Also I can only imagine how annoying many of those characters will be ingame. Since all footage at the moments is heavily scripted showcasing, we cannot yet see how fucking broken the average gamer can make these mechanics, like flashing around, grappling hooking, flying, wallrunning etc.
Although it may just die the death, like titles from one of the very best (IMHO, since they make games with high skill cap, unique mechanics and beautiful visuals) devs out there, Splash Damage. They made the Enemy Territory series (Wolfenstein, Quake Wars) and Brink, all games that were very fun, fast, skillbased, and they all died the death. At the time of release, Quake Wars was infinitly better than anything from Battlefield. FPS players, it seems, dont really want cool mechanics, teamwork requirements, high mobility gameplay. Instead they prefer hitscan weaponry and camping mixed in with easy 1hit-kill buttons and grinding. The success of such shitboxes as COD and BF4 say it all: advertise enough and kids will get their mums to buy these games, and casual gamers will get them also since they are fairly easy to pick up and play.
BTW Splash are working on Dirty Bomb, think Beta is soon, sign up for it. They have ditched the user designed faces of Brink (One of the most unique character creation mechanics ever) but kept that facial engine, so trollfaces still prevail
TF2 is a shooter above all, this is mixed genre game where characters have special abilities like in most MOBAs.
Unlike you, I do care about design. It is the main reason I'm avoiding Blizzard games ever since they hired Samwise and put him in charge of visual design of their games.
But.. but... aside from being a fat slob, Samwise draws pretty pictures for kiddies. And games are for kiddies, right?
