Factorio Forums

Currently there are some (in my opinion) quite strict requirements before you can obtain achievements in a multiplayer save.
E.g. having 50% of total playtime.

In my opinion this is too punishing, and even causes wasted energy by stimulating leaving computers running AFK to no lose server playtime.
Especially with the longer running saves from Space Age I think this is too strict, and too easy for legit players to be denied achievements.

Specifically I encountered this with some friends while "no-lifeing" starting with the Space Age release.
Me and another player took a week off from work, to truly commit, while others couldn't. As a result some of the others dropped below that 50% requirement.
While I would argue all of them contributed plenty to be deserving of the achievements.

So now we have a system where those others leave their game AFK when they can't play, just to be able to maintain that requirement. And since the later achievements require quite a time investment, due to the long running nature of Space Age playthroughs, I think it is too harsh.
In my opinion the current system punishes legit players, where if you want to cheat there isn't much stopping you.


I'd advocate just removing those limitations in the first place. If people want to cheese, nothing prevents them from just doing so. It is in my opinion more important to not punish legit players, and accept that some others might abuse the system. (like our legal system works as well, innocent until proven guilty)

If that is too far for some, I'd suggest doing something similar as discord does when joining a server, for a longer running server you need some time of playtime, before things count. That would still prevent just hopping in before some milestone, but doesn't require you to maintain x% of total over the entire duration of the server. E.g. if you've spent 2 hours on a server, everything counts.

Counter argument: The playtime requirement also prevents simply loading a mega base save found online and getting all the production achievements for no effort.

While I agree with your sentiment I think a % of the total playtime is still the fair-est option. I'm inclined toward lowering that % from 50% to 33% or even 10%.
It would promote multiplayer progression and still prevent most 'no-knowledge achievements grab'. By that I mean with 10% if you load a 500h save from someone else you'd have to let it idle for 50h to only start registering achievement progression, that's a big enough hurdle in my opinion.

Lowering the limit helps, but I think it still can result in the same, potentially punish legit players, while cheaters will always have methods of cheating.