The achievement system lets the platform down

[Alice]

Search wasn't easy to filter.. so couldn't find if it's a repost.
I know achievements are technically pointless in general but they can be fun and serve as a reminder of a game you put a lot of time into.

Compared with Microsoft and Sony the system on Steam is quite poor..

• No way to show which games you have 100% completed (showcase gives the number of perfect games but you need to use 3rd party sites to find out which games they are, so you can't show them off on your profile)
  
• There is no overarching achievement system. The Steam level would have been great for this (a la gamerscore and trophy level), but instead it is tied to trading cards & badges, which only shows how much money you spent in the market as you can't even get enough drops from playing a game to craft a badge due to drop limits. Nobody I know cares about Steam level because it symbolises absolutely nothing.
  
• People can easily cheat achievements and there is no consequence, which cheapens them even further
  
• There is no distinguishing achievements in terms of challenge, they all have equal weight. I think somewhere you can see the % of users that have it but there should be a tier system perhaps.

I hope Steam will improve the achievements system in the future, the foundation is there and I think the changes would be minor to make it more interesting.

My suggestions would be

• Ability to show perfect games off on your profile, this would require minimal effort as the data is there and 3rd party sites can show you - so why can't Steam itself?
  
• System which demonstrates your overall achievement stats in a way that you can compare with other players.
  
• Get stricter on cheating so the system means something
  
• Weighted achievements. . The showcase can show rarest achievements, but it's entirely meaningless to other people unless they have played those games and understand what each achievement entails. In general on other platforms there is some kind of currency others understand - if I tell my friend I got a Gold trophy he knows that was probably difficult (ignoring achievement farm games).

[Tammy the Muffin]

Publicado originalmente por Quint the Alligator Snapper:

Thing is, because right now on Steam there's no incentive (other than an achievement icon) to cheat achievements, relatively few people cheat achievements. So those achievements that are rarer tend to truly be the ones that are more difficult (or tedious or whatever) to get.

You cant use SAM to hack achievements in games that process data and triggers on server side. But not so many devs care about it.
Just same way like when people complain about patches ruin more than fixing and they want earlier game's version. It is possible to freely upgrade/downgrade game's version, but not many devs care. Only one i have in mind right now is PDX.

So if devs dont want their achievements hacked, they can more or less prevent it.

But lyrics aside, "rare" achievements are just... rare. Yep, thats all.

Some rare achievements you cant get any other way than SAM.
Some rare achievements you cant get any other way than SAM because those are broken. Devs are lazy monkeys, happends.
Some rare achievements were added long after game was released and rare because 99% of players doesnt bother to get those because already left a game or playing with mods.
Some rare achievements are exhausing as hell and shows only you're a nolifer with lobotomy. As good example, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak - all of 0,01% achievements are multiplayer related.
etc

Achievement rareness shows nothing if you dont play that game and dont know its true cost.

[𝕙.𝕓𝕒𝕣𝕜𝕒𝕤]

"Nobody I know cares about Steam level because it symbolises absolutely nothing."

Demonstrated by all the users who went to great length to exploit the recent Summer Sale race to level up.
For people who want a decent looking profile levels mean more showcases so the do care about it. Plus the trading card market depends on those who buy cards to craft badges to level up with Valve getting a sizeable commision from each trade.

[Tammy the Muffin]

Publicado originalmente por h.barkas:

For people who want a decent looking profile levels mean more showcases so the do care about it. Plus the trading card market depends on those who buy cards to craft badges to level up with Valve getting a sizeable commision from each trade.

You cant get more than 1 of each showcase, so you can use all of them at, i'm too lazy to count, level 150?

Anyways, more level = more chances to get free boosters. Level 100 will get few free boosters per year, level 1000 - free booster every day (not accurate). So top levels are literally cards printers.

Why do you think Valve fixed that glitch that fast, unlike alien game where you could use same tech to disable enemies and grab as many exp as you wanted because you got exp per level instead of exp per kills? Alien game wasnt fixed at all, race game was fixed in one day.

There's few more minor privileges, but nothing essential

[Garou]

Publicado originalmente por The Living Tribunal:

Achievements are meaningless. I play the games, for the games. Unfortunately because of today's "gamers" (quotes are in fact needed), they want everything as close to a social media platform as possible, hence the need for achievements. Saying "Sony/MS/Etc does (insert feature) with their achievements " is equivalent to saying "That person's fecal matter smells slightly better than this other person's fecal matter."

I'll give you the same response other people like you often like to type in this forum. If you don't like achievements ignore this discussion. Many people do like achievements and are entitled to suggesting positive changes to the system.

