Do the devs play through the achievements?

[Supremeleaderpies]

as someone who achievement hunts and has now reached 71/132 (including the new ones added for the upcoming dlc.) (https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198042437517/) my steam if you want to confirm or ask about an achievement. i have done machau my day, as well as many other really difficult achievements so keep that in mind. im not talking out of my butt here.

I have to ask, did any of the devs actually play through any of these achievements before just throwing them into the game? IMO a good majority of the achievements are basically impossible now with all dlc including LaR , unless you abuse game mechanics and the ai, as well as restart multiple times to get the ai to go down the most beneficial focuses for what your trying to do. Not to mention just how badly designed a lot of the achievements are, IMO i should NEVER have to rollback a game to a previous patch to get this artificial internet sticker, that to me screams bad design.

Is that honestly whats intended? to get this achievement in 2020 you basically are required to break the game or do super cheesy bullshit?

I have been attempting to do every achieve with the most up to date version of the game, as that's what i feel you should do. in my mind its cheating to rollback or turn off any of the dlc.

 

[Zukhani]

Offensive VAC cheater lol. Nice troll.

 

[Dlin369]

I know Da9L, the QA lead, does achievement runs on his free time for his youtube channel so I'm guessing they do play their achievements. That being said a lot of HOI4 achievements are fairly annoying or inconvenient to acquire, but that's why they're achievements I suppose

 

[Mr_Dimento]

Many of the achievements are poorly designed. Oh cool. A world conquest as Portugal. Many achievements, specifically older ones - like nuking yourself as Australia just involve playing on 5 speed and watching a movie. Seriously that’s what I did. I watched a movie while waiting for nuke tech.

 

[Mr_Dimento]

These new achievements however look to be much better.

 

[Supremeleaderpies]

Many of the achievements are poorly designed. Oh cool. A world conquest as Portugal. Many achievements, specifically older ones - like nuking yourself as Australia just involve playing on 5 speed and watching a movie. Seriously that’s what I did. I watched a movie while waiting for nuke tech.

i literally just completed that last night and thats what inspired this.

i literally sat for 5 hours afk to click a button.

 

[Supremeleaderpies]

Offensive VAC cheater lol. Nice troll.

whether you wish to believe it or not is up to you. my younger brother used to play counterstrike and used to use cheats all the time. he got his account banned, then proceeded to play on mine because i didnt like cs at all. and he got me banned as well.

mind you he was in highschool and i away at college. kids do dumb things.

i dont know why it matters to you though. nor does it have any relation to what i am posting about.

 

[Kazakk]

Offensive VAC cheater lol. Nice troll.

I have one in my account too. Got overwatch banned in csgo because gold leaguers are that bad.
Though it's not VAC, still appears on the profile.

I hope they do something about the 475 casualties as Germany achievement. It's the only achievement I don't have.

 

[Ivankovsky]

I did 100% of the achievements (well, now 84% due to Battle for the Bosporus), and yeah many of the cheevos, mainly the older ones looked like no effort or thought were put into them.

The worst types are the ones you need to "own" certain territories, that means winning the war and taking them in a peace deal, if you consider that often requires you to capitulate UK and the US, that means many of the cheevos are essentially turned into world conquests, which are unbearable to do due to how slow the game runs late-game.
The worst offenders were the old "Wake and Angry" and "Battlecry" cheevos which required that you capitulate France and the UK as China just to get HK and GZ, those were so bad that Paradox actually changed them not to require said tiny outpost territories.
To avoid turning these achievements into world conquests you often need to plan a way to exploit the AI, that can either be completely breaking the game, like I did order 66 on the US for those Chinese achievements (and have no shame in admitting it!), or actually find clever strategies, it can go either way.

Many of these "own" should've been changed to "hold" to avoid this mess.

Also, most of the "research or build number of this" cheevos are just dull if you don't have an accompanying objectives, same for the spy achievements.

 

[him_15]

I am sure the Dev didn't complete the achievement by themselves before releasing it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

What they probably don't do is test old achievements on new patches, which leads to some questionable interactions.

They also decided to conclude that the statement "Curacao is not an island in the Caribbean" is somehow "WAD". Wad of something perhaps.

In the past I also earned the "Balkan powder keg" achievement by declaring on the allies as a member of Axis to kick off WW2, but the game decided not to count it because I declared on South Africa (a member of the Allies) rather than UK (a member of the allies). I could run down that focus tree again and just redo it, but spending extra time because of a developer mistake rather than player mistake is a bad look, when a lot of extra time is already being spent because of how poor the UI is...

 

[Duke_Dave]

Achievments should be hard challenges but not gamey (Macau my day, Finish him with the next one) like say they rework the eastern front with logistics and harsh winter and all the achievement could be to conquer moscow before 31st December 1941. Its a challenge, it makes sense game context wise. But for example conquer the world as Saudi-Arabia (global Caliphate) which I fear will come in a future DLC featuring the middle east is not fun. I did three world conquests with waking the tiger and conquering the world in 1960 isn't fun its a few hundred million dead grind, when I capitulated Iran I got 1000 of my own tanks back that is how much grind it was, in that time of the game every country has so many divisions and so much manpower in reserve its impossible to blitzkrieg them.

 

[Mr_Dimento]

Achievments should be hard challenges but not gamey (Macau my day, Finish him with the next one) like say they rework the eastern front with logistics and harsh winter and all the achievement could be to conquer moscow before 31st December 1941. Its a challenge, it makes sense game context wise. But for example conquer the world as Saudi-Arabia (global Caliphate) which I fear will come in a future DLC featuring the middle east is not fun. I did three world conquests with waking the tiger and conquering the world in 1960 isn't fun its a few hundred million dead grind, when I capitulated Iran I got 1000 of my own tanks back that is how much grind it was, in that time of the game every country has so many divisions and so much manpower in reserve its impossible to blitzkrieg them.

best strategy I think about forming Arabia would probably be to restart until UK decolonizes

 

[TheMeInTeam]

When you have nukes, fast divisions, and air advantage enemy troop/manpower count is irrelevant. AI is also bad enough that you can blitz any quantity of troops with properly made mech + modern tank divisions too. 15 enemy divisions on every province only matters until you get enough soft attack + hardness + armor to de-org the 80w in initial fight before help arrives. Going to 1960 should only happen when you avoid early war shenanigans when playing low tier minors.

best strategy I think about forming Arabia would probably be to restart until UK decolonizes

You would want to capitulate Japan before it declares on Philippines (enormously delays USA joining allies, if ever), or capitulate UK before that (no allies for USA to join). Pulling these off while gaming the war score system (which is always broken and requires gaming to play HOI 4 fairly) will allow any nation to acquire the IC, resources, and manpower to set up world conquest. Obviously fascism is the path for any such efforts since you can justify new wars in 30 days and low PP cost as long as you're currently fighting at least one major, stuff the new targets into the same faction as that target major last moment, and take them in full after beating the major as long as you bomb them a bit or take a province.

Same principle as was applied here, just later in game

Spoiler