This is a great response to my original question. I get it. I still don't particularly care for this feature myself. But I at least get it.
What's the big draw of achievements?
- Thread starter marceror
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This is a great response to my original question. I get it. I still don't particularly care for this feature myself. But I at least get it.
Are we done here yet?
I think you're vastly overestimating the amount of effort it takes to create an achievement. More time is going to be spent drawing the icon to appear on Steam than actually coding it. As shown above..
achievement_shahanshah = {
id = 89
possible = {
ironman = yes
start_date = 1444.11.11
tag = TAB
}
happened = {
tag = PER
}
}
That's an achievement. Literally, that's the whole thing. It's not something that needs testing or coding. If you start as that nation in Ironman in 1444, and become Persia, you get the achievement. It's that simple.
Now, that's not to say they haven't had broken achievements before. They have. Typos will happen sometimes. But these twenty new achievements won't take anywhere near 40 man-hours to make. The most time-consuming parts are going to be ensuring the right province numbers are used when applicable, and designing the icons.
Well, best practices are that you test any changes before you deploy. If they are skimping on the testing, than sure, that saves a lot of time. And some of the achievements seem a good deal more complex than the one you reference. I'm giving Paradox the benefit of the doubt that part of my $20 spent to purchase various expansions is used for testing changes end to end. I could be wrong. Then again, so could you. I hadn't included art requirements, so that certainly adds to the time to deliver as well. Thanks for pointing that out.
I'm generally not interested in achievements myself in most games. E.g. in RPGs I don't need achievements, I'm playing it for the story, immersion or character development. And most of the time, I'm going to do one or two walkthroughs and that's it. In EU IV however I like them a lot, because, as many before have already said, ultimately there's only one goal: grow. Turning into a huge empire is satisfying, but only for so long. After you've done it with half a dozen OPMs in seemingly impossible positions and of course with several majors it's turns into a slug (at least for me).
Which is why achievements like "conquer all of Africa as Kongo" aren't that amazing in my eyes, however "Venetian Sea" is pretty damn difficult to do, even though it doesn't look too hard. In general I'm at a point where it's becoming increasingly important to set myself house rules (or specific goals), mostly keeping my expansion rate at bay, because otherwise I stop by 1550ish since my Empire is already uncontested in size and power and able to beat up the whole world if necessary.
Which is why achievements like "conquer all of Africa as Kongo" aren't that amazing in my eyes, however "Venetian Sea" is pretty damn difficult to do, even though it doesn't look too hard. In general I'm at a point where it's becoming increasingly important to set myself house rules (or specific goals), mostly keeping my expansion rate at bay, because otherwise I stop by 1550ish since my Empire is already uncontested in size and power and able to beat up the whole world if necessary.
Hi marceror
For me there are two distinct ways to play eu4.
Either start as a small nation in a difficult position and try to make it. This kind of game get's boring after you get big and you tend to quit it after a while.
Or play eu4 with a specific goal in mind. This can be your own goal or a goal set by others (ie., achievements). You play until you have reached the goal and then quit.
This is also why so few games make it to the end of the timeline.
As a side note, achievements are good at upping your game. You learn a different angle of the game almost every time and over the long run it makes you a better player. The most difficult achievements also gives rise to interesting discussions here on the forum. The recent Kingdom of Jerusalem thread is a fine example of this.
For me there are two distinct ways to play eu4.
Either start as a small nation in a difficult position and try to make it. This kind of game get's boring after you get big and you tend to quit it after a while.
Or play eu4 with a specific goal in mind. This can be your own goal or a goal set by others (ie., achievements). You play until you have reached the goal and then quit.
This is also why so few games make it to the end of the timeline.
As a side note, achievements are good at upping your game. You learn a different angle of the game almost every time and over the long run it makes you a better player. The most difficult achievements also gives rise to interesting discussions here on the forum. The recent Kingdom of Jerusalem thread is a fine example of this.
None of the achievements are very complex. They're all listed on C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Europa Universalis IV\common\achievements.txt (or your equivalent) if you wish to peruse. The most complicated is probably the following:
Code:
achievement_venetian_sea = {
id = 79
possible = {
ironman = yes
start_date = 1444.11.11
tag = VEN
}
happened = {
NOT = { num_of_cities = 10 }
1320 = { #Constantinople
trade_share = {
country = ROOT
share = 90
}
}
358 = { #Alexandria
trade_share = {
country = ROOT
share = 90
}
}
}
}Art is done by a completely different department to the coders, and so takes no time from development. Nor are achievements really the things that need testing in this game. They're really simple lines of code, and as you so extensively argue, unnecessary for gameplay. I'm fairly sure they run through them themselves as they make them, but I strongly suspect that in these playthroughs they also use the time to look out for more general bugs. In the rare instances that they are bugged (Kongo and Njad in 1.0, Great Khan in 1.8), the forums seem to pick up on it quickly enough.
Of course, to be fair, when they wrote one of the new CK2 achievements in Charlemagne, they completely screwed it up. Which naturally required QA time to go back and fix. On the other hand I also wrote out a fix for them in under a minute on the forums, so it's not like "fixing it" required much more time...