It is pointless to increase the difficulty of the game

[SANTIMEL]

Goal

Encourage hardcore players

Situation

There are no achievements on Steam, for players who like to play in Deathworld mode, or in Marathon mode.
And much more insulting. That there are no achievements for playing the World of Death and the Marathon at the same time.

In the game, although it says that the player will not have access certain achievements. If he reduces certain parameters when creating a map.
That's just judging by the description of achievements on Steam. There is no point in increasing the difficulty of the game. Since this is not a condition of any kind achievements.

Decision

Add new achievements for different game modes.
Such as: The World of death, Marathon, the World of death and Marathon, the World of trains, etc.

[Illiander42]

There is no point in increasing the difficulty of the game.

Personal challenge.

Not everything has to be about badge collecting.

[SANTIMEL]

Of course you are right!
For example, I hate that you can't disable achievements on Steam.
When the window pops up that you have received this or that achievement. It knocks you out of immersion in the game world. Throwing it into the real one.

But Factorio is not the case. This is not a game with a first-person view.
And most importantly, Factorio already has a bunch of achievements on the usual difficulty.
And it is very depressing that hardcore achievements are not encouraged.
It demotivates to make adventures.

[Illiander42]

For example, I hate that you can't disable achievements on Steam.

You actually can. Just turn off the in-game overlay.

And it is very depressing that hardcore achievements are not encouraged.
It demotivates to make adventures.

This seems like you don't enjoy the game, you just want the badges.

[SANTIMEL]

Stop thinking for me.

Game achievements are not meaningless figurines that you can buy on the market.
These achievements provide additional goals and challenges. In addition to the one that is in the game initially.
And the depressing thing is that this is not the case for hardcore modes.

[Tertius]

And it is very depressing that hardcore achievements are not encouraged.
It demotivates to make adventures.

Speak only for yourself.
For me, hardcore achievements are depressing, because they are only reachable if I force myself to play in a way I don't like, and I don't like forced gameplay.

There is a completely different achievement approach with a game like Vampire Survivors, which has its own achievement with every thing you do and unlock. Even the most basic and required things. Currently 211 achievements available. This is a thing I like very much, because your score is the number of achievements you have, which correlates to how many parts of the game you have seen. It's even better, because achievements are added with game updates, so the most rare achievements are not the most difficult but just the ones most recently added. They mirror how much of the game you played, not how well you danced for the developers.

[SANTIMEL]

That sounds great.
Until you remember that it's usually already in the game.

It somewhat resembles the check marks under completed tasks.
Questions on the map. Which icons change when you study those zones.
As well as checkboxes in Factorio, about the completed training of certain game mechanics.

[FuryoftheStars]

Personal challenge.

Not everything has to be about badge collecting.

Agreed.

Although, I'd rather see them be removed altogether to burn and rot in Hell....

[MeduSalem]

For me, hardcore achievements are depressing, because they are only reachable if I force myself to play in a way I don't like, and I don't like forced gameplay.

[...] They mirror how much of the game you played, not how well you danced for the developers.

I share similar feelings here. The feeling of having to play in unnatural, weird, stressful/time-limited or even blatantly self-crippling & masochistic ways with restrictions just to hunt some achievements is annoying. While I surely can and did play games that way, I also have to say that it often felt much, much less rewarding than it should have. xD


That is why, for example, despite having hundreds over hundreds of hours in many of the Paradox games I have not unlocked many achievements in them. Because there like 90% of the achievements they add are totally memey. They require you to play exactly in one specific odd and/or stupid way; one which you would never play in 99% of the standard ways to play the games because it is 180° against the flow of a natural playthrough. From all the games I played the Paradox ones can crown themselves kings of this kind of sh*t. Maybe there are even worse games out there, don't know.


But with games like that in the past where I was still more completionist & competitive about such things it also has driven me to the point where I started to cheese a lot of such achievements by abusing weird game bugs & exploits or by using mods or other ways that don't alter checksums or otherwise work around dev command lines that would count as cheating and hence disable achievements. And I don't even feel bad about it. It is basically my middlefinger in the game developer's face for making it that annoying. ^^

Good, it is kinda extreme example of how the stuff is failing to provide a fun experience and I am biased because for me it has grown to be more annoying than fun.



But to get back to Factorio, Factorio also has a few of these kind of achievements where it kinda forces you play in a particular way; and you will very likely only play that way once to get that achievement and then afterwards you will never play that way again because it is simply annoying. xD

For example the speed run achievements; or playing without a particular type of turrets or energy production or without logistic bots. Or the lazy bastard achievement. You probably only ever do all that stuff once to prove you can beat the game that way. But once you have done that it serves no replay-value.

There is a completely different achievement approach with a game like Vampire Survivors, which has its own achievement with every thing you do and unlock. Even the most basic and required things. Currently 211 achievements available. This is a thing I like very much, because your score is the number of achievements you have, which correlates to how many parts of the game you have seen. It's even better, because achievements are added with game updates, so the most rare achievements are not the most difficult but just the ones most recently added. They mirror how much of the game you played, not how well you danced for the developers.

Hence why I also like games with a similar approach.


One game I personally feel is nice and does it in one of best and non-intrusive ways... is for example is Stardew Valley.

Most of the achievements happen naturally as you progress through the game and story.
You are also not locked out of achieving all the achievements in a single playthrough either. You can take your sweet time to do stuff as you want them to. No time limits or anything (I really hate time limited stuff).
It also keeps separate track of achieving various things for each savegame/playthrough, so it is more or less like a checklist of things you have done or still need or want to do.


And I feel like sadly not many games out there are like that.

