I think there are some major things to take from this update and Gun Mettle.
1: Valve doesn't want to add as many unique weapons to the game anymore. Which, to me, is fair. There are roughly 159 unique weapons(not counting reskins or all-class melee weapons) in the game. How many do you see on a regular basis?
2: Valve would rather balance existing weapons so they're usable, or atleast not a complete joke. In other words, while we might see the Panic Attack become usable, I doubt we'd ever see Manntreads becoming a staple of your average Soldier.
3: Mapwise, they don't want to fork out the large upfront lumpsum that they have in the past, they'd rather it pay for itself somehow. Hence, Gun Mettle campaign pass, and the Invasion campaign pass.
3a: Valve are possibly more open to unique/different takes on pre-existing gamemodes than they have been in the past. Byre is a unique, two-CP version of Arena and Watergate is an entirely new gamemode, originally coded as a Sourcemod plugin and then coded into the game by Valve. This is pretty big. Maybe some day we could see an official version of VS. Saxton Hale, or Stop That Tank?
4: Cosmetics, they're experimenting with a variation of the CSGO system - rarities and much harder to find crates. Atleast, to begin with.
4a: My own thoughts on this are: Eh. I think it'd be fairer if the creator of the item got a split of the Market sales for items/crates/keys, and maybe if they started doing like a... six month exclusivity thing. Like, the items are exclusive to the crate/case for six months, then they're in the store. Valve probably need to take a new look at the Store altogether honestly.
