Valve Punishes Team Fortress 2 Idlers, Rewards Legit Players with Free Hat

how do you dowload this game ?

What's an idler? What does it do? What are these hats? What the heck is this article about?

I liked it when TF was just TF. Sure the achievements are kinda cool but this game is not about winning anymore, not even about killing opponents either. It's about getting stuff, hats...

Sure some of the items and weapons are awesome but the game should be about teamplay and winning, not about gathering items.

If they wanted to incorporate the items into the teamplay system then you should have to play cooperatively to win in order to get items. I don't judge people that idle because of the simple reason that finding items is pure luck and the fact that you don't have to do anything except joining a server in order to find them. And don't worry, I have a halo on my chars so I didn't "cheat".

Sure, using 3rd party software is cheating, but idleing is not.

so i idle for 3 days, get no hats, say its stupid and stop idling , then vavle goes and gives hats to everyone who didn't idle.

so I still have no hats, now no halo, i just can't seem to win.

A number of misleading pieces of information here.

4.5% of players includes everyone who ever bought Orange Box, and not just people who actively play/have ever played TF2. That's a *huge* number.

Valve is still rewarding people who used idle servers rather than the idle program.

Valve representatives (like Robin Walker) specifically said they took an apathetic stance toward idling before, people who are now being called cheaters didn't know they were cheating, especially since the item drop system rewards literally nothing but sitting in a server. All the idler did was provide a convenience (and save on energy bills) by not forcing you to load the game's engine.

This was done with NO warning and was extremely flawed in execution. People who didn't use the idle program are getting punished, people who did use it aren't, items which were "earned" (earned being in massive sarcasm quotes) are getting deleted for no reason.

It's worth emphasising that people who used the idling program are being called "cheaters" whereas people who used idle servers aren't, nor are people who farmed achievements. It's upsetting being grouped in with *real* cheaters (hackers, exploiters) over this.

Also if they implemented the trading system they were talking about months ago people wouldn't have needed to rely on idling.

I for one am really getting tired of how Valve's attitude has been as of late. I remember the old Valve sent personal apologies to everyone affected by the anti-achievement farming measures around the medic update and gave everyone affected all the medic items for free.

Maybe I'd be more agreeable if they spent their time on bug fixes, balance, and features rather than on a crafting system, clown zombies, and frying pans...

Whew, glad I didn't use that idler program, just idled in idling servers.

People still play this boring game? Oh a hat....how cute. I be that really adds to the replay value unlike variable capture points, actual good maps and unsanitized gameplay.

I am wondering why the Shack reports this piece of pretty much worthless news (mind you, I do play TF2 regularly) and none of the Quake Live updates which are filled with tons of new features.

Currently Quake Live has at least 10x the user base of TF2 (check out the stats) and yet, all we got here is complete silence. The Shack started as Quake site back in the day.

MY FIRST HAT *cums*

I appreciate that Valve is trying different things with this unlock stuff (instead of just copying someone else's system). But Jesus christ, handing out random rewards is just a terrible system.

Both in theory and in practice it's just about the most unsatisfying system you could devise.

The free hat they're giving out here (which I assume I'll get, haven't checked yet) is nice for the simple reason that its not based on the whim of a random number generator.

valve is punishing their most hardcore fans with an iron fist and excusing themselves by saying it's only 5% of the total people

flawless victory!

After reading the article I started TF2 to check the whole thing out. I was also rewarded with that fancy halo thing. I proceeded to open up a game and check out what other players were doing.

And wow. Those halos annoyed the heck out of me on second one. Everyone had them!

I can't believe Valve hasn't figured out yet that people want cool items and will do anything to get them. This is what happens when you openly advertise all the new loot you added and then make it so 99% of players will never see it through real gameplay. They can fight day and night to defend their flawed loot system but it will never change anything, there will always be a workaround. Achievement unlocks were flawed too, that's how we got achievement servers and without those we'd have people screwing around going for the impossible achievements in actual servers like with the Medic. They need to either just give up and hand out the hats for free, or get rid of duplicate drops so people who have all the items will find a hat with each loot drop.

