Closing the pollution No Spoon achievement loophole?

[osric_athanasius]

Greetings,

I just completed the No Spoon achievement on my 3rd attempt.

However, let us be honest, I used a loophole on the pollution settings to eliminate the impact of biters on my base.
My previous 2 attempt failed due to biters hammering through my base and the scale at which I working at resulted in difficult response times. So I drastically increased the pollution absorption of trees and dissipation rates. This resulted in virtually no pollution in my base, therefore no biters. This did not disable the no spoon achievement.

While I am proud of what I have achieved.
Would it be wise to close that loophole in the next update?

[Neemys]

Setting a very big starting area with the combination of tree around me have made a no attack 5 hours game too, so the pollution problem isn't the only one loophole. There is so many way too abuse that I don't think it's really necessary to fix all, there will still be other ways.

[osric_athanasius]

I will note that previous attempts used Very big starting areas as well. The previous run attacks started after the 2 to 3 hour mark. With major damage being caused by 4.5 hours.

The starting area does have an impact. However, this factory is quite large, 1.6k worth of stone smelters built and around 1.6M iron plate produced with in 6:40 minutes. So the pollution levels easily exceeded the very big starting area without the pollution tricks I used.

[osric_athanasius]

You are correct that there are a quite a few loophole abuse methods available for this achievement. The developers have closed some abuse methods on it in the past.
Is advisable for the developers to close this loophole and perhaps some others?

[zOldBulldog]

Are those really loopholes or intended? And why do I even ask?

In games you typically have a couple ways to make the game more interesting beyond understanding the basics and just playing. One is Achievements, the other are harder difficulties and challenge modes.

Achievements are typically hooks used to keep the player interested and playing more. They apply to *all* players. There are typically easier and harder achievements, but it is quite normal for *any* reasonably determined player to be able to complete them all. Otherwise players get demoralized and leave.

Harder difficulties and challenge modes are a completely different story. By definition it is reasonable for the hardest to be nearly impossible to beat them and for only a few people to manage it. And because of it over 90% of players never even attempt them, which is good as we don't want them to get frustrated and leave. Still, that 90% does not feel left out because unlike achievements, these are not seen by them as part of the main game, just an option.

So, if Spoon is an achievement and a Speed Run with biters of various difficulties is a harder difficulty or challenge... then the key question is "what percentage of Factorio players beats it, and what percentage of players do the DEVs want to beat it in order to serve as a properly engaging achievement that keeps players hooked in factorio?". Or in other words, how hard or easy does Spoon need to be in order to hook the players that beat it into the "long term" deathmatch and speedrun modes, challenges and even competitions?

I think that short of a direct answer from the Devs, answeringuestion will help us understand if they are loopholes or intended.

[Daid]

Are those really loopholes or intended? And why do I even ask?

Feels unintentional, for the simple reason that passive bitter mode disables this achievement.

[zOldBulldog]

Are those really loopholes or intended? And why do I even ask?

Feels unintentional, for the simple reason that passive bitter mode disables this achievement.

True but currently those loopholes give a degree of balance since a non-speed runner can do his research, find the loopholes, complete the achievement and hopefully get interested in speed runs or death world. So, if the loopholes get closed they'd have to come with some other adjustments to ensure that Spoon is still viable for enough players, so that the challenge will still serve as a way to tempt players into those kinds of long term games types.

[HurkWurk]

personally its not that its a loophole, its that the achievements can be completed on a non-standard game at all.
IE for certain achievements, they should require a 100% vanilla launch with no settings changes at all, while others can be independent of game mode.

as they have already mentioned several times, there is no reason at all to try and protect achievements as the game is easily modded so that you can accomplish them with no difficulty at all.

[DerGraue]

And what about the "multiplayer achievement loophole"???

How terrible, what unspeakable horror! You can just log into a multiplayer game and you even get the achievement if you do nothing and let the other players do all the work. You just have to stay online for a certain amount of time. This must be the worst day in my entire life!!!

[Zavian]

as they have already mentioned several times, there is no reason at all to try and protect achievements as the game is easily modded so that you can accomplish them with no difficulty at all.

IIRC you don't get any Steam achievements in a modded game. (The game still tracks the achievements locally, it just doesn't award Steam achievements).

[Neemys]

as they have already mentioned several times, there is no reason at all to try and protect achievements as the game is easily modded so that you can accomplish them with no difficulty at all.

IIRC you don't get any Steam achievements in a modded game. (The game still tracks the achievements locally, it just doesn't award Steam achievements).

You can mod the base game to have anything you want and still unlock steam achievement. You can even use command with the base mod to edit the map setting midgame (if you made ennemy smaller for example) and the game will restore the possiblity to achieve those achievement. The base game mod is in the game folder