[Kyralessa]

I find most Steam achievements fairly stupid. (Civ V ones are the worst: Lose a game with every civ!? That's an "achievement"?) Factorio has a decent number without going overboard, but I don't think it really needs more. Probably it'll have more in the expansion.

You can always use the Milestones mod to see, not so much achievements, but times to first of each science pack type, time to kill each biter type, etc. Then you can try to beat your times.

[Illiander42]

Game achievements are not meaningless figurines that you can buy on the market.

They actually are. Go play on an open server for a few hours and you'll pick up most of them.

[SANTIMEL]

It just depends on the concept that the game developers choose.
For example, in Skyrim, the main part of the achievements are achievements for completed storylines.
Or, for example, in some games, death is an achievement.
The absurdity …
But like I said. It all depends on the concept that the game developers choose.

[Illiander42]

Factorio achievements are basically checkpoints.

There's the "have played the game to X point" achievements, the speedrun achievements, and the megabase achievements.

Then there's the three challenge achievements (no solar, no laser, no logi).

They could add a few more combat checkpoint achievements if they wanted, but one of the cool things about Factorio is that you can get every achievement in a single playthrough. I really don't want them to lose that, so they'd have to be things like "kill X biters in a minute" that are easier on deathworld, but still possible on default. And stuff like that would be so easy to get with nukes that they wouldn't actually be a challenge.

[SirSmuggler]

one of the cool things about Factorio is that you can get every achievement in a single playthrough.

Not saying you are wrong, but I imagine it's atleast very dificult to get the speedruning stuff (There is no spoon or what ever it is called, and geting a train runing in a set amount of time) and allso lazy bastard, and all the no solar, no laser, no logibots in the same playthrough.


Any way, the concept of "Achivements" is IMO kind of silly. I play games to have fun, not to show of all my "Achivements" to my friends.

[Tertius]

It all depends on the concept that the game developers choose.

In the end, achievements are only selling points. They don't add content, they don't add gameplay value, they just document "player did <this>".

Today, games seem to struggle to tell the gamers about all the available content within the game itself, so gamers leave games early just because they're not able to find all the content. I guess there are people who played Skyrim for 20 hours just the main quest and think they're done with the game, although they've seen perhaps 10% of what the game has to offer. This is an acceptable kind of achievement to show people what the game also has to offer.

Online games build whole time consuming game mechanics around achievements to make gamers stay in the game, because the original content of online games is usually not very deep and sophisticated. Combat system is sophisticated, but that's all. It's these online games that made me see through the real purpose of achievements. They're a mechanic to sell more of the game, because players don't stop with the game until they got enough achievements. Many players don't enjoy the game itself, instead they enjoy showing off achievements to other gamers.

I once was with the people who like to show off their achievements. I played some MMO. It was an addictive game, and I was addicted. Until the game somehow set me free, and afterwards I realized I was addicted, and I was able to see through the real purpose of this kind of achievements. Keep players at stake. Since then I explicitly avoid games with these kind of achievements, and if possible, I try to ignore any achievements. In Factorio it's very easy fortunately, you just have to install a mod to get no public achievements any more. I was really relieved after I did that - the addiction to achievements is still there, and I fear it will always be there. You ask for specifically such achievements, and I tell you these are evil.

[Illiander42]

one of the cool things about Factorio is that you can get every achievement in a single playthrough.

Not saying you are wrong, but I imagine it's atleast very dificult to get the speedruning stuff (There is no spoon or what ever it is called, and geting a train runing in a set amount of time) and allso lazy bastard, and all the no solar, no laser, no logibots in the same playthrough.

The hard combo is lazy + the speedrunning ones. No solar, no lazer, no logi is easy either way.

The current 100% record is just under four and a half hours, and most of that time is spent on the last green circuit achievement (seriously, that last green circuit achievement is the megabasing achievement).

[Alsadius]

Achievements are optional. You can use them as inspiration for wacky runs, but aside from the shortest lists, getting to 100% is usually a sign of crippling addiction, and/or being a professional content creator.

I wouldn't mind some new ones, but if I want to play a challenge, I'll just challenge myself. It's a sandbox game, I can do that.

[Npl]

Achievements are bloody useless at best, can take you out of the game, can spoil details if you look at the condition. But we (nowadays known as "the old people") all know the horrible truth: It replaced something way better.

Back in the time you did not have achievements but games did allow you to unlock cheats / tweaks or give you art or a viewer for ingame models, for ex.: https://jakanddaxter.fandom.com/wiki/Jak_II_secrets .

[aka13]

I also would like some deathworld-marathon related achievements/challenges.
I still don't have lazy bastard and the speedrunning ones, after all those years, but frankly, I don't care.

More achievements, especially specific ones, is always a fun thing to have.

[mmmPI]

I also think achievement are useless for players, they do not increase the game difficulty, they document something that happened. I read devs use them to gauge what players are doing and which hurdle they are facing. So i wouldn't be surprise to see some new related to space, more like milestones.

And the biters are not the difficulty in the game i found, they are not very capable opponent to say the least x). They always attempt the same primitive strategy , using numbers and meatwaves like a beginner AI in RTS. To me, the difficulty lies in the task you choose to give yourself once you are familiar with the game. And there will never be enough achievement to reward creative players making something new that was not anticipated by devs who didn't prepare a little reward for it. ( achievement for self expanding factory ?, for digital display ? , for smart train or furnaces ? , efficient nuclear power plant ?, music box ? ).

And even for those the difficulty is not in the end result to me, but include from where you start, how much experience you gained, how much learning and experimenting was necessary is different for each player, and achievement fail to represent that i found.