Fieldrunners 2

Fieldrunners 2

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Tour Of Duty (Work Around)
By gardian06
This is a way to earn (and feel like you actually acomplished something) the Tour of Duty achievement

Disclaimer: This was obtained by only modifying my own system. I did not hack the game. I did not hack Valve/Steam. I did not change any of the games internal files. (the method used is not cheating under any direct definition by Valve, or the developers) you could think of this as a work around to a trivialization of your own time.
   
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Disclaimer
Before anyone starts accusing me of doing something illegal to obtain this first and foremost "I did not"

according to the data at hand (as of writing on July 25th 2014) I have only been playing the game for 77 hours (by Steams clock), and only started the game on the 18th of July 2014

technically this is not cheating this is merily utilizing a work-around to what I would consider to be an otherwise broken achievement
how to achieve
some minor notes before doing this. we will be modifying the date variable of the computer which in most cases requires administrative permission to the system (to the best of my recollection started in Windows Vista)

while performing this work around understand that browsing the internet might be problematic (this has to do with how security certificates for websites are written to be valid for 30 days, and considering that we will be going back more the 30 days to before the certificate was written for it will not be valid)

you do not need to go into offline mode through steam (it will attempt to synchronize the files, but even though the dates are different it will still allow for the file to be overwritten on upload)

1) open the Change Date, and time Settings (this can usually be found from the built in calender)

2) keep this window open as we will be returning to it

3) then select "Change date and time" set the date back six months (in my case I set it from July 25th 2014 to January 3rd 2014 this had to do the the current date being a friday)

4) then open the game (steam may attempt to do a synchronize at this point, but this is because of it being confused, but this should not interfere), and enter into a level. I would suggest Speedhenge (total of a 3 minute timer period, and relatively easily done on any difficulty), or CloneHenge (can be completed in 1 minute on casual) as these 2 can be completed quickly.

5) when the level is complete (not sure how much of the results screen needs to appear, but doesn't add more then a minute, or so to the time)

6) then exit the game

7) wait for Steam to finish synchronizing

9) return the Date and Time Window select "Change date and time" then advance it 1 week (in my case to the next Friday)

10) repeat steps 4 through 9 until achievement is obtained (achievement will actually be given after entering the level) (I actually was given the achievement when my computers date said the 6/13/2014)

11) remember to reset the date to the proper one.
The numbers
after doing a rough calculation I obtained this after 24 weeks given an average of 4 weeks a month six months would come out to 24 weeks

so including load times, sync times, and actual play time (based on speedHenge) this comes out to about 7 minutes per "week" then multiply this by 24 "weeks" we get 168 minutes (or 2 hours 48 minutes) this are vary liberal numbers some of this may go faster for you depending on system performance.

Though if you are good at the clonehenge 1 minute run on casual then you would knoch 2 minutes off each run; therefore completing this in 118 minutes (or 1 hour 58 minutes)
Argument refutation
Some people may state that I am "trivializing the achievement for those that actually earned it." to which I reply "did those people actually earn anything technically they were just following orders issued by the developers to 'play our game for 6 months not because we are going to do anything during that time, but because we said so' this is not an achievement to follow the orders of the developer for all intents and purposes they are treating you just like the runner enemies in their own game, and the trivialization lets talk about how this achievement even existing is a trivialization of the player to a marketing number 'x percent of our players played the game for 6 months' which I don't know which is worse that the game designers would raise that middle finger to the players, or that people would defend this as an achievement"

if you want to blame me of anything blame me for: casting dought on the marketing statement of "X percent of our players played the game at least once a week for 6 months of more, because we have a percentage of users that earned an in game achievement saying so, therefore it is a 'quality' game"
Final Thoughts
by performing this action I felt as though I actually accomplished something instead of just having to return to a game repeatedly as chore (not because I want to, but because I am being commanded)

all in all this achievement is more insulting then all of the number requirements in the achievements from the first game
8 Comments
gardian06  [author] 2 May, 2018 @ 5:25pm 
if that is the way you feel, then you can be really satified with yourself in 6 months when you "earn" it for being a good little fieldrunner.
PageWraith 2 May, 2018 @ 11:02am 
You are wrong, it is their game. You just didn't care for that achievement and found a way to cheat. The truth is most games put a PITA achievement in the list to give bragging rights to a perfect game. Your liberal ass does not decide what counts and what does not.
flynn4711 23 Sep, 2014 @ 3:50pm 
I thought of that too already, got 75h on my clock. Though i still miss some more archievements, so i nm playing once a week. Maybe when i got the rest i'll think about it again.
gardian06  [author] 15 Aug, 2014 @ 11:16am 
@superFluffyKitty that is great.

the numbers that I gave were being very liberal with my times: effectively 2 minutes to load the game from the executable/library (loading the game felt very front heavy, and after doing some memory profiling on it most things in this game seem to be rather memory efficient after initial creation), and 2 minutes to go through the results screen, evit the game, and wait for sync to complete (steam raises a hissy fit at times if this does not complete before the same game, or any game is launched). I did these considerations if the player is not playing this game on a very fast machine (though I do assume a faster internet connection)

so accounting for small math you were doing between 2, and 2.5 minutes per run your system must have a good performance setup
SuperFluffyKitty 15 Aug, 2014 @ 8:54am 
Just tried and works like a charm.
Used clonehenge on casual and took under an hour
Nostil 28 Jul, 2014 @ 1:47pm 
okay, I see your point with the called into question thing, but I think the devs would be more lily to list the average number of hours people have played their game in marketing, not how many have the achevment.
gardian06  [author] 28 Jul, 2014 @ 1:06pm 
boycotting an achievement really doesn't do that much as the only way I could even state such is in a forum post (which could be deleted by the thread moderator: the developer/publisher), and then a boycot by 1 is "how cute" I would basically have to get a good hundred+ people to back me up to even get any recognition.

not to mention by even having such a guide in a publicly viewable location means that any marketing statement from braging about such a thing is automatically called into question, and then this method could probably be replicated on any device that the date can be manually altered. calling the metric into question on all of it.
Nostil 28 Jul, 2014 @ 12:15pm 
I see your point about the marketing and being commanded, but it still feels like you are trivializing the achevment for the people who did play it once a week for 1/2 year. and you would beright about it being a marketing thing if they used it as one, but not enough people do that. and if you DO feel like it is a marketing thing, you should boycot the achevment, not give it to more people, other wise the developers can brag about the number being higher than it is.