We've been hearing a lot less about Valve's cel-shaded, humor-tinged multiplayer shooter since the release of another wildly popular FPS of a more serious nature. Thankfully, Valve isn't using their lighter server load as an excuse to let Team Fortress 2 go to the dogs -- they just released a patch upon an unsuspecting populous of TF2 junkies, adding a number of new matchmaking features and tweaking a few minor gameplay quirks.
We've got a complete list of changes after the jump, but here's a few highlights: A Tournament mode has been added, complete with a team creation UI and win/loss tracker. Sorting through custom games is now easier, as server hosts can now add searchable description tags to their rooms. Most importantly, players who tire of being on the receiving end of high explosive weaponry will be pleased to hear that the maximum ammo capacities for the Soldier and Demoman classes have been sharply reduced (much to the chagrin of rocket-jumpers and Scotsmen, no doubt).
Added "Custom" tab to the server browser
- Servers can now specify metatags describing the custom rules they've adopted
- Players can use tag filtering to find servers running the custom rules they want to play
- Added options for servers who want to become custom games: Disable critical hits (tf_weapon_criticals), eliminate respawn times (mp_disable_respawn_times), and raise maxplayers above 24
Initial release of Tournament mode (mp_tournament)
- UI for handling team naming, ready mode, and win results
- Disables team player limits, autobalancing, and intermission
Class balancing
- Reduced Soldier's maximum rocket reserve ammo from 36 to 16
- Reduced Demoman's maximum sticky bomb reserve ammo from 30 to 16
- Reduced Demoman's maximum grenade launcher reserve ammo from 40 to 24
General
- Added protection against voice command spamming. Dramatic reduction in teleporters needed
- Fixed mp_timelimit ending the map during the middle of a round on maps like Dustbowl and GravelPit
- Fixed "lastdisguise" command not remembering if you were disguised as your own team
- Added "Toggle Disguise Team" binding in Options->Keyboard to toggle the disguise team for the Spy's PDA
- Changed PDA menus to accept keys bound to "slot1", "slot2", etc., and "slot10" cancels
- Fixed Spectator targetID not using team colors
- Changed team autobalance code to not balance the teams when the active round timer shows less than 60 seconds
- Fixed "-maxplayers" on the command line not correctly setting the maxplayers value for the server
- Fixed Badlands never having Sudden Death triggered
- Fixed Engineer being able to detonate buildings that are being sapped
- Changed Engineer buildings to detonate when a player disconnects instead of blinking out
- Fixed potential client crash for players being healed by a Medic or dispenser
- Made several improvements to server-side stat reporting (not related to individual player stats)
