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.

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.

As to the apologists for the rubbish system that was just fixed, I say “screw you”.

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.

[Rage Quit]Eightball wants to play!

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.

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 ;)