News Valve to punish TF2 cheaters, reward others

Actually I play TF2 maybe once a month, if that. I have no interest overly in the game, don't think it is particularly good, it is "ok" now and again for a blast.

I certainly have zero interest in a stupid cosmetic hat, however if I am reading this right, next time I log in I will get some sort of halo?

Maybe I will log in tonight to see.

My interest simply lies with people like you trying to defend actions that are immoral, gaining advantage of normal players, then whining like the cheating tards you are when smacked on.

OVER A COSMETIC, USELESS HAT YOU WOULD ACTUALLY IDLE FOR HOURS AND HOURS TO TRY AND GET ONE INSTEAD OF JUST PLAYING AS NORMAL.

Your attitude towards these issues, and mine, applies to all types of games, I am sure.

You should not be doing it, you know it, now stop crying about it.

 

DraigUK - "You should not be doing it, you know it, now stop crying about it."

If people knew it was against the rules they wouldn't have done it. This is the problem. Now they've been labelled hackers when valve let it happen for 4 months, never clarified whether it was ok or not despite 1/3 of their regular players using it etc. and it's annoyed people.

Also, no need to call people cheating tards, that's just being confrontational and argumentative. As clx said, angry much?

 

Who cares? TF2 was never a good game to begin with. I can't stand it.

 

It sounds like the people who have lost the hats didn't do much other than idle on a server, it's not like you've played the game for hours as valve intended now is it?

If you didn't actually earn the hats, why cry when they're taken away? I really don't get it, are the hats like a status thing or something? "i've got a blue hat, na na na na" ?

 

I agree with you Dreaming, mostly. Valve have not been as quick or upcoming with info, and the hat system distribution could be better - maybe - but it is up to valve.

The fact these hats are so hard to get, though, is what makes people want them?

Making it easier to get one just devalues the item.

It is Valves call how they want to do it, and how hard they want to make it to get one. All we can do as customers is give them our views and abide by the current rules until change is made.

At end of day though, people were doing this before Valve said "it's ok to do this" in order, as you put it, "To maximise their chances".
Why?
Over a hat?
That is cosmetic?

Common sense would say this is not how Valve want them earned.

Maybe next time they do something it will not be cosmetic, it will be of use in game. So they let all know now over this cosmetic item, not to cheat to get them.

Simples!


And no I am not angry, just don't like cheating in games of any form, and all the pathetic excuses for it just make me cringe.

 

No, if people knew it was against the rules, they would still do it to get one.

I can imagine it has annoyed a lot of people, in fact probably a 3rd according to you, of people playing the game, who have been doing this. And Valve should have been quicker and clearer to say not to do it. However that leaves 2/3 of people who play it straight, pretty happy I would have thought.

BUT

Until they said "this is ok to idle, go ahead" this is the problem. People should not do it until they say it is ok to do it, not do it and then wait for the ok.

As far as calling people cheating tards, well, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

 

Then dont post. Troll.


Back on topic, from what i can see, most people where that seem to be calling idlers "cheats" and "exploiters" either a) dont play much at all and hate to think that some one might have gotten something they didnt, even if it has now been removed. or B) dont understand that it was NOT against any rules to idle

this is taken from the Healers against Halos page

PLEASE, read this and UNDERSTAND it before randomly posting like Pizan and others

Some background

1. Dev makes a system where the only way to get items is to be in a server, system is hated by all involved
2. Players join servers specifically made for being afk in, server lists clog up, no one is happy.
3. Program made that lets you idle without the full game being on.
4. Months pass, dev says they wont take action, posts and emails sent to them for stance on the program.
5. dev takes everyone who used the program, calls them cheaters, and marks others permanently with halos.

 

The original premise was that hats would drop randomly, and you could trade them with other people, so you could get accessories and the like for the class you most liked to play to customise them. A bit like battlefield heroes in that regard. Custom hats and weapons and stuff ^^.

The problem was, Valve didn't and still haven't implemented a trade system, the drop rate for hats was atrocious (you have to play 200 hours to get one single hat on average), and so basically Valve dropped the ball in releasing new cool content, but not really making it accessible to the vast majority of players.

