Two major problems with Ironman policy

[mudcrabmerchant]

1. We can't de-Ironman a save. This means no switching countries or activating mods once we complete the achievement we wanted, or using the community converter to move a save over to Vicky II.

2. One-tier achievements. Currently only 20% of EUIV players and 10% of CKII players have even bothered with achievements. And I'm sure large parts of those numbers have only played Ironman briefly before deciding they want to avoid the hassle - in fact you can see this in the CKII stats, because only 5% of players have the 3rd and 4th most common achievements. That's a drop of more than half from the most common achievement.

There should be two tiers to achievements, gold and silver. The first for those who want bragging rights, the second for those who just want to track their progress in the game. I like to watch the cheevo bar go up as I play a game, and to orient runs around getting achievements, but I like mods and I don't like Ironman. I'm sure that there are many other players who look at achievements in the same way, and Paradox will make a lot of fans happy if they implement a two-tier achievement system in their games.

 

[Johan]

on 2...

35% of all games every day is ironman on eu4. Its pretty steady there.

 

[Cymsdale]

There should be two tiers to achievements, gold and silver. The first for those who want bragging rights, the second for those who just want to track their progress in the game. I like to watch the cheevo bar go up as I play a game, and to orient runs around getting achievements, but I like mods and I don't like Ironman. I'm sure that there are many other players who look at achievements in the same way, and Paradox will make a lot of fans happy if they implement a two-tier achievement system in their games.

Nope, players will get mad that others are getting an achievement they didn't earn. I'm not going to dig, but years back there was even posters saying a set of non-ironman achievements was unacceptable to them personally. How others play a single-player game is important to a lot of people around here.

 

[LumberKing]

The only complaint I have about Ironman achievements is in EU4 where all of it (save for one) is locked with the earliest start date. It would be fun to go achievement hunting in different start dates (for the historical flavour rather than exploits), regardless of game balance.

 

[Cymsdale]

It would be fun...

Fun is irrelevant. We're talking about achievements here, which are serious business.

 

[Mike1984]

1. We can't de-Ironman a save. This means no switching countries or activating mods once we complete the achievement we wanted, or using the community converter to move a save over to Vicky II.

2. One-tier achievements. Currently only 20% of EUIV players and 10% of CKII players have even bothered with achievements. And I'm sure large parts of those numbers have only played Ironman briefly before deciding they want to avoid the hassle - in fact you can see this in the CKII stats, because only 5% of players have the 3rd and 4th most common achievements. That's a drop of more than half from the most common achievement.

There should be two tiers to achievements, gold and silver. The first for those who want bragging rights, the second for those who just want to track their progress in the game. I like to watch the cheevo bar go up as I play a game, and to orient runs around getting achievements, but I like mods and I don't like Ironman. I'm sure that there are many other players who look at achievements in the same way, and Paradox will make a lot of fans happy if they implement a two-tier achievement system in their games.

I definitely agree with the former. I'd be far more likely to play a game in Ironman if I knew that I could turn Ironman off if something went wrong (e.g. an annoying or game-breaking bug that I needed to use the console or save-game editing to work around). I sort-of agree with the latter too, but I don't think it's gonna happen.

on 2...

35% of all games every day is ironman on eu4. Its pretty steady there.

Yes, but I suspect that regular players are more likely to play Ironman, and that most people probably either play Ironman most of the time or very rarely, so I don't think your figure is necessarily in conflict with his (which referred to number of players, not number of games).

 

[iron0037]

on 2...

35% of all games every day is ironman on eu4. Its pretty steady there.

Sounds like a lot of achievement hunters are restarting their games when things don't go well.

 

[SolSys]

2. One-tier achievements. Currently only 20% of EUIV players and 10% of CKII players have even bothered with achievements. And I'm sure large parts of those numbers have only played Ironman briefly before deciding they want to avoid the hassle - in fact you can see this in the CKII stats, because only 5% of players have the 3rd and 4th most common achievements. That's a drop of more than half from the most common achievement.

