The Bar Brawl: Setting the Standard
By The Bar Brawl ~ 21st April 2011
A quick glance around the modern gaming universe will confirm just how ingrained the notion of achievements or titles are to players. Be it a progress mark for game completion or bragging rights for completing specific tasks, achievements are working their way into more and more games. In Tyria, titles were an afterthought introduced with Factions and have been tweaked with several times in the last 4 years. Guild Wars 2 will have achievements for a variety of play styles from release covering a wide variety of bases.
While game makers love the proverbial carrot on a stick, they can be a double edged sword. Set the bar for success too high and risk alienating players who only have a couple of hours a week to play. Set it too low however and those who could play the game for thousands of hours may run out of reasons to log in. Today we’d like your opinions on the matter – do you want to be able to hit every achievement that piques your interest whilst playing around a job and family? Are you able to dedicate hours a week to slowly working your way to your first achievement 6 months after release? Would you mind not being able to reasonably achieve some achievements in the game? As always let us know your thoughts below – we’ll pick out a selection of opinions for the podcast.
There are 2 kinds of players in the world (well…only 2 that matter for this comment: Those who play for fun and those who play towards the goals. Those two things are not mutually exclusive but can take different forms. I’m a grinder. I stick to the walls when I move around (96% cart before I actually knew/started the cart title). I am achievement whore. I’ve even found a way to grind in Pocket frogs (how sad is that). Others play for the sake of playing…just to have fun…to me that seems ridiculous. If there is no goal…no target to aim at…nothing to accomplish, I might as well be playing Minecraft (and now they have achievements in there too!!!! !YAH!!!!!)
I’m an achievement hunter, I have even bought games on Steam simply because they had them. So I’m really looking forward to the achieveables in Guild Wars 2. Although achievements such as the Lucky/Unlucky titles (Guild Wars 1) are something I’d consider doing when I’m at the end game. I’d expect the casual “Killed 50 centaurs” achievements to come along as I play the game, which I totally will.
As long as the achievements are not repetition based, and instead based on triggering acts. Anything that has multiple levels to the achievement, lightbringer, faction, lucky/unlucky should not be achievements. Clearing DoA, completing missions/dungeons are appropriate achievements. Jonny’s right, Steam based achievements like those in Portal are some of the best.
My favorite kinds of achievements are based doing cool stuff with your abilities. The achievements in Left 4 Dead and TF2 are best examples of this. GW2′s action oriented combat allows for a huge opportunity for some really cool skill-based achievements. Especially if you think about all the possibilities of cross-profession combos.
Yeah, I loved the Achievements in TF2. You’re gonna do some of them anyways, you might be able to do others with a little luck/skill. Some Achievements I’ve seen are just excuses to justify grind, like 99% of LOTR Online.
Definitely agree with the grind achievements in LOTRO.
What I think LOTRO did right is the multitude of Titles. You could get a dozen or so Titles per zone for questing, exploring, grinding, crafting, etc. Which I found to be pretty rewarding, a cool title is a fun reward IMO.
I by no means must get every achievement, but for those that fall within my sphere of interest, I like trying to fill out the scorecard, once I’m done with the game proper. I find that ignoring them at first usually lets me pick up a few that might at first glance seem hard by pure dumb luck.
My favorite kind are the ones that take a bit of forethought to set up, but can be attained quickly after that. F.inst one in WoW which requires you to kill a certain boss without allowing him to use a certain ability (which in turn requires a few well-coordinated applications of interrupts). Simple concept, but can be tricky as hell to get right, yet doesn’t require grinding something a bazillion times.
It irks me when, especially in MMOs, gameplay styles will influence your ability to get an achievement. My personal bane is when a desirable meta-achievement (that requires you to get achievements A, B and C) mixes and matches f.inst. PvE and PvP. I don’t PvP much, if at all (though GW2 may change that), so if achievement C is a PvP-related one, it rather effectively locks me out of getting the meta-achievement. It’s well known by game designers that a lot of players play one or the other exclusively, so these things just seem like deliberate annoyances, trying to force you to play the game a certain way.
Achievements are nothing new, incidently. Players have been setting themselves goals beyond “complete the game (with or without 100% completion)” ever since games became more complicated than tetris. Speedruns or low-level challenges f.inst, could be considered unofficial achievements that have been around for yonks. Lately game designers have codified some of these and made it easier to prove bragging rights. It fosters community in an increasingly multiplayer world, provides replayability and adds variable challenge without having to make the game itself Nintendo Hard. Overall I like them.
The value achievements have for me is in tutorial and pointing me to other things I didn’t know about. Minecraft’s new achievement-gets are a perfect example of this. They’re the first step toward an in-game tutorial, but they also clue you in to things like riding pigs (off cliffs). I appreciate these because they explain those things that are helpful to know, but aren’t absolutely necessary to know, when you’re new to a game. It saves you from the tutorial texts that always pop up when you don’t want to read them.
As for the carrot/stick ones, whether they’re story achievements or collection ones or whatever, I find them easy enough to ignore. They make me feel the game’s makers don’t have enough faith that their game is fun enough on its own, and are trying to artificially generate replay value.
Achievements, Yes what fun.
I believe for the most part, having achievements in an MMO does extend the games longevity. But for it to not be a mindless grind or what would seem like a pointless exercise, these achievements need to have appropriate rewards with appropriate lengths and difficulty.
