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Achievements being compatible with mods
- Thread starter MST2003
- Start date
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Every single word on this topic was done to death on the Vicky 3 forums.
I don't feel like repeating myself in detail this time around.
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You don't have to guess what it's going to do to CK3. You can just check out what's going on in the Victoria 3 side of the world where achievements have been unrestricted for over half a year now.
And the result is people who cheat to get achievements are so rare it's barely worth mentioning them. The least obtained achievement on Steam is Broken Promises at a whopping 0.7% completion rate (betray two allies in a diplo play as Italy). American Territory is slightly higher at 0.9% (starting as Indian Territory, puppet the USA). If there was widespread cheating, wouldn't those numbers be higher?
Instead, every time the American Territory achievement comes up on reddit, the poster accompanies it with a long story about all the challenges they had to overcome and the strategy they needed to pull it off, since it has some genuinely difficult constraints. There are a couple of people who admitted to using a bugfix mod to get an achievement (Vic 3 has had a few achievements bugged to check == instead of >= that were eventually fixed on the next major patch months later), but by and large it hasn't really devalued the challenge aspect. And the majority of people just don't care about what achievements someone else has earned.
On the flipside, you can now play the game with a community bugfix patch, or localization mod for an unsupported language, or a UI accessibility tweak mod and still qualify.
And the result is people who cheat to get achievements are so rare it's barely worth mentioning them. The least obtained achievement on Steam is Broken Promises at a whopping 0.7% completion rate (betray two allies in a diplo play as Italy). American Territory is slightly higher at 0.9% (starting as Indian Territory, puppet the USA). If there was widespread cheating, wouldn't those numbers be higher?
Instead, every time the American Territory achievement comes up on reddit, the poster accompanies it with a long story about all the challenges they had to overcome and the strategy they needed to pull it off, since it has some genuinely difficult constraints. There are a couple of people who admitted to using a bugfix mod to get an achievement (Vic 3 has had a few achievements bugged to check == instead of >= that were eventually fixed on the next major patch months later), but by and large it hasn't really devalued the challenge aspect. And the majority of people just don't care about what achievements someone else has earned.
On the flipside, you can now play the game with a community bugfix patch, or localization mod for an unsupported language, or a UI accessibility tweak mod and still qualify.
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What?I am saying that you can downvote, I m not holding your hand or something, but please help me understand. I made this topic to see reasons as to why this change would be good.Otherwise maybe it should just be reverted.So far I have seen: 1.people don t cheat thaat much 2.people I know don t care 3.Victoria did it so why not.And these arguments just don t make sense in explaining why the change was made.They just say why it isn t THAT BAD.
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Literally everything that was said about this topic in respect of Vicky 3 applies, completely unchanged, to CK3.
I suggest you read one of those threads
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I think it is good. Achievements are personal and if you wanted to cheat, you could already cheat before (ironman only makes saving/reloading slightly more complicated, nothing more).
And for the mods part, most of us use mods to make the game more difficult and/or more realistic (and overall more enjoyable), so much the better if you can get your achievements this way.
(though personally I can't really bother about achievements anyway)
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Seeing i can get achievements with mods made me such a happy camper. It will elevate my gameplay experience without making me feel like im missing out on achievements, which give me a certain sense of satisfaction.
The ironman thing im not so sure about... honestly, i liked what ironman mode did to me as a player. I used to play games and constantly reload if anything went wrong. But i wanted achievements so i played ironman and it taught me to accept losses.
Granted, i learned to cheese a bit by making backups of saves - usually every 20 years or so - in case something went drastically wrong i didnt lose all tue time and effort i put into a playthrough.
The ironman thing im not so sure about... honestly, i liked what ironman mode did to me as a player. I used to play games and constantly reload if anything went wrong. But i wanted achievements so i played ironman and it taught me to accept losses.
Granted, i learned to cheese a bit by making backups of saves - usually every 20 years or so - in case something went drastically wrong i didnt lose all tue time and effort i put into a playthrough.
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People use ironman for more than just achievements! When modding CK2, we probably got almost as many bug reports from people playing ironman even with the modded checksum necessarily blocking achievements
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This is an amazing change!
