Commendation and Achievement Farming

[Baeztoberfest]

What are y'all's thoughts on this? Cheating? A last ditch effort to get those last few hard achievements? Or is it totally legit? Lets talk farming.

[FleshBack]

I never felt good about anything I boosted for in any game. I wouldn't enjoy any achievements, commendations, or armor if I got them by boosting. For that reason the temptation escapes me.

[Zuko 'Zarhamee]

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by farming, but as long as it doesn't cause problems for other players and doesn't break any rules of the game, it seems like it would be fine to me.

Edited February 3, 2013 by Zuko 'Zarhamee

[Baeztoberfest]

Boosting maybe would've been a better word? I dunno. I can't stand when people do that. Act like they have NO IDEA what it is you're saying when general context clues are enough that Helen Kellar would understand. It's just annoying...

[36-2071 Pragmatic Avarice]

Playing Spartan Ops alone ad infinity isn't an offense, if it doesn't involve mods that boost commendations counters. In fact, there's an achievement for going alone....

 

Mad men, like me, play Spartan Ops LEGENDARY alone. It's a hardcore plot development fallacy.

[Bloody Initiate]

Yeah you've used several words that have different definitions.

 

Boosting is when you cooperate with your enemies to achieve goals. This is often done by getting two friends with 4 controllers and going into a 4v4 playlist, attacking idle guests. Another way this is often done is in FFA playlists where you get more enemies to kill quickly (So you can make multikills faster). It's also common in games like Grifball where players begin with a powerful killing capacity.

 

Farming is when you take advantage of a sort of cost/benefit analysis of automated game features. You can't really "farm" players, because they tend to change what they're doing which defeats the purpose. But you could "farm" Spartan Ops missions because they keep coming up, have a limited time investment (low cost) and a high experience reward (high benefit). Farming is investing minimum time and resources in a game for maximum rewards.

 

Cheating is when you alter the game or take advantage of known exploits (Like super-jumping in Halo 2, people say "it's in the game" and so it's not cheating, but the Xbox Live definition of cheating is much less flexible).

 

I think you made this thread about boosting, specifically getting with other players and sort of taking turns bending over to accomplish goals (Like commendations) or just bringing guests.

 

I think boosting is a pretty lame way to get achievements and commendations, and not only have I never been THAT much of a completionist I've also never thought it was necessary. Aside from finding the skulls I got all my achievements and medals in Halo 3 legitimately, it wasn't THAT hard (Although the two deaths from the grave took me forever, and it was a very funny achievement to fail to get). Generally before DLC boosting for achievements didn't really apply in Halo Reach or Halo 4 because they didn't have as many matchmaking achievements. However DLC brought those achievements and the boosters came back out.

 

For some people though having that list complete is more important than striving to complete it, and while I don't agree with their practices I've never felt they were hurting my game. I never really understood why people got so upset about boosting, because while I think it's a bit pathetic it's not really hurting anyone. Until Halo 4 you didn't really gain any in-game advantage from completing everything, and boosting is less practical than farming in Halo 4, farming REALLY doesn't hurt anyone.

 

I may not really sympathize with boosters and I may think they pursue a fool's errand, but they're generally not hurting anyone. Also I was actually OK at Halo 3 and Halo Reach, so things like perfections which seemed very hard to obtain I obtained legitimately with enough patience. I wasn't getting perfections every day or anything, but they came to me if I played normally for long enough. I know someone who had a very hard time getting a perfection though, never got one on his own tag (He got his first one as someone's guest) and he boosted for it right before Reach came out. I don't approve, but I don't really care either.

 

Cheating is a different story, I don't know how you'd cheat in this game to get an achievement (Mod so you have an invincible Mantis to get your stomps?) but cheating is always bad, and never OK imo.

[Baeztoberfest]

Yeah you've used several words that have different definitions.

 

Boosting is when you cooperate with your enemies to achieve goals. This is often done by getting two friends with 4 controllers and going into a 4v4 playlist, attacking idle guests. Another way this is often done is in FFA playlists where you get more enemies to kill quickly (So you can make multikills faster). It's also common in games like Grifball where players begin with a powerful killing capacity.

