Item drop system

“

Yes. I like this new weapon. Click to listen — The Heavy

”

The Item Drop System is a system introduced to make earning the large quantity of items within TF2 easier and maintain class balance during class updates. It was first introduced with the Sniper vs. Spy Update, and has since been tweaked in order to make it fairer between light and heavy players, and to thwart the effect of idling.

Current system

On April 20, 2010, the item drop system was changed. Instead of rolling at random intervals to see if the player recieves an item drop, the system rolls to determine when the player's next item drop will occur. With this change, players are guaranteed to find items at regular intervals of 15 to 75 minutes. Under the previous system, players could have unlucky streaks during which they didn't find any items for long periods of time, up to a month or more. The new system removed this possibility and increased the rate at which items drop.

There is no cap on the amount of items that can be received per week, but instead a cap on the amount of playtime in which drops can occur. This cap has been estimated to 11 hours each week. Playing beyond the cap won't yield additional items. Playing less than the cap carries over unused time to the next week, increasing that week's cap to a maximum of two weeks' worth of playtime. It has been estimated that a maximum of 6 to 12 items can be found each week. Receiving a Mann Co. Supply Crate does not count against the cap. The system resets each player's playtime cap around 5-5:30 PM each Wednesday, Pacific Standard Time.

The dropped items are stored in the backpack after the player's death, after a trade has been done, or if the Mann Co. Store is visited. Occasionally, dropped, traded, or crafted items may get stuck "in limbo" and may not immediately appear in the player's backpack. This may occur on instant respawn servers blocking the "New Item Found!" screen pop-up. Visiting the Mann. Co. Store will usually restore these items to the player's backpack.

Advantages and Disadvantages

A positive aspect of the system is that it allows new and old players alike to earn unlockable weapons by investing play time. It allows players to play as any class, since as long as they are racking up game-time, the player is eligible for an item drop. But if players play for more then 11 hours a week, they will not be rewarded for their extra play time.

Many players received unwanted duplicates; this issue was resolved by the introduction of the Crafting system, and later by the Trading system, allowing players to respectively craft and trade many of the available items (with some exceptions) with each other.

Despite the new systems, Idling still exists. However, it is now possible to idle for items using the offline mode (use of the -textmode game launch parameter combined with -novid and -nosound to disable video and audio processing respectively), alleviating the need for dedicated idling servers.

Achievement Milestones

On April 29, 2008, Valve unveiled a set of three unlockable weapons as part of their Gold Rush Update Update. These weapons were unlocked by completing a set number of achievements, which completes an achievement milestone. There were three achievement milestones in all, with each successive one requiring more achievements. Once a milestone was unlocked, the player received the set weapon that came with that achievement milestone. This requirement was later reduced to reduce players from grinding achievements just to get the new unlocks.

On May 21, 2009, Valve implemented a new system of random drops for unlockable items and discontinued the milestone system. Valve soon fell back to the Achievement Milestones, now coupled with the item drop system for the Sniper and Spy weapons in the the May 29, 2009 Patch. This milestone system has since been used in the WAR! Update as well as in the Engineer update.

Former System

Backpack icon, used before Mann-Conomy update.

While keeping the Achievement Milestones already present for the Scout, Pyro, Heavy and Medic, Valve implemented the random drop system to maintain class balance in the event of a class update. This system was patched into the game as part of the Sniper vs. Spy Update.

Valve calculated the average time a regular Team Fortress 2 player played, then came up with an unknown time which was used as a marker or set point. Every 25 minutes of gameplay, the game calculated a random number to determine whether the player would receive an item. If the player was lucky, (25% per item chance) then he or she would find a randomly chosen weapon or hat. If the player was unlucky, then he or she would receive nothing and the timer would reset. In addition, there was a separate timer which ran on a 15,430 second (4 hours, 17 minutes, and 10 seconds) interval, which gave an additional 1 in 28 chance of receiving a hat. The average time for finding a single item was 1h 40min (including duplicates). Since weapons were granted via a random number generator, experiences varied.

When first released, item drops would only occur if players were connected to the Steam Community. If the player was not signed into his or her friends list, or if Valve was performing maintenance on the Steam Community, the player would not receive item drops during that time. Valve changed this system at a later date, and item drops occurred for those who were not signed into the Steam Community (and still occur now with the new system).

Backpack

Main article: Backpack

See also

• Mann Co. Supply Crate
• Idling

External links

• TF2 Official Blog – May 22, 2009 – "Every one of you deserves a medal!" by Erik Johnson, explaining in detail the reasoning for the item drop system.
• TF2 Official Blog – April 20, 2010 – "Thanks for standin still, wanker." by Erik Johnson, announcing and explaining the updated drop system.