Reduce the achievement limit per game

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ladynadiad 8 hours ago

As of now a game can have up to 5000 achievements once it's met the conditions to no longer have profile features limited. This is far too high. On top of that because the games can't initially start with this many achievements, most of the games with a lot of achievements are "forever games" which is a very frustrating practice to players

What's a forever game? This is a game that released with a reasonable number of achievements to start off with. Many of these games are also free to play to further incentivize players to play. Then the games release new DLC on a regular schedule for years without any end in sight besides the limit of how many achievements a game can have and the games become impossible for the majority of players to ever complete and the amount of DLC grows massive and costly to players.

One game I play like this and regret starting is going to hit 10 years of this awful practice soon and there is no end in sight for it. Another one takes longer to start and quit with each DLC they add and they've been adding DLCs monthly since 2018.

These games now have thousands of achievements and would take hundreds to thousands of hours to 100%. The amount of content they have is overwhelming. There is no need to have games that have so much content that 5000 achievements is needed. Even the longest of MMOs don't get to this level, but at the same time, MMOs far more clearly communicate their intent to be forever games just by being MMOs. The two games I mentioned above did not make this clear when they started. One actually didn't announce the intention to have paid DLC until months after release.

My suggestion is to reduce the limit of achievements to 1000 at most. This is going to be plenty to ensure room for expansions, DLC and extra content. The overwhelming majority of games do fine with less than 100 achievements I also think game developers should have to communicate more clearly their plans regarding additional content so players can better know going in if they are going to be starting a forever game and can avoid if they are not looking for such a game.

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Showing 1-5 of 5 comments

cSg|mc-Hotsauce 7 hours ago

It used to be far larger and Valve reduced it to 5k, which is reasonable.

Nx Machina 6 hours ago

Developer choice. Player choice to participate as achievements are not mandatory to obtain.

TBS AlexDK 3 hours ago

Originally posted by ladynadiad:
As of now a game can have up to 5000 achievements once it's met the conditions to no longer have profile features limited. This is far too high. On top of that because the games can't initially start with this many achievements, most of the games with a lot of achievements are "forever games" which is a very frustrating practice to players

What's a forever game? This is a game that released with a reasonable number of achievements to start off with. Many of these games are also free to play to further incentivize players to play. Then the games release new DLC on a regular schedule for years without any end in sight besides the limit of how many achievements a game can have and the games become impossible for the majority of players to ever complete and the amount of DLC grows massive and costly to players.

One game I play like this and regret starting is going to hit 10 years of this awful practice soon and there is no end in sight for it. Another one takes longer to start and quit with each DLC they add and they've been adding DLCs monthly since 2018.

These games now have thousands of achievements and would take hundreds to thousands of hours to 100%. The amount of content they have is overwhelming. There is no need to have games that have so much content that 5000 achievements is needed. Even the longest of MMOs don't get to this level, but at the same time, MMOs far more clearly communicate their intent to be forever games just by being MMOs. The two games I mentioned above did not make this clear when they started. One actually didn't announce the intention to have paid DLC until months after release.

My suggestion is to reduce the limit of achievements to 1000 at most. This is going to be plenty to ensure room for expansions, DLC and extra content. The overwhelming majority of games do fine with less than 100 achievements I also think game developers should have to communicate more clearly their plans regarding additional content so players can better know going in if they are going to be starting a forever game and can avoid if they are not looking for such a game.

I really don't see any issues with the current limit of how many achievements a game can have

Yasahi 2 hours ago

I think it's a good thing that some games can be played for hundreds or thousands of hours without exhausting all the content they have to offer. If they want to add some achievements while introducing new races, civilizations or scenarios, so be it. It'd be silly to try and limit that creative freedom.

That's basically what all the Total War, Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, Civilization games etc. are about. "Just one more turn" is a feeling that many gamers have experienced over the years.