Version 2.0.45

[engineersmurf]

Just an update:
1. In the next release, all saves started with version prior 2.0.45 will not have the achievements limited the new way.
2. There is a new popup which tells you which achievements (and why) are going to be disabled if you start with these settings. (In the map generator gui).
3. I still have plan for bunch of new achievements for 2.1, which should make 100% run even more convoluted (=intereseting for most people hopefully), I'm even considering to add a 100% run mode, which would be the way to get one special achievement of you getting all achievements in one go. There are arguments against it, so it is still part of the discussion.

I personally am looking forward the moment, when I add these new acheivement, and will personally try to make the 100% run, the only way to see how hard it is and to make some possible balance changes.

Personally I do enjoy the freedom the game gives me. Limiting achievements on map settings is for me a bummer. Let me play the game I like and let me choose the way I want it.

Yes, you can implement a 100% hardcore achievement special run competitive mode. Fine. But taking away stuff for map settings. Who cares but me?

I do not like this step at all.

[Fantastic_Chimni]

I like the concept of a 100% run and think it would add a number of interesting challenges and warp the typical way of playing the game, just not when combined with the speedrun achievements.

Those achievements are already a challenge by themselves with an absolutely tiny portion of the factorio population able to do them. If you add all of the weird achievements along with the 40h Express Delivery? A huge number of people who love the game will just resent it and not even try.

[nzer]

In the past, there was always the rule of no biter/fight related achievement when you turn the peace mode on, as it basically doesn't make any sense. What kind of achievement is it to play without laser turrets for example, when no attack comes at all, as you have peaceful mode.

In the meantime, we added a lot of other options to configure the map settings, and we just didn't realize it breakes this logic, until one day not so long ago, someone in the office came to me and told me it is weird that they can get these fight achievements when they do "alternative peaceful mode", by turning off pollution, which isn't tracked.

Just to be clear: the pollution setting existed before the enemy settings restriction was added to these achievements, and the fact that disabling it would allow the restriction to be circumvented was called out in the very same bug report that prompted the restriction:

[kovarex] [0.15.30] Exploitable Achievement Conditions

Thanks for the report.

I changed for 0.16.3, so that lower than normal settings on enemy bases will disallow these achievements too.

Koverex: Does this also apply to changing the pollution settings? If you disable pollution then the major time & resource sink caused by the biter attacks is gone.

[Chindraba]

In the past, there was always the rule of no biter/fight related achievement when you turn the peace mode on, as it basically doesn't make any sense. What kind of achievement is it to play without laser turrets for example, when no attack comes at all, as you have peaceful mode.

In the meantime, we added a lot of other options to configure the map settings, and we just didn't realize it breakes this logic, until one day not so long ago, someone in the office came to me and told me it is weird that they can get these fight achievements when they do "alternative peaceful mode", by turning off pollution, which isn't tracked.

Just to be clear: the pollution setting existed before the enemy settings restriction was added to these achievements, and the fact that disabling it would allow the restriction to be circumvented was called out in the very same bug report that prompted the restriction:

[kovarex] [0.15.30] Exploitable Achievement Conditions

Thanks for the report.

I changed for 0.16.3, so that lower than normal settings on enemy bases will disallow these achievements too.

Koverex: Does this also apply to changing the pollution settings? If you disable pollution then the major time & resource sink caused by the biter attacks is gone.

Good catch on the earlier 'call out' about pollution.
Another 'good catch' with that is that it was posted over 7 years ago. With no 'action' taken.
A third 'good catch' would be that the same paragraph, not included in your quote, also called for pure default settings, period, for all achievements.

The lag between then and now seems to make this 'bug fix' a disconnected thing from that post. Such is further supported by the changelog not referencing that in the report, as it does for most fixes connected to reported bugs.

The last one goes much further than the current change, and would invalidate anything speedrunners could do to create alternative categories. Pure default or no achievements is, at best, draconian. Of course, like anyone else, you can impose such a restriction on your attempts at achievements. I'm not going to force you to choose my options, please don't expect me to choose your options.

[His_Cogness]

How relevant is the achievements change to the filtering of what bases are allowed in the galaxy of fame? Is this something that you would do regardless or was this only revisited because you are looking at what should and shouldn't be allowed for a galaxy of fame base?

[mmmPI]

Just to be clear: the pollution setting existed before the enemy settings restriction was added to these achievements, and the fact that disabling it would allow the restriction to be circumvented was called out in the very same bug report that prompted the restriction:

Good catch on the earlier 'call out' about pollution.
Another 'good catch' with that is that it was posted over 7 years ago. With no 'action' taken.

