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[voliol]

But there are no cakes in DF... 

There are the obscure press cakes, that you can only make from six different plants. I’d not say it’s worth putting too many obscure achievements in though, as there should be room for achievements related to later updates. Save this one for the procedural cakes.

[voliol]

Another thread popped up on the subreddit.

[YK_81]

All Steam achievements should be awarded for losing the game in different ways. Losing to a Necromancer swarm: Achievement. Losing to Werebest infection outbreak: Achievement. Loyalty cascade: Achievement. Flooding: Achievement. Enraged elephants: Achievement. Tantrum spiral: Achievement. Starvation: Achievement. Magma flood: Achievement. Lose 1000 times: Achievement. FPS death: Achievement.

This is actually a serious suggestion. It would help provide encouragement for new players who inevitably lose their first few forts and may otherwise feel discouraged. It kind of turns losing on it's head by defining defeat as victory. Personally, I would make all achievements for losing, but not everyone has my macabre sense of humour.

To clarify, I am suggesting the player should abandon the fort to get the achievement after some criteria has been met to trigger the achievement. For the starvation achievement you would need to lose x% of your dwarves to starvation in the three years before abandoning the fort, for instance.

I think that idea is friggin brilliant. It definitely ease the pain of losing a fortress, especially for, as you said, new players. That'd be especially important as the steam and itch releases will open up the world of DF to newcomers, a lot of them learning about the game from steam, not knowing what to expect as a newcomer.

[NW_Kohaku]

I think that idea is friggin brilliant. It definitely ease the pain of losing a fortress, especially for, as you said, new players. That'd be especially important as the steam and itch releases will open up the world of DF to newcomers, a lot of them learning about the game from steam, not knowing what to expect as a newcomer.

The problem, as stated before, comes when you start adding in multiple achievements for losing to different things.  Now, you don't just get an achievement for losing a fort, you have a checklist.  Oh, you want achievements?  Well, you haven't lost to a goblin invasion yet.  So go make a disposable fort lose to goblins on purpose.  Now make one lose to necromancers on purpose.  Oh, and how does the game know when you "lost to a necromancer", anyway?  What if your fort is slain by zombies, but the last dwarf is actually killed by another dwarf tantrumming?  Well, you already had a tantrum loss, so no achievement for you, start over and do it again.

Having one achievement for a fort crumbling is fine, but you guys are forgetting the reason why "Losing is Fun" is the tagline.  It's supposed to be encouraging you to say that losing isn't the be-all-end-all of the game.  (Especially because the OP's "lose" conditions are all fortress mode, so apparently you shouldn't even play adventurer mode?)  There should be an achievement for reclaiming a fort to try again, or for sending an adventurer to the site of one of your old fallen fortresses.  There should be an achievement for your adventurer reclaiming an artifact one of your old forts made.  There should be an achievement for your adventurer finding a masterwork whatever in the markets of another town besides your fort, just to see how far that dresser you sold to the human caravan actually traveled.  There should be an achievement for building a new fortress on a cave that had been cleared out by your adventurer.

Achievements shouldn't be "lose because that's all Dwarf Fortress is, just losing because you dumbasses apparently can't learn the game", they should be hints and encouragements for exploring aspects of the game that someone who only plays by generating a world to make one fort then do nothing else try doing other things like retiring the fort, playing an adventurer, and unretiring later.

[thompson]

Yes, I made the suggestion as someone who really doesn’t care about steam achievements. I hadn’t realized people took them seriously, so it was a bit of a blind spot on my part. We certainly don’t want people to think they need to lose.

You could probably make double barreled “achieve this or die trying” type achievements, but again I’m not placing much value on steam’s extrinsic achievement system. A true achievement in DF does not require external recognition, and certainly not by steam. How would the game recognize a turning complete lever-operated microprocessor, or a trap system so sophisticated it can fully automate the destruction of a siege? Or a mine cart powered magma cannon? Or some creative use of the game’s mechanics no one has ever thought of?