[Satoru]

Booster packs actually have a hard cap so its pointless to go beyond a certain point because the system wont drop boosters quicker than the hard cap. It doesnt matter if your steam level is 10 billion, you're not geting booster packs any faster

[Tammy the Muffin]

Publicado originalmente por Satoru:

Booster packs actually have a hard cap so its pointless to go beyond a certain point because the system wont drop boosters quicker than the hard cap. It doesnt matter if your steam level is 10 billion, you're not geting booster packs any faster

So, you're telling that lvl1 will get same ammount of boosters at same ammount of time with lvl1000000000 ?

[UTFapolloMarine]

Publicado originalmente por AmsterdamHeavy:

I dont really care about achievements; they are a minor diversion.

"System which demonstrates your overall achievement stats in a way that you can compare with other players."

That already exists though.

now if they paid us 10 cents for each achievement then bam

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Publicado originalmente por koskeusko:

Publicado originalmente por Quint the Alligator Snapper:

Thing is, because right now on Steam there's no incentive (other than an achievement icon) to cheat achievements, relatively few people cheat achievements. So those achievements that are rarer tend to truly be the ones that are more difficult (or tedious or whatever) to get.

You cant use SAM to hack achievements in games that process data and triggers on server side. But not so many devs care about it.
Just same way like when people complain about patches ruin more than fixing and they want earlier game's version. It is possible to freely upgrade/downgrade game's version, but not many devs care. Only one i have in mind right now is PDX.

So if devs dont want their achievements hacked, they can more or less prevent it.

And amounts to always-on DRM.

I'd rather not have such DRM and have cheatable achievements, than have such DRM but no cheatable achievements.

Publicado originalmente por koskeusko:

Some rare achievements you cant get any other way than SAM because those are broken. Devs are lazy monkeys, happends.

To be fair, some of these are for games that were released a while ago and the devs may have moved on (or in some cases just the studio no longer exists), and even the source code may have been lost. (I guess the devs should in turn be willing to accept community-sourced reverse-engineering to make the chieves work right, if someone does put in such work, but this work is hardly guaranteed.)

Publicado originalmente por koskeusko:

Achievement rareness shows nothing if you dont play that game and dont know its true cost.

Are you trying to use the achievements as some sort of measure of one's "gamer worth"? Because that's basically a giant can of worms given that devs can make basically anything achievements, or even simply make no achievements.

The problem with making achievements "count for something" is that people will start whining (more than the baseline that they already do) about achievements -- complaining that some are too easy, others are too hard, some might be broken (and Steam Support would get tickets concerning them), some games don't have them, other games have too many, some chieves are too luck-based, and so on.

Publicado originalmente por koskeusko:

There's few more minor privileges, but nothing essential :LizzyD5:

The same can be said of achievements.

[Crazy Tiger]

Publicado originalmente por Quint the Alligator Snapper:

Publicado originalmente por koskeusko:

Achievement rareness shows nothing if you dont play that game and dont know its true cost.

Are you trying to use the achievements as some sort of measure of one's "gamer worth"?

Considering the mention of Gamerscore (Xbox) and Trophy level (PS), put together with saying that Steam level now is meaningless (and thusly implying it would mean something if on par with the other two), one would think that is what he's saying.

[Alice]

Publicado originalmente por Crazy Tiger:

Publicado originalmente por Quint the Alligator Snapper:

Are you trying to use the achievements as some sort of measure of one's "gamer worth"?

Considering the mention of Gamerscore (Xbox) and Trophy level (PS), put together with saying that Steam level now is meaningless (and thusly implying it would mean something if on par with the other two), one would think that is what he's saying.

Not at all, more to do with recording progress and adding a bit of a metagame to it. Maybe I've finished the game but I want to get more out of it, and in that case well designed achievements can be a godsend and offer many extra hours of gameplay.

A lot of people here high horsing as if they are paragons of virtue who play games just for fun and never compare with others... I'm sure most of the favourite games of these people are competitive games with ranking systems, which I'm sure those very same people take very seriously and feel proud of.

Why not have something similar for those of us who don't play competitive games?
There is a system, but it's bare bones - that's all I'm trying to say. The thing is I don't think it's actually far off being a great system too with a few tweaks.

Whether you give a crap about achievements or not, anyone who got the gnome to the end of Half-Life 2 is a legend, and that's the kind of feat I think achievements are best for.

[Crazy Tiger]

Publicado originalmente por Yosaron:

Publicado originalmente por Crazy Tiger:

Considering the mention of Gamerscore (Xbox) and Trophy level (PS), put together with saying that Steam level now is meaningless (and thusly implying it would mean something if on par with the other two), one would think that is what he's saying.

Not at all, more to do with recording progress and adding a bit of a metagame to it. Maybe I've finished the game but I want to get more out of it, and in that case well designed achievements can be a godsend and offer many extra hours of gameplay.

A lot of people here high horsing as if they are paragons of virtue who play games just for fun and never compare with others... I'm sure most of the favourite games of these people are competitive games with ranking systems, which I'm sure those very same people take very seriously and feel proud of.

