The next Team Fortress 2 update will be a Heavy one

Now that the Medic and Pyro have gotten their updates, there has been some speculation over which class Valve would be releasing new weapons and achievements for next. Although there were some rumors that it would be the Spy -- complete with fake update posters! -- Valve has announced that the next update will be for everyone’s favorite minigun wielder, the Heavy Weapons Guy.

Valve has also decided to start giving us some insight on why exactly they make the changes they do in an attempt to be more open with their development process. In the latest post on the official Team Fortress 2 blog, Robin Walker talks about the need to set clear goals on what needs to be accomplished before the idea pitching process begins.

“We do design collaboratively at Valve, and one of the side effects of it is that we really need to be able to evaluate design ideas as objectively as possible. Otherwise design meetings would devolve into subjective arguing. We've found that the best method of working objectively is to have clear goals up front. Once we've got clear goals, we can throw a bunch of ideas up on the board and measure how well each idea achieves those goals. Often the work of testing those ideas against the goals causes us to further refine or clarify the goals.”

She sets forth their latest goal: finding a way to make the Heavy more viable when there aren’t any medics hovering around, and lays out several constraints and parameters that need to be kept in mind when coming up with a solution. If you want to try coming up with your own awesome idea to solve the design goal (and rub it in Valve’s face), then head on over to the blog entry and give it a read.

[Via MATTFOO’s cblog]