Achievementbox was created to help TF2 players with their medic achievements, which require them to reach a number of defined goals in order to unlock the alternate medic weapons. Either that, or a map-maker named Tom Achievement decided to make a very small, strange boxy CP map that just coincidentally addressed the current achievement farmer’s needs, and then named it after himself. Probably the former.
While some of the medic achievements can easily be accomplished during normal play, there are some that are harder to get, such as Medical Intervention (healing a teammate who is falling to his death), Placebo Effect (killing five enemies while your uber is charged but not activated), or Does It Hurt When I Do Ths? (needling fifty scouts to death). And, let’s not forget Specialist (heal 10,000 points in a single life).
It was this last one that led me to visit Achievement Box. I’ve had some epic runs as a medic on maps like Dustbowl, where there are tons of teammates to heal at all times and where you can generally stay out of the line of fire, but the challenge isn’t just staying alive during the round but the round also lasting long enough for you to get all those points. It just didn’t seem like it was going to happen — my record for heals in one life after months and months of play was a shade under 5,000, not even half of what I needed. So, I decided to think inside the Box.
The Box is really quite well designed. It is, plainly, a box. There are both BLU and RED resupply lockers, a control point in the middle (some of the achievements require one), a section that hurts players if they stand on it (good for lowering your health to allow people to kill you easily, and also good for constantly healing someone standing on it), and an upper bridge area. Above the bridge is a cube of water which you can swim around in collecting health kits. I’m not sure of the real purpose of that, but it makes a nice place to hide for a bit if someone is griefing, and someone is always griefing. More on this later.
So, a medic looking for the Medical Intervention achievement can have a friend stand on the hurty-spot until he’s down to just a few HP, then scamper up to the bridge and leap off, at which point the medic can heal him before he lands, thus earning the achievement.
If you’re after Placebo Effect, you can charge your uber on your friend, and he can then switch teams and let you kill him five times. If you want 10,000 healed points in one life, just have him stand on the owie-spot while you heal him, and then the both of you go grab a coffee for about ten minutes. All in all, it’s a great way to nab those hard-to-get achievements.
In theory.
In practice, well, it’s a different story. Generally, it won’t just be you and your pal in the Box. There will be other players in there as well, all going after their own achievements. Your goals may overlap or clash. For instance, let’s say you’re healing your friend as he injures himself. You’ve been doing it for a few minutes. Someone else joins the server, and he’s after the achievement that requires you to bonesaw 50 enemy medics. And there you are, a medic with your back turned. Bonesaw’d!
Now, say you’ve managed to explain to this guy what you’re doing, and he agrees not to kill you. It’s all good until someone else joins. This guy is an engie, and he immediately plops down a sentry. Everyone goes apeshit on him, but hey — it’s an Achievement Box, and medics aren’t the only ones who have achievements. This guy just wants ten sentry kills, which is one of the game’s general achievements. Again, a conflict, as grinding medics get mowed down and have to start over.
Two more people join — one is a pyro who starts setting people on fire, perhaps to get his own achievement, another is a Heavy who stands with his back against the resupply locker and opens fire for the next 238 straight minutes. Someone else arrives and begins talking — a good sign, because communication is important in the Box — unfortunately, he’s talking in Russian.
Two more engies show up to help a medic get the achievement where he has a demo destroy five buildings with an uber. Instead of building teleporters and dispensers, though, they build sentries which start killing all the medics. Plus, there are no demomen to be seen.
Crouched in the corner, you begin trying to heal your friend again, but a spy materializes, standing on your head, and backstabs you. You respawn in the Heavy’s path and are killed the next 1,179 times you spawn. A demoman has shown up but he’s hitting people with his bottle. One medic is killing a scout, but with his bonesaw. Someone is mic-spamming some sort of Japanese pop song. You make the mistake of crossing the control point and you are killed by an ubered soldier. You respawn and are dropped by a medic weilding the ubersaw, which indicates he already has all the achievements and is just being a dick.
