You get all the archievements and get the final archievement “Addicted” and this picture is shown:
(WARNING: HARSH MATERIAL. Seriously, don’t look if you have faint nerves, or does not appriciate a good troll!!!)
http://www.chillinpanda.com/img/people/drug_addiction/drug_addiction08 dot jpg
Never mind. Generally there seems to be a tendency to destroy too much only because there is problem X. In most cases the solution to a specific problem in this alpha so far resulted in unbearable theory crafting with mostly inconsistent and awkward results which are artificially imposed. I would rather say then: dont do any achievements at all in this case.
No achievements at all will reduce the competition level of the game, make it less dynamic, and mostly less addictive. This means less money for SD and a shorter lifetime for the game … which cannot happen !
They are incentives and part of both economical AND gameplay aspects of the game. So far in this thread we have somehow concluded that there should be three types of achievements :
- session or match-related : easy to unlock, can be cumulative, enforce the competition, teamplay and the raging of the fights => grants more XP
- permanent : big objectives, harder to get => grants rewards like tags, guns, mounts, skins, etc.
- social : rewards like reputation points, social points and teamplay points, only giveable by players => unique and special rewards (not buyable in the store).
I cannot see what the problem is with achievements ?!?!? They bring only benefits as they can addict the player, help force the player to play with the team, and provide support from an economical point of view.
If we don’t add achievements to DB, then there is no way to make it F2P imo. Most people would just play a few times the maps and move on to another game that will be able to capture their interest by giving them the tools to identify themselves to their character …
Then here in this forum, we give ideas, thoughts and feedback to help SD make DB our game, of course not all the ideas will be integrated to the game and some of our threads here will only have a role of brainstorming … but that’s alpha testing. In the end I’m sure we will all be pleased with the game and proud to say : “we did it right !”
But maybe I didn’t understand your point correctly ?
Point was that problem solving generally results in even more awkward game mechanics. SockDog mentioned the spam. I would say, if this is recognized as a problem and there is no good solution to it, then better not do it at all instead of making the game unfun and artificially pump it up with some pseudo theories which make only sense in really abstract thinking brains. Good example is to lock the game achievements over time. Also a statistical spread makes no sense at all, because inconsistent. See: by trying to solve a problem mostly more problems are introduced. Why make it hard, rather not do it then and try to invest energy into something else.
EDIT Also: since this is only a shooting game and perceived as such by a majority of all, the achievements generally tend to look like this:
kill this - oh achievement
kill that - oh achievement
kill another thing over here - oh achievement
also over here - oh another achievement 
kill kill kill, meh, this is boring, probably because of the underlying structure you try to build your achievements on. Maybe it is a problem of the genre overall Or a problem of how this genre is projected from the brain to game aka the perception of how a shooting game should turn out. Mostly everyone will say that it is about killing. And there comes a little monotonic problem if you copy paste this over and over again, which is exactly what is happening at this moment in the FPS genre. There are only some few innovative designs noone seems to take interest in, because there is other market data and other directions in the past which make people decide to make the game like this and not like that.
I think as TB said: if you keep buying such games then it is your own fault if devs keep driving down this road, because it is where the money is (or seems to be).
I have to disagree …
This cannot result in spam at all. I mean look at unreal tournament : there is no spam with the killing sprees, headshots, and others … Have a look at BulletStorm for example, they have tons of rewards and no spam at all. The result is that the game becomes enraged and dementially fun to play ! Then it’s up to us to create new achievements, implying tricky gameplay to unlock them and not only the common headshot of killing spree … the FPS genre is opened to improvements you know …
Then the greater rewards cannot be considered as spam for obvious reasons as they are way harder to win.
Finally, player to player rewards are out of the game, so no spam either. And remove the achuevements, you will kill this game by removing 50% of the fun.
Achievements are pure benefits, no issue at all for us. And if we renounce to adding new stuff to the game because we are afraid that they wont be implemented or not as we wish, then there is no point in doing the game at all … This is game development, you gotta be prepared to be disappointed and that maybe only one idea over hundreds will be good. The point here for us is to help by bringing ideas and feedback. And achievements are a must.
[QUOTE=RasteRayzeR;437279]When I played ET:QW I fought hard to get these medals (getting 500 knife kills, vehicle stunts, etc). They were like goals to achieve for my own pride yet they would not grant me anything else, which was a shame truth be told. And when you tell me about the africa’s campain, I remember only the “Close, but no cigar !”
[/QUOTE]
My friend actually held a party when she reached “supreme commander”… i was drunk. This was when the stats pages had been offline for a long time.
This is exactly what I’m talking about : achievements are a MUST ! They tighten the bound between the player and the game. No goals, no investment.
That’s why we should prepare a good list of crazy achievements. I’d like very much to have the feedback of the guys at SD on this, how they see this thing and if we go in the good direction. Imo the 3 types of achievements (session-related, permanent and player to player) are a nice way to bring steps in the development and classify the kind of rewards.
article about achievements i think he got some good points
To conclude your discussion, we all want to have achievements (which is pretty sure) which are not:
A)too repetitive
B)spammy
C)fast to achieve
It is for certain players (myself included) fun to collect these stuff. For me this system extends the motivation to play and let the game last longer “new”, especially in the beginning. Sure SD has to come up with a decent Achievement design, and Reward system, otherwise it will bore players.
