Steam Achievement Hunters... why?

[Dead†]

With programs like SAM, it kinda takes the buzz out of the whole thing, does it not?

Some of the tasks you have to do seem so tedious and to expend all that time and energy for what can be achieved with a few clicks of your mouse, don't you ever think "what's the point?"

I used to be a trophy hunter on PlayStation so I get it, you want that sense of completion, or if you're like me, you wan't to have an impressive library of platinum/100%'s you can show off. But when anyone can auto-unlock something that you choose to put hours, maybe even days into, don't you feel like it just ruins the whole ecosystem. Is there even a way to prove someone hasn't used SAM to unlock achievements in a believable order.

I'm expecting answers like "there's a small community of noble achievement hunters who compete with/or against each other under an honor system" or "I don't do it for competition, it's for my personal enjoyment" which having been there, done that, I find hard to believe in some instances. Same goes for "I like the challenge". If anyone can receive the same award it hardly makes the challenge worth pursuing, right?

Please, hunters, tell me why I'm wrong!

[Apathetic]

my view point is i dont care about anyone else. i like to see the number get to 100% screw the global achievement stuff

[livinggg]

happy の投稿を引用：

bisder whats ur name on TSA? I use it aswell.

bisder on TSA also, add me

[happy]

bisder の投稿を引用：

happy の投稿を引用：

bisder whats ur name on TSA? I use it aswell.

bisder on TSA also, add me

fr sent

[davidb11]

What's TSA? Besides the U.S Government thing.

[OctoberFox]

Because they're there and because I can. I even get the same ones more than once on different platforms. I'm sick like that.

davidb11 の投稿を引用：

What's TSA? Besides the U.S Government thing.

I'm guessing they mean True Steam Achievements.

[davidb11]

OctoberFox の投稿を引用：

Because they're there and because I can. I even get the same ones more than once on different platforms. I'm sick like that.

davidb11 の投稿を引用：

What's TSA? Besides the U.S Government thing.

I'm guessing they mean True Steam Achievements.

Oh, okay.
Never heard of it.

[crunchyfrog]

TWPanda77 の投稿を引用：

Achievements are great and I like to see them unlock, but I would not spend hours trying to get them and I certainly would use a SAM program. Nobody likes a cheater.

That assumes the only purpose for SAM is cheating.

Some indeed do that and that's entirely down to them, not you.

I use SAM but ONLY to correct failed achievments that are bugged.

[Kryzz]

I like to get my money's worth from games and achievements are usually a good guide to ensure you see just about everything worthwhile in a game most of the time. Doing special things for achievements that wouldn't otherwise be necessary provides a sense of self-satisfaction too, like any arbitrary challenge you might set for yourself in a game would. It's also nice to look back on as it's like a journal of what games you played and when you did such and such. They're not necessary though, just a nice feature to have.

I don't collect them to prove anything to others for a few reasons. They're very easy to cheat with external programs, you can game your completion % by privating all games not at 100%, there are games like 'Zup!' that can give you 5000 free achievements for doing next to nothing, while actual games like Holocure don't count, Most importantly though, I wouldn't expect anyone to care.

Edifier の投稿を引用：

♔ の投稿を引用：

I disagree. Should I believe every 90%+ profile is legit. I'm not gonna willingly fool myself.

If you care so much about achievement you can easily find out if they are cheated. SAM unlocks all of the achievements at once and when you see that you know they have used SAM. There is a time stamp on when they are unlocked.

Any achievements you unlock in Steam offline mode all get the same time stamp next time you start the game up in online mode, so it's useless to depend on that to determine illegitimacy. I know I have two (trivial) ones in Superliminal that have the same time stamp because I was testing out offline mode while doing part of challenge mode.

Like someone else mentioned, there are also odd game-specific cases. One that comes to my mind is how Binding of Isaac Rebirth has had a bug for a few years now where all your achievements can disappear and to reunlock them you go to the secrets screen but then they all get the same timestamp. Fairly rare bug from what I've heard, but not uncommon within the several hundred hour timespan it would take to get them all.

Edit: didn't realise this thread had been necroed so hard, sry..

[crunchyfrog]

Kryzz の投稿を引用：

I like to get my money's worth from games and achievements are usually a good guide to ensure you see just about everything worthwhile in a game most of the time. Doing special things for achievements that wouldn't otherwise be necessary provides a sense of self-satisfaction too, like any arbitrary challenge you might set for yourself in a game would. It's also nice to look back on as it's like a journal of what games you played and when you did such and such. They're not necessary though, just a nice feature to have.

