Here’s a spot of news. Team Fortress 2 has received an update tonight that means the Sniper and Spy unlockables can now be received through gaining achievement milestones. This works alongside the controversial new random-o-drops that enable people to get new items out of the blue, blue sky. The change comes alongside a collection of fixes for bugs and exploits that were brought in with the new bits and bobs. So there we go. Is everyone happy now? Cheers to pezhore for alerting us.
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To be honest I’m having so much fun with the Huntsman that the foibles of Valve’s errant Random-drop-o-Tron aren’t really bothering me.
On balance I’d say the Sniper rifle is still the more effective weapon, particularly now it has crosshairs, but it’s not as crazily satisfying to use as the Huntsman (credit is due to Valve’s audio spods for doing a great job on the feedback you get from connecting shots) plus pin-cushioning targets currently ceases to get old.
I spent a game the other week where two irish blokes were talking for about fifteen minutes, non-stop, about some other bloke who was getting unlockable hatsevery few minutes, and they were suspicious. Throughout this I tried asking them politely to shut up and either kick him if it mattered, or get a life and ignore it – nobody was playing suspiciously well or anything and I had no idea who they were actualyl talking about. Eventually I left (I tried muting everyone, but it didn’t work for some reason). Whatever the system is, I don’t care. I just wish people would stop fucking whinging about precisely how long they have to play to get their entirely free content, all of which is of limited and not entirely positive use anyway.
@Dood
Ever think that most of the complainers on the L4D side are the same ones that bitch about their team and ragequit when they’re the worst player?
I sure do.
Do you think Valve made the free content so that people could not use it?
I wonder if the ‘discovery’ unlock system is actually a massive in-joke on the part of Valve, because it reminds me a lot of one of their other franchises… A half-life is the length of time after which there’s a 50% chance of an atom’s nuclear decay. You can’t say when it happened, exactly, or which atoms in a given quantity will have done it, but by the end of the half-life, you can confidently say “Yes — about HALF of this lump of plutonium has decayed! I’m so happy.” As far as radioactive decay measurements go, hey, I know I’m not going to have any better ideas — but as videogame mechanics go? Well… to paraphrase Fight Club, “On a long enough timeline, everybody
diesunlocks the content”. Sure, by the end of a given period, a player will definitely have all the unlocks, but it’s the quantum-event-like randomness of their distribution within that period that creates the kind of arbitrary reward and neglect which… doesn’t go down too well in the liberal democracies where Valve shift most of their units (as illustrated by the enormous number of rightfully irritated posts now available on your local internet).Haha, actually, come to think of it, there’s actually no given period in which the unlocks can ‘complete’, because you can get duplicates! Thank god plutonium isotopes don’t do that!… (Or would that be awesome? Any physicists here?)
Team Fortress 2: It Has No Half-Life.
So now that we have milestones, and it’s again possible to use achievement servers to get all weapons, what’s the point of trading?
Without milestones, you had no idea what you were going to get next even if you idled for hours on end. Now you know for sure you can get everything if you want to.
I got my jarate and ambassador (as well as more huntsmen and cloak and daggers) from this update, so I’m getting a kick out of these replies…
But seriously, since we can have our cake and eat it too, why don’t we just quit whining and play?
I’m quite pleased about this update. Spy is my least played character, mostly because I’m not very good at it. I have 20+ hours as medic, and only about 2 hours as spy. I was thinking I would end up playing spy and learning how to use the class better because of the necessity to get achievements for the unlockables, which, obviously, since they are out there, I wanted to get.
I was rather disappointed to find that I’d end up with the unlocks eventually (theoretically) but that I wouldn’t have to learn how to play as a spy to get them. I still don’t have to play as spy to get his unlocks (I got one of the watches as a random unlock) but now at least there is more of a reason to work through those achievements.
I would probably have worked on some of the achievements anyway, just to give me something to aim for with the spy (I do want to learn to be a better spy). Personally, I’m looking forward to getting the Jarate though. I know some people seem to have a fit at the very idea, but my wife thought it sounded very amusing and laughed when I explained that some prudes were getting all worked up about the idea of throwing virtual jars of piss at people.
I am still looking forward to seeing what will be done with the engineer for his update (whenever that might be). Engineer used to be my most played class (until I discovered the joys of combat medic), even though I was trying not to play as him too much until his achievements were available. In my mind at least, some kind of variation on the sentry gun or dispenser would be a fun unlock – not that I’m an expert on game balance or anything, but maybe an indirect fire turret. Also, for the soldier – what about a homing missile launcher unlock? Sure, it homes in on the enemy, but you need to get a lock first or it won’t fire… something along those lines.
Anyway, overall, I shall continue enjoying TF2 and exploring all the different possibilities for gameplay – from simply working on achievements for the sake of completion and direction, to working out which weapons I like on which classes or just hopping on a server and getting pwned.
One thing I’d wouldn’t do is jump on an achievement server just to get unlocks. Personally, I haven’t used a cheat in any game for at least a decade. I like the challenge of having to work to get all the options – to me that’s some of the point of the game – a single-player element to an otherwise multiplayer experience.
Finally, my TF2 motto – Death, carnage and the pursuit of ridiculous achievements.
Everyone should stop complaining. This is the best of two flawed worlds. The milestones are ridiculously low; I logged on yesterday, got one kill, and was rewarded with 6 achievements and 5 new weapons. All three unlocks need a pittance of 17 achievements, which is actually only 15 because the first two milestones are counted. I had gotten that for both classes within maybe three or four games of normal play. The random drops mean that people who are utterly abysmal at the game will still get drops.