REWARDS:
Titles are a great example of a reward that lets players “Show Off” what you have achieved to others in the game (and let’s face it, most people really like to show off what they have achieved to others, it’s in our nature). But I do believe not everyone likes titles and don’t really care to show off what they have completed in the game. Some players would just like to work towards something interesting or useful.
HOM in Guild Wars is a perfect example of that, I believe it has been stated 30 out of the 50 achievements are actual in game items, ranging from Pets to Clothing to gameplay items (My knowledge of this is limited as I haven’t started doing the HOM achievements yet).
TIME AND DIFFICULTY:
This is the tricky subject, how long should it take to get an achievement and how hard should it be?
Unfortunately to make it fair you would need achievements for both PVP and PVE, which may make some achievements Unachievable for players who do not want to partake in one of those play styles. Though all achievements should never be impossible to get, it would be up to the player to choose whether they would want to do something they don’t like to get a certain achievement.
(EG: PVP or a Dungeon run etc.)
Any Achievement that would take a long time to achieve could easily cater to the casual player by simply saving their progression through that achievement; it would simply mean casual players would get the achievement much later than any hard core player would.
Achievement difficulty should be based on its reward. Something that takes time and effort should have the appropriate reward attached to it. Once again though no Achievement should be impossible to complete by any player who wants to do what must be done to achieve it. Players will fail achievements, but it should be possible to have repeatable attempts at the task till the achievement is reached.
I have lots more to write but once again this is getting out of hand for a simple Comment so I will finish by saying.
As long as Guild Wars 2 has a great balance of Titles and Vanity Items with just a few Nonessential but useful gameplay items, and the achievements are not monumental grinding sessions. Then I believe achievements will be a great asset to the game.
Exploration / Skill achievements are something I enjoy very much… manage to not only save the village but do so without letting any of the villagers die in the process? Achievement!!! Seeking out what lies in the darkest places of the world… going where no wizard has gone before? Achievement!!!
I am not a fan of achievements just for achievements sake, or for grind achievements… if it’s something that any blind drunk, semi-brain damaged monkey could accomplish simply by playing the game then it is not a true achievement, and calling it that cheapens actual accomplishments by folks who can manage to fire off a complex sequence of skills/abilities and not hit themselves in the forehead with the keyboard in the process…
I was raised in another era where kids weren’t handed a trophy for simply finishing a task in a semi-competent manner so my judgement on this topic probably doesn’t correspond with the majority of gamers. When I was a kid a ‘look’ and a nod, or a gruff slap on the shoulder was the highest praise one could (or should) hope for, and quite honestly, felt ten times better than any trophy of medal I’ve ever been awarded (and I’ve got a few of those over a long lifetime.)
Oh…. and it should go without saying but just in case, ‘You damn kids get off my lawn!’
Well, I think I’m gonna try to keep it short. Sorry if i just reiterate someone else’s point, but these posts are all a bit long…
Basically, I think achievements are great fun, they give you some focus for your game time, and something to show for it.
However, I think there are some potential pitfalls. I think that achievements should be just that; games where you’ve got 5 achievements by the time you’ve left the starter area really annoy me. (But they don’t have to be really difficult, just strike a balance).
Also, they should not be pointless or grindy. Perfect example is the explorer title. Is real exploring about wall hugging? No. Who would prefer an explorer title where there are landmarks in the world and you get points for visiting them, maxing the title when you’ve visited them all? I know I would. Harder to implement, but it would be actual exploring, not wall hugging.
My final point is probably a bit more controversial, but I think that some (not all) achievements should have actual rewards. These should be more substantial than titles for certain achievements, as some are so hard to complete that they deserve a proper reward, not just a great big anti-climax when you realise that most people don’t really care what your title is. Obviously I prefer a title, a la GW, compared to some games which don’t even give you the option to display your achievements, but some more tangible reward for the bigger ones would have been best. (HoM rewards for GW2 does something to remedy this, but GW rewards should have been in)
Wow, I went and wrote more than i expected.
TL;DR
Achievements = good, but not grindy ones or hard ones with no reward.
I think you can have a bit of achievements for everybody. I usually put them into 4 categories.
1.Regular gameplay rewards. Just something you would get for regularly playing the game. These can help direct people or just give them an extra sense of accomplishment, but are ultimately pretty pointless.
2. Changing up gameplay, these are what a lot of the TF2 and L4D games have. They give you achievements for trying something different. These are a personal favorite of mine as they can get players to try something a different way from normal. These are also great because they take minimal time and effort to set up usually, but some of them do provide that extra challenge.
3. Extra task completion. Rescuing Gnome Chompski and the Protector/Guardian titles are probably some good examples. It’s something extra and it doesn’t necessarily require you to play differently, but it does give you more to go after. They generally require a bit more skill to complete and at least a little bit of dedication. Great for that person with the completionist mindset. They can sometimes get on the grindy side (vanquisher) but, hey, those completionists need something to keep them occupied.
4. Grindy titles. Drunkard, Kill 500,000 zombies, get 10k vanguard faction. Rewards for repetition. I hate these. They add nothing to the game than another way to get people to extend their playtime instead of creating content.
Really, a decent mix of the first 3 types are the best, with an emphasis on the middle two, as they aren’t entirely insane and reward people for playing your content. They aren’t too bad for the casual person who has a passing interest in the possible rewards either while still giving the completionists some extended playtime.