YMMV

[Shonai_Dweller]

Yes, I made the suggestion as someone who really doesn’t care about steam achievements. I hadn’t realized people took them seriously, so it was a bit of a blind spot on my part. We certainly don’t want people to think they need to lose.

You could probably make double barreled “achieve this or die trying” type achievements, but again I’m not placing much value on steam’s extrinsic achievement system. A true achievement in DF does not require external recognition, and certainly not by steam. How would the game recognize a turning complete lever-operated microprocessor, or a trap system so sophisticated it can fully automate the destruction of a siege? Or a mine cart powered magma cannon? Or some creative use of the game’s mechanics no one has ever thought of?

YMMV

Toady has mentioned one use for Steam Achievements as a kind of "advanced tutorial" beyond the basics that'll be taught in the regular one. Motivation for beginners to explore the deeper aspects of the game with achievements as the reward (because some people like to get them, apparently).

Now try beekeeping, now try bookbinding, now take over an elf village, now call back your troops with a messenger, etc.

Obviously has nothing to do with real DF achievements, like a thousand likes on Reddit for your vampire powered pinball table, etc.

[GumNut]

The future is now, old man: have a third generation citizen turn into an adult. (Grandchild to a migrant or a dwarf from the initial embark)

[Starver]

Vegetarian fortress: Have a fortress survive for 5 years without using or producing animal products (silk included) butchering or fishing - pretty much the standard haunted evil glacier embark.

Make that "Vegan fortress", have "Vegetarian fortress" be without the stricter parts of the condition (no edible products from butchery entering the foodchain).

Or, as some argue that using roadkill does not invalidate vegan principles (assuming you didn't run the critter over yourself, of course), allow meat/leather from 'non-deliberate' (^*cough*) corpses to complete the vegan qualification, but would simultaneously ruin the veggie 'run' (as would bought-in foodstuffs that (dis)qualified as meats).

[NW_Kohaku]

Yes, I made the suggestion as someone who really doesn’t care about steam achievements. I hadn’t realized people took them seriously, so it was a bit of a blind spot on my part. We certainly don’t want people to think they need to lose.

You could probably make double barreled “achieve this or die trying” type achievements, but again I’m not placing much value on steam’s extrinsic achievement system. A true achievement in DF does not require external recognition, and certainly not by steam. How would the game recognize a turning complete lever-operated microprocessor, or a trap system so sophisticated it can fully automate the destruction of a siege? Or a mine cart powered magma cannon? Or some creative use of the game’s mechanics no one has ever thought of?

YMMV

While there are some people who go for achievements no matter what, sandbox games are unusually good environments for achievements, because they directly encourage you to try things you wouldn't have normally thought of doing.  Achievements in Crusader Kings II, for example, included things like "Better to be Emperor", where you have to start as a count and become emperor as a single character (nearly impossible the direct route as conquering an empire from scratch is hard, but if you start play as a landed count who is heir to an empire, you just have to wait for Dad to die...), "Empressive" - rule as three successive empresses (made difficult by how gender bias works in most succession schemes), or one of the achievements that require specific starts such as "A Servant No More" where you play as a vassal and need to rebel and re-establish your empire.  (Or one achievement a DF player would get - "Dwarf Fortress" - have 7 dwarves in your court.)  You can still play how you want, but these give both goals and suggest how you can work the system in less-obvious ways.

Again, the point of the "losing is fun" is to get players to not just quit when they have a fortress crumble, but to make an adventurer, and explore the ruins of your fort, or see how some of the masterwork rock crafts you traded away without thinking about it have become some treasured object on display in the village chief's residence, because *damn* those are some nice rock mugs.  These are all things Toady spent a lot of time doing to try to make the game more than just another town manager game, so if new players only see this as a game where you manage a town and "it's hard", achievements are a good way to show them some of the less-obvious ways the game is different.

[IndigoFenix]

How about this: You get achievements for the usual in-game accomplishments, but those achievements aren't actually awarded until you lose.  So you don't have to lose specifically to a particular source such as a necromancer attack, but rather any loss after experiencing the attack gets you the achievement.  This way, losing in specific ways doesn't become a "checklist", but losing still gets you the "accomplishment" feedback.