The end result of all this bullshit is that this is NOT the TF2 I paid for back in 2007. The weapon updates did a good enough job of throwing out TF2's original winning formula of simplicity and balance, then came the item system, along with the hats. Then more hats. Soon there will be a trading and crafting system with effects for each item.

What the fuck, Valve. Give me back the goddamn game I fell in love with, or at the very least give servers a new "pure" vanilla mode that reverts the server back to pre-weapon-updates state, balance and bug fixes intact. Give us back the original TF2, because it was damn good and just fine as it was.

I like how this works. I do nothing, and they give me free hats.

Gentlemen...

Sasha kill many babies with halos today...she misses KGB though :(

Im glad I nevered used the idler. Shame on you all who did.

here's a halo for the ladies, http://www.facepunch.com/showpost.php?p=17095240&postcount=1289

Nice. Already a few of my favourite servers have 4 or 5 players just +forwarding in the respawn room. This is what happened before the idler too.

I wonder if valve are deliberately short sighted or are they just retarded?

I wish they'd make a new game instead of perpetuating a storm of controversy and anticipation around a tired old concept. I play TF2 for the humour and because it's one of very few FPS games popular enough to regularly find a decent server - If there were anything more modern, anything that took advantage of modern technology to provide a deeper, more creative and rewarding experience, I'd be playing it.

I miss Planetside ;-;

I laugh at what TF has become. Used to be you'd get on a server or in a decent clan match and beat the shit out of the opponents, Now you have babies sitting around for poly models or stupid crit hits like a stupid mmo. Yeah console gaming killed pc gaming, you have the idiots over here now ruining decent games expecting their glowing item of the month.

So.. Inventory system bugged.. I lose Flare Gun for no reason.. I use idler program for 1 night.. get Flare Gun back.. delete program and not use again.. now my account is fucked?! and I STILL don't have a hat? You can fuck miles of off Valve. If it wasn't for your shitty arse bugged inventory system deleting my items all the time, I wouldnt've NEEDED to use a stupid program in the first place.

I would kill a man in real life for just one hat.

it also seems the random gifts are broken. been playing for a while and no one has gotten anything...

this could be rough...

jesus christ, I can't believe how stupid tf2 has become

good thing there aren't real, glaring problems with this game they could be fixing. huntsman hit box extending WAY over model, etc. btw, I'm betting the 4.5% figure is total bs. the sourceop idler program had 4 servers, each full with 11k people. 44k is probably more than the active community playing right now.

Its like fining speeders on the freeway, then raising the speed limit.

THIS is what gets people riled up now? i miss the days when they tweaked the damage of a CS weapon by 0.5% and everyone threatened to drive to gabe's house and shit on his doorstep - at least those minute, insignificant changes actually somewhat affected the game.

dropping items? been a while since I played tf2

jumped in game, equipped the halo, won the round... lost the halo.
it's not in my inventory and it's not on any of my characters.

i'm sure somewhere, there is an ascii face to describe my displeasure with this!

It's funny because the halos are still visible on cloaked spies

well i guess this will just cause people to do it the old way just sitting in a kill box server forever.

valve, don't think this fixes anything it just changes the way they do it. The drop system is a bad system from the start fix the drops, fix the idling that's how it works by hurting your paying customers for getting something they wanted in a broken system does not fix this.

the trimming has started. taken about an hour before my account got flagged:

http://www.shackpics.com/files/hats_taqde8amzga0lekaa1pw.jpg

lost the 4 hats.

screenshot: http://www.shackpics.com/files/ctf_sawmill0006_uzc7mccwjj926pyuoa5x.jpg

Finally, I will get a hat.

So this effects all idle program users, or just those users who acquired a hat?

Just got my halo. My first hat, but I can use it for all the classes so it's like 9 indidual ones! \o/

I wish they would punish team switchers.

AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!!

My friend has been using an idler lately. I can't wait to tell him the news!