The random system is now, of course, useless to anyone with all the items. I plan on collecting as many Sandviches as possible once trading is implemented. I much prefer the achievement system, not because I can go on a grinding server and get them in twenty minutes, but because I genuinely like VALVe’s achievements, and it seems a shame to waste them.
As the Christians once said to Charles Darwin: Quit rocking the boat.
It was awful to get razorback, two dead ringers and a second razorback in a row. Next to useless items if you ask me. Gladly I got lucky with a force-a-nature that I was missing and the milestones unlocked the missing jarate (after 3 random huntsmen and 3 random razorbacks) and ambassador (after two dead ringers and a cloak & a dagger).
Gotta say, I don’t believe my team was happy when I was running around shooting at people with sniper rifle without using the scope ;)
Well i’m pleased to see the milestones back BUT i think they made them far too easy considering they now added the random item finds.
I found myself automatically getting them all and it felt like an empty achievement. I guess that’s due to me still set in my roots back when you had to do all the achievements to get all the unlocks.
Man i was so proud to be one of the few to have gotten an ubersaw (legit) then.
I suppose they just wanted to make it easy to everyone could have the unlocks within a very reasonable amount of time.
Ah well. The times, they are a changin’.
Oh and people will still idle to get the hats y’know.
also why is no one ever on the 32 man RPS server???
[Rage Quit]Eightball wants to play!
Whats the IP? I’ve only found the 20 man server IP. That said TF shouldn’t be played with more than 24 players.
Oddly, I logged in today, got some milestones, but the weapons refused to unlock :( Now I’m sifting through forums and restarting games waiting for the server to catch up with my achievements.
I think the random unlock system is actually quite brilliant (in combination with the milestone system.)
On almost every server I was on, someone would say “Oh, I just got ‘x’ achievement for ‘y’ class I never play,” and they’d then try the class, and find they actually liked it. I noticed that the amount of each class being played is a LOT more even now – 2 scouts, 2 spies, 2 snipers, 1 Soldier, 2 Demo, 2 medics, 2 heavies, 1 engineer, 1 Pyro (random mixing of those, sometimes 3 of one, 1 of another) is pretty common now. Before it was rare to see a scout, etc.
The only thing I wish would have been done is to check to see if you have ‘x’ item before you get it, because I’d rather not get all the pyro weapons (again, i’d already unlocked them) before getting any Heavy stuff, for example.
And I still don’t have the KGB’s, heh.
Just got 3 weapons in under an hour. Took me almost a week to get the other 3. I’m glad you were able to admit your mistake, Valve. I forgive you (even though it hurt).
As to the apologists for the rubbish system that was just fixed, I say “screw you”.
The random system really wasn’t brilliant though. It actually still isn’t, as many people still haven’t gotten a single random drop, old or new weapons.
Will it be eventually? It’s valve, so yes. But it is no where near ready for actual public usage as the only way of getting weapons.
Are those who’re getting no drops doing anything to help themselves? By helping Valve, they’d help themselves. I guess what I’m asking is whether the statistics thread I suggested yonks back has been created and padded out, yet?
Information they could supply:
- Their Steam ID
- State that they’ve had no drops, very rare drops, or only duplicate drops.
- State their standard playing times, and times when they think they should’ve had a drop (X amount of time over X days).
- The servers they’ve been playing on.
- The maps they most frequently play on.
There are likely bugs in the system still, yes, but only feedback will help these people. If they’re not giving feedback then they’re not going to see any fixes for these bugs, it’s as simple as that.
I’m a casual player yet the system is working as intended for me, but even still, I’m tempted to create this thread to help people out if no one else has, simply because I’m beginning to feel a bit guilty. I’ve had a number of unlocks, both relevant to my class and not, so in my eyes it’s working as intended.
But if people are whining and not giving reasonable feedback then they’re obviously either A) not as bothered as they’re making out or, B) a big bunch of fibbers. Deductive reasoning and all that.
To wrap up: If you’re having problems with the system, then you’re in a position to give rational feedback, provide as much info as you can, and be reasonable about it. The more people that do this, the more quickly Valve will be able to track down any bugs.
For those wondering about my motives…
I’ve worked on software projects before, and having people who whine on and on without doing anything constructive helps no one in the long run, especially not them. If you’re experiencing an issue, file a bug report, provide as much info as you can, and do it in a way that will be easy for the developers to parse. By providing helpful information, problems get fixed.
All too often I’ve listened to people whine about one of the projects I’ve been involved with, and I’ve wanted to strangle them and scream at them: “Well, maybe if you told us how you encountered this bug, and the situation surrounding the bug, and told us what error messages you had, and gave us the logs we asked for, the bug you’re going on about would be fixed already!”
I know paying for something gives people a sense of entitlement, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be helpful, right?
I suppose my views are just a bit skewed though, because the projects I’ve worked on have been free ones, and people whine about free stuff that doesn’t work too. Because… well, people are like that.
TL;DR: Well reasoned, rational, informative, helpful, and constructive complaint = GOOD. Whining on the Internet about a problem you could likely be part of the solution to = BAD.
spy mileston bug nu se unlock deloc am ajuns pana la 28 de achivements
da-i dreacu pe cei de la valve