f13.net

Going with a Mafia theme (http://www.teamfortress.com/uberupdate/)

I should go play some TF2, it's been a while

As much as I love that Valve continues to support this game with free updates, I feel like they've just added way too much to the game, way too much variation.

Looking forward to more Tim Schafer comedy antics in the Medic video  :grin:

Ya, pretty much my sentiments.  It just looks stupid now.  Not like funny stupid, either, like inconsistent and random stupid.  Like whoever did their original art design left and they couldn't get anyone competent to replace them so now they're just taping random shit like tiki masks and cactuses to everything.  And every new weapon has it's own little effects and it's just a clusterfuck of abilities and those goddamn hats now.  Adding yet more shit is not going to bring me back, I suspect.

Still interesed to see if they crank out another video, though.  Those were pretty cool.  Seems odd to be five years out and still haven't finished that series.

That's funny, I LOVE that they keep adding new things.  Helps keep the game fresh.  As for the aesthetic, I don't really care one way or the other. 

Every time something awesome happens some of you fuckstains have to shit up the thread with this nostalgic 'not what it was' bullshit.  Shut the fuck up.  This is the best shooting game ever made.  If you're playing a shooting game on the internet, and it's not this game, you're flat out doing it wrong.  This game is so goddamn well done that litterally the only possible improvement (and I say improvement fully well knowing that term in this case is totally relative to how much you want the following) will be when the genre advances to mmo fps.  

And you dog gone retards do the same fucking thing in every fucking thread.  Stop it.  You're entitled to your opinions of course, but when you're being emo pussies expect to be called out.  

"Oh god the art direction."  What the fuck.  Seriously?  I literally do art for a living.  I love art.  I'm one of those hippie douchebags that thinks that everything he sees is art.  But even I am dumbfounded at this statement.  They add mob guns and all of a sudden it's shark jumping in your mind?  The art direction in this game IS shark jumping.  One hundred years from now in some digital art museum, a tightly wound British docent will explain that this is when Gabe Newell's art director screamed, "HAHA LOL GG!" to the world, and in doing so changed all our lives forever.

"Oh there's too many variables."  While somewhat more legitimate, still falls on the 'eyeroll' end of the convolution spectrum.  It's not convoluted.  It's very well, and constantly balanced.  Except spies.  Fuck spies.  When you say that, all I hear is, "People who play all the time have all this stuff.  I don't know what do."  You're fine with stock equipment.  Stop being a bitch.

The only test this game has to pass is this:  Have any other online shooters had as much stickiness?  No.  Not quake.  Not counterstrike.  Not TF classic.  Not even my beloved ET.  And if anyone even thinks about saying Halo, I will kill you with my thoughts.  Ergo, it's the best.  Now fire this shit up, or eat a bag of ass.

/thread

While I totally agree that TF2 is the best shooter out there, to be fair counterstrike still regularly has more players:

As of a couple seconds ago...

Current Players    Peak Today         Game
 
53,954    69,816         Counter-Strike
51,793    65,808         Counter-Strike: Source
28,943    36,148         Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Multiplayer
22,304    30,324         Football Manager 2011
20,366    26,451         Call of Duty Black Ops - Multiplayer
17,741    17,741         Team Fortress 2

Last time I played TF2 I decided to arbitrarily limit myself to the vanilla loadouts and I still topped servers consistently, this isn't about being butthurt over not having the weapons.  Its about adding things into the game which prevent intelligent decision making.  One of Valve's great achievements with TF2 (That they talk about a LOT in the dev commentary) is how its very easy to see whats going on quickly and identify things quickly.   

The weapons might technically be "balanced" but the way I play the game takes into account things like "I will die in 2 more rocket hits" and that matters with what I'm going to do when I see a soldier.  If they have 3 different rocket launchers all with varying damage models, you basically take away a lot of that decision making because you can't change the way you play because you have no idea what the fuck you're going to get shot with.

Lastly, I fully realize that most people don't play like this, TF2 is still great for that.  But for me, it just doesn't do it anymore.   Now I'll sit back while you all rip me for not understanding what fun is.

I am certain I am a FAR worse player than you, and I have absolutely no trouble telling what weapons other players are using.

So the game isn't fun anymore because you can't predict who and what's going to kill you with as much precision as you could when there were fewer weapons.  Correct me if that summary is off.