Why not have something similar for those of us who don't play competitive games?
There is a system, but it's bare bones - that's all I'm trying to say. The thing is I don't think it's actually far off being a great system too with a few tweaks.

Whether you give a crap about achievements or not, anyone who got the gnome to the end of Half-Life 2 is a legend, and that's the kind of feat I think achievements are best for.

That was the impression you gave, the way you said it implied that Steam level is meaningless and the other two aren't. Even though they are just as meaningless as the others.

I've said in a previous post in this thread what I think of achievements. I also mentioned that as long as it's just as invisible as now (or optional, as Quint correctly calls it), it wouldn't bother me.

I've listed my favorite games on my profile. I'll add that I play UT only against bots. So you can check whether my statement is high horsing or just how I think.

As long as achievements can be cheated, Valve won't do anything about it. I believe they don't consider it a big point.

And I'll have to take your word for it that that gnome thing in HL2 is legend. To me it sounds like a waste of time. Then again, I consider the HL series to be a waste of time, not my type of game. :D

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Publicado originalmente por Yosaron:

Publicado originalmente por Crazy Tiger:

Considering the mention of Gamerscore (Xbox) and Trophy level (PS), put together with saying that Steam level now is meaningless (and thusly implying it would mean something if on par with the other two), one would think that is what he's saying.

Not at all, more to do with recording progress and adding a bit of a metagame to it. Maybe I've finished the game but I want to get more out of it, and in that case well designed achievements can be a godsend and offer many extra hours of gameplay.

A lot of people here high horsing as if they are paragons of virtue who play games just for fun and never compare with others... I'm sure most of the favourite games of these people are competitive games with ranking systems, which I'm sure those very same people take very seriously and feel proud of.

Why not have something similar for those of us who don't play competitive games?
There is a system, but it's bare bones - that's all I'm trying to say. The thing is I don't think it's actually far off being a great system too with a few tweaks.

Whether you give a crap about achievements or not, anyone who got the gnome to the end of Half-Life 2 is a legend, and that's the kind of feat I think achievements are best for.

I do kinda like how achievements can serve to record progress, but that's just a minor benefit I can do without, since I can and do take screenshots of stuff.

For what it's worth, most of my games are single-player, and I usually ignore achievements, only looking at them as suggestions for gameplay if I feel like messing with a game some more. I generally avoid competitive modes in multiplayer games (e.g. TF2), because I find them too uptight. You can see my games list (it's set to public), if you don't believe me.

I think Steam could use some new features to improve display of achievements, including:
* allowing multiple achievement showcases
* a badge whose text instead says the number of games a person has completed all the achievements on
* a completed-games showcase
* achievement showcases showing more information about the achievements, including but not limited to rarity

[Radene]

Publicado originalmente por Red_Hood:

Publicado originalmente por The Living Tribunal:

Achievements are meaningless. I play the games, for the games. Unfortunately because of today's "gamers" (quotes are in fact needed), they want everything as close to a social media platform as possible, hence the need for achievements. Saying "Sony/MS/Etc does (insert feature) with their achievements " is equivalent to saying "That person's fecal matter smells slightly better than this other person's fecal matter."

I'll give you the same response other people like you often like to type in this forum. If you don't like achievements ignore this discussion. Many people do like achievements and are entitled to suggesting positive changes to the system.

I like achievements, I just think it's dumb to make them be some sort of an e-peen thing.

If you wanna be proud of yourself, achieve something that will get you ahead in life.

[76561198407601200]

Publicado originalmente por Red_Hood:

Publicado originalmente por The Living Tribunal:

Achievements are meaningless. I play the games, for the games. Unfortunately because of today's "gamers" (quotes are in fact needed), they want everything as close to a social media platform as possible, hence the need for achievements. Saying "Sony/MS/Etc does (insert feature) with their achievements " is equivalent to saying "That person's fecal matter smells slightly better than this other person's fecal matter."

I'll give you the same response other people like you often like to type in this forum. If you don't like achievements ignore this discussion. Many people do like achievements and are entitled to suggesting positive changes to the system.

And as will I give you the same response other people like you often like to type in this forum. This is a public forum, I am free to post my opinion on this topic. If op wished for no replies, they would have posted elsewhere in which they have control over who can post. My point still stands regarding achievements being worth nothing. You don't have to agree with it, but it is what it is.

[Sleepy Yoshi]

I do actually like the idea of being able to see a list of 100% games.

For the rest, I'm indifferent. I could see the value in creating a more indepth achievement system, but there are aspects of PC gaming that I wouldn't be willing to give up for such a system. I don't see any viable way to prevent achievement cheating without some major restrictions in how game's can be played i.e. PC losing it's open nature.

As far as Microsoft, if you believe people haven't been or currently aren't using trainers (memory editors etc), modded lobbies and so on, to cheat achievements then you're gravely mistaken.