2 years later and this thread is dug up. Halloween has rolled round once again. So what's the deal this time?
This time, the Halloween event is a Payload Race on a modified Hightower map, get your payload first to the finish line. For those that don't remember Hightower, it's the map where half the path of the cart goes PAST THE ENEMY SPAWN and ends up having to go up on a tower where the enemy has a CLEAR LINE OF SIGHT from their spawn to you. Throw in plenty of enviromental killzones for Pyros, the map being small enough that even one Mini-Sentry can dominate half the map, and that this is THE favourite hangout for Goomba-stomping Trolldiers... you start to get the idea. And I haven't even mentioned the new stuff. There's no real Boss this time, but not only can tiny little annoying skeletons spawn and chase you around the map, but also a Skeleton King that's harder to kill.
But wait, it gets worse. Once a cart has been pushed to the top, the round doesn't end. Instead everyone gets sent to Hell, and ANOTHER race starts, this time whichever team is first to reach the Bombnomicon book wins the round. Yes, that's right: One team can dominate the payload race, and yet LOSE the round. And in Hell one Mini-Sentry literally means the difference between winning and losing.
There are no new "standard" weapons added in this update, but instead everyone gets a spellbook. Yes, a spellbook. Spells spawn randomly on the map, with 1-3 charges. Spells can include 3 seconds of invisibility (?), a high-jump spell, a shrinking spell (which is actually among the more powerful spells of the lot) and summoning Monuculous to spam rockets around for a while.
But the thing that is causing so much rage about this event are the new items. This update adds over 100 new items to the game, many of them very Halloweeny... and some not. Undead versions of the various animals, a Hellboy hat for the Heavy, some Cthulhu-related stuff for the Demoman, and a My Little Pony hat for EVERYONE. That one has people raging extra hard. But here's the kicker: ALL of these new items are restricted to being used on Halloween and Full Moons. That's 100+ new items that can't be used in-game 90% of the time. Some of them even have new and specific voice lines. Good news in regards to the MLP hat, bad news for almost everything else. The new items can't be bought from the store, can't be traded, can't be used in crafting... I don't see the angle here. Why add so much new content, and yet restrict it to only being used a tiny part of the year? (Oh, and the Engineer got screwed over big time. ONE new hat and ONE new misc for him.)