Yes, but I suspect that regular players are more likely to play Ironman, and that most people probably either play Ironman most of the time or very rarely, so I don't think your figure is necessarily in conflict with his (which referred to number of players, not number of games).

Sounds like a lot of achievement hunters are restarting their games when things don't go well.

You do realize there are a fair number of players who play in ironman mode not for achievements, right**?


**As in don't even bother to turn Steam on.

 

[iron0037]

You do realize there are a fair number of players who play in ironman mode not for achievements, right**?


**As in don't even bother to turn Steam on.

Well something doesn't add up. How can 35% of CK2 games be ironman but only 11% of players have ever gotten the marriage achievement? Possibilities I can conceive:

• As I suggested, a small number of players are "spamming" ironman games. I suggest this because I've done this myself . Any data on average session time for these ironman games?
• The current players represent a subset of the number that have ever played the game. Any idea what percentage of active players have the marriage achievement?
• As you suggest, there are lots of ironman players logged off to Steam and thus not gaining achievements but included in the 35% figure. If so, how are you tracking those people?
• Ironman players represent a disproportionate number of game starts for reasons other than achievement hunting. They're just more passionate players. Any idea what the ratio is for games:unique players each day?

 

[Mike1984]

Well something doesn't add up. How can 35% of CK2 games be ironman but only 11% of players have ever gotten the marriage achievement? Possibilities I can conceive:

• As I suggested, a small number of players are "spamming" ironman games. I suggest this because I've done this myself . Any data on average session time for these ironman games?
• The current players represent a subset of the number that have ever played the game. Any idea what percentage of active players have the marriage achievement?
• As you suggest, there are lots of ironman players logged off to Steam and thus not gaining achievements but included in the 35% figure. If so, how are you tracking those people?
• Ironman players represent a disproportionate number of game starts for reasons other than achievement hunting. They're just more passionate players. Any idea what the ratio is for games:unique players each day?

It makes perfect sense that Ironman players would be more passionate players. Ironman makes the game more difficult and means you can't go back if you make a mistake, so it's far more suited to regular players than occasional ones.

Also, from what I recall of previous discussions, "game starts" means "any time someone starts up a game", including saved games. So, how many new games people start isn't the important factor.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

on 2...

35% of all games every day is ironman on eu4. Its pretty steady there.

Still only just over a third. And personally, I've only ever played Ironman because I like watching my progression, as opposed to having bragging rights, and I imagine there are others like me, who would not bother with Ironman if we could get silver-tier achievements without it. Even if that isn't a large number, there are still the 65% of games that don't use Ironman, that would be more enjoyable if players were given a sense of meta-accomplishment alongside the Ironman players.

EUIV is the first Paradox game that I can play for hundreds of hours without getting an irresistible modding itch, and that speaks to the quality of the game. But I have stayed away from minor mods that I want to use because there's a choice between those, and achievement tracking. There doesn't need to be a choice.

 

[Johan]

Sounds like a lot of achievement hunters are restarting their games when things don't go well.

I meant players.. 35% of all players play an ironman game, 55% of the forumites that play play in ironman.

 

[SolSys]

As you suggest, there are lots of ironman players logged off to Steam and thus not gaining achievements but included in the 35% figure. If so, how are you tracking those people?

There seems to be several misconceptions here:

1. You seem to think that just because achievements --> ironman the opposite is also true while it certainly does not. Just as a personal example, While I do have several hundred hours tracked in EU4 on Steam, I also have a similar - or even higher - number of hours played offline.

2. Since achievements have become decoupled from ironman, it makes sense the wouldn't be a direct correlation between numbers. This has been asked for enabling ironman with mods.

3. You assume all tracking is done via Steam only just because it is a Steam game [a rather common misconception]. Edit: This is not to say you're being spied upon.

