Update pros and cons:

Pros:
*New maps
*Sandmen can no longer stun ubers
*Overtime, overtime, overtime, overtime, overtime, overtime!
*Fixed hitboxes
*Sappers can now use teleporters
*Sandmen scouts have 30 less health
*Made baseball shootable with alt fire
*More sawmill
*Humiliation animations
*Made Kritz more noticeable
*Undisguised spies can use teleporters

Cons:
*All projectiles (stickies/rockets/grenades/baseballs/arrows/flares) are faster
*Increased flamethrower damage (or decreased falloff, in the end they're the same thing)
*Most weapons fire faster
*People are healed much, much, much faster
*Soldiers and demos jump much higher or don't jump high at all, it seems to alternate between these two extremes
*Increased/added massive knockback to all bullet weapons (usually only noticeable when person hit is in the air)
*Increased air blast range (50% or so now)
*Decreased rocket splash area
*Rockets sometimes do no damage to enemies (this might've been fixed today)
*Baseball does almost 5x more damage
*Stunned enemies take 50% more damage than before
*cp_Yukon still sucks. Valve needs to pick good community maps to promote, not popular ones
*Minigun cone of fire decreased (more accurate)
*Engineers can protect both ends of a teleporter at the same time
*Critboost on flag capture (can be disabled)
*Splash damage is really funky (some people next to the source take no damage while people behind them are hit) (might've been fixed today)
*Sandmen scouts can double jump
*Gave soldier medals to a select few who happened to be home trolling the steam forums at the time the update was released instead of to people who have had the game since it was released and have 300 hours logged as a soldier
*Made crits more common
*Made melee crit streaks broken (a string of 17 crits in a row is probably not balanced)
*Stickies no longer stick to capture points
*Spies cloak more quickly (maybe?)

Undecided:
Made spy cloaking harder to spot


The bottom line: Valve spent over one month developing 18 new hats and prevented minor spawn camping on one respawn on Granary. Scouts, pyros, medics, heavies, and engineers received some bonuses. As usual. Soldiers, demomen, and spies got the short straw. Soldiers big time. As usual. For being a classless update, just about every change centered around classes. But I don't really care because classes start up again soon and TF2 doesn't like my Macbook for some reason.

What time is it? OVERTIME!!! =D

I got mine at 9:30ish central just waiting for a scrim to start. People sent me the link. Some people messaged me the next day, and were like "you prolly didn't get your medal I DID HAHAHAH" I think they were the ones trolling boards, cuz I know they didn't tell a single person. If i hear about one next time, I will spam you fatty :D

Yukon's design is inconsistent with stock maps. While as the crow flies it might not be true, in gameplay, the distance (time, in effect) from the second spawn point to the fourth cap point is further (longer) than the distance (time) from the first spawn point to the middle point. Coupled with the maze of empty tunnels connecting wide open areas, it feels like I'm lost on a hiking expedition instead of fighting over logging rights or whatever. I've played the map in an 8 vs. 8 or so game before and it was fun, but the play value drops significantly as more players are added. Is making a casual game more 'competitive-friendly' good? When will Valve collaborate with the top-tier 'fun' players and do studies on mario_kart 3x speed all crits servers and make the game more suitable for their playstyles? Yes. I realize that's a stupid point, but it's what Valve deserves for constantly catering to specific players and adding useless gimmicks instead of following through with their original goal. And for making my FPS drop by about 10 every update.

While I find this update, in the whole scheme of life, to be irrelevant, it continues the downward trend of Valve and its TF2 updates. Starting with the very first 'major' update, Valve has attempted to reconstruct the game and its play style. Doing it one piece at a time makes it very noticeable and very off-putting. I went through the developer commentary this evening, and nearly every update and every change is in opposition to their original goals. When Valve makes changes for a specific minority, they fail to realize what it's doing to gameplay and how they've completely remade the game. In my opinion (who cares, eh?) for the worse. Valve originally said they wanted a light, casual game that focused on highly strategic team play to succeed. Now it's becoming the chaotic spamfest they originally wanted to avoid by adding faster weapons, more particle effects, more damage (to some). What works for a team of 6 does not work for a team of 12+. Nearly every update has promoted extensive solo play in public servers and has gone directly against the original design goal.

Also, I don't like the huge selection of main menu music. I liked the original 3 (4?) the most. Especially this one. Maybe I just don't like first person shooters. This is the first FPS I've truly enjoyed because it was more strategic, forgiving, and varied than other games, but Valve's decision to do away with what made it stand apart from other games is disappointing. And their perpetual nerfs of the soldier.

In short: I've never played any competitive TF2. I don't care about competitive TF2. I don't know what dx_may 81 is. That's what Hammer/SDK is for (making competitive maps--Yukon isn't (or shouldn't be from what I've played of it) competitive anyway). There are plenty of vanilla/nearly-vanilla servers; some of them have a few custom maps, some don't. My favorite server just closed down last December. It was a 24-man vanilla sever with stock maps and none of these annoying console/screen messages. I have a few of those on my favorites list, but nobody ever plays on them. I never said Valve is losing touch with gameplay, I said Valve is losing touch with TF2 according to the developer commentary. Eight new maps are nice. I never said I hated Valve for releasing new maps. 21 of their new maps have been remakes of other official maps or maps made by other people, so I don't really know if I count those. Two of the new game modes are, again, in opposition to the developer commentary, so I don't really have much to say on the matter. I don't think I ever said I dislike what Valve has done, I said they they shouldn't have done it. Oh, and when I bought TF2 I expected to still own the game two-ish years later, not another game with the same title. This one is still fun, but not as good as the original.


