TF2: The Sniper vs Spy Update

[James Bond]

THE DUKE OF SPOOK, THE PRIME MINISTER OF SINISTER

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Ok, getting items is becoming dumber and dumber. According to people on the Steam forums you can get items just by being present in the game. Join a game, join a team, and just sit in spawn. Minimize the game window, go grab a sandwich, run some errands, go to sleep, come back, and hope you've gotten something.

EDIT: AND hope that you've gotten something that you didn't already have before. Yes, you heard right. You can receive items that you've already gotten.

 

[darom]

"Flamethrower's air burst now extinguishes fire on friendly targets "

Now this is a useful addition esp. for poor engies taking care of sentries while being on fire. What I noticed lately not a lot of people want to play medics, so at least pyros can help team members out.

 

[TheVrolok]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny
Ok, getting items is becoming dumber and dumber. According to people on the Steam forums you can get items just by being present in the game. Join a game, join a team, and just sit in spawn. Minimize the game window, go grab a sandwich, run some errands, go to sleep, come back, and hope you've gotten something.

EDIT: AND hope that you've gotten something that you didn't already have before. Yes, you heard right. You can receive items that you've already gotten.

Yep. I played for like 2 hours today and in the span of time I got 1 "unlockable" .. the Force of Nature.. which I already had. Now 2 are showing up in my Scout's inventory. Awesome.

 

[SOSTrooper]

I got the sniper shield while playing Demoman. I received (or, 'unlocked') the item after my team won the payload map Badwater.

I personally never cared for the achievements, I barely have 1, 2 at most, unlocked weapon for each of the classes that were previously updated. I never gave any of the classes other than Soldier and Demoman significant playtime to achieve all unlockables. So for me (and most likely for me only), I welcome the random weapon unlocking scheme.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Here are a few confirmed facts:

1. You can get items while dead.
2. You can get items while in spectator.
3. You can get items while afk.
4. You can get duplicate items.
5. You can get items from another class when you're in a different class.
6. You must be in a VAC connected server to get items.

Start your own server to get items!

http://forums.steampowered.com...ad.php?t=870341&page=2

EDIT

It seems that the following method is either:

a. incredibly slow at getting items (rate of about 1 item per 8 hours)

or

b. doesn't work at all

I think the game reacts to "stuff going on" inside the game. A completely idle server with just yourself sitting in spawn isn't going to do much, so try the following:

1. Try to join a game running the map "achievement_idle," or download it somewhere.
2. Spend time in an achievement_idle server. I did this for 8 hours and got 7 items.
3. Start your own small achievement_idle server USING the console settings below, have it be open to players joining, and just sit there.

The thing about achievement_idle is that you start in a room that slowly drains your health for everyone. So you go through a lot of death/spawn cycles. Not sure what would happen if you went engineer and built a dispenser to keep you alive, but I went as heavy and as I said, I got 7 items in 8 hours on someone else's server. I'm currently trying my own.

Start a new TF2 server. Any options will do. Join your server, select any class, sit in spawn.

Open the console and type: sv_lan 0

Type: sv_pure 1

Type: changelevel achievement_idle

Now open your console back up and look for this message.

Code:

Got pure server whitelist: sv_pure = 1.
Connection to Steam servers successful.
VAC secure mode is activated.

If it doesn't pop up, it's either your router is blocking it or
you are still in LAN mode.

And that's how you check to see if your VAC is enabled.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Homerboy
The more you play the more you should be REWARDED with better items. Isn't that the idea?

Ugg, no. The only reward for playing should be the enjoyment of it; ADHD players shouldn't be rewarded with better gear. This is the grind I'm talking about. It's not the damned World of Warcraft. Everyone should have access to everything right away, that's how you play an FPS.

 

[Modelworks]

I think they should just stop with the giving out of items,give everyone everything so we can get back to playing.
People playing sniper or spy because they think that will get them the items faster.
Then there are the people who are joining and just going AFK to get items.
Just give them out already and lets get back to playing.

 

[43st]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: Homerboy
The more you play the more you should be REWARDED with better items. Isn't that the idea?

Ugg, no. The only reward for playing should be the enjoyment of it; ADHD players shouldn't be rewarded with better gear. This is the grind I'm talking about. It's not the damned World of Warcraft. Everyone should have access to everything right away, that's how you play an FPS.

I think BF2142 did it well. You got mad unlocks at first but they become much fewer as you progressed.

 

[imported_Imp]

Updates for the two classes that I never play (aside from scout).

 

[TheVrolok]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny
Start your own server to get items!
.. snip ..

Good plan. Doing that now.

This thread shows how successful this new unlock system is. :roll:

Sounds like the unlock system is bugged.

 

[fustercluck]

This new 'unlock' system is utterly ridiculous and I can't believe they implemented it...they're usually such a smart company. My guess is they just got tired of all the newbies whining about not being able to get any unlockables without actually doing something to get them. Just ignore those newbies and revert back to the old system which makes a billion times more sense.

