Do not invalidate achievements with specific mods!

[Prometheus_1]

One thing I hate of the game is that it invalidates the game when you activate any mod ...
I understand that some mods can interact with gameplay , but I would like ot be able to play with some essential mods that improve the game like adding better provinces, better look , better this and that without specifically adding cheats ...

 

[LoLLarN]

There is a reason to why they disable achievements when you use mods. It is to make sure it was done legit, changing files and so on will probably mean you changed something that makes it easier than it should have been to make it right.

I'd assume you mean mods that change the flags or something, and from what I recall I could use that in EU4 without achievements being disabled. It depends on what the mod changes if I recall right.

 

[Draky]

Not every mod disables achievements though, only those changing the gameplay. You are free to use some that change graphics or the UI side of the game

And it's easy to see why they went with these settings, otherwise someone would create a mod that would give players infinite money while they play Ryukyu/Boii, which would invariably result in invalidating those achievements hardcorness

 

[Thure]

The game can't know if you make the game easier or harder per mods. So they have to ban all mods otherwise somebody would make it way easier.

 

[Prometheus_1]

Not every mod disables achievements though, only those changing the gameplay. You are free to use some that change graphics or the UI side of the game

And it's easy to see why they went with these settings, otherwise someone would create a mod that would give players infinite money while they play Ryukyu/Boii, which would invariably result in invalidating those achievements hardcorness

Not to my experience, I couln't mod in new flags and stuff without invalidating achievements, wich bothers me to no end , also I made a mod that added new better province distribution in Italia and it invalidated achievements as well .

 

[Draky]

Not to my experience, I couln't mod in new flags and stuff without invalidating achievements, wich bothers me to no end , also I made a mod that added new better province distribution in Italia and it invalidated achievements as well .

Flag changes shouldn't invalidate ironman. Maybe you did something wrong and accidently changed something else?

"Re-distributing provinces" should absolutely invalidate Ironman, since that affects gameplay and there's no way to know whether those changes made some achievements ridiculously easy or not

 

[Ekyman]

I think there's two ways to view achievements (as Paradox does them, at least).

One view is that the difficulty of an achievement is an inherent part of the achievement (hence the name "achievement"), and circumventing that difficulty by mods or by console cheats violates the validity of the achievement. This view would say that the difficult achievements should be gotten only if you have the skill, and the zany achievements gotten only if you actually encounter a zany scenario.

The other is that achievements are nothing more than fun targets for gameplay, and that it doesn't matter how you get there. This view would say that it doesn't matter if you mod or cheat your way to the achievement because achievements are just a fun bonus for each individual player, isolated to that specific player.

I would prefer they go the second way, but the important bit is that Paradox apparently prefers the first style, and therefore locks achievements behind "validity walls."

And as long as they're going with that approach, they can't allow mods that change province layout. That would allow you to, for example, get an achievement that said "own states X, Y, and Z" by modding your game so that those states contained various random provinces that were easy to get or that you already had.

 

[Badesumofu]

The only way what you're suggesting could work is if PDS have someone whose job it is to look at all the mods on the workshop and determine which ones change the gameplay in a way that ought not invalidate the various achievements. That is a pretty huge amount of work given you;d have to check every achievement against every mod, and redo it every time they change or the game is patched.

That seems like a pretty bad use of PDS' resources to me. If you want achievements then don't play with mods that alter the checksum. If you really want to use mods then go for it, and ignore achievements. Have your cake, or eat it, basically.

 

[EvilMonk3y]

The other is that achievements are nothing more than fun targets for gameplay, and that it doesn't matter how you get there. This view would say that it doesn't matter if you mod or cheat your way to the achievement because achievements are just a fun bonus for each individual player, isolated to that specific player.

I really wish Paradox did go for this option with their games. I completely understand why people want to keep the legitimacy of earning an achievement however I feel like locking achievements to Ironman mode has always been a mistake.

