Halo 3 achievement party: I think I figured it out

So I'm desperatly trying to get that one last Halo 3 achievement that's been eluding me: Steppin' Razor, and after another 5 or 6 games of no luck (usually, no sword) I give up and dig through the internets, yes, all of them, to find an answer to my dillema, it appears there is only 1.

Since you need to be playing in a RANKED playlist to get most of the multiplayer achievements, you can't naturally "party up". But, there is a crafty little way. Set your xbox's language to something completely asinine that no real xbox owner would use, and set halo 3 to multiplay in "same language only". So, you just need a few willing cohorts who are up for the same shenanigans.

All that said, is there anyone else here who craves the ridiculously stupid security helmet and way ghetto sword as much as I do? I'd love to organize a party (perhaps, in association with a game of zombie skate) where we just go and snag all of the achievements that people are still looking for. I imagine it wouldn't take more than a few rotations to get a laundry list of items if we cooperate.

I'm thru trying to find randoms to help me with this one, I should have thought to ask this board ages ago.

PS> Feel free to friend me: "The Reach"

Hmm, that's a very interesting way of going about it.. I'll add you. I need that helmet.

Whats the deal with all the achievement whoring on this?

I can't join a game without over half the people begging to do achievments... Which is absolutely stupid for public games and i never participate.

Achievements are the new gaming crack. Hell, I played Medic in TF2 for a couple hours last night just to get the Head of the Class achievement, and I'm not a very good medic.

Edit: The old gaming crack being, you know, fun.

nsmike wrote:

Achievements are the new gaming crack. Hell, I played Medic in TF2 for a couple hours last night just to get the Head of the Class achievement, and I'm not a very good medic.

Edit: The old gaming crack being, you know, fun.

I am missing one damn class, and I am not sure which one it is.

Wow, Add me in. I'll be online for zombie skate tonight hopefully... After 8pm EST All I need are Steppin Razor and Overkill.

Personally, I'm of the mind that achievements should be earned and not shortcutted through. I realize there are loopholes to everything, but pulling off some of the more difficult achievements should be just that, an achievement earned in regular play and not a quest for helmets or gamer points.

Heck, maybe Bungie is missing a key opportunity and should be selling the samurai armor as DLC if you don't want to earn it, a la EA.

ranalin wrote:

Whats the deal with all the achievement whoring on this?

I can't join a game without over half the people begging to do achievments... Which is absolutely stupid for public games and i never participate.

We want the pretty unlocks.

Personally, I took a route with equal parts of cheating and earning (I cheated some of the hard ones, like steppin' razor and the laser double kill one but earned others, like the kill frenzy and mongoose mowdown achievements) and I feel quite satisfied with what I was able to do. Also, in the process of working out both paths I ended up at skill rank 32 in the Lone Wolves list, which is the biggest achievement of all since I never expected my limited hand eye coordination to be able to carry me much beyond skill rank 15. Honestly, I see the social engineering needed to convince four strangers to cooperate with you during a ten second lobby countdown to be almost as big a challenge as earning some of the achievements legitimately.

Anyway, I've got all the achievements already, but if you guys have trouble putting together a group of five people to work on this, I'll be glad to help if I'm around.

LockAndLoad wrote:

Personally, I'm of the mind that achievements should be earned and not shortcutted through. I realize there are loopholes to everything, but pulling off some of the more difficult achievements should be just that, an achievement earned in regular play and not a quest for helmets or gamer points.

I agree with you, and I get that special feeling when I accomplish a quite difficult task and get an achievement for it. But, killing everyone else on the map within four seconds of each other is an utter crap shoot, you either have to be extremely lucky or... well extremely lucky. Sure they're relatively in the same area in king of the hill or oddball... if they're playing to win... or are they sitting back and doing the same thing you are? I honestly hate lone wolf or Rumble pit. I'd much rather be in a team setting. But here I am a level 29 captain on lone wolf from constantly trying to get those last 2 online achievements... I got the rest fair and square. and at level 29... getting even a double kill is rare.

Edit: Forgot to mention that 90% of the time King of the hill or Oddball gets vetoed quick, so that rules out that strategy.

If I'm on, go ahead and invite me. We'll see what happens.

