Non-game changing mods and achievements

[Seleck]

How come they don't make it so mods that don't modify the gameplay don't disable achievements?

[Fel]

Mostly because of people that put value in achievements and want them to remain somewhat valuable by not allowing for any mods or cheats to allow you to get them.

It would also mean taking a stance on what exactly is a mod that doesn't modify the gameplay, because outside of mods that just change the skins and sounds (and I'm not sure there are many of those), they all tend to have an effect on the gameplay, even if not necessarily obvious or direct.

Did you have a specific mod in mind that doesn't affect gameplay at all?

[Seleck]

from the ones i use for example, bottleneck, helpmod, edit-blueprint and vehiclesnap. I get that but it would be nice if they added a tag or something for mods that don't modify any stats that could potentially affect the balance of the game

[Fel]

Bottleneck is a good example of a mod that doesn't seem to impact gameplay but still does.

You know at a glance about the sate of all of your machines on screen at once, including if they are working at full efficiency or not, saving you a lot of time and making timed achievements quite a bit easier to reach.

Don't get me wrong, I don't care either way, I never understood the elitism surrounding meaningless medals and I even went out of my way to make sure to not gain any of the steam achievements.
What I mean is that a lot of mods that don't change the gameplay directly still have an impact on it and can make reaching specific achievements easier.

[PunCrathod]

Why ban people who use wallhacks in fps games? Those don't change stats either. I know it is a bit hyperbole but the idea is the same. You gain unfair advantage over people who don't use mods.

Even if there were mods that did not give any advantage whatsoever, programming a system that allows only those mods to be used while granting achievements would cost a lot of manhours. And it would need someone from the devteam to go through every mod that wants to be achievement enabled. Basically too much work for too little gain.

[PamukLuLu]

👍

[luziferius]

引用自 Fel：

Did you have a specific mod in mind that doesn't affect gameplay at all?

There is Disco Science (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/DiscoScience), which is a cosmetic mod. Description says »Makes science labs light up with the colours of the science packs they are consuming.«
You can argue that it allows you to quickly see the technology level of the current research and know the current lab resource consumption without knowing each tech by heart. But that argument stretches "game changing" quite hard.

Another one is Bullet Trails (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/bullet-trails), which adds cosmetic bullet trail effects to all bullet-consuming weapons.
Here, you can argue that it makes it easier to see the current target of your personal/car SMG and thus makes targetting easier.

Custom Map Colours (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/custom-map-colors) lets you recolour your map. This can be an accessibility tool, if you are colour blind. Or it can be considered cheating for speed runners, as it makes it easier to process the map information. But how much this is valid on your 1000th run of the same seed to shave of some additional seconds is a thing to debate…

For each modification, you can come up with some fancy, contrieved scenario in which it is superior over vanilla and therefore grant an advantage…

But if those make it easier to "ram 100 nests" or "burn 10k trees" or make it easier to send fish to space is a different story…

[AlexMBrennan]

Because achievements have no value whatsoever on the PC platform where I can modify any file and any memory location in any way I wish (e.g. I can use a memory editor to freeze the number of iron plates stored in one chest, or modify the scenario file to spawn the player with a rocket silo, nuclear reactor and a million rocket fuel, or I could edit the recipes to make rocket fuel free).

Because of the above it was a complete waste of time to disable achievements for modded games, and wasting any more time on fixing an impossible-to-fix problem isn't going to help anyone. They should certainly not waste hundreds of developer manhours trying to classify which mods are "game changing".

[THE kilroy]

Achievements are not disabled by mods. Steam achievements are. If you still wish to target an achievement while modifying the game(even if its slightly and doesnt effect the purpose of the achievement) you can still earn a per map achievement.