Some players then decided that to increase their chances, they would leave TF2 open in the background, just sitting in a server doing nothing, hoping for a random chance drop. Valve were pretty much fine with this, and even today you can do it happily. But someone created an external program - well its not even much a program to be fair, its more like how you run a dedicated server without loading a GUI - same thing. It runs TF2 from a dos prompt, connects to an idle server and you're "playing" the game, without having to load up the game.

Again, Valve let this slide for 4 months. Afterall, it was just for cosmetic items, it didn't really matter that much, did it? Then last night, announcement that despite having no prior policy on it, it's no longer allowed. That's really fair enough. Then, they are retrospectively removing all items gained through it. Ah, that's annoying, especially for the people who have been false-flagged, but again understandable if they don't want the economy for the trading system ruined. But the icing on the cake really, was giving a unique item to everyone who didn't use the program, and labelling everyone who did a 'cheater'.

The community is divided, arguing, servers are banning people for having halos or not having halos, it's all a bit rubbish - and there were so many things Valve could have done to stop it getting to this. They could have a) told people not to idle in the first place b) told people not to use the program 4 months ago (and it wasn't like a minority used it - about 10,000 people) c) told people today, but not made the rules retrospective as nobody knew before now, and try to avoid making too big a distinction between players who idled and didn't d) fixed the drop system and implemented a trading system to remove the need for people to 'farm'.

Some more legitimate complaints though, is where the hell is the soldier and demoman updates? Are we getting an engineer update? They're spending time fixing non-issues like this and causing friction in the community, rather than developing content and finishing the game.

 

Cheers, i see the problem now!

 

I UNDERSTAND. Valve is just better off letting 3rd parties develop mods and such for there games. See what happens when they try to add more crap themselves. Especially all the level-upcrap. If i wanted to play an RPG with level-ups, I would have bought one.

1. I obviously dislike more then just the system
2. Server filters have been around since at least 2004.
3.
4. Doesn't Valve take months to do anything.
5. I guess you have never been VAC banned for using different skins.

Can anyone tell me if creating your own local server would also get you a hat drop? Then what would you need a special program for.

 

you wait til Richard Dawkins hears about this

 

The halo is one hat that cheaters can't collect to complete the set. Sweet.

 

Dreaming has got it spot on. Sorry been AFK (probably a good thing) for a few hours but time to put in a final opinion.

Yes it is time for facts. Not wanting to start a flame war but you clearly don't play the game, at least on a regular basis. The "news" is actually incorrect, as Dreaming as already has pointed out, as Joe has sourced the 5% from Valve. The 5% is from ALL PLAYERS who have bought the game. Obviously people like yourself don't play the game regularly; if you include only people who have used the game at least once a week for the last 6 months, then it mounts up to be about 1/3 REGULAR players having idled. Since this now turns out to be a much larger majority of the regular playing community, the issue becomes more serious, and we can consider the facts again. Here is a list;

0. Valve have a poor drop system.
1. Valve never had an official view against the idler program.
2. Valve had not, prior to last night, even taken action against people using the external idler application in question.
3. The idler program was developed to counter fact 0. It was not developed to malisciously earn unearnt weapons, or circumvent the drop system, it just allowed players to idle in the hope of getting hats. Personal fact - I idled for about 300 hours and got one hat. I have a play time of over 400 hours excluding the 300hrs idling time.
4. The idler application was running for just over 4 months. (Opinion - isn't that time to air an opinion against it Valve?!)
5. Valve decide that using external idling applications is unfair.
6. Valve remove hats (and in some instances unlockable items) which were earnt through the idling program. (Opinion - again, fair enough, the community doesn't mind. Remember that unlockable items can be earnt through achievements, and said items do not give a player an advantage in gameplay - if you have an unlockable, they have negative effects as well as positive, take the Ubersaw. Although it builds up ubercharge, you can't score crit hits with it. => earning unearnt items theoretically doesn't give you an edge in conventional gameplay, arguably it just affects your style)
7. Valve give players who didn't use the idler program a halo.

