Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #55 - Achievements

[GenericType]

No Three Mountains or any WC achievement

*Chef's kiss with Italian hand gesture

Perfeeeetto.

 

[LunarBahamut]

Frankly, I always saw achievements as little more than bragging rights thing and never had an interest in them, especially when it comes at cost of playing without legitimate mods that adds to the gameplay value.

Some achievements are actually good tests of base game understanding. In IR, flawed as it is/was (nearly everyone who still plays it plays with mods that add flavour, for good reason), there were some good achievements, like forming Albion in 50 years, which required using nearly all base game mechanics, and it doesn't take a full grinding late game campaign to complete either. So not as much bragging rights, but just a benchmark of knowing you understand the game, and do not rely on highrolling battles or events or something either because of ironman. I know for a fact that I "cheat" by going back half a year if I had a major oversight in a non ironman playthrough, abut it felt very rewarding completing precisely that achievement because I knew I HAD to do it the hard way.

I doubt I am going to get that feeling of having completed a challenge from the new way achievements work.
The new system does for sure have it's own upsides; I do actually prefer casual campaigns, and these make great goals, with an included ingame checklist for what I have done so far. But there's merit to both ways of doing it, in my opinion.

 

[Kaspar Osraige]

Who forces you to keep a world spanning empire if you just want the achievement? That's not the requirement. As far as I am aware you could release yourself as Wales right at the start and get the achievement.

I mean I assumed you had to keep the beginning tag or something higher level TBH. If you can release Wales or say Cornwall it is pretty significantly easier.

Okay, I give you that. Dutch already have a presence on Borneo at the start of the game and if they expand that quickly it will be harder, but I don't think they will

In Victoria 2 they would usually eclipse much of Indonesia by end-game, but this depends a lot on the balance. Still you have to beat them.

Nah... you are the strongest power between Balkans and Central Asia, easy blobbing, easy economy. Just change your laws to multi-cultural or make a vassal swarm.

Still terrible literacy and this game should definitely challenge you more with keeping Balkans than Vicky 2 did. Also you get permanent negative modifiers from not reforming the state in time so it's kind of a race against time too. Plus terrible literacy with high population. But it isn't that hard I guess.

This isn't Vic2 where national differences(manpower, tech) were much more pronounced. In this game Mexico will be a lot stronger starting out and as long as you manage to be friendly with the US to hold them off, pass some laws that attract immigrants you'll easily usurp the US powerwise.

I don't see why this would happen to be honest. We still have army technologies and higher starting populations for US. You'll have to manage both of that with the bad literacy and bad laws of starting Mexico. This one will be fun and challenging I think.

None of these require you to play a specific nation up to mid or late game just so you can perform the singular requirement that is asked of you.

I suppose so. But you included some of the country-neutral achievements there too so it's not just tediousness. Plus I don't find any of the achievements tedious except Qing and Punjab ones.

France is the strongest European power, just by reaching end game and doing some basic economy everybody will be above 20 SOL.

You're probably right yeah. But still you'll have to subsidy French lower class and universities so it's a fun side challenge for when you play France for any other set reason.

You literally put the school institution to 5, you just have to get enough bureaucracy points.

I think you also have to get either public or private schools and some technologies. Plus it will be done alongside any backwards nation game.

Bro... Great Britain already starts with probably thousands of units of production.

I am fairly sure most of those are under East India Company. I think when I do this achievement I will try and do it with Siam or Vietnam to make it more of a challenge.

Not really. As your maxed school institution makes your people more literate, you have to build some Universities and that's it. Start with the highest literacy country or something like Switzerland, enjoy peaceful speed 5 game. Click some buttons here and there.

I actually did plenty of those games in Vicky 2 and usually go with culture tree first but unless you start with high literacy it's basically impossible.

Same point as Mexico vs US.

I am not really sold on that particular point. All those disparities still exist, what makes you think smaller nations are stronger this time? Plus if they model Oriental Crisis accurately Egypt will have to be against Great Powers too.