So, for the first time in your TF2 career, you ragequit, and join another Box that only has two people on it. You help them get an achievement, and then, when it’s your turn, one of them leaves and the other starts chasing you around as a kukri-swinging sniper. You realize All-Talk isn’t on and there’s no quick way to communicate. More people join, spawn as pyros, and the server descends into madness.
Still, hang in there long enough, and you’ll reap the rewards. I was stuck somewhere around 30 achievements, but finished them up last night with the help of two very considerate strangers. Here’s me with my new toy:
My advice is to join a server with a friend with only two or three people in it, and immediately offer to help them out. Once they’ve gotten a couple achievements, they’ll usually offer to help you get a couple of your own. For the map to be really effective, you’ll need:
A constant admin: Someone to kick greifers.
Alltalk always on: Everyone has to be able to talk to everyone else. Always.
Instant respawn: A must. If your achievement calls for killing 5 people with an uber, and there are only three on the server, you can still manage it in time if instant respawn is on.
I’ve also been on some servers that spawn bots to kill and that limit the classes or even prevent engies from building sentries.
Under a best-case scenario, here are my scores:
Gameplay 8/10
Class Balance 1/10
Originality 9/10
Appearance 2/10
Farming Modifier: +2
Score: 7/10
On a crowded server filled with jerks, the scores look like this:
Gameplay 0/10
Class Balance 1/10
Originality 9/10
Appearance 2/10
STOP FUCKING KILLING ME Modifier: -2.5
Score: .5/10
56 responses so far ↓
1 Enedok // May 21, 2008 at 8:55 am
Create one yourself, be admin and have a zero tolerance on gankers. Should do the trick.
2 Kenny // May 21, 2008 at 9:16 am
I still think it defeats the point of achievements going onto a server and map specifically designed to get them. They aren’t going away any time soon so there will be time to get them. I have personally got all of them apart from 3 on normal public servers while matches have been going on. Usually need a friend to help out, but they are nto that bad given time.
Still got to get the soldier, scout and demoman uber ones, but I know it’ll happen eventually.
3 Duca // May 21, 2008 at 9:41 am
I don’t mind achievement farming for the ones that are near impossible to get (like for me the one with a lot of steam friends, I dont ha that many), but i hate it when the achievements are released and then people rush to the farms and stay there until every last achievement is “earned”.
4 Draco_2k // May 21, 2008 at 10:12 am
Bah. I just gave up on Ubersaw due to this achievement with 10 friends… Not even for Ubersaw am I going to spam my Friends list with random pricks.
Then again, Specialist, Syringe Scouts, Medical breakthrough and others seem relatively implausible as well.
5 Sam // May 21, 2008 at 10:17 am
I don’t understand why valve made achievements that are stupidly hard to get, and it’s not like it’s skill based some of them, just plain dumb luck.
6 Stranger // May 21, 2008 at 10:20 am
I too know the temptation of visiting the Acheivementbox. Your review perfectly sums up the benefits — and the frustrations — of the quest for the Ubersaw.
However (and perhaps it hasn’t hit yet) you left out that tinge of remorse that hits the next time you’re logging in to a regular match and see that your “Personal stats” are completely skewed.
Thanks to my time helpfully mowing down “bots” while fellow players heal me and earn “Big Pharma,” my record number of kills in a single life has almost tripled. I could play TF2 from now until Doomsday and probably never legitimately best 95 guys in a row in a single game without dying.
Even worse, I unwittingly joined a server that had somehow tweaked the game clock and max heal points. After just a minute or so with my Medi-gun on someone I received a message congratulation me for reaching 10,000 hp and earning the “Specialist” Achievement. It had previously taken a long hard-fought round of defense in “Gold Rush” for me to reach the 7,000 hp threshold, so I knew something was up. By the time I died, my new high score was 342 — and I had racked up an astounding 204,161 ill-gotten heal points.