I'm sorry, but I can't follow why that's a good thing at all.  I might agree with you if it ever got to the levels of mmo button mashing sillyness - every character has three different forms all with 30 different playstyles.  But come on man.  You can still play like that.  It's just harder now that there's more stuff.  Other people might feel like it's more interesting that way.  It's not like you can't peek out and see what the soldier is carrying.  They're pretty easy to differentiate.

Its fairly on point.  I really enjoy working out those very fine grained details.  Its one of the reasons I still think Quake 3 (Live) is probably the best shooter ever made.

Its not like TF2 went from being amazing to shit.  It went from being amazing to something that isn't my best option anymore, and thats really all that matters.

This is the only way the game could improve?  So then, by your own argument, any other changes to the game would be bad, right?  Hey, what a coincidence, that's what I'm arguing, too.

TF2 is a fine game, I have something like 400 hours logged, but the changes they are making annoy me.  Since this thread is about changes to the game, pardon me if I bitch about the ones I don't like.

I don't care if the art direction in this game is intentionally shark jumping, it's getting fucking retarded.  You can't just throw in random tacky bullshit and then expect me to suddenly think it looks good because they were trying to go for random tacky bullshit.  It's not like the look of the game was vastly improved by sticking googly eyes on the pyro and giving the sniper a jar of urine to chuck at enemies.  I can understand maybe people having differences of opinion, but there comes a point at which you have to step back and look at what you just said, and I think it's somewhere before "someday, this game will be put in a museum as the first game to give players the ability to beat people to death with a fish while wearing a beer hat."

But by all means, keep digging on a game because it has so much "stickiness," a metric which only you have access to.  Maybe they'll let you pre-order Call of Juarez and you can unlock a novelty foam cowboy hat for your scout, I know your artist's soul will thrill at the subtle aesthetic genius behind that move, while us plebs ignorantly assume it's a cheap cash grab.

Changes that are not explicit improvement is not the same thing as bad.  So, uh.  No.

I'll just spend a little time with you, as this I think is where you're missing the point.  Yes it's a cash grab.  But in the history of cash grabs, it's probably the most innocuous one ever.  Except in your case, apparently, as the aesthetic is overwhelming for you.  And as I said, you're welcome to that opinion.  But it seems to me an irresponsible position, as the aestetic started out very obviously trying to be overwelmingly, overtly, over the top.  So, for example, from my perspective it looks like more of the same.  But in a game as popular and successfull as this one, the fact that they have not started making weapons (or other game altering things) that are exclusive to the cash shop is the real story here.  Yes, there are hats out the yang, and it's very hard to get them all without shelling out.  Yes there are hats that are promotions only obtained by purchase.  But none of these things have any effect what-so-ever on the gameplay.  They are, in fact, just a bunch of fucking hats.  Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo wat.  For that reason, even if upon viewing these hats, your mind is literally blown, I hope you can appreciate the fact that what these hats accomplish is a shiload of free content for you.  The hats pay for the continued development.  And while the point that the continuing infiltration of offensive art - in your opinion - is actually not a boon for you or others with your ill-considered opinion is not lost on me....  They're litterally selling people imaginary hats.  Do you understand the magnitude here?  The hats do nothing.  They are selling nothing, and instead of blowing the money on hookers and blow (well all of it anyway), they're using it to pay for more stuff for you.  Don't you get it?  You're saying, "I don't like these hats they're using to pay for the stuff they're giving me for free.  The stuff looks funny."

OH MY GOD SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET SOME HATS YOU STUPID MOTHER FUCKER.

I also don't mind the store - the point being that they'd rather just run the economy in house instead of having one pop up on eBay or whatever people use to sell shit these days.   Even if everything was given to all players for free, no unlocks, no finding items, no achievements, whatever, I still think their addition hurts more than helps the gameplay.  Obviously I'm in the minority by a pretty wide margin, but I still find it to be the case.

I think I might print this out and frame it for the home

/threadageddon

These two points are probably what we're butting heads over.  

