"Spam" Achievement Games Now Have A Capped Score On TrueSteam

To get the full picture of those games i assembled some spreadsheets (which were used on kotaku in the related article as well).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17RkY6HmoaEK43gphrzjp...

Has yet to be updated for the last two months but i don't think it got any better.

Regarding logistical (again):

It may be true that unlocking achievements takes serious time...but so does unlocking achievements in other games. There are some games that I've also put hundreds of hours into and don't have all of the achievements, but these games are worth a few thousand TSA at best. With Logistical being worth hundreds of thousands, it would be absurd to say that there is no difference between this game and normal games.

If the point of this whole thing is to discourage the selling, buying, and tracking of games where you are effectively purchasing achievements, then Logistical absolutely qualifies. I've seen people earn 300+ TSA in a couple hour gaming session of Logistical...every day. I can never earn at that rate playing most games. Therefore, Logistical absolutely skews leaderboards in favor of people who buy achievements.

Very glad that this change was made.

Algreth said:The vast majority of games will give more than ~100 TSA/hour. I've started just under 2,000 games according to the site leaderboards, and maybe ten of them gave double digit score per hour.

That's not to say that Logistical doesn't give a disproportionate amount of points, but just that if you genuinely can not earn 300 TSA in a day on most games, then the problem is definitively with you.

(Also, it's worth noting that while Logistical is certainly one of the most consistent sources of points on TSA, it's nowhere near the most efficient. For example, the 12 level platformer asset flips give approximately 4,300 TSA per hour, far more than you could ever earn even under ideal conditions in Logistical)

You cannot buy the achievements in Logistical. You can buy the game, but that gives you 0 TSA unless you actually play it. When people talk about "buying achievements", it's literally buying achievements - for example, paying $1.19 and getting a game that gives you 4,444 achievements without you even having to open it.

Very, very few people would be against modifying the points system so that games like Logistical are not overvalued. I myself have championed SteamHunters for its modifications to a traditional points system that effectively manages both high volume games and DLC overvalue. Logistical isn't anywhere near my most-valuable games there, despite being one of maybe three (non-idle) games that I've put over a thousand hours into, and I'm completely fine with that because it's done based on facts and numbers rather than people going "I think this is worth too much, artificially cap it".

What people are against is the constant and relentless attack from a small number of people insinuating that thousands of hours of work and effort should be worth the same amount of points as buying a spam game, opening it, and then immediately closing it. Beyond simply being outright ridiculous in the context of attempting to create a fair and balanced points system, it's also offensively dismissive of the time and effort of people who have actually played the game.

Algreth said:You've got good points and made a good argument. The ratio makes our scores more honest. I know there are some factors that throw it off like who buys more or who has more time, but dedication and community hopefully balances it out.

Although I was excited, after being stupid confused, when Dinosaur Forest did what it did, I now understand and agree with the community's balancing this out. I got the Zup! series on a bundle as well. Didn't know it was that spam type of thing until after I bought it. I'm just learning about achievement spam, I had suspected that it was just a way to sell.

Does anyone feel that the spam games mess up the leaderboards for completion percentage? Gives some the edge as well, right? I haven't thought much into it, but doesn't seem like there's much to be done for that unless you curb that somehow too.

Also, I feel that anyone that has money or is willing to throw money at their gamer score, they'll always have the edge relative to others, but that is probably another discussion.

I'm guilty of paying for easy games in a mix of not so easy. I am a whore! Achievement whore because of TrueAchievements. Mostly I like the community coming together to help each other out...more often than not that happens.

Sellyme said:You are number 16 on the global leaderboard for this site, and more than 10% of your TSA are from a single game - Logistical. How is this not a glaringly obvious problem?

Logistical isn't a game that awards users for doing nothing! it's probably one of the only ones to that size that require you to actually spend 100+ hours trying to get achievements

Spam is the very term to over-excessive, not an over-excessive amount of achievements but an over-excessive amount of unlocks for doing nothing (For example: "Died 1 Times" in GooCublets which is the term Spam Achievement Game'

TSA Patrick said:Not even close. I played clicker heroes for over 6000 hours on steam alone, not to mention the other platforms on which I played the same save file. In total, my 100% completion of the game grants only about 2000 TSA.

That's just one example. There are hundreds of others.

Spending a lot of "time" on something is really different from spending "effort" on it, especially in this age of spam games and idle games. If there was a clicker game with 5000 achievements, this would get put to the test.

I just don't get why you're so het up against Logistical. Just let us enjoy our shipping game. Just because you think there's not much to it doesn't mean that we don't get a lot out of it. I get so much joy out of planning, moving trucks around, and watching my minions do my bidding. Just leave it.

daysocks said:Logistical is awesome and is definitely not a spam game. Steam allows up to 5000 cheevs per game, and lots of shitty devs take advantage of that. Sacada doesn't at all. It's long, long work.

That's the reason WHY it's so high in TSA score, because people start it and never finish it.

I don't care about being on top of leaderboards. Some people do, however. When one single game (logistical, for instance) constitutes >10% of the TSA of a top ranked player, that instantly tells everyone else who wants to compete on the boards that owning logistical is 100% necessary. That should never happen. That's why I don't like it.

You guys are missing the points being made - I'm not against big/long games - in fact, I'm someone who has done stuff like Payday 2, Tales of Maj'Eyal, The Pit, Zaccaria, PPU, etc. Spam is when something is wildly overly granular: kill 1 enemy, kill 2 enemies, kill 3 enemies, etc. up to 5k.

You're perfectly allowed to have as much joy as you want out of it. And a point system is never going to be perfect - there's always going to be high-efficiency ways to play the system and advance the fastest. Logistical as a series just happens to be a high-end outlier at this point, and it's exacerbated when other games get capped. It's currently a "you absolutely must play this" game series for anyone interested in competing on points because of its massive amounts of spam achievements, its massive point value, and its very low barrier to entry in terms of skill/focus-needed - it's 100% the type of game you play with netflix running on the other screen next to you.

Algreth said:You'd know why this isn't a glaringly obvious problem if you actually read my post instead of dismissing it entirely as "nonsense", but let me spell it out again, more clearly this time:

I have put 2,925 hours into Logistical, more than the active time in every other Steam game I've ever played combined. The fact that it's not more than 50% of my total score shows that there's hundreds of other games that give more value for less effort.

It's not. There are many people in the top 10 who have not played Logistical, by virtue of having thousands of hours more time to put into other games than those who do.

TrueSteam said:Any idea when those will be tackled ?
I feel cheating with my best game still being "Scary House"

Can't wait for the next 4000+ achievement Logistical spam game.

I have a question - how and who will decide what is Achievement Scam Games? There are vivid examples, but there are also more complex. Administration of TAS? Or players? Or together? I think we need to make a separate thread for Scam Games and their discussions.

AnotherWay said:They made a subfora to discuss achievement spam games.

missiloon said:Link pls ? 10x

AnotherWay said:Achievement Spam Games Forum

Accidentally hit the edit button instead of quote on your post.