Team Fortress 2 Update Released

[tf2.com]

An update to Team Fortress 2 has been released. The update will be applied automatically when you restart Team Fortress 2. The major changes include:
Scream Fortress VIII has arrived!

• Featuring 3 new community maps: Brimstone, Pit of Death, and Maple Ridge Event
• Added the Creepy Crawly Case
  • Contains 22 new community-created items that make-up the Creepy Crawly Collection
  • Has a chance to give one of 3 community-created Halloween-restricted items as a bonus item
  • Has a chance to give a taunt Unusualifier as a bonus item
• Added a taunt Unusualifier
  • A new tool that will Unusualify the specified taunt with the Unusual effect listed in the tool's description
  • Can be found as a random bonus item when opening a Creepy Crawly Case
• Added two new taunts to the Mann Co. Store
  • Taunt: The Victory Lap
  • Taunt: Second Rate Sorcery (community-created)
• Added 8 new community-created Unusual effects
  • 4 new effects for Unusual hats
  • 4 new effects for Unusual taunts
• Continue last year's event by collecting the souls of dead players for your Soul Gargoyle by killing enemies, doing map objectives, or collecting the Soul Gargoyles that spawn in the maps
• Join Halloween matches by selecting the "Halloween" category in Casual
• Scream Fortress VIII runs through November 9th, 2016

• During Scream Fortress VIII
  • All players who launch the game will receive a Soul Gargoyle if they don't already have one from last year's event
    • Grants access to Merasmissions and Halloween item transmutations
    • Tracks Merasmissions completed and souls collected
  • Added 3 new Merasmissions for the featured maps
    • Completing a Merasmission will give players a classic Halloween item and the chance for a Creepy Crawly Case
  • The chance to receive an Unusual item from a case opening has been increased during the event
  • All cases and Mann Co. Supply Crates will grant Halloween 2016 Unusual effects instead of their normal Unusual effects

• Matchmaking
  • The Competitive maps list has been updated
    • Added pl_badwater and ctf_turbine
    • Disabled cp_granary and cp_badlands
    • Maps will continue to enter and exit this list over time
  • Added "Load Saved Settings" and "Save Current Settings" buttons to the Casual mode Map Selection menu
    • Search criteria is now manually saved to give players more control over the default settings when the game is launched
  • XP earned in Casual matches has been adjusted to reward players more for their personal contribution to the match
    • XP per point has returned to 6.5 XP per point
    • XP earned for match completion and objective completion now scales based on your score relative to total amount of points scored by everyone in the match
  • Increased the matchmaker's priority of matches with imbalanced teams
    • This should reduce the occurrence of extended imbalanced matches when multiple players leave

• General
  • Added the AsiaFortress Cup Season 10 tournament medals
  • Added LBTF2 6v6 Season 13 tournament medals
  • Improved several aspects of texture handling for OS X and Linux clients
    • This should reduce the rate of "Out of memory" errors for players on high texture settings, especially on level change
    • Players still encountering this error can reduce texture quality to medium or lower to greatly improve stability pending further improvements
  • Fixed a missing material issue on cp_sunshine
  • Fixed players not taking damage when exploding as a bombhead without stunning Merasmus
  • Fixed Mann vs. Machine zombies not using the correct skin in Ghost Town outside of the Halloween event
  • Fixed a bug with the vote-kick timer in Mann vs. Machine mode
  • Fixed taunts not restoring the proper weapon when the taunts are finished
  • Fixed the Pomson 6000 playing the shotgun reload sound
  • Updated the sounds made when the Scout shoves someone while using the Shortstop
  • Updated some Merasmus audio files that weren't playing properly
  • Updated the localization files

Read on the TF2 Blog...

 

[Hipster_Duck]

Congratulations to the three people who got maps added into the game!

 

[Crowbar]

I was near sure slasher gets in. Also questioning reasons there were for removing badlands. I mean, why on earth?

 

[Mikroscopic]

They're cycling maps now it looks like.

 

[Zed]

But adding Turbine and Badwater in their place?