Ally Russia and you can simply use their border to war Europe.

I hope it won't be possible to pass millions of Chinese soldiers through Siberia without significant attrition. Plus this doesn't sound like it would help with France or UK.

It's not hard, just don't use your bureaucracy points on institutions, get accepting culture/religion laws, maybe only max police institution and you have plenty of points to integrate.

Still you have to integrate like seventy states, that is quite the feat. Perfectly fine challenge for an expansionist playthrough too.

That's what I said, the start will be hard. Obviously you start out with blobbing the smaller nations.

TBH it doesn't sound very hard. You can probably peacefully reintegrate Ecuador and Venezuela, pick off of USCA and even Haiti or Cuba, then Peru-Bolivia, Chile, Argentina or Uruguay aren't much of a challenge, it sounds snowball-y. Still it is a cool playthrogh to go full on Libertadores and unite the Latin America.

Use France or Prussia to help you form Benelux.

Meh, that being possible probably means diplomatically bad balance. I think blobbing in some smaller German minors and later Benelux could be a way to go around it too. It is hard either way.

I half-agree, but in the end Algeria is a weak country with low population. It's like the Ottomans achievement, just that you have to even become Ottoman level first.

Your cultures will probably be Maghrebi and maybe Berber so Tripolitania, Tunisia and Morocco should add population. It is still hard though when you consider it again.

I don't want or need them to be impossible to do challenges or everything has to be hard. I want them to be fun and everything that is listed below easy just isn't fun. It's just a time grind without much thought put into it. From what I understand, overall you do agree with my judgement seeing as to how you even made a thread pertaining to specific country achievements. It's just that I am especially frustrated by those that aren't fun which is everything listed below easy.

Most of them are on your way as playing the specific countries though, so it is not a meaningless time grind, more of a side challenge for any German or French or Bri'ish run. Also I won't comment on specific achievements like this again man, it is tiring to do all this quoting.

 

[Nwaij]

Highly likely 5 achievements are not finished or able to be shown because their original conditions have changed due to reworks and we still have fleshing them out as todo. Thus we don't want to publish them as certain if they might change.

Or we are keeping them a secret.
Or we simply forgot.

All are feasible.

So Byzantium achievement confirmed after all!

 

[ScottyWired]

Okay but that's XCOM, you don't know if a game with a normal difficulty setting will go the same way.

The point is that basically no one is installing cheaty mods. Most modders are always trying to create balanced content and most players want balanced content.

XCOM 2 has a mod that unlocks all achievements automatically and it's been downloaded 293 times in 6 years. This thread has existed for 24 hours and it's already gotten 400+ posts.

It doesn't matter how easy or hard a game is, achievement cheesing just isn't that popular. The idea that thousands of people are going to cheat themselves and devalue achievements is purely hypothetical. The HUGE silent majority of players really do want to play fair.

 

[Cymsdale]

XCOM 2 has a mod that unlocks all achievements automatically and it's been downloaded 293 times in 6 years.

Sticky this line. Debate over. What more even needs to be said?

 

[za3tarani]

That's not a proof, because country being renamed to Germany and getting "formed Germany" effect doesn't necessarily require changing tags

Well if you checked that in the leak and confirmed it to be the case then it's true, but you didn't mention it before

what is your point even? i asked a simple question, if switching tags in non-iron man still gives the achievement and you had to start with your "well, akshully"...

 

[Delinard.]

Why not just make entering any console commands trigger a red flag, making it unable to earn achievements from that match any further until you reload save/start a new game. Some games did it like that.
Unless there is no console commands like in CK3 and you have to enable debug mode.

 

[Troyen]

I mean... Maybe I'm cynical here, but won't this mean there'll quite quickly be "install this to get all achievements" mods? I get not requiring Ironman, but allowing mods seems to throw the whole "achievement" idea out the window.

Sure, and 100 people might download and use that mod. But everyone else won't care and will try to get the achievements normally.

