Besides the fact that it makes a lot of TF2 players angry, what with all the duplicate unlocks everyone’s getting, the new system is also wasteful in terms of energy.
I counted roughly 350 achievement_idle rooms at 3:00 PM today, most of which were full and had probably on average 12 people in each room. That’s an estimated 4200 people who are in these game rooms idling, doing absolutely nothing but leaving the computer on to gain achievements in most cases. If each one of those people were to commit 24 hours to letting their computer idle that would equal $3,113.11 worth of electric according to my figures. That’s in a single day, but what if users were to idle for a full week? Well that would cost them $21,791.75 over seven days.
I think everyone would have been better off if Valve just stuck with the old system for this update, and worked out the kinks in the new system while everyone was enjoying their earned unlocks.
Two patches and the random drop generator is still horrible. Where the hell is my huntsman?
May 28th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Hate people being idle all the fucking time. I won’t do it. I do want the new unlocks, yes. But idling them is just bullshit.
Play the game and be patient, everyone gets his drops.
May 28th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Shame it’s such an irking matter. Patience can’t even hold out well enough cause, sure enough, you’re gonna end up seeing someone get some of the new things. Even worse is if they say they already HAVE them.
This random drop system might work if it were based on something more than just TIME. And perhaps go with an interesting system I read about that- each time it “checks” to see if it should give you an item, the chance of getting it doubles if it doesn’t. And then resets to normal when it finally does. That should speed things along.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Valve said in their blog that they will “Give players a method to influence the system so they can work directly toward getting specific items.”
May 28th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Idle achievement servers aren’t bullshit, the new weapon unlock system is. I’ve already got 25 sniper achievements and I still don’t have the Huntsman. :/ Instead I have 4 Jarates..
May 28th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Don’t get me started on the new unlock system.
Seriously, don’t.
May 29th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
@Cobrastyle
The problem is Valve Time.
We don’t know when valve will fix the new crappy system.