Steam Achievements

I think it's fair to say Steam's digital distribution had a pretty significant effect on the market.

This.

Also, let's set some things straight.

There's a difference between owning the company that made the game, and owning the game. I think you've mixed the two.

Technically, 1 and 2 are not the same as buying a game from the store. 3 is correct.

4 is completely incorrect as proven by your previous statements. You cannot "own" a game on Steam, sell it to someone else, sell it to gamestop, buy it back from either one, give it, or a copy of it to someone else so they can install it, play with them at the same time in the same room even. Without internet.

In the middle of the Himalayas.

Steam is not like that. You can download a game from your account, but are forced to log in to play it meaning you can't simply physically give it to someone else. You are forced to log in meaning you cannot play with said person you gave the cd to. You cannot make a copy of the program for a friend and expect it to work without them owning it on their Steam account. Plus if Steam's login servers die, you're screwed out of your game list if you don't have the games already downloaded to play on the PC, and ONLY if you use Steam's offline only mode, and last I checked, that also forces you to go online at least once before playing the game on a new computer.

I don't like the DRM that Steam has on the games, and I understand that if they got rid of said DRM, everyone would simply make copies of the games instead of buying their own, but that has literally created a black market for copying Steam games. The very thing thing they're trying to prevent, they directly caused by using the DRM originally designed to prevent it.. It's kind of sad.


ALL of that said, I think Steam is an impressive program that allows you to access your list of games at any time, should you have internet access to download it. (presuming you don't have the game's Steam installation already on a mobile drive of some type).

Steam does make it very easy to keep, track, buy new games, watch your friends play theirs, play with your friends on games you both own, and also has the overlay on Steam and non-Steam games. It also allows you to add non-Steam games into the program so you can boot it using the Steam program, but won't have all the features a game built-in to Steam would, like achievement tracking for example. (that's a different topic.) I like the idea of Steam. It is a tried and true concept that works, Steam is living proof of it, so is Origin and other such similar programs.


Now, Achievements are a topic of this, that, and the other. I've heard some majorly good arguments from both sides for and against them. Personally, I'm on the wall. I don't know about PA having achievements in Steam because achievements in general tend to stray from the original idea of actually achieving something.

Some make you spend hours doing something monotonous. Pick up 500 thousand slime gels! Kay.
*ACHIEVABLE!* [All the Slime Gels!] +1 Gamerscore.
"wat. Only one? wtf >:/" Achievement? lolno.

Some force you into playing the entire game, from beginning to end, by yourself, not taking any damage, dying, or being seen, not using any weapons or vehicles, making sure none of your allies take damage or die, while assassinating every single enemy in the game from behind.. on the hardest difficulty.. with all the skulls on. skjafgjhasgfkAHHHH RAGE D:<
*ACHIEVABLE!* [Wait, what? How in the WTFBBQ did you do that?]
Yeah, some of them are like that. Not fun. Achievement? Most definitely. Worth it? Definitely not. Never again.

Others are like Minecraft that simply say..
*ACHIEVABLE!* [Open your inventory!] [Punch tree!] [Wood Get!]
Achievements? I think not. Amusing? Sure, I think that one's fair. Intentionally poking fun at the entire idea of achievements is pretty funny.

Achievements, overall, are far and wide, and you can't simply tailor them for everyone. Some people feel forced or compelled to do [ALL the achievements!]. Maybe partially OCD? Perhaps simply Achievement Hunters. I don't know if they're best for PA, but so far I have yet to see an RTS with a good achievement list. I'm curious yet very skeptical.. but that's just me. For other people, the best achievement list is no list at all.

*ACHIEVABLE!* [Read through an entire TL;DR post without wanting a TL;DR]
+1 respect

I would love to see invites work on steam. That's one of the big reasons i use steam. Achievements are meh. I personally love achievements that are rare and you go "oh yea cool i remember how i got that!" and not "1 million shots fired". I mean, do you remember your millionth shot in a game?

Stuff i'm talking about: in Modern Warfare 2 i killed a guy with a flashbang. I remember exactly how it went. I got an achievement, and every time i think of MW2 or see that achievement i go "yea that was awesome". Then i see "achievement: 1000 kills" and i just blankly stare at it.

I think a planet smash deserves an achievement, but i don't think the game has that much good achievement material.

Same. At least some launchers (like Total War) check and tell you whats in/out of date.

achievements... PFF. Most annoying ridiculously useless garbage ever. Why would anybody care about stupid achievements?? Especially among the audience of PA I had not so many people expected to...

@ Bgrmystr2: Good post.

@ Bgrmystr2: Good post.[/quote]
Thanks :V

I like the idea of saying "I did [this thing]" and being able to show I did it, but the achievements picked for a majority of games I see aren't based on true achievements that make you feel accomplished. In that respect, I agree that "achievements" tend to be complete garbage. It's also based on an arbitrary system that defines what an "achievement" is, instead of giving you real challenges you'd need to be competent enough to prove yourself.

The fact that now achievements are simply used a tool for people to say they're better than others because they have more "gamerscore", or they "100%ed X amount of games" and think it means something.. perhaps, perhaps not. It's in the eye of the beholder, not a general thing that means something to everyone. That is where achievements of today fall flat.

