3281

I dunno. I see unlocking items as a bonus to playing the game, not playing the game as a bonus to unlocking items. So idle servers aren’t for me.

3282

And?
I wasn’t playing the game before. Tonight I’ll be playing to try out all my new neat stuff.

3283

I’ve still got several rows empty on my backpack, I imagine I have been luckier than most in terms of not getting 10 of the same thing, I do have 4 Force of Nature’s though.

3284

They did that already. It’s called playing the goddamn game. Have you played TF2? It’s really good. It lets you burn people!

Since I have so much space at the moment and trading is coming, I am keeping them so I can give them to people that don’t have them.

Valve has said there were issues, and it seems as though they have been working to fix the issues. They have said on the TF blog that the goal is for players to have 20 items in their backpack after a few weeks, that those who play more will get them faster (which would always be the case unless they simply gave all weapons to everyone, and I think Valve has good reasons not to do so), and that the system wasn’t working right. In fact, I bet the patches that have been released in the past few days have upped this rate.

The new system isn’t perfect, and neither is Valve. But they work hard to make good games and try new things. So let them experiment with this, and just try it out and and shoot people with the default sniper rifle. You will get to throw piss on someone soon, I promise.

3285

Yeah, that’s great. But when everyone else is running around eating Sandviches that you don’t have, nailing people to walls with a Huntsman that you don’t have, cloaking forever thanks to a gadget that you don’t have, and cutting fools up with an Ubersaw that you don’t have, just burning people tends to lose it’s luster. Let’s not forget that some of us cannot play the game for full weekends at a stretch or accumulate hundreds of hours of overall playtime to wait for the random possibility that we may (or may not) get a neat new weapon. When I do get a chance to play, I’d like to do so with all the same options the rest of the community has.

With this idle program, I can work, eat, go out to see a movie with the missus, play with the kids, and get eight hours of sleep while going through the stupid motions of unlocking weapons to enable me to enjoy the game when I really do get a couple of hours free to play it.

3286

Man, this is going to be a long post.

How is this worse than achievement farming? Those servers were the opposite of playing and generally made people play like idiots for one specific goal in the middle of a real game (particularly the early achievements, the sniper/spy ones are, sadly, excellently done for not getting milestones, they just reward good play). Achievements still unlock the old stuff, and once the trades hit, just playing the game will mean you get new things. Got something you don’t want or have already? Trade it away, get new item.

I played a pretty damn good amount of TF2 only to get my first achievement unlock this week with the pyro. I never grinded, I never went looking specifically for achievements, and it took ages to get that flare gun. I’m not a particularly good player by any means, probably a little better than average given the right class. And I’m not a hardcore player at all, I’m pretty sure I’m the average player even.

And I hated achievement unlocks. I saw a lot of items which I felt people effectively cheated to get, a few who’d earned them, and things I’d basically NEVER have without serious time playing one class, which I don’t, I bounce around to fit team needs.

With the randoms, I’m getting things already that I don’t have, even if I’ve got inexplicable numbers of sandmen. But more than that, when trades start in presumably a few weeks, I can get MORE things I want.

The system is FAR better for the average player who doesn’t have lots of time to put in, but can get any random item and just trade it for something wanted more. Players who play more will get everything faster while they just play the game, and players who don’t have a lot of time can get a specific item or two they want quickly.

What’s the downside? Seriously, tell me. It’s not like this is a game with an overall persistent ranking system where we’re all competing for number one brigadier general or something with 20 expansion packs.

It’s TF2, not BF2. It’s as casual as any team objective/deathmatch game is ever going to be, and it makes sense to make the unlocks fit that idea.

Also, people should whine less about free extra content. Valve could easily have saved this all up or sold microexpansions, but no. It’s FREE. You don’t have to like how they do it, it’s free and you get to reap the rewards anyway.

tl;dr-Achievements sucked and made people stupid, casual players were screwed, whine less about free additions to awesome games.

3287

I never said it was worse than achievement farming. I never said that at all. In fact, if you read one of my older posts in this thread, I said this was an improvement over achievement farming because it allowed noobs the chance to get stuff in-game without jumping through crazy hoops.

Technically, it’s not strictly free is it? I’m supposed to be spending my time to get these items, which to my way of thinking is more expensive than the typical DLC pricing anyway. If they want to really make it free, then drop the stupid unlocking BS and just give the damn weapons to everyone as soon as the patches comes out.

