and just in general (like the model breaking and the bug fixes) were a nice touch.

This update was much bigger than gun mettle, meet your match or tough break, so I'm happy.

Hopefully the TF team has something in store for Scream Fortress and Smissmas as well to surprise us.

I'm not sure I remember correctly, how much of these patch notes are actually different from the blog post they posted ages ago? Ambassador is changed, what else?

I feel like people have been de-senstitized to the grandure of the update because we've already seen most of the balance changes, so the largest part of the update didn't seem so big, we did ask for communication however, so it's hard to say what was the right decision. I think people misunderstand that all these changes and weapons took playtesting, development, and planning. I hate that there's no comp changes, but really it's a fucking good update, it adressed SO many problems (even little ones that won't make valve money), not a valve dickrider but damn what an update.

I have mixed feelings leaning on the positive side on this.

+ New maps, some might be crap but it's still nice new ones are being added
+ New Weapons that make Pyro more interesting
+ Rebalancing a bunch of broken bullshit
+ Good changes to how the party system works
+ Good changes to the contract system and the drop system, really hope they expand more on this

= Changes to casual match making are better than what it was, but casual match making is literally killing TF2 as we know it. Since casual MM has been released and more specifically since Quickplay was changed to basically no longer put people in community servers ever community servers have been dying and the number of competitive teams have been dropping steadily in both 6s and HL.

- Competitive MM changes were promised nothing was done. They could've at least allowed a few more client side commands or something...
- Valve desperately needs to do something about the value/usefulness of metal, currently it holds no real value as it isn't necessary for damn near anything other than making random regular quality hats. Idk can't stand seeing keys be 20+ refined and the main issue with that is metal being worth jack shit.

-edit-
also that Cow Mangler buff isn't a big deal, being crit boosted = minicrits , yeah the weapon didn't need a buff but realistically this changes basically nothing about the weapon.

Also for all the people saying this isn't a big update that shouldn't have taken so long. Consider the following

Their's an actual Valve made map, new voice codec, entirely new party system, new particles and likely animation for all the flame throwers, new particles and animations for the Dragons Fury, Gas Passer and Jetpack , completely reworked airblast, fixed several bugs, added a host of new menus with the PDA and new menus for MM, added several new sounds to the game, etc.

While a lot of those may seem like minor things they still take a lot of work to do.

They changed the bonk max slow after expiration, changed YER cloak drain rate, added claymore and bison reverts and reserve shooter nerf.

not much different, more new balance

Reserve Shooter, remove airblast minicrit
Cow Mangler can be crit-boosted now, but turned into minicrit instead
Righteous Bison back to normal, deals less damage but faster projectile
Claymore back to normal also
Rescue Ranger, there's one confusing line about double the metal, idk

i really (might) like the changes to the pyro, and contracts are always fun. the balance changes seem fairly good to me, although I think some more fundamental changes should be made, but just my opinion. I think what's concerning to me is that if valve considers this to be a "mammoth" update, and that these kind of updates will take 1 year and 4 months to happen... it would take Valve 5-6 more years to really get the game where I think it should be, and there isn't really time for that.

I really hope this is more of a part 1 of the updated they intended and they have another update planned in the next 2 to 4 months for alot of the other stuff they've been working on (if any).

Technically this is part 1 now we wait for part 2 aka heavy update xd

400 days

It took a over a year just for this update, I think everyone here is incredibly optimistic for predicting an update coming out that adds exactly what the game needs in just a simple 2-4 months.

How easy do you think it is to redo particles and animations, make sounds from scratch and completely redo a game mechanic, make new animations from scratch, design and polish a map, create dozens of new HUD panels while also making all of this look remotely professional and not bugged as hell.

All of those things take a shit ton of man hours, some of the things they changed are honestly not that important to you or me but they still take a significant amount of work.

I didn't say anything about adding "exactly what the game needs" they probably have a bunch of half finished shit they would like to add but can't at the moment and will at a later date, whether or not they will prioritize it and make it happen in the next 2-4 months is what I'm hopeful for I have no idea if it'll be what the game needs though.

no

I honestly feel that it was pretty underwhelming, because I don't really care about pyro enough to be excited for balance changes to him and the ones that they decided to go with seem mediocre. Lack of competitive/casual changes is really what kills the entire thing for me. Only silver lining is that now I get to level my strange natascha on jetpack pyros with no air control.

You've all missed the most important change.

The bottle now breaks again on crit.

New winger sound :)
New awp sound :(

As much as I love abusing the fuck out of the winger it really did need some sort of cue to let people know you're using it. The airtime it gives you forces soldiers to hold their rocket longer or go for a risky airshot so it makes cleaning up even easier for scouts.