Now those ludicrously lopsided brown and gray bars on the left side of the screen taunt me every time I log in to a match. I would gladly give back the points (and the, in my opinion, lame Ubersaw) to reclaim my integrity and preserve the purity of the game. Otherwise it seems I’m doomed to be the “Shoeless Joe Jackson” of TF2 — forever tainted by momentary weakness and the desire for easy riches.
Of course, I realize players can’t be free to edit their stats at will or else the records will be just as meaningless. No, this requires something far more drastic. What is needed is a kind of “Morning After Pill” for all us regretful Achievement Whores out there — a way to wipe out everything (the good along with the bad) and start over.
At this point, my only hope, as I see it, is if you could use the awesome power of the 1Blog to wish for something and make it so.
7 Christopher // May 21, 2008 at 10:28 am
Stranger - you’re in luck. I just read yesterday that the ability to clear stats will be coming in a future update, according to Robin Walker.
8 Stranger // May 21, 2008 at 10:38 am
Ha -wish and ye shall receive. The power of the 1Blog is not to be denied…
9 Joerdgs // May 21, 2008 at 10:40 am
Achievements just don’t feel like achievements this way…
Same thing as with cheating: you’re not feeling like you actually accomplished anything.
10 Lagged2Death // May 21, 2008 at 10:46 am
I’ve been stuck at 9,985 healing points in one life since long before the achievements came out. Now, with the record set so high, I don’t have any feedback on how close (far) I am from finally gettting Specialist.
11 Punjabi Fury // May 21, 2008 at 10:51 am
Yeah I got mine on a private server with friends. It was actually a nice experience, helping people out and being helped in return.
12 ZomBuster // May 21, 2008 at 11:29 am
It was such a nice time before the servers were kill fests. Servers were still filled with happy medics healing each other and getting achievements along the way.
That was, untill I came along.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2DP7UdOFYA
Now everyone is just killing eachother :(
13 friccish // May 21, 2008 at 11:31 am
Medical Intervention, Placebo Effect and Specialist can all be gotten without farming. Just find the right map.
Toy Fort can easily give you the Medical Intervention, just watch for Demos that don’t make it to the tops of the doors.
Lazytown Nightime gave me Specialist, actually got 13,500 heal points, on 8 ubers. Just run up and down the center ramp, when you’re team owns center. Then backpedal after all ubers. That map is never ending, so you don’t have to worry about the time running out.
And now I can’t actually remember where I got Placebo Effect. But I do remember getting my uber charged, and then forgetting everybody else on the team until I had five kills. It involved handing several spys a saw to the face as they tried to sap sentries and such.
Now Does It Hurt When I Do This? is going to be a bitch!
I personally dislike all the farming, and I’ll wait until I get all mine “legit” (currently at 22). It just doesn’t feel right to me to be waving around a weapon that I never “earned”. But to each his own I guess.
14 Wossname // May 21, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I’m glad I’m not the only one having problems getting Specialist on official maps. It almost feels like good teams who win quickly are penalized.
15 zehran // May 21, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Placebo and Specialist aren’t hard; they were among the 10 first achievements I got. Does It Hurt When I do This? isn’t hard either, it just takes a freaking long time.
Besides ruining achievement servers is really funny.
16 Rico_JB // May 21, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I think we are slowly killing TF2 with this attitude. A map like this defeats the porpouse of the achievments: separate the good medics for de casual ones, since they require effort, skill and luck.
It is frustrating being in a map with 4 medics and get no healing in team play because they are all farming.
17 [@] Chronos[Ha-G] // May 21, 2008 at 1:11 pm
@10 -
If you open up the scoreboard mid-game, you can see how much you’ve healed this round/life (I forget which) - if it’s life, it’s easy. If it’s round, then you’ll have to keep looking at it to see how much additional you’ll need THIS LIFE to get it.
