IDLERS BEWARE! BLU is onto you!

[Fragimus_Max]

Look in a mirror.

Naw man, there's a difference. I don't attack people personally, dude. I don't use things that other players say, out of context, to fire up and vilify someone in a public forum just to gain a false sense of power over them.

I'm gonna write this out, just to get it off my chest and put it behind me... honestly, no one has to read past this point.

I'm very aware of how I treat people, in real life and in the virtual world, and I'm way too empathetic to want to hurt someone with words over something as simple as a video game. Not to mention a video game that's SUPPOSED to encourage both the growth of its community and camaraderie amongst its players.

People must read my posts like I'm frothing at the mouth as I'm writing, or something to that nature. It couldn't be further from the truth. I'm sitting here calm, collected, drinking some ice cold crystal lite.

If I call someone a cheater, I have good reason to. Feel free to defend yourself, but that does not give you reason to attack me, or anyone for that matter, personally.

But I used to be that type of person. When I was in my 20's. And, yes, as much as a teenager or a young adult in their 20's doesn't want to admit it - an intelligent adult is always five steps ahead of them when it comes to recognizing patterns that repeat, good and bad, throughout their lives.

And, in my 20's, I didn't want to hear that. And neither do most of these guys. So they pick at little things - like how you word a sentence - or when you've finally had it, and you see the topic is heading down a dark path that - as an adult, you would rather not continue on - they announce to world that you are evading the issue.

But this is the TRUE face of immaturity. It's not calling someone out on something you consider to be bullshit. It's when you state your point, and the other person replies with something that, as a more experienced member of the species, you can clearly see is an attempt at justifying something that is simply... incorrect.

Sorry for the rant, guys. Let's just agree to disagree, if that's the case - because honestly, I'm being called to do something right now that many of the people I communicated with today have yet to experience...

Sitting on a couch, eating chocolate chip cookies and milk, watching Discovery with two people who truly love and understand me on a much more intimate level than any 20 year-old in the World could possibly comprehend.

And I'm not talking about my parents. lol

Goodnight. TTYL

 

[Mexican Apple Thief]

even though, for some reason, no one can justify why they need an external program to do so in the first place.

Because if you don't, you won't get hats. Scientific fact.

I really don't see what the problem is. What's the point in rewarding people for playing the game for a long time. There's no monthly fees or anything, so it's not like we're stealing time. Personally I think it should come down to preference. Want to feel like you're pure and innocent, then don't use it. Want to practical, download that idler. It's the same as achievement farming. It's bullshit to have to "earn" what is effectively a side-grade. That's why I used to farm. However, for the scout and some of the spy/sniper updates, I decided to actually earn them as intended because I thought it might be more fun.

Anyway the idler's a great thing because without it we'd have what we had before: AFK spectators in every server. The idler is protecting you from us terrible cheaters.

 

[evanonline]

It's funny, I use the idler a lot but 3 out of the 4 hats I own were all obtained in-game, and the one that was obtained with the idler was my fourth item I got while using it

The way I see it, it's not really so much "cheating" so much as trying to make a rather abstract system work a little more fairly. It's human nature to strive for individuality, and stand out in a crowd of faceless nobodies--it's only natural to want a hat. And if you get it without idling, that makes it even MORE special, no?

If you ask me, I think instead of hats they should give you like a "Mann Co. Habadashery Coupon" that you can exchange for a hat--that way hats are still rare as hell, but at least you can get one you want if you actually win the lottery that is hat drop rates.

 

[Ida]

1) That the TF2 Community is full of very angry, thuggish children. (Don't know why I didn't see *that* coming, to be perfectly honest with you.)

I'm sure you're, to a large degree, referring to me, and... what can I say. As I tried to imply in my post, I was ranting about the general widespread whining about people who use the idler program, and of course it makes me angry when someone writes a long post on it despite there being nothing to prove about this issue. None of the complaints I've read have mentioned why they think using the idler is a bad thing, all they do is berate the people who use it. If there's one place to let it out, I believe that's here, because people will actually read it.

EDIT: All right, after reading through some other posts of yours, it's made it clear that you're also talking about other communities. Either way, my opinion remains unchanged, more or less.

 

[Trotim]

I take it you're annoyed at people who use the idler. To which I reply that you're just acting like an idiot, because it does not disturb people who are not idling. Jesus Christ, when will people get this? When can I stop repeating this obvious fact?

People using the idler does disturb every player simply because the rarity of hats, and thus their only value, decreases. When everyone has hats, they are not special anymore. Once again, people who play the game instead of doing arbitrary other things are not rewarded (I'm looking at you, medals).