The lag between then and now seems to make this 'bug fix' a disconnected thing from that post. Such is further supported by the changelog not referencing that in the report, as it does for most fixes connected to reported bugs.

I think you guys have missed a bunch of updates !!! like this one for example : 125581

[Panzerknacker]

Just an update:
1. In the next release, all saves started with version prior 2.0.45 will not have the achievements limited the new way.
2. There is a new popup which tells you which achievements (and why) are going to be disabled if you start with these settings. (In the map generator gui).
3. I still have plan for bunch of new achievements for 2.1, which should make 100% run even more convoluted (=intereseting for most people hopefully), I'm even considering to add a 100% run mode, which would be the way to get one special achievement of you getting all achievements in one go. There are arguments against it, so it is still part of the discussion.

I personally am looking forward the moment, when I add these new acheivement, and will personally try to make the 100% run, the only way to see how hard it is and to make some possible balance changes.

Personally I do enjoy the freedom the game gives me. Limiting achievements on map settings is for me a bummer. Let me play the game I like and let me choose the way I want it.

Yes, you can implement a 100% hardcore achievement special run competitive mode. Fine. But taking away stuff for map settings. Who cares but me?

I do not like this step at all.

But you know, you can just play the game? Achievements are just, achievements. But they are called that for a reason. You can also enjoy the game without them, maybe even more actually.

[bm13kk]

I have played more than 1000h. I personally still can not do "90m train" + "lazy bastard" + "default biters" in one go. 2 of 3 already hard enough. Not talking about "rush to space" and "clean hands".

Instead of being a puzzle game, it became smash-buttons-runner game. This is awful. I do understand all dev's played start game so many times, that they absolutely must have the skill to launch a first rocket in a couple of hours. But this is a completely different game.

[Cabble]

3. I still have plan for bunch of new achievements for 2.1, which should make 100% run even more convoluted (=intereseting for most people hopefully), I'm even considering to add a 100% run mode, which would be the way to get one special achievement of you getting all achievements in one go. There are arguments against it, so it is still part of the discussion.

I personally am looking forward the moment, when I add these new acheivement, and will personally try to make the 100% run, the only way to see how hard it is and to make some possible balance changes.

Oh yes! Please spam us with more nice Achievments. For example a 10x or 100x science cost run would be more fun if there waits an achievment at the end.
I‘d also be a big fan of a 100% run achievment, but *please* without the „Finishing the game in x hours“ ones. These Are too stressing and speedrunners will beat 40 hours anyway. Although the early game ones, such as „get on track like a pro“ won‘t hurt i guess.
When i did the 40 hours one, it came down to preparing bluepints in another game and just stamp these down. Thats Not my preferred play style and was a bit exhausting. Figuring out a strategy on the fly is much more enjoyable and relaxing.

[thedoh]

Someone on Reddit made a forum post about kovarex's recent comment and said that the achievement where you get 100% achievements in one sitting should be 101%. I think this is a fantastic idea, especially since the vast majority of players won't ever come close to getting all achievements in one sitting, it seems like it would be crummy to shut those players out. Let the dedicated speedrunners worry about getting 101%. If players who don't consider themselves speedrunners go for that 101%, maybe we can convince them to submit the run to the speedrun.com Factorio leaderboards.

[Panzerknacker]

Honestly I'm not a fan of including content in a game that is only obtainable by a select few speed runners. Leave it up to the speedrunning community to create these prestiges outside of the game.

So not a fan of a 'all achievements in one run' achievement since it is so uncomparably much harder than each of the other individual achievements and therefor completely out of reach for anyone except the very best players (top 0,01%?). Adding this will prevent almost every player from '100 percenting' or 'completing' the game.

[dupraz]

Nice to see game devs standing up for their game balance decisions, personally I would have always considered unfair someone claiming achievements while playing with anything else than the various "default" intended setting presets (not just biters), but addressing these oversights definitely is a "bug fix", since that's pretty much how it really was always intended.

However, a simple fix for runners that want to play whichever way they fancy, would probably be to implement some MapSettings parameter that allows unlocking any achievements under any configuration, this way they'd have to rely on a mod that ticks that box for them, therefore making their achievements "non-canonical" and say, not synced to Steam. What's left to see is whether they're ready to live under that "new reality".

To be fair, as is, the "hardcoding" doesn't make much sense as far as playing with mods go, say, I'm not even sure if having a mod that remove biters would disable those specific "in-game" achievements, unless they are "disabled" under map settings as well, or what amount of leeway is really allowed under the current API.