I'm too tired to be an achievement whore this morning.

Is that katana that gets unlocked just decoration or can you actually wield it.

It's Just for decoration. But that isn't what it's about for me anymore. I'm so close to 1000/1000 that I just don't want to give up. This'll be my first 1000/1000 game... well besides oblivion... but that was easy, just time consuming..

Amen, I'm at 995 of 1000, and honest to god I've earned every other achievement. Its taken forever and I only had a modicum of collusion on a few of them (ok, a lobby did once agree that we should all go do the two-for-one laser kill instead of playing KOTH on Snowbound once).

Getting overkill NATURALLY, mongoose mowdown with some luck, etc, that's all been great, but now that I'm in the 20's as well in my Lone Wolves rank, no one is willing to cooperate anymore to get this 1 last achievement.

I'm going to lookup the language settings and post a suggestion here. Is anyone else up for attempting this tonight? I'm not sure when I can get on, so I'm going to need to clear this with the better half.

I used to actually care more about achievements (for all the fun reasons) until I saw just how widespread the exploitive behavior that this thread exhibits started to occur.

I agree with most of the things said in this thread so far. Here's the thing that gets me- it seems like the achievements were picked WAY before the playlists were designed. You'll see they only mentioned ranked FFA games- not lone wolf. The overkill achievement doesn't have to mean every other player on the map- what if they were designing a FFA ranked gametype that was 16 people? overkill and stepin razer and the laser would be relatively easy compared to now.

While I don't follow the mad achievement craze, if I'm on and you want help getting em, I'm happy to join.

Achievement games annoy me. I wasted 10 minutes of my life the other day because I got stuck in consecutive games. I didn't want to cheat, the others did. If I'd have quit I'd have been penalised.

1Dgaf wrote:

Achievement games annoy me. I wasted 10 minutes of my life the other day because I got stuck in consecutive games. I didn't want to cheat, the others did. If I'd have quit I'd have been penalised.

This was the most annoying part of Shadowrun for me: otherwise great games were ruined by people more obsessed with earning some damn achievement than playing the game as part of their team.

Multiplayer achievements, particularly ones that can only be done in ranked matches, are stupid. They encourage players to play a different game than their teammates.

1Dgaf wrote:

Achievement games annoy me. I wasted 10 minutes of my life the other day because I got stuck in consecutive games. I didn't want to cheat, the others did. If I'd have quit I'd have been penalised.

Is this (that is, the desire to "cheat" for your achievements) the fault of the players or the designers? Obviously, some of these things are meant to be uncovered in the course of gameplay naturally, but you can only go so far to keep players from discovering the goal and wanting to get the points, even if you make the achievements secret.

Is it really cheating to want to get the achievements? Is it cheating that a friend of mine took me around to all of the skulls in the game and then I did the same for some other friends? Is it cheating to just stand there and try to get an achievement without "accidentally" getting it in the course of gameplay? I mean, when am I going to accidentally take down a Banshee with a spartan laser? The idea that achievements are all meant to be accomplished innocently without trying to get them is absurd.

I'm going to try and get in with you guys on this. The sooner I get the achievements the sooner I can put halo 3 behind me.

WiredAsylum wrote:
nsmike wrote:

Achievements are the new gaming crack. Hell, I played Medic in TF2 for a couple hours last night just to get the Head of the Class achievement, and I'm not a very good medic.

Edit: The old gaming crack being, you know, fun.

I am missing one damn class, and I am not sure which one it is.

I am a terrible person for doing so, but I created my own passworded server so I could be alone to knock out some achievements. I hate playing as a Heavy or a Spy, so I quickly blew through a CP match with each class so I didn't have to waste peoples time playing classes I suck at in a real match to get the achievement. Commence spitting and/or shunning :).

nsmike wrote:
1Dgaf wrote:

Achievement games annoy me. I wasted 10 minutes of my life the other day because I got stuck in consecutive games. I didn't want to cheat, the others did. If I'd have quit I'd have been penalised.

Is this (that is, the desire to "cheat" for your achievements) the fault of the players or the designers? Obviously, some of these things are meant to be uncovered in the course of gameplay naturally, but you can only go so far to keep players from discovering the goal and wanting to get the points, even if you make the achievements secret.

