This has been the case since CK2 at least, so I doubt it will ever be changed for PDS games.
Hard to understand how you could play so much Stellaris but get no achievements though? You are in Ironman, right? If not, well ... why not, if I can ask?
Several reasons:
1, what I stated above. I disagree with the premise that ALL of the achievements have to behind the Ironman wall. Outside of my personal objection, it makes the games seem more intimidating, which is going to shrink the player base not, grow it.
2, Not all of us want to play a game on extremely hard modes. I work a miserable 60-hour a week job for an unrelenting boss. The last thing I want to do is sit down to play a computer game and work harder than I just did all day. If I screw up, oh, well, that's what saves are for! It's always been one of the main joys of playing computer games over consoles. You could always save and reload at any time.
3, Since I saw they had done that when I started playing it. I made a mod to create a bunch of alien portraits and names and logos to play with and against. They, for some dumb reason, put the checksum above cosmetic changes, so even if I do do ironman, I can't get achievements if I want to play against the aliens I want anyway. (I mean, who wouldn't want to tell ET you ate his homeworld, so he can't phone home anymore. >:-} Mwahaha! Besides, if you let him phone home, he shows up with an armada!) The whole game is about random cosmetics placed upon a standard player creation system anyway. Why put cosmetic mods behind the checksum for
single player mode? I personally think they should have put a species creator in it similar to the one in CK3, where we could just import a species pic, draw or import a logo, and make name lists. GalCiv3 had that very effectively implemented. And just to be clear, the mod makes no changes to the gameplay conditions at all. It's solely cosmetic.
It just seems like a stupid, gimmicky business decision that probably isn't actually good for growing their player base. It's just hit me enough times playing, and I saw it again when I started back up CK3 that I felt compelled to provide my feedback. If I'm in the minority, fine. If they keep going the directions they've been going with making their games more complicated and more difficult instead of easier to access, they might just lose this customer altogether. It's one of the main reasons I've loved Stellaris so much. It's easy to pick up and start. You're not dumped into a huge, intricate scenario moving in real time with a million dials and levers to set and pull that you don't have any clue what they do. Most of their games look like you're staring at the latest incarnation of a TARDIS console. Stellaris starts off simple: one planet, limited tech, and a few ships. All the other systems and intricacies build on top of that slowly, over time as you unlock more and more tech. This gives the player time to focus and learn the new complication that's been added without feeling overwhelmed. I'm trying CK3 again, but reducing everyone down to counties in the hopes of giving that same build up feel. I'd love the CK rules set on top of a completely randomized map (not Earth) with barbarian baronies and counties to get you started while other players both major and minor do the same. (Old World is doing something similar, but they lack the finer details that CK has.) This way the levels of feudalism and economic development will start out simple and grow over time. I'm hoping I can kind of get that feeling with nothing but counties starting out.
Okay, see you got me going on too long. I was trying to avoid that. Oh, well. Again, like I said, it's just my feedback. Take it or leave it.
