Valve has officially announced a major upgrade to the Steam achievement system and is expected to launch the new “Achievement Sets” feature with a future Steam client update. The feature is currently available first in the Steam Beta, giving players who are passionate about collecting achievements and pursuing 100% completion an early look at this long-awaited revamp.
Steam is finally going to stop DLC from ruining your 100% achievement completion.
The biggest feature of this update is that developers can categorize in-game achievements by different themes or content. For example, single-player and multiplayer achievements can be tracked separately, and achievements can also be divided based on specific characters, game chapters, expansion content, or even challenges added in different version updates. With clearer categorization, players will be able to understand their game progress and completion status more intuitively.
In the past, many players pursuing 100% achievements often ran into a troubling issue. When games released subsequent updates or DLC, development teams would often add new achievements, causing players who had already achieved perfect completion to suddenly lose their 100% completion and have to spend time again unlocking the new content. To address this long-standing pain point, Valve has also proposed a solution this time.
Under the new achievement set system, completion progress will be calculated independently for each achievement group. When a player unlocks all achievements in an achievement set, Steam will record that milestone and award an “Achievement Set Completed” trophy on their profile. Even if developers add more content to the same achievement set in the future, the system will still preserve the record of the player completing that achievement set at the time, so their earlier efforts will not be lost.
To make it easier for players to identify different types of achievement content, Steam has also introduced a new visual design. Achievement sets for the base game will be marked in blue, while DLC-related achievements will be shown in purple. In addition, developers can create seasonal achievement sets exclusive to limited-time events, such as Halloween, Christmas, and other themed events. After the event ends, these achievement sets will be archived and preserved, becoming important content for players to collect and commemorate their participation in special events.
Alongside a major overhaul of the achievement system, Valve has also redesigned the Steam achievements page. The new interface provides a more comprehensive overview of achievement sets and progress, and adds global completion rate statistics, search functionality, and an enhanced achievement comparison page for three friends, making it easier for players to review each other’s gaming accomplishments and completion rates.
In addition, Steam is also rolling out several related feature changes. The original “Perfect Games” page will be renamed to “Completed”; in addition to listing games where all achievements have been unlocked, it will also show games that have completed a specific achievement set. In addition, players can now add games with completed achievement sets to the “Perfectionist Showcase” in their profile to show off their collection.
Family Sharing has also been enhanced. Games played through Steam Family Sharing now appear in players’ game lists, and the playtime of friends using Family Sharing games can also be included in the friend comparison system. In addition, Steam store pages and the library interface will add indicators so players can quickly check whether a game supports the Achievement Collections feature.
It is worth noting that this new feature must be actively enabled by game developers, and existing achievements need to be organized and grouped into different categories. Confirmed supported titles currently include Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Portal 2, Victoria 3, and Forza Horizon 5, with more games expected to join the supported lineup in the future.
The all-new Achievement Sets feature and the redesigned achievements page are now available to Steam Client Beta users. Players who want early access only need to go to Steam Settings, find “Client Beta Participation” under “Interface,” and opt into the beta to be among the first to experience the most significant overhaul of Steam’s achievement system in years.
Source: KOCPC Chinese