There could be a cap on how many achievements you can get with a single loss, with less common events taking priority over more common ones.

[Shonai_Dweller]

How about this: You get achievements for the usual in-game accomplishments, but those achievements aren't actually awarded until you lose.  So you don't have to lose specifically to a particular source such as a necromancer attack, but rather any loss after experiencing the attack gets you the achievement.  This way, losing in specific ways doesn't become a "checklist", but losing still gets you the "accomplishment" feedback.

There could be a cap on how many achievements you can get with a single loss, with less common events taking priority over more common ones.

But then I might play a hundred year fortress a couple of days a week for several months and never get an achievement. Losing may be Fun, but not doing so should be fun too.

In fact, likely I'd never get any as I retire my fortresses, building several throughout the world with the different civs, visiting each with adventurers. No achievements for me? Hmph.

[NW_Kohaku]

How about this: You get achievements for the usual in-game accomplishments, but those achievements aren't actually awarded until you lose.  So you don't have to lose specifically to a particular source such as a necromancer attack, but rather any loss after experiencing the attack gets you the achievement.  This way, losing in specific ways doesn't become a "checklist", but losing still gets you the "accomplishment" feedback.

There could be a cap on how many achievements you can get with a single loss, with less common events taking priority over more common ones.

But then I might play a hundred year fortress a couple of days a week for several months and never get an achievement. Losing may be Fun, but not doing so should be fun too.

In fact, likely I'd never get any as I retire my fortresses, building several throughout the world with the different civs, visiting each with adventurers. No achievements for me? Hmph.

(Technically, in the spirit of achievement-hunting, you can often do things in "burner saves" - just make a copy of your save, and then deliberately flood the fortress to kill everyone and get a crumble before reloading the save.  This is how you get any set of cheevos when you need to pick all four endings from an Ending-Tron 4000 where a single choice at the end of a game overwrites all previous choices, and you can just reload a save from the very end to see all the different endings, preventing a need to play the whole game again.)

Still, at that point, you're asking the player to go out of their way to kill their fortress off all just to achieve a forum meme that Toady himself isn't even particularly keen on, and again, it's completely forgetting that Adventurer Mode exists at all.  Making a game or movie based entirely off of memes on the Internet is how you get Snakes on a Plane, and nobody wants that.  There's no actual storytelling or or immersion or gameplay advantage to doing it, and those are the things Toady cares about exploring with Dwarf Fortress (well, besides maybe gameplay), so why should he do so?

Toady mentioning that he sees achievements as an advanced tutorial is smart, that's the best way to use achievements.  Many players will find one thing they're comfortable with and stick to it rather than learn new ways because learning to do so takes effort and there's no reward for doing things differently once you have something that works, and achievements give a little push to try something different.  Why bother ranching when you know how to make farms work?  Oh, now there's an achievement just for having ten pastures with animals in it?  That's not... too hard, right?... OK, maybe I'll try it out... Oh, wow, geese really do lay a LOT of eggs, don't they?

[Atarlost]

it's completely forgetting that Adventurer Mode exists at all. 

You say this as though adventurer mode doesn't also end in death.  Just because a specific poster who plays fortress mode is most familiar with the varied ways fortresses collapse doesn't meant he principle can't be applied to adventurers.  Admittedly applying it to legends mode is harder, but I'm not really sure legends mode needs achievements. 

[Starver]

Achievement Gained: Used Legends Mode

[YK_81]

Now, admittedly I forget how steam achievements work, but I do share some of the concerns of other people in this thread, that making achievements for losing would encourage people to lose the game, now, if you can't see what the achievements are until you achieve them, I don't see this being a problem, you'd accidentally lose a fort, and get an achievement that you didn't know existed. Basically what i'm saying is that if you can see there's an locked achievement for losing your fort to a goblin invasion, or what have you, you'll try to lose your fort to a goblin invasion. Now if you can't see that, when you lose a fort to a goblin invasion, you are pleasantly surprised when you get an achievement.