Achievement ideas

Gameplay
#33

Achievement should be…Upon 1st playing “Well done, thank you for supporting!”…Then NOTHING…

Achievements are so awful, I’m not a dog, I don’t expect a pat on the head or a treat, just for getting up, breathing in and out, having a shower, playing a level, drinking a cup of coffee. It’s really ridiculous…

I used to like things in Smash Bros, or Perfect Dark, like if you had the best aim in a Death Match or used the most equipment, or did the most KO’s. In a none Multiplayer - RPG it’s kind of pointless.

#34

If you don’t appreciate achievements why not just ignoring them? I dont’t get it…

2 Likes
#35

they take time to implement, which might not be relatively long, but i still would like that time to be spent on something else.

don’t do things just because everyone else is doing them. achievements are the worst example of this.

break the trend.

#36

Achievements are included because many people like them. They are not “forced” by any natural law or anything… A trend usually is a sign for a rising customer demand. That’s just a fact, no matter if you personally like it or not. :wink:

And achievements really don’t take that much time, almost none at all. What “feature” would you like to have instead??? I can’t think of anything that could be made in the extremely short time you need to come up with achievements… :smiley:

#37

They’re also easy to create and bring in many people from modern audiences. Achievements = more resources for Warhorse to make the next episode. Think about that for a second :wink:

#38

So first you tell people that they should join the debate. And when they do, you tell them they should keep their opinions for themselves. I don’t get THAT.

And that another layer of challenge translates into extended gameplay. Additionally, it can be produced with minimal investment on the part of a developer.

Making achievements creates more value for the money spent than making full content, like quests, locations, items, or DLC’s. Also, the completionist achievements are usually pursued only by the devoted players. Therefore making achievements adds value especially for the devoted players, which is a very nice thing for the developers to do.

#39

Achievements are allegedly required for publishing on Xbox.

[…]

Montola, Markus, et al. “Applying game achievement systems to enhance user experience in a photo sharing service.” Proceedings of the 13th International MindTrek Conference: Everyday Life in the Ubiquitous Era. ACM, 2009.

#40

Point taken…

My reply was more meant as a reaction to the one-liners like “Don’t like achievements” without explaining why and what to incluce instead. Taking part in a discussion requires imo to be willing to add something and not just to share your own taste or distaste. :wink:

#41

The game is going on Xbox and maybe Playstation… There will be achievements and maybe trophies… It’s not going to not have them…

#42

Few more ideas

Russell’s paradox An achievement achieved by achieving all the available achievements.
Singin’ in the rain Making a bard go outdoors while it’s raining.
Much blowe For one hit killing a dog. Shiba would do best, but I guess there weren’t any in Europe back then.

Burning the bridges Awarded for attempting to burn a bridge. Obviously bridges in the game are going to be indestructible, players should be compensated for trying.
Hacking on the threads For attempting to destroy a bridge with the sword.
Blast in the past Firing at the bridge during the final castle siege.
Disassembly For trying to use some construction tool on the bridge. Crowbar and so on.
Ants marching For managing to maneuver guards into marching over the bridge.
Stress test The player puts at least five horse carriages on the bridge at the same time. (Because proof load testing of bridges is often done with military tanks.)

You’re gonna go far Meta achievement, for attempting at least 3 different ways of breaking the bridge.
X bridges of KCD where X is the actual number of bridges in the game, for completing an Eulerian trail over all of them.
Bridge troll For blocking a bridge so that an NPC could not pass.
Jim Bridger For being pursued by a large number of enemies and killed.
Crossed a bridge for crossing a bridge when you came to it.

Then there should be an achievement for managing to avoid getting any achievement for at least 10 minutes into the game.

Merge the quest system with the achievement system

Every quest has an achievement tracking it across playthroughs and every achievement is a quest of sorts, its completion will grant XP or count towards improving some in-game skill. For subsequent playthroughs player would have the option to have these bonuses applied to their new character as well.

Making achievements moddable

The game would support a number of triggers that the achievement mod could register for. There needs to be a system of public voting on achievements to weed off the interesting ones. Using triggers would guarantee that achievement tracking is lightweight on system resources. That way the game can track progress on almost all submitted achievement mods, maybe even before the player opts in, as if all were installed at the same time.

Just a crazy idea. Since Steam Workshop does not support it and probably never will, it would require some custom infrastructure.