One I personally championed for!
Here's the rationale:
1. This game has a ton of amazing mods that do not fundamentally cheat achievements but use to disable them (UI, clothes, courts, even small events).
2. Those who want to cheat achievements should know that it's doable even with the old system, although I admit it took slightly more steps.
3. People that cheat achievements are usually pretty blatant, all their achievements will be unlocked the same day. It'll be even more blatant now since people will just download a mod to do it. So it'll be easier to spot.
4. People usually don't cheat achievements because it's literally pointless. They either cheat them for all their games or none.
5. Many more people would play with some mods but don't because they want to earn achievements.
6. You're punishing more people that want to earn achievements by not allowing them to use mods than people that want to cheat achievements.
7. It's better to have an honour system and call out achievement cheats than punish all achievement hungry players.
It's really a matter of how much you think the tiny amount of cheaters spoils the bunch. Imo the only places you can tell they're 'spoiling the bunch' is global achievement stats, which will just be slightly padded, and individual players steam pages which should be really obvious since they get all their achievements on the same day. Plus those people already exist and we're only allowing the pool of them to grow a little bit.
I just think it's clear that they're inconsequential compared to all the players that miss out on amazing mods because the old rules.
One I personally championed for!
Here's the rationale:
1. This game has a ton of amazing mods that do not fundamentally cheat achievements but use to disable them (UI, clothes, courts, even small events).
2. Those who want to cheat achievements should know that it's doable even with the old system, although I admit it took slightly more steps.
3. People that cheat achievements are usually pretty blatant, all their achievements will be unlocked the same day. It'll be even more blatant now since people will just download a mod to do it. So it'll be easier to spot.
4. People usually don't cheat achievements because it's literally pointless. They either cheat them for all their games or none.
5. Many more people would play with some mods but don't because they want to earn achievements.
6. You're punishing more people that want to earn achievements by not allowing them to use mods than people that want to cheat achievements.
7. It's better to have an honour system and call out achievement cheats than punish all achievement hungry players.
It's really a matter of how much you think the tiny amount of cheaters spoils the bunch. Imo the only places you can tell they're 'spoiling the bunch' is global achievement stats, which will just be slightly padded, and individual players steam pages which should be really obvious since they get all their achievements on the same day. Plus those people already exist and we're only allowing the pool of them to grow a little bit.
I just think it's clear that they're inconsequential compared to all the players that miss out on amazing mods because the old rules.
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Why don't these arguments make sense to you? Don't just dismiss them out of hand
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This is the best decision I've seen in years and hope it gets backported to the other games as well.
Honestly it alone might almost bring me back since I can fix the grievances I personally have with CK3/HoI4/EU4 and still have goals to play towards.
Honestly it alone might almost bring me back since I can fix the grievances I personally have with CK3/HoI4/EU4 and still have goals to play towards.
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Ideally I wish there was a way to differentiate mods that are straight up cheats and disable achievements for those, but that's just not feasible. Or if there was a way of having a special mark of distinction for getting an achievement "the old way", but Steam doesn't have a system for that and having two copies of each achievement wouldn't be a good solution.
For me personally it doesn't really matter because I don't have anyone to share my achievements with, and all I need is to know that I got mine honestly. But I understand why this change can make people unhappy.
For me personally it doesn't really matter because I don't have anyone to share my achievements with, and all I need is to know that I got mine honestly. But I understand why this change can make people unhappy.
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Ironman specifically is still valuable as a tool to stop you just reloading when something goes wrong, and forcing you to play through any mistakes you might make so that you experience the lows as well as the highs - and the recovery from those lows.
The achievements don't change noticeably in difficulty just because you can now get them with ironman off, and most don't change difficulty with most mods - although there will be exception.
Event pack DLC are going to still be worthwhile as they reflect the aims of the game designers, and help to fund any patches that come out between larger packs.
You already could "instantly unlock" all the achievements with external software.