I don't particularly care if people ‘cheat’ for achievements as unlocking them is very much personal to me and it would be fun to be able to unlock them while playing the game however I want to be playing (with mods, save scumming etc). I feel that a compromise would be having ironman specific challenge achievements instead of locking every single one to that mode.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

Controversial opinion:

Achievement is a waste of time that does nothing but boost people's e-pride and takes away development time since achievements have to be scripted and checked by the event system.

 

[loup99]

Adding more provinces in a mod would completely screw with conquest-related achievements for vanilla, hence the incompatibility.

 

[Thure]

Controversial opinion:

Achievement is a waste of time that does nothing but boost people's e-pride and takes away development time since achievements have to be scripted and checked by the event system.

Achievements are really easy to script. It doesn't take that much time away.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

One thing I hate of the game is that it invalidates the game when you activate any mod ...
I understand that some mods can interact with gameplay , but I would like ot be able to play with some essential mods that improve the game like adding better provinces, better look , better this and that without specifically adding cheats ...

Better provinces *is* a cheat.
Changing values or even locations of provinces can have a massive impact on gameplay, and thus on how easy or hard an achievement is.

Some cosmetic only mods don't affect the checksum (and thus your ability to get achievements), but they tend to be limited to things like different flags, or sometimes changing the presentation of the map without altering anything of the underlying gameplay.

What *might* be useful is to work out what's purely cosmetic and ask for those to be available for modding that doesn't break iron man.

Off the top of my head, I'd say flags, portraits, different looks to the map, maybe country colours, and name lists are probably the limit. At a push UI redesigns could qualify.

 

[Augustus93]

Controversial opinion:

Achievement is a waste of time that does nothing but boost people's e-pride and takes away development time since achievements have to be scripted and checked by the event system.

This is only partially true because Paradox do use the telemetry data that they get from achievements to figure out a bunch of things like how difficult it is to achieve said achievements. Also since many achievements have very specific conditions (like you have to play country X), that gives some players who care about the achievements an incentive to play those countries.

 

[Ekyman]

I really wish Paradox did go for this option with their games. I completely understand why people want to keep the legitimacy of earning an achievement however I feel like locking achievements to Ironman mode has always been a mistake.

I don't particularly care if people ‘cheat’ for achievements as unlocking them is very much personal to me and it would be fun to be able to unlock them while playing the game however I want to be playing (with mods, save scumming etc). I feel that a compromise would be having ironman specific challenge achievements instead of locking every single one to that mode.

I do think it’d be cool if they locked the “challenge scenario” achievements behind ironman but left the “course of gameplay” achievements unlocked.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

I do think it’d be cool if they locked the “challenge scenario” achievements behind ironman but left the “course of gameplay” achievements unlocked.

What do you mean by "challenge scenario" and "course of gameplay" here?

 

[Ekyman]

What do you mean by "challenge scenario" and "course of gameplay" here?

Things like Ryuku WC and reclaiming Rome vs things like inheriting a personal union or assassinating your son (not sure if those ones are actual achievements, but they’re the same style as real achievements at least).

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Things like Ryuku WC and reclaiming Rome vs things like inheriting a personal union or assassinating your son (not sure if those ones are actual achievements, but they’re the same style as real achievements at least).

So where do you put "have a treasury of 10 000 sestertii" (or whatever they call the coin standard)? Is that a course of gameplay achievement?
What about something like "inherit 3 thrones at once"?

 

[Ekyman]

So where do you put "have a treasury of 10 000 sestertii" (or whatever they call the coin standard)? Is that a course of gameplay achievement?
What about something like "inherit 3 thrones at once"?

Course of gameplay. I’d probably put almost everything but the specific conquest achievements in that category.

But that wouldn’t be my ideal setup, it’s just something I think would be more likely and cause less user uproar than my ideal setup. Really I’d prefer everything be unlocked at all times.

 

[Nicolas-]

As a modder I can assure you, if mods are allowed for achievements, there would be many ways to easily exploit the code to give myself advantage and make achievements easier.

The only solution would be for devs to spend weeks working on a super smart filter that can detect such mods. But why waste resources when they could be adding new nice features to the game instead?