How to idle in Team Fortress 2

BobbyDigi

How to idle in Team Fortress 2

Lincoln

Idling ain't teaching you how to avoid my minigun.

Canti

I used a third party program to get item drops without launching the game. I still have the halo. Wat.

Koreish

I didn't cheat at all and never got my halo. Sad wat.

BuddyJ

Interesting article. I'm gonna try it just for kicks. Really wish I could spend more time playing. :\

GnomeQueen

All of this sounds like waaaay too much effort.

shwaip

You can also just start up a practice game and minimize tf2.

i mean...I've heard you can do that.

Thrax

^ did done that.

GHoosdum

I haven't played TF2 since around the time of the first class update... If I log in now, will I have a halo?

BobbyDigi

GHoosdum said:

I haven't played TF2 since around the time of the first class update... If I log in now, will I have a halo?

Your backpack is completely empty. Would be interesting to see what it triggers if you do log in. You should at least get your Medal with your join date on it.

Canti said:

I used a third party program to get item drops without launching the game. I still have the halo. Wat.

There was a second set of drops around the time the Mannconomy update dropped. Cheater

Koreish said:

I didn't cheat at all and never got my halo. Sad wat.

Valid reason for Steam support ticket is Valid.

bright

I don't have a halo, the most I think I did was sometimes go into idle servers, but I was just farming achievements for the weapons. I want a halo..

BobbyDigi

@Koreish and @bright, Open a ticket at https://support.steampowered.com/

Steam is weird that you have to create another account for support but I think if you do that, they would give you your Halos.

BHHammy

I SHOULD be trying idling sometime, if nothing else just to get my items for the week. I don't play TF2 as much as I should, because my attentions for games are so all over the place.

BuddyJ

I ran the text-only idle overnight. 19 weps and 3 crates.

midga

Nice article. Thanks, digi

BobbyDigi

I ran the text-only idle overnight. 19 weps and 3 crates.

To explain this: There is an 'overflow' so to speak where if you do not get any or all of your drops from a week, that amount will carry over to the next week. There is a limit of 1 week of overflow though so you will never get more than 2 weeks worth of drops in any given week and that will only happen if you did not play at all the previous week.

Glad to see people getting use out of the information provided

Theironhand

I tried the Text-only idle but every time I would run it, it would pop out for a split second and it would exit out.

BobbyDigi

@Theironhand Make sure that your batch file is pointing to where you have Steam installed.
For 64 bit systems this is usually:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe

For 32 bit

C:\Program Files\Steam\steam.exe

Go in through your C drive and hunt it down. Then right click on your batch file and select Edit and change it to match where your Steam.exe is.

RootWyrm

Here's my textidle.bat (mostly) verbatim. I took out the hooks for notifications.

"D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe" -applaunch 440 -nosound -novid -textmode +sv_password "c00k13m0nst3r" +map cp_badlands
And for those of you who (for some reason) are still on 32-bit:
"D:\Program Files\Steam\steam.exe" -applaunch 440 -nosound -novid -textmode +sv_password "b4n4n4r4m4" +map cp_badlands
Obviously change drive letter as appropriate. I keep it on my desktop so I don't forget to run it in the morning. Uses less than 8% of 2 cores on average for me.

Puzzled by the item schema queueing though. Yesterday I had multiple schema updates reporting as queued, but none applied. Today, it finally said "Current item schema is up-to-date".

BuddyJ

Theironhand said:

I tried the Text-only idle but every time I would run it, it would pop out for a split second and it would exit out.

Also make sure you have the quotes in place in your script. If the steam path isn't in quotes, the bin breaks.

Gargoyle

It sounds like cheating, but it's practically a victimless crime. I'm torn between wanting to do it since I don't play enough to get any weapons (I still don't know how most of the ones I'm killed with work), but also frustrated that other people might have all the fancy weapons just because they idled overnight. Then again, they could have bought them with cash money, too, and the microtransaction model is here to stay. So, basically, whatever.

Linc

Gargoyle said:

(I still don't know how most of the ones I'm killed with work)

Usually by getting hit with an item or a projectile that comes out it.

pragtastic

Lincoln said:

Gargoyle said:

(I still don't know how most of the ones I'm killed with work)

Usually by getting hit with an item or a projectile that comes out it.

icwudt

fatcat

vanilla TF2 was best TF2

CB

Medic update only TF2 was best TF2.

Garg

I remember when the only way to get weapons was through some fairly challenging achievements.

primesuspect

I remember two days ago when I had amazing fun with a ton of friends on the Icrontic server.

shwaip

I actually don't remember much of my IC TF2 experience. Can't imagine why that is...

mertesn

shwaip said:

I actually don't remember much of my IC TF2 experience. Can't imagine why that is...

It's part of the euphoric effect of TF2. There's a warning on the box that it can cause amnesia, especially when combined with large quantities of alcohol.

MAGIC

Has this changed at all? I tried setting it up. When I run the .bat file a flicker of a box shows up and nothing launches.

I am logged into steam, the path is correct... stumped.

MAGIC

Nvmnd, thanks _k.