Opinions.
Now, as Dreaming has said, this has split the community. It seems as though Occasional players who have come back to the game after hearing this announcement, have obviously earnt the halo and are smirking against the people who used the idler. Remember the facts - Valve never took an official stance against it. Now, regular players who have used the idler are now understandably incredibly peeved off with people saying "ooh look i don't cheat lololol!" as it was never said to be cheating. You then have got a split between regs who know the story and occasional players who frankly don't seem to.

Furthermore, to answer a previous commenter, us idlers have been labelled "cheaters" as when we load up the backpack, on first run we get a message warning us that we have been stripped of our items and if we are caught idling again we lose *ALL* items (weapons/hats), or if caught again have our accounts possible banned. This appears to be an official warning to me for cheating when, as again if you look at the facts, it clearly isn't cheating.

The point is that people idled BECAUSE there clearly was no official line against it, and Valve clearly had time to say something about it but didn't. The community used an idea to basically save energy to spend more time connected in the hope of earning a hat or 2. Hats have no value other than aesthetics. Now Valve has turned on those regular players who were idling and without warning labelled us cheats, and reminding us by allowing all the "occasional" players to wear halos to show how good they are for doing something they never had officially any trouble with. This is what is annoying people like me, it's allowing loads of arses to connect to servers and be smug and generally ripping the game apart.

Better finish off by replying to this;

Sorry but STFU. Again, Valve took no line against it. This issue is completely separate to the weapon fiddling from the Scout updates, and of a level of greatly reduced severity. Valve is ripping apart its core community by taking this action. You're the exact type of person who is coming onto servers and wrecking the experience of a regular player.

Unless I see anything else which infuriates me, it's over and out and time to gag myself.

 

It does seem, and has ever since they added in ludicrously hard unlocks for specific classes that were doled out at an impossibly slow rate, that Valve has kind of lost the plot for TF2. I want a team game with set classes, everyone has the same layout, for the hardcore AND mass market, that puts everyone on a level playing field and lets me jump in for a few rounds, swapping class as I want. It was that at launch, but it isn't anymore. It's all about grind, which is why I stopped playing ages ago.

 

I'd like to invite anyone interested to send an e-mail to Mr. Doug Valente at dougv@valvesoftware.com. He is Valve's head of support and the person responsible for handling claims filed with the Better Business Bureau.

I can only imagine what would happen if Mr. Valente's inbox was suddenly full of angry customers on the cusp of discontinuing to use Valve's products and services.

 

Thing is though that most of the unlocks are terrible. Only unlocks I consistently use are medic unlocks and jarate. You are still on a level playing field and it's not really about grinding the unlocks at all. TF2 gameplay is very similar to back in the beta, its just covered by layers of useless unlocks and hats.

 

Personally I think this is pretty funny... all those people who went out of their way to seek a method of unfairly attaining all items are now unable to do exactly what they set out to do since there is now an item they will never be able to get!

Valve no longer wanting people to use this 'hack' to idle - fair
Valve removing hats gained in this way - fair
Labelling people as cheaters - Possibly a bit unfair, but then they were doing things outside the spirit of the game
Giving everyone who didn't 'cheat' a halo - priceless

Why people care so much about a hat is beyond me...

 

It's a hat people, A HAT!

I've got one and it's the only hat I've got. To be honest I suspect that the hats where partly Valves solution to people complaining about not getting any hats, seen as how idlers have had a much higher chance to be running round in a hat for the past few months than non-idlers.

If valve were handing out VAC bans for idling, then I'd be supporting the idlers. But to be honest anyone considering abandoning Valve due to a hat is both childish and stupid in my eyes. I'll be enjoying Portal 2 and HL:ep3

Here's a handy form to send:

 

1) Wrong.

2) Wrong.

3) Wrong.

4) Wrong.

5) Where are you pulling that data, thats very precise. Please share this with us!

 

Correct!

Whats wrong with leaving it to luck and time like the game was developed to be?

Too much like hard work for some aint it sunshine.