1- I've seen better cash shops (League of Legends, for example), largely because the idea that they'd just decide to add one on after I already bought the game is not endearing to me.  Especially since the money is going towards making a game I enjoy less enjoyable for me.  It's not like the game was shit when it launched, so aside from the addition of new maps, I'm not really in favor of the "they need money to make more content" idea.  If they'd designed the game from the bottom up to be a cash shop, I don't think I'd object, but it's a significant departure from the game I signed up for.

2- The aesthetic was always over the top, but previously it was A: clear and B: consistent.  You saw a soldier, you could identify him very quickly and guess what his abilities were, even if you were new to the game.  Now, though, he's running around looking like Carmen Miranda with a grenade belt and combat boots and I don't know which of the half dozen different rocket launchers he's got in his backpack.  If they'd given him different hats but kept him looking like a soldier, that would be one thing, but they're decking him out with viking helmets and greek helmets and the Cat in the Hat hats and all kinds of stuff that breaks the metaphor.  A better option, in my opinion, would be something like League of Legends, where there are a bunch of stupid skins but they're full character skins (so the character looks consistent at least, rather than just having a stupid hat on a normal skin) or Brink where you can kit your security guy out in any one of a dozen different hats but they all look like something a security character would wear.  

I'm probably overselling the whole thing (OMG I HATE VALVE FOREVER I QUIYT), but it does bug me, and it is always there.  There's always people wearing this crap, and it always nags at me.  And like I said, I don't begrudge them the desire to make money, I just wish they hadn't gone about it in this way.  They put out two Left 4 Dead games in the meantime, you'd think that they'd be able to throw together "Team Fortress: Ultimate" or something, where the cash shop stuff is integrated into the game rather than bolted on.

Like, for this update, it's allegedly Mafia themed.  I could maybe see League of Legends doing this and releasing some mafia themed skins or something, sure.  But for this, you've got a few new hats and some weapons which are probably inspired by gangster flicks, but still being carried around by a skinny dude in a bright red t-shirt and running shoes.  Which makes me kind of wonder what the point is.  Though I am looking forward to the video, at the very least.

The character silhouette and the way it moves hasn't changed though, I've certainly not had trouble with IDing classes, even after the parade of silly hats.

Ya, the silhouette's the same, but the information it conveys is different.  The reason it's important to quickly identify someone's class is to get an idea of what they can do, but now you need to know what they're carrying as well, which the game doesn't tell you.

And the silhouette is only part of how the character looks, part of the idea behind the original design was also to let novice players know what each class does.  Originally, a new player who's never heard of Team Fortress before could look at an engineer and know that he built things, look at the soldier and know that he was a fairly heavy combat type guy, and so on.  But now, the soldier's got, say, a samurai hat on, does that mean he's got a sword?  Is he really good at melee?  It's just not as straightforward.

A soldier is still a big burly guy carrying a rocket launcher.  You can probably guess he's gonna shoot a rocket at you and take a few more hits than the little skinny guy.

You can guess that, and you'd be wrong, if the solder had a Rocket Jumper and the Scout had a Bonk.

So, despite some really bad examples, it's clear to me that Kail doesn't like all that stuff they're adding.  So instead of shitting on your chest some more, I'm just going to once again try and reinforce the idea that there's a cash shop that doesn't interfere with the balance of the game AT ALL.  And in return for enduring that cash shop and the sundry hats it foists upon your precious person, you get free stuff.  You get a popular game with people willingly paying for servers.

I haven't played LoL since beta, and I can't really talk about their cash shop.  But even if it's awesome, and for the sake of argument I'll say it is, you can bet it was inpired by this cash shop here.  Maybe it would be a good idea for a broader perspective.  So here goes.  In a sea of money grubbing corporate dick holsters who can't wait to figure out a way to monetize their product by shoving facebook credits up your ass, Valve does an end-around that delivers in pretty much every way through the vehicle of imaginary hats.  It's so beautiful that it makes me misty, man.  And I'm a grown ass man.  You don't like the aesthetic?  It's such an ancillary concern that it's pretty much irrelevant.  If you hate it that much, I guess you gotta hate.

I agree, the fact that a complete noob would not be able to predict the actions of his opponents with 100% accuracy makes it a terribly boring game.   :uhrr:

I uninstalled TF2 about a year ago. It was getting way out of hand.

It's filled with silly horseshit and all the players worth playing against have long since quit.

I'm sure it's fine for pubbie stomping, but there are dozens of games better suited for that.

