[photon]

You don't have to unlock stuff at all.

There are other weapons than your default set of weapons but what they are and how to get them differs greatly from an unlock system.

First, there are multiple ways to get them. You can unlock some of them via achivements if you wish. Many achievements are easy to get just during normal play, or if you really want to there are achievement servers where people go to help each other get them.

Or you can just wait, just playing the game gives you random drops of weapons. Getting a few per play-session is common, and again if you really want you can go on an idle server where you just sit in game for forever doing nothing but getting the random drops.

And you can craft the desired weapons as well. If you get random drops of items you already have, you can craft those into metal and then use the metal to craft new weapons.

Or you can trade for them. If you have an extra weapon of one kind and someone has an extra of another kind, you can just trade.

So getting the extra weapons is pretty easy, the update came out last night and I already have 4 of the new weapons from crafting and playing a bit.

Second, it's not like some shooters where you have to unlock weapons to get the decent ones, the default weapons are still pretty much the best ones to have. In a few cases a different weapon is a pure upgrade, but mostly they are just supportive of different play styles or different player skills. Most are too gimicky for a serious player to use and are actually a disadvantage to use, or at best are very situational.

The Pyro for example gets a default flame thrower. There's two other ones, one does more damage if you burn the guy from behind, but uses up far more ammo to do the airblast (reflect projectile weapons). This sucks for the most part as getting behind a good team is quite difficult, but on some maps at some points there are great opportunities for ambushes so this works in some situations. The other does less damage but gives you faster weapon switch speed. Again supports a specific style of play where you use your melee weapon a lot, which puts you in close and more vulnerable.

Almost all the weapons are like this, very specific tradeoffs. I play mostly on a server where the guys are pretty competitive (some play in leagues and competitive play) and with all the variety and choices you'd be surprised that a good deal of the time the best players use default weapons.

Give it a try, and don't worry so much about the unlocks. By the time you really understand the benefit or need for a specific unlock, you'll probably have the means to get it. I'm a pack rat and have to get all the weapons and I usually have them a few weeks after they're released with little extra effort.