Keep in mind that sometimes you'll find some achievements that may not look like anything at first glance, but bring on shenanigans during your playthrough that you wouldn't have experienced without trying it. I can see some of them as challenges, which feels more "achievement-y"(?) to me.

Example : There's one achievement in the Halo 1 Anniversary that requires you to complete any mission on heroic/legendary without taking damage. It's not a huge limit, and you can play with a friend, but it does require a little planning and while doing that one, a whole lot of hilarity happened, and my friend was the one that ended up stopping me from getting it.. xD

One requires you to storm the beach of The Silent Cartographer on heroic/legendary without a marine dying. I did this on heroic not because I wanted the achievement, but because the marines tend to be useful as attention grabbers. It's something I would probably have jumped and done if I didn't do it all the time. I think this example is worthy of the 'achievement' title. Friend was doing this, and I accidentally stuck a marine in the face.. which killed off basically everyone but the enemies. It was bad.

Another challenge is the escaping the map room in the above mission without firing a shot on heroic/legendary. It was pretty difficult because of trigger finger instincts, not because of the difficulty of the enemies. Had to do that one a few times.. goddam swordsman.

There aren't too many of these achievement-worthy challenges, but they are fun. Whether the little bleeboop I get for doing it is worth anything or not is something else altogether.


In regards to PA, I can see random achievements like..

*ACHIEVABLE!* [Lamenting Custard] Launch a moon at the planet it's rotating.. just for the mechanic to fail while the entire system gets stuck inside the sun somehow..

*ACHIEVABLE!* [Wait, Zaph did what now?] Play a small planet freeforall game with at least 6 players, start with only one metal deposit, and still win within 20 minutes.
(Was it 30 mins? I know someone had to have seen that video..)

Edit : Bro I don't even engrish..

Actually, Steam is a little bit different than traditional licensing. While you are correct that you only ever buy a license to a game (regardless of where you "bought" the game), with Steam, you are actually buying a license on behalf of Valve, who then allow you to play it via Steam. You don't actually own the license, Valve does. This is why they are allowed to say that they won't guarantee the continued ability to play the games on your account if the Steam platform is ever shut down.

Sometimes it's worth reading the EULA

And that's why I don't use Steam to manage my games.

The platform I use is myself. If it ever shuts down, I really won't mind losing continued availability. ;p

I'm fine with achievements as long as they're not strictly tied to steam and no Skinner box shenanigans.

gratuitous extra credits video:


Edit: this would be good for post-release feature. I believe.

It's all a matter of perspective of what "owning" something means. People could continue to go against your statement but after a while it's just time to quit, lol. But the small sample does prove that the majority of people want full Steam integration. I honestly don't think it's a big deal and Steam could help PA grow a bit, anyway.

You started this. I just want to make that clear. I had made my post. My singular post. Singular because it was off-topic. It even included on-topic content. I was done with the subject of Steam. Now you've brought me back. Let's get this over with.

xD! The fact that you seem to have not read my post thoroughly at all in any way just makes me laugh. Either that, or you didn't understand it whatsoever, which is also kind of funny. The section you quoted has quotations on the word "own" for a reason, and I'm thinking you simply didn't get the hint.

Also, why are you telling me to quit? I made only one post about steam. One. And it was specifically to debunk incorrect information. Not to go against the idea of steam integration. The person whom I quoted stated Steam can do the same as any physically purchasable game without external DRM:

Bold for importance. This was incorrect. You can't sell, nor give away, nor let others borrow, nor buy/have returned your game, or anything like that with a steam game. That's not opinion. That is fact. Steam is not the same. Steam DRM being the same as non DRM disk is impossible. I stated this, and that was it. They also made other correct points which I pointed out as well.

And for good measure, A good example of a disk game with DRM that acts like Steam's DRM is Diablo 3. You can't remove the game or give it to someone else once you register to play it.

You must have missed this part.

I like steam, I have and use steam for quite a few games. I don't like it's absolute DRM. PA doesn't have said absolute DRM because the Devs here are pretty awesomeface. That means PA will benefit from Steam's UI without losing to it's DRM.

Now, I don't have 800 or over two thousand like some other people, but I know my way around it just as well, and do normally enjoy it's overlay's bonuses when I'm using it such as external game joining and chatting using the in-game UI, keeping track of screenshots and other stats from myself and other players, as well as many other things. Steam integration with PA as a helpful UI for social features would probably come out as a good thing. A great thing, even. It's the other parts of Steam that I'm worried about.. but that's another topic for another time.

Achievements, especially Steam achievements are hardly used for any "bragging rights". In most games they add more virtually "playable content". When you are bored and don't know what to do, there can be achievements left to hunt. I just don't want to be able to unlock them during betas unfinished mechanics yet.

Personally, I agree that Steam achievements are really cool. I'd love for our game to dish them out.

Steam achievements, however, are pretty low on our priority list. Will we get them in for launch? Maybe. Post-launch? Probably. It's not like we're actively opposed to them or something. This is just a matter of bandwidth.

As long as they aren't as bad as AoE 2 HD's achievements, I'm fine.
I MEAN LOOK AT SOME OF THESE THINGS.
LOOK AT THEM!

THIS IS NOT OKAY, MICROSOFT. IT IS NOT OKAY.

"Achievements/medals/badges/pavlovs dog buggery" <- Check it out has some interesting ideas for achievements.