Is it really cheating to want to get the achievements? Is it cheating that a friend of mine took me around to all of the skulls in the game and then I did the same for some other friends? Is it cheating to just stand there and try to get an achievement without "accidentally" getting it in the course of gameplay? I mean, when am I going to accidentally take down a Banshee with a spartan laser? The idea that achievements are all meant to be accomplished innocently without trying to get them is absurd.

The fault of both.

I got taken around skulls too. I didn't want them for the achievement points, but to see how the game played with them. I'd have preferred if the skulls were just options available to everyone at the beginning.

The difference between a skull and a multiplayer game is that I don't f*ck everyone else's time by getting skulls. At worst - at worst - I devalue their achievements. That is another matter, one which I've not commented on.

I don't think it's cheating if one gets an achievement accidentally. That's different to a group of people standing still to let an opponent laser them, then taking turns to do the same.

Also, It's not absurd that achievements, at least in multiplayer games, are meant to be accomplished innocently. It's not absurd that I don't want to be in a game where I'd like to play, while others would not.

Like it or not, achievements are here to stay. The only remaining major gaming platform that doesn't have them is the Wii. As a matter of fact, there are claims that they increase sales and review scores, and anything that is good for business isn't going anywhere.

1Dgaf wrote:

I don't think it's cheating if one gets an achievement accidentally. That's different to a group of people standing still to let an opponent laser them, then taking turns to do the same.

Also, It's not absurd that achievements, at least in multiplayer games, are meant to be accomplished innocently. It's not absurd that I don't want to be in a game where I'd like to play, while others would not.

First off, it's definitely not cheating if someone gets an achievement accidentally or without trying to.

Secondly, you're applying some value system to achievements that doesn't exist. Sure, it screws with your good time, but XBox Live gives you recourse for situations like those. Leave bad feedback for those players who want to stand around and just laser each other. There's no measurable way to say that you must get the achievement by doing it in the course of natural gameplay, so it can't really be a constraint on the achievement. If someone wants to stand around and be lasered, and then laser others just standing there, and that fulfills the requirements of the achievement, then that's the end of the debate.

I know it's not cheating, but I wasn't sure if you thought it might be.

It sounds like you're saying that because there's no way to measure how people get achievements, there's no constraint on how they're to be achieved.

Yet if there's no constraint on how they're achieved, then why limit some of them to ranked free-for-all matches?

I think it's because Bungie do want to limit how people get achievements and that was the easiest way of doing it.

nsmike wrote:

There's no measurable way to say that you must get the achievement by doing it in the course of natural gameplay, so it can't really be a constraint on the achievement. If someone wants to stand around and be lasered, and then laser others just standing there, and that fulfills the requirements of the achievement, then that's the end of the debate.

Certainly, and likewise, if I feel that:

Farscry wrote:

I used to actually care more about achievements (for all the fun reasons) until I saw just how widespread the exploitive behavior that this thread exhibits started to occur.

Then that's the end of the debate as well.

There are reasons I avoid games with people I don't know, and the rampant proliferation of exploit-abusing achievement addicts is a significant part of it.

[edited to be less offensive ;)]

1Dgaf wrote:

It sounds like you're saying that because there's no way to measure how people get achievements, there's no constraint on how they're to be achieved.

Yet if there's no constraint on how they're achieved, then why limit some of them to ranked free-for-all matches?

I think it's because Bungie do want to limit how people get achievements and that was the easiest way of doing it.

It's not that there's no constraint at all. Obviously those match type restrictions are meant to make it as difficult as possible for people to collaborate and squeeze those achievements out of the flaws inherent in the system. For example, allowing voice communications in the lobby, which greatly facilitates cooperation, even though you can't voice chat in the match itself.

But my point is that since there is no applicable constraint on ensuring honest methodology in getting an achievement, there is no implicit measure of a dishonest method. Since such a constraint would not be enforceable except at great cost, the constraint is abandoned altogether.

nsmike wrote:

If someone wants to stand around and be lasered, and then laser others just standing there, and that fulfills the requirements of the achievement, then that's the end of the debate.