Anyway the idler's a great thing because without it we'd have what we had before: AFK spectators in every server. The idler is protecting you from us terrible cheaters.

Wrong. You could only farm that on bad servers (or achievement_idle servers) because you'd get kicked every 5 minutes.

Anyway. The idle program is not at fault, though - it was obvious players would exploit a system based only on time "played".

 

[Nineaxis]

The idle program is not at fault, though - it was obvious players would exploit a system based only on time "played".

This.

All Valve needs to do is implement some system to break the idler.

Done.

(Preferably with an increased chance of getting hats that decreases the more hats you have).

 

[Fearlezz]

They cant remove items from players that has spent incredibly amount of time in TF2. Because they have no proof that they used the idler.

However, they might come with a system that replaces items that has not yet been placed in the backpack, but which you have. When you idle you get items, but they are not placed in your backpack until you die in the actual game and accept.

You can go to tf2items.com and look at someone backpack that you know idle, you will see some items down on the page and there which is says that these are items that has a invalid place in the backpack.

 

[Peterm]

Does this mean no idling or we get banned?

 

[StoneFrog]

Having never once idled in my life (probably because my computer exploded around the time hats were becoming popular and now I can barely run TF2), I'm going to be mean and vouch for the "death by firing squad" proposal.

 

[Psy]

Does this mean no idling or we get banned?

It means nothing.

 

[Wegason]

Hmmm...

Hypothesis time.

If an environmental group were to discover that hundreds if not thousands of people are idling on servers in order to get hats that only exist digitally, would they not do a nut?

The wasted electricity, communication bandwidth, and other energy used by these thousands of computers would (if you believed in it) be contributing to global warming.

This would make said environmental group very angry, if said group had enough sway, they may make this an issue in the public eye. This publicity would be bad for Valve, theoretically, Valve may view this unwanted attention and bad publicity as a reason to prevent idling from obtaining hats or achievements.

This would then stop the complaints and also see people actually playing and/or an increased drop rate while actually playing.

Hypothesis over.

 

[A Boojum Snark]

They cant remove items from players that has spent incredibly amount of time in TF2. Because they have no proof that they used the idler.

That's what you think. I imagine it would be very possible for them to change some little thing in the real game client without telling anyone and from that point on steam could track who was real and who wasn't.

 

[Fearlezz]

That's what you think. I imagine it would be very possible for them to change some little thing in the real game client without telling anyone and from that point on steam could track who was real and who wasn't.

Very true.

 

[Mexican Apple Thief]

stuff

Environmental groups probably view video games as a whole a waste of energy.

That's what you think. I imagine it would be very possible for them to change some little thing in the real game client without telling anyone and from that point on steam could track who was real and who wasn't.

But they probably won't, because they don't care. Although I could imagine them pulling up a list of people and posting it on the blog to freak people out. Then they'd say they're banning the accounts, Steam forums explodes, Robin Walker laughs, and they all go home to the underside of their troll bridge.

 

[NovaSilisko]

Honestly. If valve wants to lash out at idlers, then they're going to have to do so to over 15000 accounts.

 

[Terr]

Honestly. If valve wants to lash out at idlers, then they're going to have to do so to over 15000 accounts.

Ad populum?

Valve has shown they understand statistics. They would probably limit it to a certain top percentile.

 

[Fragimus_Max]

All they have to do is to track how many directional "steps" a player takes during a single session where they don't disconnect from the same server.

I would assume they would use the same type of numbers system that's behind recording a demo and that player positions are all based on an array set, much like a GPS.

And here's something odd that happened last night. I've been reading drop rate algo threads and I don't remember, but do any of those stats mention what the chances are of a player receiving multiple items in a drop?

I got my 19827th Ambassador and another Bonk! Lunchbox at the same time. I also have like five Cloak & Daggers. lol Could drops POSSIBLY attributed to the time of day that the game is played? 'Cause I kinda play around the same time, all the time - and seem to get multiple drops of the same items very, very often.

Does anyone here think that drops are stats driven in any way?

Because I'm still receiving high level items for classes that I've been playing a lot more of than others - and low lvl items for classes I don't play often - like Scout. I've even read some players believe Valve abandoned the whole item lvl system, but it's not true because I'm receiving leveled items still.

 

[Psy]

I'd rather have them working on an update then punishing people who aren't affecting the game in anyway.

 

[J4CK8]

Somehow I doubt they're going to punish anyone, observe:

 

[A Boojum Snark]

That better be on his server, something he gave himself, I can't say I'd be happy if they considered him valuable to the community.