I don't collect them to prove anything to others for a few reasons. They're very easy to cheat with external programs, you can game your completion % by privating all games not at 100%, there are games like 'Zup!' that can give you 5000 free achievements for doing next to nothing, while actual games like Holocure don't count, Most importantly though, I wouldn't expect anyone to care.

Edifier の投稿を引用：

If you care so much about achievement you can easily find out if they are cheated. SAM unlocks all of the achievements at once and when you see that you know they have used SAM. There is a time stamp on when they are unlocked.

Any achievements you unlock in Steam offline mode all get the same time stamp next time you start the game up in online mode, so it's useless to depend on that to determine illegitimacy. I know I have two (trivial) ones in Superliminal that have the same time stamp because I was testing out offline mode while doing part of challenge mode.

Like someone else mentioned, there are also odd game-specific cases. One that comes to my mind is how Binding of Isaac Rebirth has had a bug for a few years now where all your achievements can disappear and to reunlock them you go to the secrets screen but then they all get the same timestamp. Fairly rare bug from what I've heard, but not uncommon within the several hundred hour timespan it would take to get them all.

Edit: didn't realise this thread had been necroed so hard, sry..

Fair point though about the sense of self-satisfaction.

I term it like this too. It's not markedly different to back in the early days when games were essentially just high score challenges. Most arcade games were exist as long as you can and score as much as you can. They were INCREDIBLY compelling.
So what's the difference fundamentally? Not much.

It's basically tapping into human nature and giving us little goals to go for if you want to. No harm in that.

I personally LOVE some of the good achievements. I've had great fun with the Half Life 2 achievements, for example. The Little Rocket Man achievement of getting Gnome Chompski from the beginning, through the game until near the end and then launching him into space is utterly meaningless to the game, but a silly and different way to play. Likewise the 1 bullet challenge in Episode 1.

Adding MORE value to games whatever it may be is worth applauding even if you don't like it.

I personally rarely play online components for games, but apprecaite the fact they are there for others.

[Elder_Moloch]

Regarding achievement hunting:
"I don't do it for competition, it's for my personal enjoyment". I mean it's nice to get rare achievements (which may not even be hard one), but I'm mostly fine with enjoyment part. I like to keep my % of progression per game around 50-70% and like completionism, when I like a game or process of getting achievements is enjoyable.
I don't care much about other people using SAM or not. I suspect that most people I know don't use it (at least in most cases).

Regarding SAM usage on my own:
So far I used it only twice (for unlocking achievements and outside of deleting achievements for testing purposes). I don't like/don't think it's fair to be denied achievements due to non-related to game progression reasons (requirement of specific platform or bugged achievements for example) or due inability to get achievements anymore (MP or beta test one for example).
As said I used it only twice so far: one required installation of Linux or emulator and one was simply bugged for me (even when I met all requirements) without any solution. But I don't mind to use it in the future for said cases.

[metamec]

I definitely don't value Steam achievements as much as (for example) PlayStation trophies because you can't trust that anyone earned them legitimately on Steam.

Achievements/trophies in a lot of games are more than just shiny dopamine releasing tokens, however. They actually set interesting and fun goals and often encourage you to play games in different ways, sometimes even extending their replay value. So despite everything, many achievements still have meaningful value.

[Elder_Moloch]

metamec の投稿を引用：

I definitely don't value Steam achievements as much as (for example) PlayStation trophies because you can't trust that anyone earned them legitimately on Steam.

Achievements/trophies in a lot of games are more than just shiny dopamine releasing tokens, however. They actually set interesting and fun goals and often encourage you to play games in different ways, sometimes even extending their replay value. So despite everything, many achievements still have meaningful value.

Yeah, agree regarding value and basically additional content from some achivements.
With that said, even outside of mentioned by me examples above there are also in-game achievements, which don't make a lot of sense. For example there was achievement that required to play game for 40 hours for a game, which almost doesn't have any replayability I did it without SAM, but regret wasting my time for this and think I should probably used SAM instead.
So, I think, if there would be some sort of quality control for achivements on Steam, I don't think SAM would be needed at all (outside of said testing purposes).

[Kenpoleon Bonaparte]

I work hard for my achievements, and I take great satisfaction in earning them, especially those that force me to think outside the box. The fact that some people cheat for their achievements doesn't change my satisfaction at all.

I've got a few games in which I'm only missing one or two achievements, such as "beat on hardcore mode" or "do a speedrun". I'm not the kind of player who can really do things like hardcore modes or speedruns, so I'll be missing out on the 100% for those games. Such is life. I would rather get 98% honestly than get 100% by cheating.

[vaa32944]

None of those things, games included, are necessary.

[DronkenPony.Be]

+1