Huh?  Don't strawman this.  I'm not quite that stupid.


Might want to get a source for that, given that League of Legends launched in 2009 and the TF2 store just went live last September.

The thing is, though, I don't care if they're "giving this stuff away for free."  I'm not sure why you're not seeing this.  You can't just show up at someone's house one day and repaint their shit, and then tell them to stop yelling at you because you did it for free, and if the aesthetics bother them, it's such an ancilliary concern that it's irrelevant.  They didn't give the game away for free, I already paid for it, and I do not feel it is greatly enhanced by adding toilet plunger hats to it, so any "upgrade" which increases the frequency at which I'm going to run into them is not a free service for which I feel grateful.

And really, aesthetics are about half of what this update is (or more, if you really believe it when you say all these new weapons have no impact on balance).  So saying they're irrelevant is kind of missing the point of a thread discussing the update.  What do you want us to talk about, how awesome the game is?   I mean, I love the game, it's a lot of fun.  But the update is about new hats.  So that's what I'm talking about.

Bad analogy homeboy.  Try again.

Do we really have to do this again? We need some sort of official TF2 changes anger me reference thread we can just add to the first post of every Tf2 update thread and call it a day. Honestly I think we could shorten a lot of threads around here that way. The politics forums might fade away entirely.

I'm curious to see what the big changes are; rumors have been a F2P model which makes a fair amount of sense. Monday wasn't terribly exciting although I'm always happy to see new Valve maps, and new payload maps in particular.

In the VAST majority of cases, the classes maintain their domain.

Also in the Bonk case the player sees a ton of big "MISS!" graphics and the guy has a super speedy blur effect and looks like he might be hard to hit. It still fits the character.

And the Soldier with the Rocket Jumper? You should be happy if he's using it - means he's not much of a threat. Lets try something here...

Scout - avoid his shots or melee, just kill the kid.
Soldier - Dodge rockets, try not to melee, shoot him in the face.
Pyro - Stay away at all costs, shoot him/her.
Demo - Dodge nades, watch for stickies, stay away and shoot him.
Engineer - shoot him in the face, then shoot his stupid passive-aggressive sentries from afar. Or use a spy/uber.
Heavy - Stay away, shoot in the face.
Sniper - Get to medium/short range and shoot/slash him, or snipe him first.
Spy - always be on the lookout for these bastards, shoot them dead.
Medic - shoot them first. In the face.

Maybe it's just the way I play, but my approaches to fighting different classes hasn't changed a whole lot since launch. The only classes that have fundamentally different playstyles are the options for Demo, Spy, and maybe engineer. And those different styles, except for maybe Spy depending on watch/knife options, are sub-optimal (DemoKnight, mini-sentries) under most conditions.

And the crack on the Jarate? Shit, that item was a god-send and is crazy-useful.

http://www.teamfortress.com/uberupdate/ (http://www.teamfortress.com/uberupdate/)

Finally, Snipers get a primary weapon that may have a clear reason to use it over the stock rifle. Will be more interesting if the new rifle has a bit less base damage - I would actually prefer trade-offs to a flat-out upgrade.

It's base recharge is slower than the standard rifle.

Where did you find that out? If true, that's very interesting.

And watch out for the fucking broadsword. Or the shield. So stupid.

Sure, you might get charge killed from time to time, but a good demo with stickies is almost infinitely more dangerous.

As a sniper, I cannot count the number of demos I've headshot as they charge in a straight line... :awesome_for_real:

Yeah, demo-knights aren't a serious threat.  The last time I played I don't think I saw a single one.

I'm not saying if it's strong or weak. It's there and it's retarded and it's the kind of thing that drove everyone I know to uninstall TF2.

I don't know why - Demos that use the shield are inferior demos. And I say this as someone that normally plays a DemoKnight if I play demo at all - I'm a terrible demo, but DemoKnight can be fun.

Don't forget the new scout weapons.

http://www.teamfortress.com/uberupdate/scoutpack.html

I learned about the sniper rifle from the TF2 beta notes. They've had it there for awhile.

Dear Valve,

Demomen are supposed to blow shit up.

Thanks.

Dear Eldaec,

Black Scottish Demomen wearing eye-patches get to do whatever they want.

Thanks.

