Idling. And how!

I just started playing really, and enjoying TF2 a lot!!

Although I keep getting smashed by people with upgraded weapons, I'm happy to earn those via achievements, like everyone else did (I hope).
What I'm interested in though, is hats - and from what I've heard, these are simply unlocked over time spent in the game.

This seems a bit silly to me, especially seeing as I'll probably only be playing for about 5-6 hours a week, at an absolute max.

So I've seen a few mcohndies in idle servers, and I'm keen on getting the low down so I can look STYLE.

• Does it matter which map you idle on?
• Does the class you choose effect how much/what you get?
• Is there a specific combo that will allow me to only get hats, and no other unlocks?
• Is there a way to auto accept stuff so there is no idle downtime?

And finally, I'm happy for this thread to degrade into a IT'S RIGHT / IT'S WRONG debate, as long as it's civil.
If anyone is interested, I've only idled for about 24 hours, and I've got gloves of boxing, and 2x dead ringers. None of which I think I will ever use

The specific idle maps allow you to idle without stuffing up your most time alive stat (by killing you constantly), other then that there's no way to effect what you get.

As for the right/wrong -> http://steamcommunity.com/groups/deathtoidlers

Yeah you used to be able to idle from an external application. But valve outlawed them.
To be honest, fastest way to get weapons is achievements like you said, more specifically achievement servers. But i find it more fun if they come somewhat naturally or you work towards them legit.

Getting 'random' hats - something like a 3% every 4 hours or something, Baines will be able to inform you, he has 4 hats over what i would think to be around 500 hours of idling? Or maybe not that much.

DEV! YOU DIRTY (I'M THINKING ABOUT DOING IT) IDLER!!!

Having never idled myself I wouldn't know.

Benneh is right, aiming for achievement unlocks can be fun, but it can also be frustrating, esp if you don't have a lot of time. You should be able to get random item drops through just regular game play though. As for hats.... you could be playing for five minutes and get a hat, or you could play for 500 hours and get no hat. Totally random. If you're willing to have the game running forever and a day then go for it. There are no guarantees.

And Baines has like three hats that are all the same.

Thanks everyone, all helpful info

Is there somewhere I can find out how to get certain things via achievements? For example, I'm keen on completely kitting out my medic - are there certain tasks that will help me get what I need?

The other thing I've been told is that all unlocks are random, and you get the random unlock after you complete a certain amount of achievements.
This sounds about right, as I don't normally get items for the class I am playing at the time...

Is any of this actually documented, or is it all just people guess work?

theres a screen in tf2 that shows which achievements you have, which you dont and how far you have to go (if its something like get 2k kills as scout)
under character info and achievements i think

when the class update teaser pages were released, they had a page for which weapons were unlocked after x number of achievements. it used to be 13 achievements per unlock but they reduced it after the pyro update i think

some searching on the tf2 blog http://www.teamfortress.com/ will yield some answers

You need the 'milestone' achievements at the bottom of each classes list of achievements. You get them for getting 10, 16, 22 achievements for that class (including the earlier milestones), and each one gives you a weapon. Which weapon is fixed, but the order varies from class to class.

i believe phenom had a script to reconnect him to the server every x hours incase he lost connection. would anyone be able to help me out here? i was going to use a set of retry commands with ridiculous wait times in between them, but that won't let me join a team or anything.

helpsies?

I idled a couple of times, I never thought of it as a bad thing or cheating - just the lazy way. I don't play TF2 for 4 hours straight, so how am I meant to get a hat? So I idled a couple of times, got like 15 backburners, and gave up. Then I lost everything. Even my Ubersaw! /cries

I don't really think it's good or bad - it just happens. I don't idle any more, I don't fancy losing my items again.

I have four hats and only one duplicate ili

The best way to idle is to go spec so you don't get enormous time spent as any particular class. Unless you want to make it look like you've been super active in TF2, in which case switch your class every day and you'll be 500 hours on all classes in no time!
If you don't care about your "time played" stats then idle as a class. In my experience idling as a class yields a higher amount of drops than spec, but that might just be coincidence.

If idling as a spec you won't get any popups informing you of your new items, as they only popup when you die. So at the end of your idle session, type . 1 1 (change team, random, scout) and either wait to die, type explode in console, or better yet, bind something to explode and press that button.

Every time you get a new item it will stack on the "new item acquired" screen, so there is no downtime.
If you get five new items you will get a prev/next button and be able to delete/equip each item individually, or accept them all.

I leave mine idling for about 9 hours each day, at the end of each session I have on average 11 items. I'd say that's much easier (and faster) than going through the achievement servers.

There have been threads and threads on the official steam forums about all the math behind hats.
It's pretty much accepted that if you idle 24/7, you will get a hat approximately once a week.
I've been idling (not quite 24/7) for about 5 weeks now and have 4 hats. I'd say that sounds pretty correct to me.
Granted, it's completely random, so there is a chance you may get three hats in one day. Extremely unlikely, but possible.

Unfortunately there is no way to go for a certain item/hat. Idling as any particular class does nothing apart from increase your time played as that class.

i believe phenom had a script to reconnect him to the server every x hours incase he lost connection. would anyone be able to help me out here? i was going to use a set of retry commands with ridiculous wait times in between them, but that won't let me join a team or anything.

helpsies?

I would like to know this as well, lately my internet has been playing up and I've been timing out from servers.
However with the recently introduced (classless update) random crashing in windows 7 bug, I've been crashing more than dropping out, making me only idle about 3 hours a day.

i dont know what wait time you would need but try this script, replacing x with wait time

alias autoj "retry; wait x;autoj" //reconnects to the server, then loops after x frames
alias joinspec "jointeam spectate;wait 1;joinspec" //spams join spectator, wait is there to avoid crash
joinspec
autoj

testing it now

ok guys just tried this and it works

alias autoj "retry; wait x;autoj"
alias joinspec "jointeam spectate;wait 100;joinspec"
alias stop "alias autoj;alias joinspec"
bind p "stop"
joinspec
autoj

what time you need to set in x depends on your frame rate i believe. If you are capped at 60 fps set x as the number of seconds you want to wait in between retrying multiplied by 60

this should work well

oh and press p to stop everything

very nice!!
i think ill try and earn the weapons i want first then - then do the idling and get rid of stuff i dont want/need.

thanks for the tips baines, and props for the script jatemeeee

Another thing of note, Valve have said they plan on implementing a weapon crafting system, so it might be an idea to hold on to dupes. You have two backpack pages so you can keep all your dupes on page 2, or you can do what I did and keep five of everything.
However knowing Valve's turnaround on pretty much everything, you can expect to see this in 24-48 months time.

so does that script loop infinitely? or should i put another wait and command in somewhere?

Code: Select all

alias set_fps "fps_max 60"
alias normal_fps "fps_max 0"
alias autoj "set_fps; retry; wait 1800; joinspec; wait 432000;autoj"
alias joinspec "jointeam spectate;wait 100;joinspec"
alias stop "alias autoj;alias joinspec"
bind p "stop; normal_fps"
joinspec
autoj


(432000 is a two hour reset.)