 

[LeSwordfish]

Valve are consummate experimenters: there's nothing more behind adding turbine than "does turbine work in matchmaking? shit, only one way to find out".

 

[Jethro]

I was near sure slasher gets in.

Submitted way too late, to be fair. Everything else was up for a lot longer.

 

[MegapiemanPHD]

Submitted way too late, to be fair. Everything else was up for a lot longer.

Sadly that's probably true. The same thing happened last year with Pit of Death so I'm glad to see it got in this year. Now that slasher is on the workshop, there's always next year.

 

[Hi5TBone]

Damn, I was hoping for atleast one reskin map. The new ones can be confusing to learn the ropes respectably with the Halloween effects.

Otherwise, congrats to the map creators!

 

[TheClaudioAmericano]

Is there any specific reason this time why they didn't add the original Maple Ridge?
I find it odd how they've been adding event versions of maps without adding the original, same thing happened with Moonshine.
Congratulations to the mappers though, can't wait to have fun in these maps this Halloween.

 

[Diva Dan]

Submitted way too late, to be fair. Everything else was up for a lot longer.

A taunt was uploaded a day after slasher and that didn't stop them from adding it. Sure, a taunt is easier to add than a map and would have much less consequences if something went wrong, but the map was still uploaded 4 whole days before the delay. The only thing that would take time on valve's end (that I can think of) for adding a Halloween map is placing the gargoyle spawns or playtesting (which if the ghost payload on the old hellstone said anything, they don't (sorry ICS!)). I also wish valve didn't make the whole "What we're up to post" saying they want maps a week before the deadline. I'm just mild/medium salty!

 

[dryerlint]

Updated the sounds made when the Scout shoves someone while using the Shortstop

Aww. We don't get to hear Scout having se- ... ah, exercise anymore.

 

[Lain]

• Matchmaking
  • The Competitive maps list has been updated
    • Added pl_badwater and ctf_turbine
    • Disabled cp_granary and cp_badlands

It really is halloween.

Also rip Slasher, and hello Maple Ridge!

 

[Idolon]

Is there any specific reason this time why they didn't add the original Maple Ridge?
I find it odd how they've been adding event versions of maps without adding the original, same thing happened with Moonshine.

Valve seems to err on the side of caution when adding maps, adding less instead of more if they're not feeling confident in a map (and with how much we complain about Junction and Turbine, who can blame them?). However, the event map pool is a lot smaller than the normal map pool, and the event needs new maps to stay fresh, so you end up with this sort of situation.

If that last paragraph was a bit gloomy, consider that Valve really loves playtesting data. It wouldn't surprise me if Valve uses these events to try and evaluate maps that don't have their vanilla versions in the game yet (see: S(i/u)nshine). Even though the spooky gimmicky bullshit is going to skew that data a lot, they can glean a lot from it.

I do kinda find it disappointing that the originals aren't getting added in some cases, but I feel that the alternative is that the H'ween-variants don't get added at all, and that's definitely worse.

 

[MegapiemanPHD]

Valve seems to err on the side of caution when adding maps, adding less instead of more if they're not feeling confident in a map (and with how much we complain about Junction and Turbine, who can blame them?). However, the event map pool is a lot smaller than the normal map pool, and the event needs new maps to stay fresh, so you end up with this sort of situation.

If that last paragraph was a bit gloomy, consider that Valve really loves playtesting data. It wouldn't surprise me if Valve uses these events to try and evaluate maps that don't have their vanilla versions in the game yet (see: S(i/u)nshine). Even though the spooky gimmicky bullshit is going to skew that data a lot, they can glean a lot from it.

I do kinda find it disappointing that the originals aren't getting added in some cases, but I feel that the alternative is that the H'ween-variants don't get added at all, and that's definitely worse.

For a map like millstone it's a bit weird as well since the non Halloween version of that map is a different game mode and hasn't left Beta. Sunshine, in comparison, was a finished map played a bit in the competitive scene. It's also always possible that Valve will add the normal versions in the future at any point. Who knows.