Hiding Achievements

I'm just making this topic because it seems that every modern game has to go out of its way to put in achievements for some stupid reason. (Back in my day, we dictated our own achievements etc etc.) It doesn't seem likely that PA will have achievements in it, but if it must, please give us an option to disable them or hide them completely.

That depends on where the game will be available. On Steam if they decide to have achievements I don`t believe Steam API allows for hidden achievement rewarding. Other APIs probably do the same. Otherwise it`s possible to hide it.

I`m a huge achievement apologist for single-player games when said achievements suggest fun and/or different actions (In Red Dead Redemption there`s an achievement for putting a woman in the train track and waiting for her untimely demise). So overall achievements don`t bother me, but I`m all in for the option to hide it altogether for the people that don`t like it.

Well, I'll be playing the non-Steam version anyway, so as long as my version gives me that option, I'm fine.

Won't the 'Steam version' just be the regular game distributed through Steam rather than being tied to the Steamworks API?

That`s Uber`s decision. They may integrate the API as much as they want into Steam`s version. I may be dead wrong since I never worked with the API and information about it is confidential, so don`t take this as final. Steamworks API has very little mandatory feature implementation. As far as I`m aware only the basic overlay system call is really needed for Steam games. All other stuff (achievements, cloud saving and so forth) is optional.

Achievement Unlocked:
No Sense of Priorities (50 G)
Got offended by the thought of a couple of lines of text appearing in the corner of your screen every few hours.

Now there's a thought - will Steam players be able to play with non-Steam players?

Likely. Uber has previously stated that the idea is to make sure the game isn't locked into one service, but that anyone can create servers, etc. I would be strange if the Steam version was so locked compared to the non-Steam version.

There are plenty of games on Steam where you can play with people who bought the game elsewhere.

I personally do not know of a game that is available for Steam and outside Steam, where these two groups cannot play one another. (I know about region locks and platform (PC vs Console) locks, but not distribution lock... yet.)

With all the other ridiculous suggestions appearing on the forums, I would think this is the least outlandish, and one of the more easily implemented. And I doubt I'm the only one that feels this way, so best make it known early on.

Also, if I recall correctly, the devs said that PA wouldn't require Steam, which means that it wouldn't use the Steamworks API. (At least, not for all releases of the game.) That was a major deciding choice in whether I backed the game or not, so I'm fairly certain it will remain.

We certainly want to be on Steam but we have our own equivalent UberNet API's for most of what people use Steam for.

I've wanted to ask this for a long time but I didn't want to start a new thread for one single question.
If PA comes to Steam (which I hope it does), then I can I use my non-Steam key to bind the game to Steam? I know you can do this with a few games but usally you have to buy another copy of the game on Steam itself if you want to have the game on Steam.

My question is, what exactly is so bad about achievements that you don't even want to see them? I know plenty of people that don't really care about achievements. I myself only ever pursue them if the method of unlocking seems like fun in a way that I probably wouldn't have done without it (i.e. Mirror's Edge no weapons run). However, I've never met a person so vehemently opposed to achievements that they would actively champion for their removal from the game. Why do you dislike them so much that the thought of accidentally unlocking an achievement is abhorrent to you?

The argument I heard from a friend and I can understand (but I don`t share) is about immersion breaking. When an achievement message pops up you loose the sense of immersion from the game. Particularly that don`t bother me but I understand if it bothers other people so I support a achievement pop-up disable option.

There has been plenty of debate about whether achievements are a bad thing in games. With regards to online multiplayer games, the main issue is that it makes players play differently than they normally would, all in pursuit of their achievements.

With regards to playing alone in a single player game, it doesn't affect gamers other than yourself, so in that area it becomes more of a philosophical issue for me than an issue for all players. A game is designed to be played a certain way and enjoyed for what it is. Some players may decide to go outside the definitions of gameplay boundaries in order to do fun, clever little things. This is why speedruns, glitch runs, extreme exploration, secret hunting, and generally weird methods of playing a game come in. It's an optional aspect of the game that the player may choose to partake in, but it may not organically fit into the original design of the game.

However, by adding achievements, you are encouraging gamers to play the game these specific ways in order to receive this reward that's offered for playing the game in a way they normally may not. And for those achievements that come through ordinary gameplay, do they even really have a purpose? It's just rewarding something the player would do anyway.

(And the worst is when actual gameplay elements are blocked off by the need to "unlock" them through achievements, but that gets into a whole other matter about locking off gameplay elements, something to which I am even more vehemently opposed.)

I'd better stop before I go on a lengthy rant about why I dislike achievements so much. Suffice it to say, TA and FA never had achievements (maybe on Steam, but I wouldn't know), and I doubt anyone had less fun for the lack of it.

For me, I prefer not to have the distractions of little popup messages interrupting the immersion I have in my game. I'm not demanding that achievements not be put in, or even that they be turned off. Just give us the option to make them completely invisible, so that players don't have to be bothered with them in the first place.

tl;dnr: Achievements bullied me in school, dented my car, and killed my mom. Also, I'm an old man who does not liek the ways of the modern generation.

I like stats and achievements, what is so bad about them?
You dont need to read them, do you?

Stats are perfectly acceptable, and I welcome them. What I am against is getting a popup in the middle of the game saying

Achievement Unlocked:
Commnapper (10G)
Pick up an enemy commander with your dropship and then self destruct.

Is it such a sacrifice to add a option in the options menu to hide it away?

The real question is if it's worth the Dev time to make it an option.

Mike

So it wouldn't be worth the Developers' time to allow people to turn them off, yet it would be worth the time to make these useless things to shove into the game in the first place?

That's a separate issue all together. My prior point was based on other people's assumptions that the game will achievements.

Also heck, while we're talking about Achievements;

Extra Credit - Achievements

Just so we're all on the same page here.

Mike

if(achievementsEnabled == true)
achievementPopup(achievementMessage);

Oh the horror. (And adding it to the options menu would probably take a max of 10 lines of code as well.)