3288

Uh…yeah, it’s free. You’re playing a game, not working, and stuff is being added to it. If your time is worth that much, I suggest alternate hobbies. Or just playing a lot of shmups (god, I still hate that word), MAME games are instant gratification!

If you give everyone everything at once, there’s no sense of investment and time spent to earn it, even if you just earned one and traded for it, you spent the time to get it. Plus new people will just instantly jump to alternate items, never learn the basics of the class, never learn the “weak” weapons (which really aren’t, at all, just different effects), etc. This makes players spend some time with the basics, then they’ll have a clue what’s better for a situation when they get a new option.

3289

Sense of investment? Learning? This is the same system that randomly rewards people for just being present?

3290

Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you just implied time isn’t free, therefore has value therefore is an investment.

3291

Stop it.

3292

There’s definitely no investment if I walk away from the computer while my Soldier just stands idly in a server, or hey if I just fire up the server spoof and do whatever.

Look, I’ll try this one last time. I understand what Valve was going for. I applaud the change from tying unlocks to achievements. Knowing human nature, however, this solution was not the answer they were looking for. All this does is encourage people to run TF2 in the background on an idle server (or spoof it) while playing something else. Something that doesn’t allow people with new shiny weapons to bust the Hell out of you while you wait vainly for a possible unlock that you have no influence over.

Christ, even slot machines allow you to influence the roll by paying for more winning lines.

3293

OMG I’ve been idling for 4 hours now and got:
nothing.
This idling system is terrible - bring back the achievements!

3294

While I’ve been idling all day and went from 2 to 12 (one duplicate, though).

If it had been random drops from the start, I probably wouldn’t have minded - but the achievements made me stop playing. Using the idle program I can “farm” items without bothering anybody since I’m not taking up a spot on a server.

I’m also fine with gold buying in a MMOG (if the actual gold farming isn’t done using cheats or disruptive play). I have more money than I do time, I don’t mind being able to exchange some for the other (this being free is even better, though).
When people reward what I’m allready doing or reward fun play with stuff, I think it’s great. If a game requires some sort of grind, just to have what other players have, I either find a way around or stop playing.

3295

well in one instance they are actually god damn playing the game, and the other they are simply leaving the game open. So idling is worse because you are not playing the game.

And forcing noobs to jump through hoops is better than encouraging them to leave the game running while they do something else. At least jumping through hoops taught you some skill.

Anyway, it doesn’t really make a difference to me, not like idlers have an advantage, I just think it’s really sad that people are that impatient that they need to resort to not-playing in order to get the items. I got 3 items in 2 hours this morning just playing!

3296

this is more the exception rather than the rule though. hopefully the update last night can help things, but you can’t blame people for idling when they’ve played for 5-10 hours and have gotten one or no items.

3297

Are these items gifts from god or something? I don’t feel any rush to try to get all of them, but then again I guess I haven’t been playing long enough for vanilla TF2 to get boring without new or previously unattainable things.

3298

No, except in one case (ubersaw), its generally agreed that they aren’t better, just different. They give you a bigger toybox to play with, and potentially let you customize your character to more accurately fit your style of play, but they all have tradeoffs such that they’re not necessarily better. In fact, one of the strongest arguments for the achievement based unlock is that it forces players to actually learn the basic weapons so that they’re better equipped to appreciate the differences when the new unlocks do come. For instance, if you play Pyro and started with the backburner (100% crits from behind, no air blast), you might never learn to use the air blast, which has situations where it is useful. (eg. Uber denial).

Really, you shouldn’t even bother using the new weapons until you’re a) bored of the old ones and want to learn something new, or b) see a specific hole in your game that an unlocked weapon would address. Most people just want them because they’re upset that “Billy gets to play with that toy, so why can’t I?”

3299

I was joking. I had no chance of getting the achievements for the new stuff, and there was no way I was going to waste my time in achievement servers. For some reason those reminded me of the Craig’s list poop hot tab ad.
I came back to TF2 because I was interested in the new toys, but I’m actually having a lot of fun anyway. If the idler nets me some of the new weapons - I’ll have more fun :)

3300

I wouldn’t even be playing if it was sitll achievements.