Mods shouldn't disable Steam achievements

[nzer]

TL;DR

Mods disabling Steam achievements undermines mods as a means of delivering quality of life features, potentially harms the new player experience, and does not prevent people from unlocking the achievements fraudulently.

What ?

Mods should not disable Steam achievements.

Why ?

So I'm sure this has been discussed to death in the past, but hear me out. I have friends who, despite not being completionists, enjoy Steam achievements and will occasionally chase achievements in games they really like. Some of these friends have experience with other factory builder games, and some of those factory builder games include features at baseline that Factorio requires mods for (e.g., Satisfactory basically has Bottleneck and Rate Calculator built right into the game). When I convince those friends to play Factorio, they have to make the follow choice:

• Play without mods and deal with the absence of quality of life features they're used to from other games
• Use quality of life mods and deal with Steam achievements being disabled
• Use quality of life mods and track down a dll mod to re-enable Steam achievements, if there are any that are up to date at the time

This is not the end of the world or anything, but it's a blemish on an otherwise amazing game, and I'm not sure why it has to be a thing in the first place. I'm assuming the reasoning for disabling Steam achievements is to prevent people from trivializing them with mods, but... why? There are third-party programs you can download to unlock whatever achievements you want, removing cliffs and cranking all the resource generation settings doesn't disable achievements, and in theory you could even do nothing while someone carries you through all the achievements in multiplayer. It's not like the game gets harder when more people are present. If the goal is to prevent people using gameplay-affecting mods from inadvertently tainting their own vanilla achievement progress, I think that's reasonable. But that just requires a checkbox in the game settings.

In general, relying on mods for optional quality of life features is really smart design that lets players implement the features they care about while the devs focus on content. But that's completely undermined when you punish players for using those quality of life mods by disabling reward systems like achievements. I've heard people argue in the past that this doesn't matter because achievements are meaningless, but like, if that's the case, why do they exist in the first place?

That's it. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[boskid]

No.

Its a hard problem to decide if a given mod makes it easier or absurdly trivial to gain certain achievements so in general we just disable steam achievement tracking when mods are enabled.

[nzer]

Like I said in the post, I don't see why that's necessary. If you're doing it to protect the player from inadvertently tainting their achievement progression, there should be an option for players to turn it back on. If you're doing it to prevent players from earning achievements fraudulently, they can already trivially do that with third party programs without even booting Factorio. In fact they can even do it in Factorio; there have been several dll mods that circumvent the achievement disabling.

Other games that have mod support don't bother disabling achievements, and I've never seen it become a problem.

[Koub]

Like I said in the post, I don't see why that's necessary. If you're doing it to protect the player from inadvertently tainting their achievement progression, there should be an option for players to turn it back on. If you're doing it to prevent players from earning achievements fraudulently, they can already trivially do that with third party programs without even booting Factorio. In fact they can even do it in Factorio; there have been several dll mods that circumvent the achievement disabling.

Other games that have mod support don't bother disabling achievements, and I've never seen it become a problem.

I'm very satisfied by the fact Steam achievements are disabled by mods. For those for who it matters, it's a metric of how much of a PGM they are. I'm well aware it's very similar to measuring who has the biggest stuff in their pants, but for some people, achievements matter.

And in that case, mods can so much trivialize getting all the achievements that for those who care that metric, it would be quite insulting. As for the effort necessary to unlock these achievements, via mods would make things so so much easier than with third party tools (which Steam could decide to punish some day).

[Tertius]

I'm the vanilla game type - I prefer playing games as the developers envisioned it, so I automatically collect Steam achievements. I don't care for mods usually. However, there are always QoL mods that "fix" things I find annoying in the vanilla games. Things that are so annoying that I consider them bugs. In Skyrim, it's the UI on PC. In Factorio your viewing distance/zoom level is lower the more widescreen your monitor/Factorio window is. I once bought a 49" ultra widescreen monitor to see more of everything, only to realize Factorio lets me actually see less!

There are zoom mods that fix this. For a long time, I didn't install them because of the Steam achievements, however in the end I was so annoyed I installed the mod. I let go of the achievements, and now I don't care about them any more. They don't actually say anything any more. More important is how pleasant the game is to play, how convenient. So I installed more of those tiny QoL mods that improve usability. I would never run any map without them again just to again advance achievements. It's just all those tiny improvements that have much more value to me than an achievement. Let it go.

Instead, show your maps to your friends. Do multiplayer with them, share your saves, your blueprints, your battles (use OBS to record video). Achievements are still there, there is a shadow achievement collection that still continues. It's just not mirrored to Steam any more if running with a modded map.

[nzer]

For those for who it matters, it's a metric of how much of a PGM they are. I'm well aware it's very similar to measuring who has the biggest stuff in their pants, but for some people, achievements matter.

I apologize if this sounds combative, but this logic only works if you ignore reality. The 2.2% on your precious There Is No Spoon achievement already includes people who did it with starting area maxed, evolution and pollution turned off, and all the resource generation settings maxed. It also already includes anyone who re-enabled their Steam achievements with a dll mod or used an achievement unlocker, neither of which are hard to do. And Valve does not ban people for using achievement unlockers. Quite the contrary, they actually have a history of taking action against developers who try to ban people for using achievement unlockers.

Achievements have always been an honor system thing.

