Add date to achievements

[Zr40]

Would it be possible to add the date of achieving to the achievements list?

This would really be useful for SteamStats (http://dev.zr40.nl/steam/). For example, with this information, there could be a list of players who got the most points in the span of a month.

There's also another use for this data. It's not as visible as the time-based player list, but it's at least as important. I'm not really keen to discuss it publicly here on the forums, since that would reduce the effectiveness of that use. If a moderator or Valve developer wants to know, you know how to contact me privately.

[Chris Fifty-Two]

This is something I want to see this as well. I visit SteamStats on a regular basis and would be nice to have even more functionality added to it.
Shouldnt be impossible to add.

[*VeLeRoN*]

And a whole new tab for achievements too, that would be the best.

[Peewi]

Having Steam show what date you unlocked an achievement would be neat. I wonder if those stats exist for achievements unlocked before the blotter was added to Steam Community.

[Zr40]

Bump.

This could also be used to show a player's most recent achievements.

[Seth.Sekhmet]

Can't think of any good use for such a feature.
I'm against Valve using precious resources to add date to achievements. They have no real impact on gameplay, so why bother ?

[Zr40]

Steam already stores the timestamp of achievements. Just look at the Blotter, you'll see when your friends have achieved achievements. You can even browse the history and see when they achieved other achievements.

This feature is about exposing that information on profile pages (and XML feeds), provided of course that the profile is public. Also, consider that you can already see when someone became friends with someone else.

[Peewi]

Steam already stores the timestamp of achievements. Just look at the Blotter, you'll see when your friends have achieved achievements. You can even browse the history and see when they achieved other achievements.

We don't know whether the date unlocked is stored for achievements unlocked before the blotter was added, though.

[Skaery]

My oldest entry in Blotter is Feb 28.. I can see good use for this feature on SteamStats.

The blotter has been on since late last year; October, IIRC. The blotter and total time played are un-related features.

[DeathConvoy]

Zr40 - are you the man/woman/machine behind SteamStats? dev.zr40.nl ? I must say - fantastic work! I check it almost daily to see if there are any new games, and love to be able to see all my achievements (and ones yet to be earnt) on a single page.

... and at the same time, hurts to see the results sometimes... look at Eternity's Child; thousands bought the game yet only around 80 made it half way through.

[Chris Fifty-Two]

Yes, its him. He is constantly working on it as well so would be great if he could access more data like the date (see first post) and other stuff.

[Dr Colossus]

This is a good idea. Not only for general interest, but would also help weed out cheaters who unlock large amounts of achievements at once.

[Jeff S]

It'll happen.

[*VeLeRoN*]

Zr40, it's your lucky day today! :D

[Skaery]

That's nice. I hope it will happen soon =)

[Peewi]

That's nice.

[Zr40]

Any progress? :)

[MikeBlaszczak]

Nope, there's nothing to report.

[-ReuF-]

Great! I hope they're going to expand the achievement and steamstats functionality even more. Keep posting the good ideas!

[alchemistlord]

Yeah, that would be cool.

[Zr40]

Well, since it's already been posted, I might just as well tell about the second use I mentioned in the first post.

This is a good idea. Not only for general interest, but would also help weed out cheaters who unlock large amounts of achievements at once.

Achievement cheating is a big problem for SteamStats. Since SteamStats assigns points to achievements based on the actual number of players, cheaters can influence the statistics and thus affect the achievement values. But that's not the biggest problem.

Right now, I find cheaters by hand and mark their profiles so that they are not ranked in the SteamStats top players list. This (http://dev.zr40.nl/steam/topplayerswithcheaters) is the top players list with cheaters included.

There are 90 profiles on that page. 63 of them have been found to unlock achievements illegitimately. Consider, this is just the tip of the iceberg. These 'top cheaters' have unlocked this many achievements merely because they own a lot of games. There are a lot more of them with less games whom I just have not found yet.

Presumably, people who illegitimately unlock achievements unlock them all at once. This would be very easy to detect automatically if the date and time of achievement unlocking is exposed.

When this feature is implemented, it would make SteamStats more valuable to legitimate players. When a player sees a cheater at a high spot on the top players list, he might quit getting achievements at all, defeating the purpose of developers including them. Or even worse, he might consider cheating.

So... Any further progress? :)

[bloodypalace]

Why are people so obsessed with achievements, seriously?

[Tibo]

Why are people so obsessed with achievements, seriously?
I don't see any obsession here. Maybe you got the wrong word. People like various things. Some like achievements. Some like posting thousands of threads.

Achievements are sweet, espeially on good games. That add much to it imo.
This definatly needs to be done, first of all because the opposite service (gfwl) offers it, and as a bonus can help crazy Zr.
And valve needs to add achievements in hl2 and ep1, but that's a different subject (cough cough) ...

[Zr40]

There are 90 profiles on that page. 63 of them have been found to unlock achievements illegitimately.
This is now 69 of the 90 profiles. On the regular top 30 list, 16 would be cheaters if they weren't removed by SteamStats.

Achievement cheating is a real problem. I believe the date and time of achieving is very useful to accurately identify cheaters. This means that more cheaters will be found, but more importantly, legitimate players won't be accidentally marked as cheaters.

Of course, making the date of achieving available also allows for the other features I mentioned in the first post, but right now for SteamStats, the cheater problem is most important.

I strongly urge Valve to add the date and time of achieving to the existing XML feeds.

(Of course, better security so achievement cheating is impossible would be nice, too, but that doesn't undo the damage so far.)

[spark4160]

that would be great

[WiZeNgAmOtX]

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=937143

What do you all think about my idea? I seem to have thought of the same ideas, though due to our ideas having been developed separately, I am able to assume that there are others with the same thoughts.