 

[iron0037]

I meant players.. 35% of all players play an ironman game, 55% of the forumites that play play in ironman.

Thanks for the clarification. So I take that to mean that 35% of all players in a given day start at least 1 ironman game that day. You aren't saying that 35% of players in a given day have started at least 1 ironman game at some point in their lives, right?

1. You seem to think that just because achievements --> ironman the opposite is also true while it certainly does not. Just as a personal example, While I do have several hundred hours tracked in EU4 on Steam, I also have a similar - or even higher - number of hours played offline.

2. Since achievements have become decoupled from ironman, it makes sense the wouldn't be a direct correlation between numbers. This has been asked for enabling ironman with mods.

3. You assume all tracking is done via Steam only just because it is a Steam game [a rather common misconception]. Edit: This is not to say you're being spied upon.

Oh ok. I always refer to modded ironman games as "tinman" games so that there's no confusion. The OP was discussing ironman games in the context of achievements when Johan tossed out his figure, so I thought we were focusing on that subset of players.

For the record, I don't agree with the proposal of easing restrictions on achievements, but I do like the idea of being able to convert an ironman game to a regular one. And now that I know you're spying on me, this is what my CK2 characters will look like .

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

I meant players.. 35% of all players play an ironman game, 55% of the forumites that play play in ironman.

OK, but there's still a significant majority who never play Ironman.

Would it be too much to ask if it's possible we'll ever see changes to the Ironman system? Are you or other members of the development team opposed to something like this?

 

[PreXident]

1. We can't de-Ironman a save. This means no switching countries or activating mods once we complete the achievement we wanted, or using the community converter to move a save over to Vicky II.

Yes, we can! I have done this for my Replayer. There's just no officially supported way.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

Yes, we can! I have done this for my Replayer. There's just no officially supported way.

I know there are ghetto ways to de-Ironman a save, I just think it's really strange that there's no official way.

 

[Axe99]

I think there's some value in having achievements that are achievable with mods - you wouldn't even need to make them Steam achievements, just in-game game tracking - for 'remembering the good times' purposes (what I use achivements for), but it's no biggy for me, just 'something nice' - nice little goals to focus a game around, and having the discrete win/loss condition is a bit like the ironman mode - there's no wiggle room, so it adds a bit of an edge to chasing it. I enjoyed the in-game goals in EU3 (I'm pretty sure it was EU3). If it's an in-game stat tracking thing, then there's no fear of others having their "I've got this achievement and only 1% of the playerbase also has it" bragging rights affected .

I also think the option to de-Ironman a save is a good one. I prefer to play ironman whether I'm doing a 'I'll shoot for this achievement for a lark' or not, but say I'm playing HoI4 and I see something odd, being able to drop out and tag switch to understand what's going on and better understand the game (I'm planning to mod HoI4, so understanding the game before doing that is a good thing!) would be handy.

Nope, players will get mad that others are getting an achievement they didn't earn. I'm not going to dig, but years back there was even posters saying a set of non-ironman achievements was unacceptable to them personally. How others play a single-player game is important to a lot of people around here.

How people conduct their personal live may be important to people, but it shouldn't be their right to impose their values on something that doesn't affect them in any meaningful way. A lot of people get fired up about views on religion and sexuality, but that doesn't mean we should all be forced down one path .

 

[Jorlem]

@Johan
I wonder, has the usefulness of bug reports been affected at all by the introduction of ironman? I've seen quite a few people in the bug subforums for EU4 and CK2 state that they can't provide a save to help in reproducing the bug because the game was in ironman mode.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

For the record, I don't agree with the proposal of easing restrictions on achievements, but I do like the idea of being able to convert an ironman game to a regular one. And now that I know you're spying on me, this is what my CK2 characters will look like .

If we get two tiers of achievements, why would you be opposed to it? Current achievements wouldn't be lessened - it would be clearly visible to everyone whether or not an achievement was attained via Paradox standard rules, or otherwise.