Achievement Icons as Avatars Proposal

[triazra]

I am not sure if this has been suggested before and I appologize if I am rehashing an old topic.

An avatar is one of many things to many different gamers, but in short it is an identifier. It shows the community a small shot of us the individual. Steam is very generous in providing a large assortment of free avatars or allowing an individual to upload their own (as I currently do). Unfortunately there is a down side to this though. Amoungst the free avatars, there aren't always ones that resonate with the individual or appropriately relate back to their gaming style. Also not everyone is willing to free hand draw their own avatar or crop it from another internet site, rescale it, and upload it.

However, I believe there is a missed opportunity here that could easily add a factor of convience, individualize a users profile more, and be tied into he steam ranking system.

Allowing the use of -earned- game achievements as avatars would fill in this gap. These are icons/art that are already available on steam and would only need to be resized to fit the size specifications. Considering achievements already scale to a standard size, rescaling them to fit avatar size should take minimal investment. The art used by the developers in the achievements is not only unique to the game, it is enticing and fun to a gamer that enjoys that title. Unlike the current free avatars this allows an accurate representation of what we the gamers do play to be easily seen by the community without even leaving a discussion thread.

While forum goers often go through the trials and tribulations to appropriate find an avatar to identify themselves, this does not go for the community as a whole. There are plenty of gamers out there with blank avatar images. Tying in unlocked achievement icons into a profiles accessible potential avatars should not take up more system resources (since the images are already hosted on steam) and will hopefully encourge more gamers to identify themselves and add to the community that is Steam.

I am not sure if there are legal matters surrounding this but as moderators and procurers of this community that promotes individulaization already (ie achievement showecases, earned backgrounds that are game themed, and emoticons) this could take your system one step further. Making it level dependant, for example, like user profile backgrounds at level 10 would potentially help promote a system that has yet to interest avid gamers in your community. I say this because there are gamers out there that do not participate in the system because they do not see a worthwhile return for their time and investment. Adding another feature to your system is a great way to bring more value to it. Keeping it low level (ie unlock somewhere between 5-15) would make it also a reasonable access to begin to encourage more individuals to participate in the system.

Allowing individuals to be identified by these achievement icons (preferable with the descriptors off to prevent spoilers) would be another way for gamers to show off the games they play and, potentially, their rarer achievements to the community. While this is currently available on the profile page, I do not go back through to everyone on a forum thread to read their profile page, I do not believe myself to be the only individual of this manner of thought either. Instead allowing the community to utilize what we have already earned in a new fashion would be another way to show off our achievements in even a broader sense.

I only propose this for game achievements earned/unlocked on an individuals account. This promotes replay value of a game, a commodity that we already own in our accounts, and does bring out some of the more interesting art that is often hidden several pages deep or obsured from ready vision.

While I understand that this is often a legnthy process, I do hope you formally consider my request. These unique game aspects are underutilized at current and can be brought further to light. The art is beautiful and a worthy trophy to any gamer, and should be shown as such. The pride an individual can take from wearing their achievement front and forward should be something Steam/Valve itself should be proud to encourage.

I look forward to your response.

-Triazra

[Perlague]

Quite the late reply but I'd absolutely love being able to use one of those rare achievements I have as a pfp.

[Bill]

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