Hey look! More sheilds and swords!

 :uhrr:

A fully stacked demoknight is a terrible sight to behold. I single handedly held back a pretty intense attack on 2fort a couple nights ago as a demoknight. I think it's true they are generally less effective but damn if they aren't fun to play.

I don't really have a problem playing against demo knights, it's when you need to take down a sentry nest(s) and all you have to uber are a bunch of idiots who charge head first into a heavy's mini gun it becomes problematic.

You know a lot of fragile people.

That looks like a bunch of fun tbh

Quad jumping scouts should be fun.

I am amused by the new stomp damage of the scout and soldier.  :grin:

You're an idiot. A fucking idiot in fact. Thanks for playing, though.

New flare gun for pyro too.

http://www.teamfortress.com/uberupdate/thedetonator.html

Whaaaaaaat...

1) How did you find that?

2) Why would they abandon my Engineer?

If you go to the page (http://www.teamfortress.com/uberupdate/) and just keep hitting "tab" it hilights all the links on the page.  There's one buried in the picture next to the Soldier, of the Pyro's face.  Or you could just check the page source for any weird looking divs.

Do want.   :drill:

Oh I see it now..I'm usually pretty good about that stuff to :P

Ok.  Cool.

Video's up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lSzUMBJnc

"Now....let's go practice medicine."

$99.99 for the Uber Bundle :ye_gods:

Free to play baby.

Tried this again for the first time in months at lunch. It's still as fun as ever. The new payload map is pretty good as well. Protip: do NOT enable the "Play a hit sound every time you injure someone" when playing a pyro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OWcc6PlG6o

 :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods:

Always a classic.

 :Love_Letters: :argh: :heart: :heart: :heart:

Does the Pocket Medic thingy do anything?

Heh, you got me.  :awesome_for_real:

It's the sound of winning.

I've been able to do that with pretty much all classes, the ones that are the most fun doing it for me are sniper and spy.  My aim as a sniper can be a little spotty but when it's on anyone who pops their head out it becomes a death sentence.

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

Top games by current player count
Current Players   Peak Today       Game
 
97,019   97,019       Team Fortress 2
57,353   57,353       Counter-Strike
51,865   51,865       Counter-Strike: Source
30,404   30,455       Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Multiplayer
26,108   26,108       Football Manager 2011
23,565   23,565       Call of Duty Black Ops - Multiplayer
20,717   20,717       Sid Meier's Civilization V
16,943   19,454       Terraria
11,518   12,048       Left 4 Dead 2
8,258   8,258       Total War SHOGUN 2

So much for Counter-Strike.   :awesome_for_real:

Fair enough, but the fact that Counter Strike 1.6 still has 50k+ concurrent users daily is still the most impressive number on that list by a wide margin in my opinion.

Christ

$99.99 is the sale price. It's $218 normally.

Also, the new Heavy gun is bullshit. A team with three Tomislav heavies and a couple Medics is nigh-unbeatable.

...Football Manager 2011?  :headscratch:

Also...yeah, the Tomislav is a bit broken. The efficacy of the new sniper rifle is debatable, at best...but I love the sfx for it.

Question time!

Is that the gun with no wind up time ?

Also, I noticed I can craft a few of the basic recipes to get some of the early sets (I am looking at the spy set(s) atm). Are there any bonuses for wearing a full set ? The mouseover does not tell me if there are.

Yeah, set bonuses:

http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Item_sets#.C2.A0Spy

No, it can just have a quicker charge time if you make a bunch of consecutive headshots without missing.

Tomislav has 75% faster spin up, no barrel spin sound, 20% slower firing rate.

Tomislav may as well have no windup time. If you're fighting a heavy who's at least mildly competent it's ridiculous.

Anyone having troubles using the in-game server browser?  I fired up TF2 for the first time in ages over the weekend, and the in-game browser would just time out.

I haven't but other people have (various fixes in thread):

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1946853

The linked article from Ginaz about F2P is quite interesting to, erm, listen to if you have a spare 40 minutes as it pertains to F2P and TF2. Looks like perhaps Valve has decided that TF2 has reached the end of it's retail lifecycle and are now going to monetize it as a hat shop. Can you buy weapons as well?

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=20961.0

Yes.  The reasoning being, as far as I know, that because you can trade items,  and selling them is intended to prevent a player run real money economy from popping up around their items.

