Grand Prix - What we know about how it works

[Miraglyth]

So the event is a mess and the explanation given is terrible. I know! I've done a bunch of research, and here's what we know so far:

The main part of the event is the Driver Dash. It is on the event page immediately beneath the team position chart.

Update for Day 2: You can now mouse over parts of the Driver Dash to get more information about how it works!

Update for Day 3: The structure of the Driver Dash and the points involved have been overhauled, eliminating the old "odometer" and "capacity" metrics that confused so many people. Now there are 3 main parts:

Update 2 for Day 3: The display for "Max Points" at the start of day 3 was bugged. It has now been fixed. I've updated the explanation.

Available Points
"Points you'll contribute to your team's distance when you boost - Max 1k/Boost"

This is a direct replacement for odometer, which even has the same mouseover text. So long as you have more than 0 points, you can boost which decreases up to 1000 points (or however many you have).

If (and only if) you have more Max Points than Points Boosted, boosting also increases the tokens you have in the pit stop by that amount. The pit stop page says how many points you will receive from your next boost below your token count, if you will receive any at all.

To earn points, you need to complete quests or claim achievements. This is only possible if you have fewer Available Points than the difference between Points Boosted and Max Points (described below).

Points Boosted
"Points you've already boosted that have been converted to tokens you can spend in the Pit Stop"

This is now self-explanatory. It's the score of how many points you have spent on boosts you've made during the event, with equals the number of tokens you've earned by doing so.

Max Points
"This is the number of points you've earned through purchases on Steam since the Lunar New Year Sale, including any unspent Lunar New Year tokens, plus any points granted for participating in the Grand Prix every day."

Again they have tried to focus on providing a simple explanation. This the limiting mechanic that replaces capacity from day 1 and 2. It is increased by 100 points per 1 USD spent (or a converted equivalent for other currencies).

Some players received Max Points for unspent coins in the Lunar New Year event earlier this year. The amount of Lunar New Years tokens earned was shown on the Pit Stop page but this did not include the amount spent during Lunar New Year itself, consequently players actually received less than it said. As mentioned, purchases on Steam after that event also provided some additional Max Points.

Generally within 1-2 hours of each new race day, players' Max Points are increased by 100 if and only if they used a boost on the previous race day. Shortly after day 3 started, players who boosted in days 1 or 2 also received 1,000 more Max Points for each of those days they boosted in.

Day 4 introduced Qualifier Tasks that allow players to gain 2,000 Max Points by performing four activities.

So long as Max Points is greater than Points Boosted, you can earn Available Points by doing quests or claiming achievements. If you have Available Points, you can also boost, which will bring Points Boosted up to Max Points.

To be clear, capacity is gone.
Steam have gone to great lengths to eliminate all references of capacity from the event, because it confused so many people. The Max Points mechanic replaces it, but it does not work in the same way. Lots of people are still talking about capacity - especially with reference to its former use - and they are giving you outdated information.

[JayXL]

I appreciate your research and explanation. Thank you.

This thing is still a total cluster. The way Steam rolled this out is an absolute joke. Especially in the current climate of competition between online delivery platforms, Steam is doing itself no favors here. This event has had an overwhelming negative response so far.

The confusion between points, boost capacity, tokens.. I mean, could this be any more messy? That Driver Dash is ridiculous. And some people were given points/tokens, then Steam changed it, then some people got their points/tokens reduced, but some were able to game the badge for insane level increases, and here I am with games bought and nothing to show for it?

I'm checking out on this event. Way to go, Steam.

[Miraglyth]

Quests

Beneath the Driver Dash are two rows of games with quests. The first row contains games participating in the event which are in your library or Free To Play (Team Fortress 2, War Thunder, Path of Exile, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and World of Warships). The second row contains the other games participating in the event that you do not own.

For both of these rows, the behaviour is identical; by playing the game and performing the tasks listed on the page, you are given Odometer Power. All of these tasks can be completed multiple times, and the page will list how many times they have been done. It takes a while for the page to update, and several users are reporting that performing tasks is not registering at all.

