Team Fortress 2: The Gun Mettle Update

Ever since the day that unusual hats were first summoned into our plane of existence through a money burning, tear harvesting ritual, an isolated cult has had their members waving their hands to and fro, hoping to appease the Lovecraftian entity that is the Team Fortress 2 development team, praying one day for an ability to finally lift their buckets of paint, incant some nether spells, and gorge their weapons in bright pink and lime green. Also the blood of their enemies. The unholy lights brought about by the unperfected and unstable versions of the above ritual has lead to many environmental and personal hazards. After many police hearings, the TF2 team decided to intervene, reasoning that demonic paint rituals were better handled by professionals, lest anymore people get hurt; enter the Gun Mettle Update!

wait what

The Gun Mettle Campaign: 

i.e. Collector's Canadian strange unusual kill-streak weapons

The update's primary focus is the introduction of a three month long contract system in TF2. Upon purchasing access to the Gun Mettle Campaign, players will be able to attempt two contracts each week. Upon completion, each contract will award players a decorated weapon with a skin system similar to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's. 

Liking the new skins or not aside (because we've lived through painted hats, kill-streak-fire-from-eyes, and Australium weapons), I think the new contracts are a lot of fun and remind me of daily reward systems from MMOs. The week long span for two skins limits the contract content, however; it would've been nice to see an unpaid contract system by which players could earn weekly item drops in a guaranteed fashion if they hadn't received their random drops yet.

several hundred million dollar paint jobs

New Maps:

i.e. Cactus Canyon and Asteroid are still in beta.

Three new community maps have been added to the official support list: Borneo, a single stage payload map; Suijin, a Japanese themed, rooftop fighting fetish, king of the hill map; Snowplow, a "well-that-wasn't-so-complex-after-all" control point map. To round the new maps off, the TF2 team has also created a map of their own: Powerhouse, the spiritual successor to Hydro.

Community mapmaking is a powerful asset to the TF2 community and it is always great to see continued love and support.

build on the roof

New Taunts:

i.e. the conga is now for peasants.

Gameplay Changes

i.e. still no one uses the Panic Attack

A full listing of the gameplay changes can be found at the bottom of the update page. 

Prior to this update, I was having a lot of difficulty pinning down what direction TF2 was headed in. Unfinished maps (Asteroid, Cactus Canyon) and beta game modes (Mannpower), to me at least, seemed like an experiment in trying to orient game updates to be driven more by players instead of developers by including players in the quality assurance step, en masse. Even after all the talks of a competitive matchmaking coming along, there weren't many signs of it coming along- until now.

In general, Spy and Heavy received buffs to make them more survivable in extended confrontations and Engineer's buildings deploy quicker; these changes all seem to gear them up for competitive gameplay where the firepower and mobility of Scouts, Soldiers, and Demomen seem to dominate. 

Additionally, weapons from fallen enemies can now be picked up if it is a weapon usable by your class. Your dreams of destroying your enemies and then taking their prized heirlooms away as a constant reminder to them "I HAVE KICKED YOUR ASS AT LEAST ONCE" are finally going to come true! If you can kick their ass at least once.

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Source 2 is around the corner with Dota 2 Reborn having been announced. Perhaps the matchmaking update for Team Fortress 2 will occur after the Gun Mettle Campaign is over? Until then, we have a very nice and easy update to once again continue breathing fresh air into this eight year old game.