[Koub]

The 2.2% on your precious There Is No Spoon achievement already includes people who did it with starting area maxed, evolution and pollution turned off, and all the resource generation settings maxed. It also already includes anyone who re-enabled their Steam achievements with a dll mod or used an achievement unlocker, neither of which are hard to do. And Valve does not ban people for using achievement unlockers. Quite the contrary, they actually have a history of taking action against developers who try to ban people for using achievement unlockers.

Achievements have always been an honor system thing.

You're most probably right. But then again, being one of 2.2% is still a feat, while being one of ... dunno ... 50% is kind of meh given similar conditions.
On a slightly different approach, if achievements are so meaningless and a honor system thing, why even complain when they are disabled ?

[Tertius]

It's strange people invest time to investigate and write a DLL to unlock achievements. Is this really a thing?

Free yourself and forget achievements. In the past, I played an MMO that was littered with extremely time consuming achievements - they were a means to bind people to the game way beyond the point where a game is fresh and interesting. I had to free myself from that addiction-inducing system. I was a member of the crowd that ran after every achievement, but at some point in time I was stopped somehow and the game spit me out. It set me free. Since then, I despise and ignore achievements and recommend you at least don't let them enslave you. They are unhealthy. They can show a goal, but they are also a means to enslave you and bind you to some game.

[jodokus31]

I once bought a 49" ultra widescreen monitor to see more of everything, only to realize Factorio lets me actually see less!

True, I think even on 16:9, it's not that comfortable. The Shortcut bar in the bottom-middle also reduces the height in the important area. I tend to play with a more like 3:2 or 4:3 window size.

It's strange people invest time to investigate and write a DLL to unlock achievements. Is this really a thing?

Free yourself and forget achievements. In the past, I played an MMO that was littered with extremely time consuming achievements - they were a means to bind people to the game way beyond the point where a game is fresh and interesting. I had to free myself from that addiction-inducing system. I was a member of the crowd that ran after every achievement, but at some point in time I was stopped somehow and the game spit me out. It set me free. Since then, I despise and ignore achievements and recommend you at least don't let them enslave you. They are unhealthy. They can show a goal, but they are also a means to enslave you and bind you to some game.

People doing all achievements in 6 hours speedrun. It's not a big deal to redo in like 40 hours casually, if you have a guide. Or do several achievements in different playthroughs. The 8 hours achievement is not really tight, if you follow a guide.
I would say, achievements are rather pointless and maybe can challenge newcomers a bit.

I have no steam achievements, because I never played on steam version.

[nzer]

You're most probably right. But then again, being one of 2.2% is still a feat, while being one of ... dunno ... 50% is kind of meh given similar conditions.
On a slightly different approach, if achievements are so meaningless and a honor system thing, why even complain when they are disabled ?

Achievements aren't meaningless, they're just not suited for the kind of prestige jockeying you're talking about. People derive personal value from them, in the sense that it feels good having a lot of achievements for a game you enjoy, and the honor system works well enough that the percentages are (presumably) at least roughly in the right ballpark. Like, you're not going to see There Is No Spoon go from 2.2% to 50%. You might see it go up to 3%, and even that would honestly shock me. Most people just have no desire to cheat their achievements, because they're a casual "for-fun" thing that has no real value other than making the player themselves feel good about having achieved them. I don't think the mindset that the percentages are super accurate and are suitable for gauging your "street cred" as a player, or whatever, is something most people subscribe to. It seems a little toxic to me, honestly.

Again, most of the games I've played with official mod support don't bother disabling achievements and don't have any problems. Hard achievements remain rare. I think Deep Rock Galactic is the only game I've played that disables them for some mods, but in that game there's an approval process for mods that don't disrupt the vanilla experience which allows them to be used without consequence.

It's strange people invest time to investigate and write a DLL to unlock achievements. Is this really a thing?

Free yourself and forget achievements. In the past, I played an MMO that was littered with extremely time consuming achievements - they were a means to bind people to the game way beyond the point where a game is fresh and interesting. I had to free myself from that addiction-inducing system. I was a member of the crowd that ran after every achievement, but at some point in time I was stopped somehow and the game spit me out. It set me free. Since then, I despise and ignore achievements and recommend you at least don't let them enslave you. They are unhealthy. They can show a goal, but they are also a means to enslave you and bind you to some game.

Factorio has in-game achievement tracking completely independent of what's in Steam, and it is not disabled by mods. If we're going to take the stance that achievements are altogether worthless or even intentionally addiction-inducing the question of whether to disable Steam tracking for mods is irrelevant; we'd have to argue for the complete removal of the entire achievement system at that point.

Hopefully most people can agree that isn't a reasonable stance.

[jodokus31]

Achievements are fine and reasonable for vanilla.
If achievements should be enabled for modded experience is only a question of all or nothing. And they decided for nothing, because it's less trouble than all, i guess.
Every solution between all or nothing is unnecessarily complicated.

[BlueTemplar]

Factorio has in-game achievement tracking completely independent of what's in Steam, and it is not disabled by mods. If we're going to take the stance that achievements are altogether worthless or even intentionally addiction-inducing the question of whether to disable Steam tracking for mods is irrelevant; we'd have to argue for the complete removal of the entire achievement system at that point.

Factorio has TWO files tracking achievements :
- achievements.dat (for unmodded games)
- achievements-modded.dat

Any reason why your friends can't just complete achievements with the mods they like, then just unlock them on Steam using a faster method ?

Also relevant :
More Achievements

Adds many more achievements for players that feel there aren't enough, ranging from progression based to difficult.

Someone's LUA-Console

Run lua commands without losing achievements.