[Zr40]

Ignoring the non-security uses (like the 'recent achievements by player X' idea in my OP) since your idea is only about security:

Your idea seems to address only legitimate achievement unlocking - getting achievements by actually playing the game. Yes, I consider achievement farming maps legitimate here. Making achievements VAC-only wouldn't work, since there are lots of games with achievements that don't use VAC or are single player.

My request addresses illegitimately unlocked achievements - getting achievements without even touching the game. I admit it doesn't stop people from doing it, but at least SteamStats can detect it and remove them.

[WiZeNgAmOtX]

Ignoring the non-security uses (like the 'recent achievements by player X' idea in my OP) since your idea is only about security:

Your idea seems to address only legitimate achievement unlocking - getting achievements by actually playing the game. Yes, I consider achievement farming maps legitimate here. Making achievements VAC-only wouldn't work, since there are lots of games with achievements that don't use VAC or are single player.

My request addresses illegitimately unlocked achievements - getting achievements without even touching the game. I admit it doesn't stop people from doing it, but at least SteamStats can detect it and remove them. VALVe and other VAC secure multiplayer games could be made so that achievements are only attainable on line while on a VAC secured server (with the latest VAC).

[Fuzz Bucket]

VALVe and other VAC secure multiplayer games could be made so that achievements are only attainable on line while on a VAC secured server (with the latest VAC).
You can farm achievements on VAC servers.

[WiZeNgAmOtX]

You can farm achievements on VAC servers.

While I have issues with the morality of achievement grinding servers, I read that they are legitimate though questionable, from VALVe sources, and so achievement 'farms' would only be VAC protected servers. The number of achievement farms and hosts would be controlled.

[Zr40]

It'll happen.
Any progress?

[InuRamza]

The "Blotter" section on the community tab already shows our friends achievements achieved in the last 3 days.
Storing the date for each achievement seems a waste of resources and not important at all to me; plus it will make the achievement display lists look cluttered.

[Zr40]

Blotter only shows data useful to yourself. It can't be used by SteamStats or other websites using data from Steam Community.

There are no extra resources to be wasted, Steam already saves the date. And if it is added to the XML view (that's something used by programmers, not by gamers like you), it can't affect clutter in any way.

[Suomis]

Me too, I visit steamstats every day. I love hunting achievments! And I think it does tell the date, but as soon as the date gets burried, you lose the info when you have got it.

Edit: soz didnt read the last post.

[Amiral Benson]

Hi,

This topic is very interesting, I found a really annoying and strange bug in Unreal Tournament 3 Black Achievements, because some of you are talking about timestamps and cheating, I thought it might be interesting to report it here.

In Unreal Tournament 3 Black, when I get 2 achievements in one time, only one is recording in Steam Community, but the 2 are recording in the award section of the game.

I will give you an example, when I finish a chapter in Insane, because this is the first time I finish this chapter, I must won 2 achievements:

Not In Kansas Anymore: Complete Chapter 4.
Open War: Complete Chapter 4 in Insane.The 2 pop-ups are showing, the intern game awards record these 2 awards, but the Steam Community Achievements only record the first one "Not In Kansas Anymore: Complete Chapter 4."

I had to finish the campaign 3 times to won all the achievements related to the campaign.
3 Times because the final match in the final chapter contain 3 achievements:

I'm Not On A Holy War: Defeat Akasha and complete the campaign.
Fear The Reaper: Defeat Akasha and complete the campaign in Insane.
Thanks To All The Little People: Complete a campaign in co-op.Why the game records all of these achievements in one time without any problem, while Steam Community Achievements can only record one at a time ???

These UT3 Insane achievements are ones of the most difficult achievements I have ever earned (even more difficult than my Platinum PSN Trophy for WipEout HD with the almost impossible Zone 75, etc.), according to zr40 wonderful SteamStats, only 347 persons won the "complete the campaign in Insane" achievement, and I received it only in the third attempt... :o

Well, I'm not here for whining, I really enjoy achievements/trophy/awards, I still really enjoyed won 3 times the campaign in Insane, but in the end I really would like to know where is the bug ?
Is it in UT3 or in the SteamWork system ?

zr40 told us that cheaters can unlock many achievements in one time, and here in UT3 legitimate players have to deal with this strange bug, this is really weird.

I hope this bug will be fixed, and I hope you guys could tell me what was the cause.

And thank you a thousand times zr40 for your SteamStats, I hope that one day it will be directly available in our Steam Community Page, with many other improvements.

[LicenseToThrill]

Any progress on this? o.O

[SEKCobra]

What about gaining achievments again and again and a count how often you did it? :3

[Amiral Benson]

And what about, like in the PS3, a kind of "Platinum" achievement which we win when we gained all the achievements.

And if a DLC is released after and add new achievements, it will come with a new "Platinum" achievement, or an upgrade of the first achievement, like a Platinum level 2.

And all these "Platinum" achievements would be visible on our community page profile, directly in the first page, like a medals board.

And like in SteamStats (http://dev.zr40.nl/steam/) what about a point system, or a system to see how many players won this achievement, etc.

With an awesome database like this, I do not know why Valve so underexploit it, why they do not use it to add a lot off more cool features.

[Skaery]

And what about, like in the PS3, a kind of "Platinum" achievement which we win when we gained all the achievements.

And if a DLC is released after and add new achievements, it will come with a new "Platinum" achievement, or an upgrade of the first achievement, like a Platinum level 2.
Platinum achievement for 100% is not a stupid idea. I support this.

[RobertSmith8]

Since SteamStats assigns points to achievements based on the actual number of playersCan u pls explain the formula for achivment points?
Thx for a great site!!!