[TF2] Migrate all "Head" region cosmetics to "None" region.

[Skip-eo]

Any hat with an unusual quality variant to it should not lose its misc status. The "none" equip region would retain the previously accepted behaviour of valuable irems, without breaking the UI issues. Simplest way would be to transfer all "Head" region items to "None" region.

The Mask of the Shaman has been a "misc" for over 10 years. Suddenly deleting the functionality goes counter to previously established understandings of how valve would handle such issues.

There are dozens of examples of accidental unusuals existing such as the coffin kit, the heavy vests and the coldfront curbstompers. These items weren't retroactively deleted or modified.

From Valve's point of view, breaking long-standing item values is detrimental to the economy. Both potentially decreasing unboxing rates aswell as key purchases.

[rabscootle]

The examples of honored misc unusuals you provided are items that were always misc equip region and were obtained in Unusual quality by accident. Their equip regions were never changed. The head cosmetics you're referring to were always intended to be equipped as hats and should be treated the same (as in no equip region changes). The only way they were able to be worn in the past as miscs was by exploiting #4055

I assume that's why you added quotes around "misc" for the Mask of the Shaman as most UI does imply it's supposed to conflict with regular hats. All the 'official' Unusual-quality misc items are ones that can be equipped normally through the equip UI.

At the end of the day, valuating items off of obscure bugs should always be seen as a risk and is detrimental to other users as it brings opportunities to scam/take advantage of newer players. There are also users that have already sold some of the affected items as a result of yesterday's patch, which causes additional issues if they were to suddenly reach a value even higher than before the bug was patched.

[Skip-eo]

Again, these items have been valued like this for over 10 years. This isn't some new behaviour.

Should all items that result of a bug be patched then? Blank Killstreak kits? Incorrect vintage items? Tradeable self-made items?

The precedent has been clear for years. Once an item exists in a certain state, it might get patched for obtaining it, but the item is never modified.

To say changing it now would increase the value means it can't be touched is absurd, when a change that decreased the value was just pushed. Either all bugged items should be reverted and you break large portions of the economy, or things that exist bugged should retain that behaviour.

[rabscootle]

You answered your own question there, those items were never changed/reverted themselves; The only thing that was patched was the means of obtaining them.

This week's patch fixed a UI bug that allowed for conflicting cosmetics to be equipped, nothing more. The Unusual cosmetics affected were already supposed to be hats as reinforced by several changes/strings/UI elements.

[pinocchio-pinochet]

Let's forget about unusuals for a second. About half of what the TF2 Wiki lists using the "whole head" equip region actually uses the "none" equip region despite looking like they should use the former. The other half does use the "whole head" equip region. As far as I could tell, whether it's one or the other is arbitrary. For consistency's sake, it would make sense to move them all to one or the other. As for the Mask of the Shaman specifically, it's much more in line with the "face" region.

Valuing items off a glitch that might be patched in the future is a bad idea (e.g. vintage untradable concherer) but it's far from detrimental; anyone who bought these items should have known the risks before spending hundreds or thousands. Scams will occur no matter what and it's up to the traders - new and old - to do their research. And it doesn't make sense to dismiss people losing money over this patch and then be concerned about those who already sold their items at a loss if it were to be reverted.

[Skip-eo]

I'm not going to clutter this feature request with an argument.

To reiterate my request; the previously established 'misc' behaviour of whole head cosmetics should be retained by modifying their regions to "none".

[rabscootle]

There was no 'established' behavior. #4055 was an obscure UI bug exploited by a miniscule amount of people. Nothing in the item schema was changed at any point for these cosmetics when fixing this, they're practically the exact same cosmetics they were before this week's patch.

Bugs can be fixed at any time because they're not intended (just like the Iron Bomber had its projectile size fixed after several years). Following through with this suggestion would also have significantly bigger economic implications versus the fix that went through this week.

You also keep mentioning key sales as a potential issue if this were to remain even though the items would most likely not be unboxable in Unusual quality after the proposed change (as they would no longer be considered 'hats' internally).

[Skip-eo]

This is the only comment I'm going to respond to due to the absurdity.

They keep mentioning key sales because this is likely a 4chan-led excursion of new Github accounts created solely for the purpose of trying to keep Valve from patching other bugs that let them wear invalid combinations of items. They think if they threaten that key sales will drop, it will keep Valve from patching it.

I have never once touched 4chan, I'm not part of a brigade. I'm a user who liked the variety the miscs gave and think removing them has no positive benefit to the game, but instead a massively detrimental one.

Lots of game mechanics are built off the foundation of unintended mechanics. Rocket jumping was a quirk in quake originally. Now it defines how tf2 is played. Removing unintended features that users enjoy, but doesn't harm the game in any form, is counter to the entire philosophy of this game and game development in general.

An unintended feature that produces fun and player desired results should be implemented properly, not deleted due to being unintended.

[tlelievre26]

While I appreciate the sentiment here, I don't think this is an entirely practical solution. There are plenty of whole head items such as the Herald's Helm, Whirly Warrior, and Blast Defense that really don't work as proper miscs. There are others like the Gauzed and Wraith that work a lot better as true miscs, so maybe just those could be changed, but I don't think going through with this for every whole head is reasonable.

I also wanna address the statement "their fault for investing in a glitch" comment I've seen everywhere. I've stated this before but I'm going to reiterate that there was very good reason to believe Valve was fine with quickswitch miscs. To paraphrase what I said in Issue 4300, Valve had directly fixed bugs caused by quickswitching two hats together before without touching the ability to quickswitch, which is what many people took as a sign with Valve being alright with the glitch. It was only after that patch that prices on these items really started to climb. Of course, that didn't guarantee that this wouldn't be fixed at some point, and it's definitely easier to see the risk in hindsight, but there was very solid justification for not having to worry about them fixing quickswitch. With all that said, because nothing was ever set in stone about letting quickswitching stay, its not like Valve owes it to people to convert all former quickswitch miscs into true miscs.

On the subject of other glitched items, I'd also have to agree that this is not quite a comparable case to the existence of things like Strange Uniques. Quickswitches were normally obtainable items with a glitchy property that could be used, and resetting the state of items with glitched qualities like Strange Normal, etc. would have been much more intrusive than the quickswitch fix. With that said, the fact remains that removing quickswitching has had a strictly negative impact on the game. With an alternative method already existing, I think its best to not take any drastic action like converting these hats directly to miscs and instead just let the alternative live.

TLDR: Maybe make Gauzed, Wraith, and Shaman true miscs, but otherwise I think its better to let alternative quickswitch live and leave all hats as they are right now.

[Platina6978]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/4314#issuecomment-1261547809

While I mostly agree with what you say here I do wonder. You say Valve fixed bugs related to quickswitching before without touching quickswitching itself and this is what people took as a sign that Valve was alright with the bug at the time. While I can certainly understand that reasoning, I wonder if it was also possible that Valve was simply unaware of this bug? Going through posts here it sometimes baffles me that there are issues/exploits that seem very widely known across the community (often with the community going out of their way to fix these issues themselves in the form of (source)mods) yet Valve seems to be in the dark about them.