 

[spittledip]

Originally posted by: 43st

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: Homerboy
The more you play the more you should be REWARDED with better items. Isn't that the idea?

Ugg, no. The only reward for playing should be the enjoyment of it; ADHD players shouldn't be rewarded with better gear. This is the grind I'm talking about. It's not the damned World of Warcraft. Everyone should have access to everything right away, that's how you play an FPS.

I think BF2142 did it well. You got mad unlocks at first but they become much fewer as you progressed.

I agree. I like that system as well.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Or more likely, they realized that the old system was incredibly problematic. It caused a tremendous flood of the new classes after the update, all out to get some ridiculous set of achievements usually totally divorced from what they should be doing - and generally caused the days following an update to be a complete clusterf***.

Since they always accompany these with a free weekend, anyone playing the free weekend got to experience TF2 at it's absolute worst. Not exactly a good business decision.

This way you don't have to straight jacket yourself to a class to see the neat new stuff, you don't need to jump through retarded achievement hoops, and you can't just join some achievement server wank-fast and then claim you earned anything.


There is, however, apparently a bug - people reporting getting nothing after 4 hours of play, and that is not the way it's supposed to be tuned.

 

[zerocool84]

Pshh when the scout update came out, i found a lot door and pressed the space bar 1,000 times to get that achievement.

 

[fustercluck]

I don't know why people think they're aren't a flood of the "updated" classes with the new system. There are at least twice as many sniper and spies around than before the update. Either trying for new achievements (people still like to get them even though they don't really do anything now) or trying out new weapons they found (like the bow or the ambassador). So that argument is false.

I always kinda liked people flooding the new updated class. Tons of medics...or heavies... or scouts when those updates came out. Made the game a little different for a while

 

[Inspector Jihad]

find a good server to play on then noob.

 

[spittledip]

Lol I played for about 20 minutes today and got the Dead Ringer during my first few minutes. I actually respawned with it. I didn't bother using it though

 

[mundane]

I played as a pyro for about 1:30 today - there's a lot of spy fodder out there to light up.

 

[ivan2]

damn i was on for like 2 hours and nothing =(

 

[JTsyo]

Maybe they should just have both systems. That way you can try to unlock it or just wait for it to happen.

Saw this on the main page

Why did we build a new system?

* With our first four class updates we were tying the new weapons for each class to a set of achievements. Our intention was to make a set of achievements that eventually all players would get, and would be fun to get along the way. In some cases we did a good job at this (Scout), and in some cases we did a bad one (Medic). Across all of the class packs we were disappointed in the number of people that got to play with the new weapons, and feedback from the community was generally not favorable with this approach.


What did we do?

* For the last number of months we've been working on using the Steam Cloud to store a player's inventory. With that finally in place, we were able to deploy a new system focused on the giving of items to players. That new system watches the amount of time that players are playing TF2, and gives them a chance to find items at regular intervals. They aren't guaranteed to get the item at those points, but they have a pretty good chance. We based the system on granting items on the amount of time played because we don't want players to have to do weird things like join achievement grinding servers to get new content. Basing it off time also has the benefit of ensuring that if you play a lot of TF2, you're going to get more items than players who don't.

How long do I have to play to get an item?

* When we were tuning this system we first looked at the average amount of time that players spend playing TF2 daily. From there, we set the goal of most players having around 20 items in their inventory after a couple of weeks of play. If you're someone who plays a lot of TF2, you're going to get items a lot faster than that. In the first few hours after the release yesterday, we had some issues that prevented the system from working properly, so that timeframe was not indicative of the system as it's designed.

Is this the way we'll find items from now on?

* Like everything else we build, we'll be iterating on this system for a while, and have a lot of features planned. Some of the next things we have planned are:

- Item trading. This is why you're finding duplicates.

- Giving players a method to influence the system so they can work directly toward getting specific items.

- Adding more rare items like the hats.

We're going to be working on and rolling these out while we're also working on the next class pack, with the goal being to get it all released before then.

Seems like I shouldn't have been in haste to delete the extras.

 

[ivan2]

nice, i can ebay items.

 

[Praxis1452]

lol it's so bugged atm. I can with the the movement cloak do a kill taunt with the spy knife while still cloaked. It kills lvl 3 sentry's in 1 hit. I can kill people before the round stars by shooting through the gates with the ambasador. It's fuckin win. It'd be the best patch ever if I could actually get everything. I just hacked milestones in achievements to get the items and had a fun time getting achievements as I went along, but now... >.</ fuuuuuuuu

 

[fustercluck]

I'm still pretty shocked that they're going in this direction (and it sounds like they're very committed to this new item finding/trading system too)...it really sucks. Ah well, I'll just have to go with it.

 

[zerocool84]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny
Start your own server to get items!

I'm doing this right now. Haven't unlocked anything yet.