It's not really that much of an achievement then in my eyes. People boasting or just refrencing their scores that do this are pretty much liars. They didn't "achieve" anything except a higher score.

ranalin wrote:
nsmike wrote:

If someone wants to stand around and be lasered, and then laser others just standing there, and that fulfills the requirements of the achievement, then that's the end of the debate.

It's not really that much of an achievement then in my eyes. People boasting or just refrencing their scores that do this are pretty much liars. They didn't "achieve" anything except a higher score.

Which brings about the issue of the value of achievements. In GFW Live/XBox Live, achievements give you gamerscore. Steam, however, does not. Which system is better? It's hard to say.

You can see Bungie's philosophy pretty clearly when looking at achievements. Beating the game on Legendary can be a task. It's also one they exclusively control. It's potentially worth up to 375 gamerscore.

Then again, in an environment where they can't entirely control all variables, some of the "harder" achievements are worth much less. For example, Overkill. Only worth 5 gamerscore. Both of these are essentially badges, but because one is measurably more difficult to achieve, it's worth more. Bungie foresaw exploitation of the Overkill achievement in multiplayer. It also pretty much loses its status as a badge worth anything outside of that 5 gamerscore.

Steam, on the other hand, forewent any kind of scoring altogether. They let their achievements be entirely based upon bragging rights. You, and pretty much everyone else with an achievement, knows which achievements are truly worth the bragging rights, and no gamerscore is attached to it. Then again, other than the badges and bragging rights, there's not much else to be gained from these achievements. There's no boost to a Steam gamerscore equivalent. Your Steam rank is based on how much time you spend in their games.

So, which is better - a system that pre-values its achievements and thereby reduces the value of overall gamerscore, but is capable of putting a clear emphasis on which achievements are truly deserved and which ones are circumstantial, or a system that places no value on achievements except completionism and bragging rights, but is vague on which ones are actually worth anything?

nsmike wrote:
1Dgaf wrote:

It sounds like you're saying that because there's no way to measure how people get achievements, there's no constraint on how they're to be achieved.

Yet if there's no constraint on how they're achieved, then why limit some of them to ranked free-for-all matches?

I think it's because Bungie do want to limit how people get achievements and that was the easiest way of doing it.

It's not that there's no constraint at all. Obviously those match type restrictions are meant to make it as difficult as possible for people to collaborate and squeeze those achievements out of the flaws inherent in the system. For example, allowing voice communications in the lobby, which greatly facilitates cooperation, even though you can't voice chat in the match itself.

But my point is that since there is no applicable constraint on ensuring honest methodology in getting an achievement, there is no implicit measure of a dishonest method. Since such a constraint would not be enforceable except at great cost, the constraint is abandoned altogether.

I'm a bit confused. We agree that there's a constraint - that's the thing trying to stop the dishonest method - but then we're saying there's no measurement.

Well, if the constraint is 'Everyone fights each other' and the achievement is gained through 'Everyone holds hands and works together to get the achievement', then isn't the hand-holding the measurement ?

1Dgaf wrote:

I'm a bit confused. We agree that there's a constraint - that's the thing trying to stop the dishonest method - but then we're saying there's no measurement.

Well, if the constraint is 'Everyone fights each other' and the achievement is gained through 'Everyone holds hands and works together to get the achievement', then isn't the hand-holding the measurement ?

But there is no constraint on ensuring an honest method. The constraints are limited to ensuring that you play in a ranked FFA match. What that implies is what we're arguing. You claim it implies that the developers wanted you to achieve it honestly. I'm claiming that it implies nothing more than they want you to do it in a ranked FFA match. Maybe their intention was to make it difficult for you to cooperate and farm the achievement out of the game, but intention doesn't factor in when that little graphic and sound pops on your screen. I'm also saying that because an honesty constraint is unenforceable (not only that, but also unimplementable), it's also irrelevant. If you're dissatisfied with that behavior, XBox Live gives you the tools to disapprove with bad feedback. But the value judgment is yours alone. The achievement already carries the stigma of being easily gotten with cooperation. To claim you got yours honestly is like comparing a genuine dollar to a perfect counterfeit dollar. On the surface, they look the same, but I really have no reason to believe that the genuine dollar is real other than your word.