Team Fortress 2

[mcattack92]

The micro-transactions are only for people who can't be stuffed completing achivements to unlock weapons or playing for hours to wait for a hat or weapon to drop. Valve is targeting the 'I WANT IT NOW!' market which is a growing trend in games.

 

[Katana314]

I didn't see the point of the qualifier "items you can buy in the store". With some very sparse, all the store items can be attained ingame through a lot of patience. Then again, it's patience and luck; if you simply never get a Degreaser after months of play, you may simply not become a competitive pyro.

Speak for yourself. =p I've done competitive matches as Pyro with the regular flamethrower just fine. At least the regular flamethrower's afterburn is of some concern to an enemy medic, and a bigger concern to everybody else's, and the airblast potential is just the same.

That said, almost every weapon in TF2 is meant to be a sidegrade, not an upgrade, and except for some melee weapons and a few secondaries, most times competitive players will use the vanilla equipment anyhow. So really, you're good to go the moment you first boot up the game. And if you're lucky you'll meet at least a few players will give you duplicate weapons. (I sure as hell don't know what to do with four Homewreckers)

Basically the added weapons will boost your versatility, because yes there'll be cases where the Wrangler will be crucial for an engineer. But one that doesn't have one can be just as useful to his team most times anyway. Or once in a blue moon the soldier will need his direct hit to get rid of a sentry fast, but most times his vanilla rocket launcher is his best primary weapon. So I honestly wouldn't worry.

Yes, professional players don't use most of the special weapons. There are exceptions that I've mentioned, like the flaregun, equalizer, etc. Plus, some weapons were built for more professional players, such as the Direct Hit. Still, I'm not talking as much about professional play, where everyone knows all the special weapons, all their downsides, how to counter them, etc. Think about someone's first run of the game. To a new player, if the enemy isn't using a single default weapon at all, things are going to look very confusing, and he could legitimately be at a disadvantage simply because he has no idea how all these special mechanics for enemies work. Things like "+30% burn damage" aren't easily noticed.

The new weapons are usually sidegrades, but the element of surprise when you find out that unlike your Spy, the ENEMY spies can feign their death and reappear anywhere is kind of a shocker. Plus, the game has no "tutorial" that explains the mechanics of a weapon you don't own. Occasionally, you may get lucky and see the effect in the kill box, but that's especially uncommon for non-kill items like Jarate.
"My screen is yellow! WTF DOES THIS MEAN"

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

I think you're underestimating the intelligence of gamers there. The whole point of your screen turning yellow is to point out you're under a status effect, and honestly, we all had to get used to the Dead Ringer when it was first introduced, whether we actually had one of our own or not. And either way, nothing stops anyone from going to the TF2 Wiki [http://wiki.teamfortress.com] or the blog and getting educated before playing.

 

[Ashcrexl]

Instead of asking the internet forums, have you tried playing the game right now that you have right now on the pc right in front of you right now and forming your own opinions?

and for the record, those people are horrible liars.