Ability to blacklist games from Rarest Achievement Showcase

[Shot From Guns]

Half of my Rarest Achievement Showcase is currently taken up by achievements from a single game (Marvel Heroes Omega), a free-to-play MMO where, because of the sheer volume of players, even the most common achievement is only unlocked for 3.9% of players, and there are about 70 achievements that are sub-1%. (It used to take up nearly all of the slots, but over the years some of the achievements have been pushed out by other games.)

For games like this, it would be amazing if we would have the ability to choose whether to blacklist certain games' achievements from appearing in the list of overall rarest. That way, the showcase wouldn't be flooded by games with huge playerbases and huge achievement lists where very few people ever made it to the point of getting a single achievement, but it would be at players' discretion what to include or not include.

An alternative or additional feature would be to allow players to set a maximum number of achievements per game to show, only displaying the rarest for each. That way, no one game could take up more slots than the player specifies. (For example, I could set it to 1 achievement per game, so it would always show 12 unique games, with only the rarest achievement for each displayed.)

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Then it wouldn't be the rarest you achieved, would it?

[nullable]

There's already an achievement showcase where you can display the achievements you want to display. The rarest achievement showcase is just that, being able to argue why you don't like your rarest achievements, or why their rarity doesn't count, doesn't change their rarity.

[Shot From Guns]

cSg|mc: I honestly don't see the problem with letting people display slightly LESS rare achievements than they've actually earned, especially if that then showcases their activity over a wider range of games. We already have a showcase for showing off achievements in one particular game: it's called Favorite Game.

Snakub: The point of the RAS is that it does it automatically. It's silly to expect someone to go into like five dozen+ games and compare all their achievements to figure out which are the next-rarest.

This would be a completely optional feature; if you didn't like it, you wouldn't have to use it. And it wouldn't harm anyone who wasn't using it in any way.

I will also note that people could already achieve this effect by using an achievement editor to delete the achievements they don't want showing up. This would just mean that people could do it more officially, via Steam itself, without having to use third-party software, and without having to re-earn achievements later if they decide they want them. (Which would be especially tricky for a game like MHO, which doesn't actually exist anymore; so, again, you'd be stuck using third-party software to unlock the achievements.)

[Yasahi]

In other words you want to turn the Rarest achievements showcase into the achievement showcase. Calling it rarest achievements would be misleading the moment you start adding filters or rules to it.

Since you already have the option of choosing which achievements to display with the other showcase I don't see any reason for this change. If anything, it could cause confusion. Not to mention it adds complexity to something that should be simple and straightforward.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Shot From Guns:

This would be a completely optional feature; if you didn't like it, you wouldn't have to use it. And it wouldn't harm anyone who wasn't using it in any way.

Sure, but it's also a non-trivial amount of work. You're going to need a whole UI to manage games and/or achievements which are not allowed to be displayed. You're going to need database work to keep track of user configuration. It's a lot of work to modify one showcase for pretty little value. At least the way I perceive it.

Originally posted by Shot From Guns:

I will also note that people could already achieve this effect by using an achievement editor to delete the achievements they don't want showing up.

Great, I would recommend doing that.

Originally posted by Shot From Guns:

This would just mean that people could do it more officially, via Steam itself, without having to use third-party software, and without having to re-earn achievements later if they decide they want them. (Which would be especially tricky for a game like MHO, which doesn't actually exist anymore; so, again, you'd be stuck using third-party software to unlock the achievements.)

I don't think this is a case where an "more official" method warrants the effort. And if you can remove the achievements, you should be able to re-add them.

I mean not everything a user wants to do warrants a UI change. If there's a workaround sometimes you should just do the workaround. Otherwise you'll probably be waiting a long time for the feature, even if Valve stated today they will implement it.

[Shot From Guns]

It's a VERY unofficial workaround—allegedly nobody gets banned JUST for using achievement editors, but it's also using a third-party tool to change Steam data, which is in a grey area at best. (Obviously, ethically speaking, it's at least more "right" to toggle achievements you already have than give yourself ones you didn't earn.)

I'm also as sure as I can be without actually seeing Steam's back end that this would be a fairly easy tweak. As somebody who minored in comp sci in college and has programmed at least a little in *counts on fingers* over a half-dozen different languages, I'm the first person in line to tell people that the "simple" thing they're asking for is likely actually very complex; this really doesn't strike me as one of those times. Especially if you limited the number of games people could blacklist, and especially especially if you just made it an off/on checkbox for a "one achievement per game" limit.

ETA: I will also note that the Achievement Showcase does NOT show on mouseover the percentage of players who have that achievement, like the Rarest Achievement one does. I have no idea why they put the achievement percentage only on the latter and the achievement description only on the former, instead of both on both.

[MrrX]

Cheers friend. Your thread has answered my exact question about Marvel Heroes Omega, I just wish the result was better.

Your profile isn't too bad, look at all the MHO junk on my Rarest showcase !

[Shot From Guns]

Originally posted by MrrX:

Cheers friend. Your thread has answered my exact question about Marvel Heroes Omega, I just wish the result was better.

Your profile isn't too bad, look at all the MHO junk on my Rarest showcase !

Ouch. RIP in peace your RA showcase, my dude. Maybe someday we'll get traction on it, instead of "I don't see why it matters" replies from people who aren't affected by the issue and wouldn't be harmed in any way by giving us any kind of filter.

[Steve]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.