It may be that you need to have less Odometer Power than Capacity to be able to do quests. If so, this is not explained anywhere at all. It would mean that users who started with more Odometer Power than Capacity can never do quests.

[Miraglyth]

Achievements

Below the two rows for quests is another visually identical row for achievements. It will contain every game that you have played for 30 minutes recently (within the last week, perhaps).

These games operate differently; achievements earned within these games - even historically - can be claimed to provide Odometer Power. But this can only be done if you have less Odometer Power than Capacity, and only to the amount of the difference. When claiming the achievements of a game, all points that are too much to be received are lost immediately.

The amount of points games give can often be enormous - 50,000 and greater, which would require more than $500 to be spent to have enough capacity to be able to claim it all.

[Serell]

I read your whole post and I still don't understand this mess. What a dumb sale game. The past sale games have always sucked but at least they weren't a confusing mess...

[Miraglyth]

Originally posted by Riedy:

What are points though? Steam just gave me like 26001 for playing Stardew Valley for an hour, so I'm super confused. If they'd translate into tokens people could get multiple discounts every day, so that won't be it. Maybe the points have been miscalculated for me, but I don't get it...

I imagine that was for the quests you did, so if you look at the Stardew Valley section on the first row of quests (below the Driver Dash), it should say several are completed. I can't personally confirm (I just played Stardew for a while and got none at all) but I expect those points are being added to your Odometer. To turn those into tokens you'll need to use boosts.

[CrazyGrape]

So are the teams globally supported across all of Steam or somehow localized to your friends/etc? From this understanding, is there any reason to pick the team that isn't already winning (aka Corgi).. Speaking of which, they kinda screwed up the team names as well. When Steam tosses Corgi in with a bunch of other random and more generic animals (aside from maybe cockatiel), what did they honestly expect??

They should have just called it dog or something to make it a much less obvious choice.

[CZBGR Icepick]

Basically, you're forced to play a game and get achievements. Flaw: doesn't work well for games you've already completed 100% on apparently, so they don't count. Otherwise, you also can spend money, so p2w.

As of now, Team Corgi is totally one-sided. I guess Corgis are a thing, and any other team animal is insignificant in the internet age. So much bias. I liked the last one with the clicker. That was more entertaining than these obfuscated rules to start with in the middle of Tuesday, and there's only so many games to play with maximum advantage.

I'm not wasting my time on this. Your only benefit is to get the emotes and other profile stuff. That takes a lot of personal dedication for the sake of the team.

[Miraglyth]

Originally posted by Hyphae:

But I'm wondering if you can change that game each day hopefully, or is the entire event tied to earning achieves in one game? Because for me it's tied to a game I played before the event even started which the achievements take like hours to get at the point I'm at in the game.

Also, does it count achievements earned in the past, or just ones earned around the event?

Before the event started I was playing for the achievements in a particular game anyways, so this event literally changed nothing.

If you play a game in your library that's not on the achievement games list for 30 minutes, it will appear on the achievement games list shortly afterwards. You don't need to wait a day.

It does count achievements earned in the past. If you claim a game and then earn more achievements in it, I don't know if you can claim the value of the new achievements.

[Xaelath]

"CONGRATS, XAELATH!
Hey racer, great job Boosting Team Corgi toward the finish. Why not treat yourself to a little something nice here at the Pit Stop, for a job well done. Look at all those Grand Prix Tokens! Get spending, champ!
"
But none of the racer even hit finish yet.
wtf

[Miraglyth]

Originally posted by CZBGR Icepick:

Basically, you're forced to play a game and get achievements.

Not strictly. If the understanding I've detailed above is all correct, you could either do quests or get achievements (or claim historic achievements by playing a previous game for 30 minutes) until you run out of capacity. Capacity is the bottleneck here, and the only ways to get more are 100 per day (meaning one boost every 10 days lol) or spending money.

[CZBGR Icepick]

Originally posted by Miraglyth:

Originally posted by CZBGR Icepick:

Basically, you're forced to play a game and get achievements.

