Revisiting the Achievement System

[MantoStar]

I believe that the system for achievements that is currently on Steam, while it somewhat works, is still in need of a major overhaul.

The main issue is that there is no better goal to chase, other than 100%ing games, and there is no real indication of how much effort is put into an account exactly. Grinding them on Xbox or Playstation is way more satisfying than on here because you have your trophy levels/gamerscore that is a more clear way of your progress, and each achievement has it's weight that makes it even more rewarding to get through that "Super Hard Mode" in your game of choice. Steam just lacks that.

The way that you can show off your progress outside of that isn't that good either. While the "showing the individual/rarest achievements" part is fine, the stats is what is bugging me. The pure number of achievements doesn't really work when there are games that just are there to use achievements as a way to flair up your profile (even if the game itself gets deleted from the store, they still stay on your profile), which just boost the number up artificially. And as with the average achievement completion %, some games have achievements that are either completely unobtainable at this point in time, or just take waaaay too long to perfect, so it's very hard to keep this number up, especially since it only gets harder as you get more and more games.

And yes, I know, SAM exists. People will most likely cheat off their way to first place if there's gonna be some kind of point/level system, and a leaderboard to go with it, if any. But that's just an unfortunate given, and I believe it's more for personal goals/rivarly between friends anyway.
What are your thoughts about this?

[Crazy Tiger]

I think an opt out of achievements in general would be a very nice improvement.

[Start_Running]

You have a score on steam. 1 pt per cheevo.
as for trophies... the achievements are the trophies. So giving triophies for getting trophies just feels.. reduindant.

As for weighting achievements. Fundamentally pointless. Such weighting makes assumptions of the player. WHat one player may find difficulty, another will fine to be barely an effort.

Though you kinda already understand this since you speek of some achievements taking waay too long. And those cheevo spam games. Yeah they'd have their own weightings. They can just as easily give the 'Start the Game' achievment a 100pt score rating you know.

[UrbanMech]

Цитата допису MantoStar:

And yes, I know, SAM exists. People will most likely cheat off their way to first place if there's gonna be some kind of point/level system, and a leaderboard to go with it, if any. But that's just an unfortunate given, and I believe it's more for personal goals/rivarly between friends anyway.
What are your thoughts about this?

My thoughts are that they shouldn't put anymore resources to it because of the cheats. You already have to make your own personal goals and achievements for the achievements since they aren't valid anyway due to easily being cheated. Just continue on doing that. Valve should put more resources in other things imo. Like fixing issues they brought with the latest update of Steam client itself.

[Nx Machina]

An achievement like a trophy is simply ticking a box to get a pat on the back and is not an incentive to play a game. You play a game because you want to play it, finish a game because you want to finish it, in the same way when you do not want to play that game, the score or different tiers you deem relevant have zero meaning when you chose to stop 25%, 50% of the way through.

The reality is when people bring console trophies into the discussion they sidestep the very fact that games get abandoned on consoles by the player/s because their incentive to play the game was lost and trophies, the supposed catalyst for gaming on console, the much touted reward system is irrelevant.

How do i know? Because a friend has only 5 platinum trophies on Playstation and the rest of his games were abandoned. They were not what he thought they would be, he lost interest.

On PC, 1 achievement = 1 point, therefore you can see at a glance that a game which has 100 achievements and you have 50, you have 50 points, because those are the ones you got and when you did you "rewarded yourself" by doing them, because maybe you are one of the few who did it, and in turn that gives "value to the achievements" you deem is lacking.

For example in Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr, i am one of 9.8% of players who have the Perils of the Warp achievement and one of the of 3.5% players who has the Display of Valor achievement on PC. Note: I did not use SAM to get them.

And finally PC is an open platform, unlike consoles, therefore there are other ways to get achievements. Console commands, using a friends game save or downloading one from the internet etc, etc.

[nullable]

I mean achievements are quaint and all. Before achievements I just played games. After achievements I still just play games, and achievements are fine. Steam's system is a bit spartan compared to other systems, but there's nothing wrong with that.

If people want points, scores, trophies, incentives, that's fine I'm not arguing against it. Just doesn't seem all the necessary to me any more than achievements themselves are, and whatever the system is currently is always going to be good enough. If it changes it'll be good enough. It's good enough right now. It's one of those things that you can't do any wrong with.

It's fine if you want these changes. Trying to sell the idea that people need these things, or they need incentives to play games or get achievements. I dunno if that's actually a very good argument. I think when people fall into that trap trying to argue achievements need more and more value to be worthwhile to players, they start to lose sight of what it is. I think all you need to say is it might be more fun and more like other systems you like if they followed suit, and if that has any value for Valve or publishers they'll do it.