[mmmPI]

Someone on Reddit made a forum post about kovarex's recent comment and said that the achievement where you get 100% achievements in one sitting should be 101%. I think this is a fantastic idea, especially since the vast majority of players won't ever come close to getting all achievements in one sitting, it seems like it would be crummy to shut those players out. Let the dedicated speedrunners worry about getting 101%. If players who don't consider themselves speedrunners go for that 101%, maybe we can convince them to submit the run to the speedrun.com Factorio leaderboards.

When reading the comments under that reddit post i think i learned about "hidden success" that would still let players un-interested in speed achievement able to fulfill their thirst of completion and read the "100%" in steam. That seem like the perfect solution !

[toths]

Making an achievement that is only ever expected to be achieved by a handful of players seems very player hostile. We already have high score boards at speedrun.com and other places on the internet. Steam achievements are fun to share with friends and IMO should be a FUN meta-game for players to engage with if they choose to. Making a 100% in one run achievement is just too limiting. Some of the best 100% runners would never be able to achieve that without the help of many others in the community. In fact I would argue that the 100% in one run can only be done with a team of people all working together to make the blueprints, plan the routes and in general break down the game into manageable chunks. A single player doing the 100% in one run with self hosted blueprints would take months, possibly even years to do, which IMO is not a fun or reasonable goal.

Many of the speed runners have been working for YEARS on the blueprints they use now for these runs, expecting the same of non-speedrunners is... well it's a choice. One I don't think players would enjoy. Just leave that to the meta progression and chat rooms and YouTubes to document.

[SeaRyanC]

Compared to other mainstream games' hardest achievement on Steam, Express Delivery is already very rare:

Elden Ring: 10.1%
Destiny 2: 7.1%
Baldur's Gate 3: 2.2%
Fallout 76: 0.5%
Diablo IV: 0.3%
Factorio: 0.1%

so I don't think a new achievement that is "do all other achievements in 1 run" changes the calculus much either way. It's a little odd this % is so low; Balatro's "Get a gold sticker on all jokers" achievement is IMO a much more difficult feat and is at 0.4%.

That said, I'm not even convinced a 100% run including Lazy Bastard, Rush to Space, and Keeping Your Hands Clean is even possible under the proposed settings rules, at least without maybe 3-4 players. There's a 23 hour speedrun that does this, but it includes max starting area https://www.speedrun.com/Space_Age?h=100&x=xk97qv6d . I'd love to watch kovarex's run!

[naahuc]

That said, I'm not even convinced a 100% run including Lazy Bastard, Rush to Space, and Keeping Your Hands Clean is even possible under the proposed settings rules, at least without maybe 3-4 players. There's a 23 hour speedrun that does this, but it includes max starting area https://www.speedrun.com/Space_Age?h=100&x=xk97qv6d . I'd love to watch kovarex's run!

Anti did manage to finish his 100% SpaceAge DefaultSettings run in 22h18m just yesterday (or rather earlier today), so it's definitely possible. While yes, he is very good, normal players would not have the speedrun restrictions, as in no blueprint import, random seed, single sitting etc. So regular players do have the option of designing a base for a fixed seed the speedrunners don't have and take breaks every few hours, take saves and restart from an earlier point in the run if you screw up too much.
So I would not see it as unachievable. Might require some practice, but the achievements are not supposed to be too easy, right?


On the topic of speedrunners and mods, as I don't think anyone of them has addressed this specifically, but there's generally a no-mod rule in effect now, as checking if a mod has been modified to do more than is intended to do is near-impossible.

[atomizer]

It's a little odd this % is so low

It is not because you can't objectively compare these. The percentage is calculated among all players, including those that played the game before the achievements even existed, and those that don't own Space Age. The rare achievements were added very recently compared to the full lifetime of the game on Steam.

[toths]

so I don't think a new achievement that is "do all other achievements in 1 run" changes the calculus much either way.

As someone who has almost 8,000 steam hours in factorio and 100% achievements (as of today), I think that doing all the achievements in a single run is at least 10x harder than any single achievement is by itself. The hardest achievement right now (on a 100% run) is probably "No room for more" as you have to not only beat the whole game, but also build a factory which can reliably produce legendary items to beat it in the time limit of 40 hours. Just beating the game takes at least 8h 48m right now and that's not factoring in Lazy Bastard, Logistics Embargo and Keeping Your Hands Clean slow downs.

It's all doable, and with save scumming which normal people it's more accessible than just speed runners, but doing all in one run is a huge stretch. People will do it even if there is no achievement, so just leave it out of the official list IMO.

[0n0w1c]

Added Metal graphics backend for Apple devices.

I just want to say thank you very much for this!

[Ylwhrt]

much ado about nothing