18 palker4 // May 21, 2008 at 1:37 pm
wel if u are good medic on good team you won’t have much trouble healing 10000 points my brother have done 12000+ and my personal best is about 9000+
19 Joe // May 21, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I admit, I went to a farm server to finish off Grand Rounds and You’ll Feel A Little Prick, the last two to get the Kritzkrieg. I felt dirty. But I got Specialist on a legit Dustbowl server, and only had a few thousand to get my million when the achievements unlocked. I figure I’ll get my ubersaw remainders on my won, with the possible exception of Big Pharma, because I just can’t see the servers I play on having that happen…
20 palker4 // May 21, 2008 at 1:54 pm
i have now kritzkrieg after some achievement farming done with my brother on totally empty server it was quite a fun actually for a few minutes but it gets a bit boring
anyway i have that kritzkrieg and screw the stupid uberwsaw it is just not worth it imho.
21 Christopher // May 21, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Well, I think the benefit to a map like Achievement Box is that it gets the farming done in a way that doesn’t disrupt real games. Better that farmers get their goals done in a Box than screw up real matches, I think.
For those medics wanting to get “legit” achievements, hey, power to you. But if you’re in a real game, ignoring your teammates while you chase spies around with your saw or needling scouts, I don’t see how that’s being a good medic. Better to snag a few of the sillier achievements in a Box or with buddies on an empty server than disrupt a real game, I think.
22 Chijts // May 21, 2008 at 2:21 pm
This post reminded me of a psychology lesson about how people get competitve when there is no need to be.
You stick one guy in blue and another in red and all hell breaks loose.
23 Locust99 // May 21, 2008 at 2:29 pm
haha true true.
24 scrimpy // May 21, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Achievementserver with password only given to specific people who are also chosen by somebody.
Problems solved.
25 friccish // May 21, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I agree that it can disrupt a real game when medics are trying to get the more bizarre achievements on real servers. I’ll admit, I’ve ignored people when I’ve been concentrated on a stupid achievement. I just had a Scout be all “WTF? Why did you Uber me, I’m a Scout!”.
The funny thing is that when I have chased after Spys, even though I’ve got a full uber, or when I’ve dropped the healer, and pulled out the saw because an enemy medic jumped into my path, I’ve actually felt like I made more of a difference. Sometimes, I think the placid, typical supporting medics are ok, but the offensive, thinking medics can make a bigger difference.
26 Alex // May 21, 2008 at 3:01 pm
And what if it’s the admin who was greifing?
Sorry to everybody who joined my server!
27 x25killa // May 21, 2008 at 3:57 pm
A well written blog if I may say so :)
I can understand why people want to “farm” or “grind” for the medic achievements. I just reckon the achivement servers need to have admins at all times.
Also, it does help if you have a very good teammate/friend that helps you out.
I just wished valve released all the achievements in one big package instead of just release the packs one by one for each class. It’s insane and almost ruins the game.
At least we have more medics in the game now lol.
28 HyperKUltra // May 21, 2008 at 5:27 pm
AH! LMAO! That STOP KILLING ME Modifier really got meh.
29 belink // May 21, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Good blog, and a good read. If you don’t mind, what nickname to you use ingame? Last night I helped a few nice people to get loads of achievements.
30 chris12 // May 21, 2008 at 7:53 pm
lol, you should really record these at YOUTUB
31 chris12 // May 21, 2008 at 7:54 pm
a constructive look on the map.
32 Silvercide // May 21, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I personally don’t think that the medic achievements need to be any easier. Too easy, and they lose their value. The problem is that some of the achievements ask the player to behave in a manner that a Medic really never should. That can be fine, too. It’s just a video game, and there are a great deal of ways to play it and still have a blast, regardless of how efficient you are playing.
The problem is that Team Fortress 2 is obviously a team-based game, and as soon as you and a steam community friend playing an ubered Heavy start running around trying to punch enemies rather than defending that control point, you’re going to get abused by your team mates (On casual servers, at any rate).
The achievement box is great because it encourages players to be clever, work together, and try to manufacture situations in which they can get achievements that they’re not likely to get in real games. People are going to come in and exploit the situation, sure, but on the whole, I don’t think this kind of achievement grinding should be discouraged.