 

[Wizzington]

I think this could have unintended consequences. Mod makers could be stuck in a bind where they have to make new tags for all nations, even in full overhaul mods, to avoid users getting achievements they don't want to get through mods or that don't make much sense (Giant finland mod automatically giving you the achievement, mod where France is communist at start).

You can simply mod out achievements that are not relevant for your mod (and even add new ones, though they obviously won't unlock anything on steam).

 

[Telenil]

I doubt I am going to get that feeling of having completed a challenge from the new way achievements work.

Agreed. I don't think achievements are competitive (as someone said, who would you be competing against?), but they are challenging, as in, you must do your best effort to solve the puzzle you are given. It doesn't really feel like a puzzle if the rules make it possible to "win" by typing a few lines.

Obviously I can and will do achievements in Ironman, so it's still best-effort after the game starts. And I often skirted around the rules by duplicating saves (like most achievement hunters). And it is nice to know you don't necessarily have to start over if something goes wrong at the last minute. All that is true. Still, something is lost when rules are replaced with optional handicaps. As people say on reddit, I press F to that.

 

[Cymsdale]

And I often skirted around the rules by duplicating saves (like most achievement hunters).

I mean... speak for yourself? I've never save scummed, never will. Still even plan to play ironman exclusively in Vic3 too.

It's bonkers to me that the many of the people complaining that others will cheat are admitting that they themselves... cheat.

 

[crowdemon]

Good DD. Thanks for the achievements list.

 

[InsidiousMage]

It's bonkers to me that the many of the people complaining that others will cheat are admitting that they themselves... cheat.

All of the accusations are just projections of the things the accuser is already doing onto other people. People who cheat, or would given the chance, can't imagine that other people are not also rampantly cheating or would if they could or knew how to.

 

[Wizzington]

Thank you. It was very annoying to read all these comments "it's too hard to separate graphics mods from gameplay mods!" given how HoI4 (and I think Stellaris?) did exactly that.
But the possibility to "write" otherwise hidden data onto the screen is an interesting point, and even if I still disagree with it, the decision makes more sense now.

You misunderstand - the only reason it’s possible for us to make these ignore checksum is because we no longer try to prevent cheating - in HoI4 and stellaris you can’t make a UI mod that lets you cheat wildly, whereas in Imperator, CK3 and Vic3 this is not only possible but quite trival to do. Actually preventing this would mean rolling back massive amounts of functionality and moddability in the GUI system.

 

[Wenla]

I have played PDX-games before first achiement game, haven't get none (=not even tried). May be now is time for the first one...

 

[acidsun]

Can we have a 'Wakanda Forever' achievement in which, as a one-state African nation, you have the highest innovation and SoL in the world?

 

[Tetrahedron]

The problem with making achievements 'accessible' is that inaccessibility has a lot of inherent value. When I first started playing EU4, the thing that really got me hooked on it was the promise of a depth of skill expression, massive room for mastery. The achievements were a really effective way of suggesting that skill depth. Learning about The Three Mountains for the first time made me really excited to play the game, precisely because it was inaccessible to me. The thought that I might perhaps someday be good enough to do things like that really kickstarted my interest in the game.

Now that achievements are trivially easy they are effectively meaningless. They are fun, but they are only fun. They don't improve the game by existing, like they did before.

INB4 "Just play in iron man lol": Yes of course I will do that, but it doesn't change my point. It's a psychological thing. The magic is gone.

Also I should be clear this isn't a social thing, or some kind of gatekeeping or anything like that. My argument would be the same if I was the only person in the world playing these games.

 

[Zhetone]

Can we have a 'Wakanda Forever' achievement in which, as a one-state African nation, you have the highest innovation and SoL in the world?

I think the name would have to be changed for copyright, but not the worst idea for a challenging achievement. Not sure how possible it is, though

 

[Tetrahedron]

Also what is the practical value of removing the iron man requirement? You just said 'accessibility' but that means nothing on its own. Are there actual players who will legitimately enjoy the game more because of this change? I am not aware of any, and I am aware of at least one player who will enjoy it less.