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I ve already said it in exactly the same comment."And these arguments just don t make sense in explaining why the change was made.They just say why it isn t THAT BAD."It s like having steroids allowed in competitions and putting them together with those that never used them.And the argument is basically:"oh but the steroid users don t use them that much" "oh but people don t care that steroids are used", "oh but those competitions were unimportant anyways".Help me understand how is that fair.How does that make sense logically?I looked at the vic3.It s about the same arguments over and over and they still don t make sense.I don t even know what causes so many of you to put up with this , to defend it even.When I created this post I expected some good reasons(like only graphical mods counting or the game needing more players in its free period) but no.I am genuinely confused as it seems this comunity is now 80 percent full of people who can t criticise.I bet they could launch a 50 dollar event pack and you would buy it in an instant.
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No, it's almost completely unlike using performance-enhancing drugs with serious long-term side effects.
It's fairly clear that you don't want to be convinced. Goodbye.
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Why do people on your side of the argument don t know that : "While Valve doesn't care about people cheating achievements, some developers do and will ban you from their game(s) if you get caught so it is a 'use at your own risk' situation".Just because stealing is possible doesn t mean you should do it
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But why dont they make sense? Something being not bad or not too bad mean much the same if the result is good
Paradox games are largely singeplayer games, so its not so much other athletes are doping but that people play homebrew 40k in their own house
How would paradox be able to track if the change in checksum was due to a graphics mod, event pack, or cheat mod? Why should playing a start date mod (as paradox refuses to make more of them) invalidate you from the "get married" achievement? The devs allowing us to unlock achievements with mods is something thats long been requested, and so rather than us being scared of the devs shows the devs being kind to us.
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Except it isn't a competition, and it's nothing like steroids use in sport.
You don't "win" anything by having more achievements than another person. So the whole steroids comparison doesn't make sense - especially given that (by your analogy) there was an undetectable steroid booster out there anyway that can't be stopped from being used. (External programmes that can just give you all the achievements anyway at the press of a button.) An alternative way to look at it would be undetectable counterfeits of the medals being produced I suppose.
"Fairness" doesn't come into it, because there is literally no competition taking place to be spoiled by someone being able to use mods to enhance their game play. No one is being deprived of their achievements because someone else is using mods to get achievements in a different game.
Your analogies are not really related to the situation.
Now, onto some of the mods that are why people *really* wanted this change.
Coat of Arms mods.
New symbols for faith reformations
Clothing mods.
Name list mods.
Mods that adjusted the visibility and behaviour of trait ***icons*** - not the traits themselves, the icons.
Map colours for nations.
UI adjustments for readability and comfort.
Colourblindness accomodations.
Translation adjustments or translations to languages that aren't officially supported.
More readable maps - whether that's colour balance, brightness, or font adjustments for readability.
All entirely cosmetic, all checksum breaking. Very frustrating to want to use a particular set of symbols for a faith reformation, but to find it would stop you getting achivements just by having the possibility to use it. Or to have achievements blocked because you wanted a more readable map.
And then we have ones that make minor gameplay changes.
Faith and culture adjustments so that they're "more correct". Remember that you can reform religions anyway, so ones that stick to using the in game tenets/doctrines won't have too much effect on things.
Map changes to better represent a given region, either by adjusting terrain, province number and position, or title holders.
Even some of the ones that make sure a given character isn't randomly sterile and insane when they're a historical powerhouse who should be neither. (These come and go with versions, depending on back end changes to RNG)
Combat rebalances.
Diplomatic range changes probably don't matter either.
Even in this category most aren't going to make much change in difficulty of getting a given achievement.
Then there are the more serious ones that *do* strongly change the game
Most of the total conversions won't be giving achievements anyway, because the triggers just won't be there. You might get the trivial "just play the game" ones, like royal marriages, rising in rank, and so on, but you'd mostly have those if you play through a game with no mods anyway because they just happen.
The mods that add entirely new religions, tenets, and doctrines might have an impact - depending on what the new tenets and doctrines are, with this varying by mod. Some will do nothing to make the game easier, some will just make it different.
Even with this category though, these mostly won't be giving achievements out cheaply. And even if they *do*, someone else using them doesn't affect you getting them without these mods.
And lastly there are the "press button, get achievement mods".
Well, other methods to press a button and get achievements previously existed if people wanted to go that route.
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