Unfortunately, when people started griefing on the achievement box server that I was on, I just raged in general rather than rage-quitting. Now I have a similar problem as Stranger, having racked up the unrealistically high Spy score of 65, with over 30 backstabs. The score isn’t too high by the standards of some of the skewed scores we’re getting with these maps, but it’s unlikely enough to greatly irritate me every time I see it.
I didn’t consider that my actions would affect my permanent TF2 record at the time, and I would jump on the opportunity to reset my stats in a heartbeat.
33 Punjabi Fury // May 22, 2008 at 6:46 am
… O_o
34 JohnMcClane // May 22, 2008 at 8:01 am
“So, for the first time in your TF2 career, you ragequit…”
Yeah, I know that feeling! Geesh… :D
35 The Linker // May 22, 2008 at 8:17 am
My stats are messed up too, but it wasn’t my fault. It was at a time everyone seemed to be having problems, with soldiers getting “New best headshots!” and medics getting “New best backstabs!” I didn’t get anything like that, but I DID get a 42-hour lifespan as a scout. Twice. I’ve got friggin’ 84 hours added to my overall time as scout, really dwarfing the other bars. And the “Longest life” meter? Forget about it, the other bars are MICROSCOPIC. :P
I haven’t really seen a big problem with the scout-killing achievement. I think I’ve got pretty much just as many scout needle kills as medic bonesaw kills. Maybe I’ve only been meeting lousy scouts.
36 lemon // May 22, 2008 at 9:02 am
Killer.
37 Matt // May 22, 2008 at 11:47 am
I worked with some people for a long time on achievementbox trying to get the intervention achievement. Then, I noticed that it kept coming up for BLU on Goldrush. It turns out that it’s rather easy to get if you have a soldier constantly shooting the ground before the game starts.
38 Mike // May 22, 2008 at 4:15 pm
I joined one today after reading this out of interest. After thirty seconds I had the extreme urge to burn everyone to a crisp, though, and did so until they left. The server is designed for griefing too, unfortunately.
39 Gothic // May 23, 2008 at 7:05 am
Mike, you’re a dick.
A really AWESOME dick.
40 Jerryboy1993 // May 23, 2008 at 2:26 pm
I’m curious to see what happens to the achievement box servers when the other character packs come. At least people realize the importance of a medic now.
41 Ledundead // May 23, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Hey guys, I’m just wondering: When Chris first downloaded the medic update, he automaticially got some of the acheivements. Is that true? I play on the 360 version, so if we ever get the medic stuff, then I’d like to know.
42 LactoseTheIntolerant // May 23, 2008 at 4:57 pm
I have to be honest here folks - I hold anyone who’s farmed achievements, especially on these servers, in utter contempt.
It really defeats the point in achievements (whatever the point was), cheapens your own success, and isn’t especially fair on anyone who has legitimately earned the alternative weapons.
I’ve never been on AchievementBox, but if I did, it’d probably be to vindictively set up a sentry to mow down the farmers. Not nice, but that’s just how I feel (don’t worry - I’m not planning on actually doing it).
But, I hear you cry, surely I don’t want people farming for achievements on regular servers? No, of course I don’t. It’s infuriating when you see people obviously ignoring the needs of their team because they and a friend want a particular achievement. Yes, it’s only a game, but who honestly doesn’t feel spikes of anger on seeing a duo of medics camped at your spawn healing each other, or an ubered Scout with an un-ubered Heavy next to them? I condone that kind of play, too.
Obviously, that means that a lot of the achievements, if you play by my rules, are almost impossible to get. My answer is, well, fine. I’m not going to sacrifice my Medical integrity for the sake of some upgrades. Besides, I think a lot more of them come naturally than people think. Playing as a Heavy earlier this week, I almost got my Medic the award for punching out during an uber, simply because after an intense defense of a control point, I managed to run out of all ammo (Minigun and Shotgun), and resorted to fists. I killed two people before I picked up more ammo, but one was outside the uber.
So, yes. I’m completely against maps like AchievementBox, and if I see you farming achievements on a public server, brace yourself for some fierce tutting from my corner.