3 Likes
#43

You love your bridges, don’t you? :stuck_out_tongue:

#44

As a huge trophyhunter I can’t wait to see what kind of trophies will be in the game. I also hope for a minimum of 50 trophies and not only 30 or so like in some games. Some ideas:

A Mistake Is Quickly Made: Kill an innocent bystander.
Accomplished The Impossible You found your way home drunk before passing out.
Bad Luck All Around: You killed your own horse.
Can You Spare Some Change: Obtain 10.000 currency.
One Fist Of Iron One Of Fist Of Steel Win a duel with your bare hands.
It’s Only A Fleshwound: Survive with only 10% of your health.
Robin Hood Would Be Proud Won an archery contest by achieving the maximum score.
Run You Fools: Escape an assasination attempt on yourself.
They Told You Not To Play With Fire: Set a building ablaze.
Who Needs Excalibur: Forge a master blade.
You Are Victorious: Capture a keep.
You Have My Axe!: Kill a 100 soldiers with an axe.
You Should Have Bought A Horse: Travel a distance of X while over-encumbered

4 Likes
#45

The trouble with achievements is that in most recent games they are just pointless. Ridiculously so.
“Rat killer - you just killed 10 rats. Wow!”
“Rat scourge - you just killed 50 rats. Cool!”
"Achiever - you just achieved your first achievement! Youre a badass, man!"
What sort of achievement is in this, really? (None, don’t answer…)

I think that some crossover between achievements and perks that do actually give you some benefit would be much better - like in the games such as Alpha Protocol (or others, this one just popped up in my mind) where they don’t just pointlessly inform you about something totally unimportant you have done (scored over 50 critical hits with a pistol… really important to know, yeah), but also reflect your character’s progress through that a give you some minor bonus to the respective skill or ability (pistol handling).

At least that is a sort of a real “achievement” that has some sense. The word “Perk” still sounds somewhat better, though. “Achievements” are simply overused.

Also, they should at least show up only after you unlock them, not the whole achievement chart being visible from the very beginning somewhere in the menu with retailed instructions what to do like for a little baby. To avoid mindless grinding and trophy hunting. (People will always make a chart of their own somewhere on a wiki, but at least that’s their own call, if they want it so hard…)

This is no WoW in medieval Bohemia. It’s supposed to be much more sophisticated. :wink:

1 Like
#46

To be perfectly honest I want my achievements to be pointless. To my mind, pointless = optional, a way for developers to encourage players to do something they would otherwise never have done. To have an in-game benefit for doing so will suddenly mean I can’t safely ignore achievements if I wish to do so and only cherry-pick those which look fun - they stop being optional and become a chore.

#47

Losing is not a shame: You surrendered to an enemy in battle.
A Tale of true chivalry: You spared the life of an enemy.
Courtly love is better than nothing: A noble woman rejected you after you had courted her with a self-made song.
Iron doesn’t float: You drowned while wearing heavy armour.
You win some, you lose some: You’ve won a battle and you’ve lost one.
Let’s eat an humble pie: You apologized for breaking the law in order to save your life.
Rock, paper, scissors - reversed: You killed an armoured enemy with bow and arrow, a rider on horseback with a dagger and an archer with a war hammer or mace.
When two people quarrel, a third rejoices: You waited until a duel is over and killed the winner.
Pearls before swine: You tried to bribe somebody but get arrested instead.
Harm set, harm get: You killed yourself with one of your own traps.
The purse is mightier than the sword: You’ve paid somebody to kill someone instead of doing it yourself.
Tit for tat: You saved the life of a friend and he saved yours in return.
A true fabliaux: You betrayed a noble man with his wife

3 Likes
#48

what’s the point of achievements you’re going to have to do in the game anyway?

it’s like taking the most pointless feature in gaming and making it even more pointless.

#49

When they’re tied to Steam or similar, you can use them to track progress of your friends (or hostages, in your case :-P) so you don’t happen to accidentaly spoil the game for you. Devs also quite often use these unavoidable achievements to see how players play their game so they have easier way of knowing which areas of the game are problematic - when, say, only 5% of players finish a relatively obvious sidequest, you probably did something wrong.

2 Likes
#50

You have right to not like them, you can call them pointless, but fact is, majority of players likes the achievments and wants them. Inluding me. And i don’t care if one will be “You start the game, nice” and second “You found a secret passage to the castle”. I just like all kinds of achievments. I do not hunt them, but i’m happy when i unlock some :slight_smile:

Things is, achievments can make some players happy and the others don’t have to track them or use 'em at all. It’s win win.

#51

except for poor coder who has to tie these achievements to actions in game

#52

I’m sure it’s exceptionally difficult, especially in an RPG which tracks all your actions regardless. Making an ‘achievements(CHEEVOS.10BANDITS)’ call once the already tracked conditions are met can take as much as 30 seconds to code.

Yeah, yeah, I’m making it sound a bit easier than it is and you do need a mechanic to track this stuff in place, but I wager most RPGs will have these systems in place regardless of whether or not achievements are implemented, for many other … RPGy… Purposes.

And I imagine it doesn’t only apply for RPGs, most games in existence most likely have ways of logging events in place already for debugging purposes, so might as well make an end-user benefit out of those.

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