I agree, I’m reading your article and this is interesting. We need achievements, so lets get back to work !
Here is a sample of what they call skillshots in BulletStorm, which was a fantastic game to play for the combat mechanics. This can give ideas for the gameplay achievemnts, and as you can see there is no spam, it is displayed small enough not to disturb the gameplay :
Oh man, I completely forgot about UT. Audible recognition for achievements. I’d reckon those “Headshot” announcements during UT and Q3 did a lot more to encourage actual game PLAY than the achievement announcements in CoD (which has become somewhat of a stat whoring activity, what with the whole prestige grinding obsession some people have). You’re right, BulletStorm also handled that kind of thing well, just unfortunate that it was so porno-centric with it’s terminology. Those skill shot challenges were very inviting to want-to-achieve.
Personally I think the whole achievement situation as far as long term/performance milestones could be handled like a questing system. There’s no reason there shouldn’t be an accounting of traditional stats like total kills with X weapon and X attachment… and X class awards won. But a questing style system could also come into play in the sense that, you don’t earn those achievements unless you perform a specific string of tasks. This could be another subtle, and entirely optional dynamic that encourages teamplay, and perhaps even class based education.
It would have to be the kind of thing we all proof so that each quest-ee achievement doesn’t seem forced, shallow, and uttelry skill-less (like many achievements on Steam… congratulations, you just watched the opening cinematic). For a crude example, I could see an achievement that involved a medic healing an engineer during the plant/repair of the first objective, and then consistent and specific support activity during the rest of a single session to fulfill the requirements of that quest/achievement. Perhaps Combo-Achievement is a better way of selling this idea. Keep the engy alive for the first objective > escort/heal any other escortees during the second objective > defend whoever else is carrying/looting/covering-the-engy at the next objective>etc.
I can see this being an effective way of actually teaching people certain elementary tactics, per map. In some ways this basic example could be looked upon as a tutorial for that particular map, but because it’s voluntary and entirely mutable to the experience, I think the tactical nature of learning that class’s role for that map will actually stick inside people’s heads a lot quicker and more deeply than an out and out tutorial. Learning by doing, for most people, is the quickest way to learn.
I could also see this being used for seasonal/promo events… again, to reference the achievement based events that happen in Killing Floor… it could add depth to doing more than racking up 5 kills of medics wearing a santa suit (stupid example, but you get what I mean). Having something like; melee 3 elf decorations near first objective > use and explosive on a medic wearing a santa hat > during a fuel cell style objective, don’t let the santa suited enemy class steal any “milk” for his cookies.
Stupid example, but with the right kind of finesse for normal achievements, and the right kind of silly for seasonal/promo events… those would be achievements that people would actually feel a little extra proud about having achieved. And it doesn’t hurt for the bragging rights. Some people really do care about that kind of thing being visible in their player profile as a mark of skill and dedication to the game/community. Others will brag from the perspective of a smart arse, if just to joke about being a big shot amongst their friends.
it’s those little things that not only bind people to the game, like Raster mentioned, but also adds to the fun, therein adding to the reputation of ‘fun’ the game can develop which then extends to new players making the choice to try and hopefully committing to the game.
Achievements are something nobody has really tried evolving too deeply. Valve can take the credit for popularising it on the PC platform, maybe even cross platform. Maybe I’m wrong on that count but I always saw them as leading the way as far as marketing what was once an RPG only mechanic. There’s no reason why DB can’t pioneer some sort of an evolution on this front. If anything I think it would also enhance the profile of the game, give it that sense of “new” and “unique”.
I cannot agree more with Bloodbite. For the F2P genre achievements are a complete must and there is a lot of room to tweak it and bring new ideas into. This could be one of the features DB could be highlighted for in the future.
The UT audible recognition for achievements are the motivation I had when I first started this thread, because they are instant rewards and with the incredible announcer’s voice, they just make me go berserk in the game, which is exactly what we want for DB. Then BulletStorm really pushed the limits with their moto : “Kill with style”. And this is something DB could only profit from by including small XP rewards with these skillshots. This could be used as a tool to balance the classes, imo.
Then an idea could be sprees of rewards : like Bloodbite said, we could chain them so that we can transparently push the player to play the objectives. An example could be in London Bridge, from what Bloodbite said :
The “quest” style I can only encourage, since it deepens the commitment with the game just like an RPG does. This means players will more likely keep playing this game through the years. If done right, these quests could open new sides of the story behind the game, unlocks like :
These could bring elements of a single player campaign into the multiplayer, thus making it very rich. For the rest, I refer to what Bloodbite said since it really makes sense and opens to new ideas. I’d really like to see a “reward tree” per class in the game ! Just like a skill tree, but for rewards xD (btw have you seen Path of Exile ? They have a skill tree with over 1350 passives, I had to scroll like for 10 seconds on my 1680x1050 screen … wow !)
I would really like the opinion of SD guys on this whole achievements / quests / skillshots problematic though
We also need an achievement for Camden, I got killed by the train, we must turn this into an achievement, otherwise it’s just sad -.-
haha ok that one made me laugh RasteRayzeR
how about … achievement unlocked “obvious to the un-trained eye”