43 LactoseTheIntolerant // May 23, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Re: My last post. I meant I -don’t- condone farming on public servers (as is probably obvious from my ranting, but I can’t let a grammtical error pass by!).
Ledunhead - I know that when the update was released, I got a handful of the achievements for stuff I’d already done. At least I’m pretty sure I did, unless I picked up 5 or 6 achievements without noticing.
44 Matt // May 23, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Some of my not-yet achieved achievements reset recently, specifically any one that was a progress bar except for the total-heal-points.
45 Norman // May 24, 2008 at 12:28 am
I’ve tried a few achievement farming servers, and I always end up helping other people get achievements and I come away with nothing other than a feeling of having helped others out.
And then I remember that I was trying to get achievements for myself….
46 Tom90deg // May 24, 2008 at 3:10 am
Heh, funny story about my achevements. I got enough to get the Blutshlager, cause that was the only one i really wanted to get. The Kritzkreig and the Uber-saw were meh ones to me. So I got about 10 from normal play, (pretty much instantly, I play medic 90% of the time) and went to the Achievement box to get the rest.
Here’s the funny part though. After getting them, all my achevements got erased a day or so after, apparently Valve was purgeing the people who used the cheat code to get em all. I was a bit upset, but Meh, was’nt like it was extremly hard anywho. Then I get a e-mail from Robin Walker.
Hi.
Yesterday, we reset your Medic achievements because we mistakenly
believed you had hacked around the system to get them. Today we discovered a
bug in our code that resulted in you being incorrectly flagged as
cheating. As a result, I’m emailing you to apologize for our error, and to
let you know that we’ve decided to award you the full set of Medic
achievements.
Have fun with the Ubersaw,
Robin Walker.
So that was nice of them :-D
47 Ledundead // May 24, 2008 at 8:27 am
Lucky.
Thanks lactose, I should have a bunch by the time these make it tothe consoles. Also, I have an alternate theory for why the acheivements became easier: They were impossible on consoles. You can only have 8 people per team, so some would be incredibly unlikely, like this one was:
Autoclave: Assist in burning eight enemies with a single Ubercharge on a Pyro
48 JinRoh // May 25, 2008 at 9:37 am
You just described my exact experience while playing Achievementbox, specially with :
“Someone else arrives and begins talking — a good sign, because communication is important in the Box — unfortunately, he’s talking in Russian.”
It always happens :P Luckily I got my ubersaw last week :)
49 landon // May 25, 2008 at 12:03 pm
after playing this map for half an hour, mainly helping people get their achievements and getting a few of my own, i started to get a little anxious. I don’t know what it was, it was like the 5 bots standing there were whispering something to me. Not sweet nothings whispering, mind you - but creepy “Others” in the jungle whispering.
It was then that I switched to spy and backstabbed the bots 30 some times before I was banned from the server. I don’t know if I was all frothy from the root beer float i was drinking, or rabies. First time I have ever been banned from any valve game :(
50 mr. Brit // May 25, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Where are all the posts? I was looking forward to a new demoman and LIO, but it’s been ages.
What’s with the delay??
51 Mike // May 25, 2008 at 7:20 pm
LIO! LIO! LIO!
52 mr. Brit // May 25, 2008 at 11:46 pm
my sentiments exactly ;)
53 Gothic // May 26, 2008 at 6:32 am
15,578 healpoints for the motherfucking win.
54 Aaron // May 26, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I saw your pictures, and I’m sad to say this but, you need a better graphics card. Its just that it looks horrible with graphics low.
Or is it that when you take a picture you graphics are low?
55 Jonah // May 27, 2008 at 5:41 am
Call me crazy but… I think it just looks bad because it’s a bad looking map.
56 Itchy-Muff // Jun 22, 2008 at 5:43 am
Erm … what’s with the box just become better players and get the achievements in game for real If you get them in the box then the only one that’s losing out is you your gonna die real quick if you cant play no matter what achievements you may have earned in a box :0)
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