There was the original quake/quake world team fortress, ported reasonably accurately to halflife as TFC officially

Unofficially pretty much every game that was moddable at the time had some variant of fortress. unreal fortress, quake 3 fortress, enemy territory fortress(basically q3f but made free by porting to a free game).. and even when halflife2 came out that trend continued and the community made Fortress's Forever.

All of those games feel very much the same, some with slight additions, but all clearly the same 'DNA'.

And then there's TF2 which released with a last minute decision to remove both grenades and the class specific utility grenade. And RNG crits. And then over time they even added ways you could majorly change how each character played as cosmetic only hats were replaced with things like turning the demonan into a melee knight..

I'm not saying all of this to still be rehashing complaints about TF2 in 2024.. but just to add some context when I say that TF2 was a huge departure from the DNA of Team Forteess, and it's totally okay for TF3 to change things up yet again.

Many TF2 diehards will consider it disrespectful and complain, just as I made these same complaints when TF2 released. But it will be okay. TF3 would get its own audience and get a new generation loving it the way you love TF2 and I loved TF