 

Farming is when you take advantage of a sort of cost/benefit analysis of automated game features. You can't really "farm" players, because they tend to change what they're doing which defeats the purpose. But you could "farm" Spartan Ops missions because they keep coming up, have a limited time investment (low cost) and a high experience reward (high benefit). Farming is investing minimum time and resources in a game for maximum rewards.

 

Cheating is when you alter the game or take advantage of known exploits (Like super-jumping in Halo 2, people say "it's in the game" and so it's not cheating, but the Xbox Live definition of cheating is much less flexible).

 

I think you made this thread about boosting, specifically getting with other players and sort of taking turns bending over to accomplish goals (Like commendations) or just bringing guests.

 

I think boosting is a pretty lame way to get achievements and commendations, and not only have I never been THAT much of a completionist I've also never thought it was necessary. Aside from finding the skulls I got all my achievements and medals in Halo 3 legitimately, it wasn't THAT hard (Although the two deaths from the grave took me forever, and it was a very funny achievement to fail to get). Generally before DLC boosting for achievements didn't really apply in Halo Reach or Halo 4 because they didn't have as many matchmaking achievements. However DLC brought those achievements and the boosters came back out.

 

For some people though having that list complete is more important than striving to complete it, and while I don't agree with their practices I've never felt they were hurting my game. I never really understood why people got so upset about boosting, because while I think it's a bit pathetic it's not really hurting anyone. Until Halo 4 you didn't really gain any in-game advantage from completing everything, and boosting is less practical than farming in Halo 4, farming REALLY doesn't hurt anyone.

 

I may not really sympathize with boosters and I may think they pursue a fool's errand, but they're generally not hurting anyone. Also I was actually OK at Halo 3 and Halo Reach, so things like perfections which seemed very hard to obtain I obtained legitimately with enough patience. I wasn't getting perfections every day or anything, but they came to me if I played normally for long enough. I know someone who had a very hard time getting a perfection though, never got one on his own tag (He got his first one as someone's guest) and he boosted for it right before Reach came out. I don't approve, but I don't really care either.

 

Cheating is a different story, I don't know how you'd cheat in this game to get an achievement (Mod so you have an invincible Mantis to get your stomps?) but cheating is always bad, and never OK imo.

 

Yeah ^ This guy gets it. That was my question. Like I mastered Reach and tore it up. But then not really having an option to get lucky enough that all players had DLC in a playlist was lame to me. So I put an ad out looking for other players who had DLC.

 

Halo 3 is so far down as far as new players, players like myself who have switched gamer tags a lot have no chance of getting a complete game in 3 BESIDES boosting. Seriously but that's not the games fault. Except maybe a double kill with a SL in a ranked FFA. That was luck all the way.

 

On subject.

 

In 4? Some of the beat down man cannon ones are kinda dumb. That has nothing to do with skill and the requirements seem a bit rushed. Most come with game play which I'm fine with (except where they get carried away cough* SERIOUSLY GOW cough* but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

 

Looking on line there seems to be a lot of glitches on how to make Cheevo's pop. I was interested but it seems like the community has a pretty low opinion of people like that.

 

It just got me thinking about everyone's voice on the subject.

[l Xenoes l]

I've only boosted one thing so far in this game and it was the 20 Mantis Stomp kill achievement for the DLC. I already had 10 and some friends got together and asked if I wanted in on it so I did and once I got it I left. I already had all the others. The playlist never had a big population so it was hard to get it easily and I got bored of playing nothing but, CTF and Extraction. Plus people wouldn't vote for shatter every single time so it took quite some time just to get those 10 kills.

 

I don't care about people boosting or farming. It is a little irritating when I see a SR 40 or below player with Venator armor or the green visor cause I know they boosted or cheated to get it. Seen a level 37 guy with the Protector armor variant for Weapon Mastery.

[36-2071 Pragmatic Avarice]

Competitive Spartan Rank was also conceived because you can basically fly through Spartan Rank, with Legendary Spartan Ops marathons.