I'll go through a partial list (what I can remember offhand) of what Valve has done that goes against the Developer Commentary (if they added one of these with each update on a new map and explained why they added it, that would make people happy and be really cool. TF2/Portal have the best developer commentary I've seen in a game.)

1. DC: The soldier is a powerful long range attack class that can do devastating damage at long ranges.
Changes: Distance attack of soldier cut by 66% (random number). Rocket damage at all ranges has been decreased twice. Splash damage has been decreased three times.

2. DC: We did not want to add a weapon that would remove movement control from the player.
Changes: Added Sandman.

3. DC: We wanted players to be able to edit particle effects.
Changes: Made custom particle effects unusable with sv_pure 1 or 2.

4. DC: We wanted to limit the number of particle effects on screen.
Changes: Added more dust, added more blood, more than doubled the flamethrower flame length and its area (which was the example they used in the DC), added Bonk, added Jarate, added stun effects, added more weapon trails, added more uber/kritz effects, added more water effects, added snow, changed spy cloaking, added shinier teleporters and dispensers. The list goes on and on.

5. DC: We wanted the sniper to be strong at long ranges, but weak against anything relatively close to him.
Changes: Added Huntsman.

6. DC: (also the in-game tips) The pyro is an ambush class. Wait around corners because the pyro is only effective at short ranges.
Changes: Added air blast. Doubled air blast range.

7. DC: We wanted to encourage people to retreat if injured to a medic.
Changes: Increased medigun healing rate drastically. Added Sandvich.

8. DC: We wanted TF2 to have a fast-paced gameplay with attack and defense waves that favor the attack.
Changes: Added slower map modes like the payloads.

9. DC: We wanted the setting of TF2 to make at least a little sense so we added locales and buildings that suit a struggle between two corporations.
Changes: Just about every new map ever made. Egypt especially.

10. DC: We wanted the scattergun to have a large spread.
Changes: If you look at the DC now, the example in it has the scattergun's spread against the far wall smaller than a heavy's body.

11. DC: Overall, we wanted TF2 to be a slower, more strategic game that focuses on large-scale team attacks on fortified positions where a combined team effort is essential to winning on both attack and defense.
Changes: You name it. Everything.

12. DC: We wanted to keep attacks going by adding forward spawn points on CP maps so that the offense has slightly less far to go with each capture point.
Changes: Yukon.

13. DC: We wanted defenders on CP maps to be able to get around their attackers and flank them from nearly all sides by adding multiple exits, some of which are hard for attackers to guard.
Changes: Badlands, Yukon, Fastlane, some others, I'm sure.

14. DC: We wanted the heavy to be devastating at close ranges, but completely ineffective at long ranges.
Changes: Made it the most powerful long range class by a long shot. Only snipers are more effective in some situations.

15. DC: We wanted to make TF2 <insert anything here>.
Changes: Added Jarate.

16. DC: We wanted to give soldiers the unique ability to jump to reach high spaces. Also the demoman.
Changes: Nerfed jumps big time. Temporarily, hopefully.

No. Some of the changes have been quite good and I still like the game, but the more recent gimmicks just entertain people who don't really care about playing. TF2 is unique in the realm of FPS and it should stay that way, but Valve has other plans if they keep what they're doing up. Also, their updates have a huge pattern of just being reversed after release anyway. Obviously I still enjoy it (from your post I think you inferred that I didn't?), but I think it's going the wrong way. Note I said I. I don't really care what makes everyone happy. I'm not everyone. If you look at simply the most popular servers, 24/7 32-man instant respawn servers are what make the majority happy. Heck, I want 24 man pubs to be more competitive, but as I said, the changes Valve has been making aren't leaning in that direction.

I have to say that TF2 is probably one of Valve's most involved games in terms of them doing updates.

Taking DoD:S as an example. Besides the recent (and by recent I mean 6-10 months ago) update of the particle systems and achievements to match TF2, Valve has not done any updates short of tiny fixes or none at all. Even when the game was popular, they only added 1 new type of game play which was detonation where the players were to blow up specified objects. That's really the only thing I can remember them adding.

HL2:DM was another example. I didn't play that as much as I did dod, but I can't recall any major updates (maybe I'm wrong, if so, someone can fill in the details) that were done to the game.

TF2 has had new weapons, animations and game play modes put in almost once every 1-3 months. I'd say that's pretty impressive to come up with that, start programming it, testing it, fixing it, testing it again, and releasing it more or less successfully. "Valve time" was seen much less in this game as in other games.

I havent played soldier as much lately, but I havent noticed any considerable jump nerf. Ill get on and experiment.