New gun: Heals you when you hit them, but can’t crit.
New healer: Gives 100% crit, doesn’t give invincibility.
New saw: Gives über-boost, is slower.

It’s a tactical choice you’ll have to take, it’s not upgrading – it’s options

P.S: I love this game and I think valve will perfect it even more. :)

I prefer to think of it as evolving the language. It’s certainly going to elevate the debate; certainly I’ll be pissed off every time I misjudge an opponent’s abilities and have some quiet time in the respawn queue to fume…

Looking forward to it – I could use a couple new excuses to have fun like a n00b.

lol :)

I also like the sniper camouflage idea – though making it even more cartooney with eye holes and the like :)

My thoughts:
1. Heavies are going to be fucking hard to kill: bonus their ammo remains the same, meaning they won’t be minigunning for anything more than a little past half their lifetime.

2. Sentry Gun that can Walk- Imagine being able to choose to not have the rocket launcher, but instead stick with the level 2 sentry, but have it able to move, possibly while shooting, possibly while not being able to shoot, but still, capable of slowly walking from point to point, possibly faster as a level 1 sentry (fetch anyone? Go get the scout boy, go get im… 1 minute later … awwwe, good boy, you brought me a bat, thank you)

3. Alternate Spy Gadgets- I really like the idea of actually picking identities and taking them (making the other player vulnerable to team damage), from a previous post here, but I think it’d be semi-easy roundabout to turning on team damage for almost a whole team, which sorta makes the pyro lose alot of it’s value. Something more or less able to be spammed would be a limited supply version of the sapper, that would turn sentries against their engi builders and such and convert dispensers to poison allies and heal enemies (enemies and allies of the dispenser’s builder), but one would only have say 2, and no other sappers for that life, and they would die with the spy like stickies, returning the devices to normal function. Alternatively, a grapple would be very useful for surprising enemies (particularly if the spy can spread out on the ceilling rather than dangle).

4. Pyro Flamethrowers- Napalm, does less initial damage but keeps burning till they die, get healed or find water. Greek Fire would be an interesting alternative where it would go out in time, but water would make it burn worse (explosion perhaps?), but the ammo would be very limited (80 or something, with slightly less then current range). Either way, I’d like the option for a smoke grenade, it wouldn’t have far range, maybe even dropped like a ninja’s smoke bomb (with appropriate muffled dialog), but it would allow for a covered escape (pyro runs without a medic are almost suicide runs now) or confusion to burn people with, “smoke before FIRE”

5. Dynamite sticks as an alternative to stickies, very limited ammo, but BIG boom… maybe a dangerously short fuse to make it difficult to spam… mmmm, probably make a good drop on death weapon to screw with meleers, but hell, I like melee…. who knows

6. Sniper Camouflage- no NOT a cloak, sniper camouflage as in literal cover, like a barrel, a crate, a box, a false part of a wall, something that if you look at for more than a second you’d think was fishy, but something that’d you’d not notice at a passing glance unless you looked back. In exchange, no SMG, but more sniper ammo.

If this is more like Battlefield 2 weapon unlocks, I’ll be less pissed. BF2 handled the unlockables system well, I think, in that the unlockable weapons were only a little better than the default loadout. Yeah, people with unlockables had a slight advantage, but nothing serious enough to make the newer players completely inferior to everyone else.

I wonder two things:

Will the new loadouts be visible parts of the character models? Maybe the new medic gun will be a different color or shape.

Will servers be able to disable the new loadouts feature? I bet there are already purists who will yearn for the original TF2 action.

In any case, I would trust Valve with my firstborn son, so hopefully they don’t let me down.