Not strictly. If the understanding I've detailed above is all correct, you could either do quests or get achievements (or claim historic achievements by playing a previous game for 30 minutes) until you run out of capacity. Capacity is the bottleneck here, and the only ways to get more are 100 per day (meaning one boost every 10 days lol) or spending money.

it didn't take me 30 minutes to get my boost points though.

There are other games to play on my list, and many of them are related to achievements or some goal that you actually have to play, not "run the game".

NVM: Apparently one game did use the achievements earned from the past automatically.

I guess you could use that to some advantage.

[Xaelath]

Originally posted by Hyphae:

Originally posted by Xaelath:

"CONGRATS, XAELATH!
Hey racer, great job Boosting Team Corgi toward the finish. Why not treat yourself to a little something nice here at the Pit Stop, for a job well done. Look at all those Grand Prix Tokens! Get spending, champ!
"
But none of the racer even hit finish yet.
wtf

lol the race is rigged!

I am going to call lawyer for the rigged race.

[Miraglyth]

Originally posted by Hyphae:

Yeah but for some reason it counted achievements from a game I played before the event even started

It does.

Originally posted by Hyphae:

and then didn't count an achievement from a game played during the event.

That's interesting. Had you claimed from that game prior to getting the new achievement/s? Maybe you can only claim each game once in the event, or maybe it only counts historic achievements?

Originally posted by Hyphae:

So can you get them from more than one game or is there some sort of limit on how many games or what games actually work?

You can certainly get them from more than one game. If you have multiple eligible games you can switch between them to see how many points you can claim from each. If you have the spare capacity you can claim from them all too.

Originally posted by Hyphae:

Seriously the gimmicks are just way too over the top.

Unless there's a bug in play or capacity unexpectedly resets at the start of every day, it kind of seems like the complexity is meant to hide that what you can do this event is basically directly tied to how much money you spend during the sale.

Originally posted by CZBGR Icepick:

There are other games to play on my list, and many of them are related to achievements or some goal that you actually have to play, not "run the game".

You mean quests, from one of the top two rows? I explained that.

[CZBGR Icepick]

Originally posted by Miraglyth:

Originally posted by CZBGR Icepick:

There are other games to play on my list, and many of them are related to achievements or some goal that you actually have to play, not "run the game".

You mean quests, from one of the top two rows?

The event runs by both. You can do quests, but it appears to be a minimal amount of points. At the bottom is the section that counts achievement enabled games. I got points off of one that I 100%'d, but it didn't count any of those achievements for the boost. Another one I just looked at now counted the achievements I had that I didn't 100% yet, but it didn't generate the boost XP I needed, so I don't get more tokens out of this.

It makes no sense at all.

[Miraglyth]

Originally posted by CZBGR Icepick:

Originally posted by Miraglyth:

You mean quests, from one of the top two rows?

The event runs by both. You can do quests, but it appears to be a minimal amount of points.

Yes, but I was trying to clarify. You said you were talking about achievements, but you were describing quests. The two are completely distinct mechanics that the event page does a terrible job at separating.

In short, the GRAND PRIX QUESTS section has three rows:

1. PLAY THESE GAMES YOU OWN PLUS FREE GAMES
2. PLAY THESE PARTICIPATING GAMES

These two are quests - The games have custom-made tasks that have nothing to do with Steam achievements. You can do these tasks an infinite amount and receive Odometer Power for doing them, but it appears not to work if your Odometer Power is greater than or equal to your Capacity.

3. PLAY ANY GAME WITH STEAM ACHIEVEMENTS

The last row only is achievements, which provides a single injection of Odometer Power from each game on the list that you have earned achievements in. The amount given probably relates to the rarity of the achievements.

Originally posted by CZBGR Icepick:

I got points off of one that I 100%'d, but it didn't count any of those achievements for the boost. Another one I just looked at now counted the achievements I had that I didn't 100% yet, but it didn't generate the boost XP I needed, so I don't get more tokens out of this.

I'm confused. What's boost XP? You only get tokens for the pitstop by using boosts. I don't know how or if you get more boosts, but I imagine they might be tied to receiving Odometer Power.