Really awesome Global agenda is holding its own on that list.

On Sunday TF2 hit 100k at one point.

That's pretty awesome, but a big spike is also to be expected. It'll have some drop of course, but it'll be interesting to see if the huge numbers are maintained or if it has a sharp drop.

Well, my friend wanted to try this out with me again since its been so long since we played.  I begrudgingly reinstalled but decided I'd give it another shake.  It wasn't as bad as I remembered it, perhaps because I'm farther removed from my competitive playing days.   I mostly learned how to deal with weapons after seeing them a few times, although the pistols for scout and spy are hard to tell apart from a quick glance in my opinion.   Its really hard to tell about the game in general though, I'm going to see if i can find any community servers with more old school players, because there were a LOT of newbies playing, and I don't mean that as an insult, just people who were clearly brand new to the game, to the point where I don't even feel like I got a good taste of what the game really plays like because with my friend and I working together we faced almost no resistance.   

The new pl_ map is good.

Kind of makes me wish we still had the F13 server, as I thought we had a really good, tight group of folks playing for a long while.

You're welcome to hang on my server: 8.6.3.196.

How is that game?  It looked pretty good to me and I thought I might try it at some point.  I'm really enjoying TF2 right now, but I can't help but feel like I'd like to have more persistence.  Is Global Agenda a good mix of FPS and MMO?

No.

There's an app thread for that.

Ah, you stopped my derailment by reminding me of the search tool.  Well played.

21 pages?  I think I got the jist.  Thanks.  Looks like something to try once my TF2 fascination dies.  Maybe if I go through this F2P content slow enough, I'll never have to pay for gaming again.......ok, maybe not.

Yes, I'm very behind the times, but that's what being a WoW junkie since launch has done to me.  Now, everything is new and cheap to me!

Prop-Hunt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qvSb1Al_sE

This mod is more fun than I expected at first glance, put a few hours into it last night already.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG_7kjcAs84

F2P summarized.

Wait, we're blaming bad players on public servers on F2P now? Because I personally got owned like all those other terrible players well before F2P.  :-P

Some of the scores I've gotten have been really REALLY goofy since F2P.  I mean, I was pretty good before then too, but its worse now.  Though I did find an old community server I used to play on again, and that seems like much better.

This one is slightly abnormal for me, but actually not drastically so: http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540647897247514561/8E08F0B0D05FFF6B51735DB9E77B5E4E0E7A35D7/


Anyway, I think I've about played this one out again.  I think Valve has introduced too much new junk to the game, and I do stand by my previous statement that I think the new weapons actually make the game worse.  Scouts with the shortstop piss me off because I always think they have a pistol out, for example.   The hats, while goofy, actually don't bother that AS much by comparison.  Especially with Natural Selection 2 being a viable option to actually play regularlly now (rather than struggle through testing because of poor optimization), TF2 will probably get put away.  

In some respects, my opinion of it is better than I expected it would be.   Its still a fun distraction now and again, but I don't think it will ever again be "that game" for me, where I sink literally hundreds of hours into it, and I think that is directly related to the direction they've taken the game.  Of course, from Valve's standpoint losing someone like me, who started playing in beta (by which I mean to say, pre-ordered the game at full price when it was new), and was never going to spend a cent in their store on principle isn't really anything they care about.

ETA: One last thing, one of the reasons I am so vocal about this game is because I *DID* love the hell out of it so much for a long time.  I know bashing things around here isn't exactly anything news worthy, but its not that TF2 is just terrible and not worth my time and the end.  Its that I watched something that I really loved get turned into something that is merely ok that gets to me.

It's too bad you feel this way. :(  I, on the other hand, merely LIKED TF2 when it first came out, but can't seem to get enough of it now. 

Noticed this on the TF2 patch notes today:


Has Valve been doing this regularly?  Pretty damned sketchy to be adding in these "exclusive" items literally 2 days after the deal ends that they were included in.  If its clear that this was going to be the case I'm ok with it, but you know there were people out there who purchased Q4 etc just for the hats.  I guess you can say thats their own fault for buying a game just for a TF2 item, but seems a little shady none the less.

They've been doing it for quite awhile now. All items become available to the whole community once the promo is over.