Dec 28 2008
Achivements: The New, Hot Feature
Achivements are the new hot feature in MMOs. I’m not sure who had them first, or who does them best, but there is no doubt they are popular as heck. In every game that has them, people seem to really get into collecting them. Even when there is no in-game benefit, just piling them on seems to be really popular.
For those of you unfamiliar with this feature, here is basically how Achivements systems work. There is some system in game that tracks the achivements - either a list of badges (like City of Heroes), a journal (like Warhammer Online), or just an achivement interface (WoW). There are generally categories (quest related, kill related, exploration related, etc.). Whenever you kill X number of a certain mob, or find a specific location, or meet a specific NPC, or perform a task a certain number of times, you get an Achivement unlock. Unlocking achivements can even trigger additional achivements (”You’ve unlocked 100 Achivements!”). These build up over time, and generally provide you with things like fluff titles or perhaps access to specific gear vendors or powers. The tangible benefits are nice, but do not appear to be completely necessary. People will hunt them down even if there are no specific rewards.
MMO Achivement Systems: What I Think.
I think Achivement systems are great, and here are some of what I think are key features to a good achivement system:
Good tracking. You need to give people a good interface for tracking their progress and seeing the achivements they have earned. This is what makes people feel like they are accomplishing something, and it helps them feel like they are always making progress.
Interesting rewards. While I already said you don’t have to have them to keep people interested, I think some tangible rewards sprinkled throughout the system will result in more people getting involved. If you have most of your population at least somewhat involved in the system, it enhances the bragging rights for people who are hard core into the system.
Bragging Rights. Speaking of bragging rights, you need to give people a way to show off their achivements. Custom titles are one way. But there should ideally be some kind of ranking that is easily viewable by players so they can see who the reach Achivement Gods are.
What Do You Think About MMO Achivement Systems?
What do you think of Achivement Systems in MMOs, and what do you think are the key features in a GOOD system?
It is a very good idea to think about the proper implementation of achievement-systems. I think everyone who hears about the general idea absolutely agrees and just loves it. I am no exception, but I have also experienced the downsides of thoughtless implementation. I call it the dreaded urge for achievement-grind that has befallen me and almost all my friends and fellow online-players. But more about this later.
It seems my comment was too long for the blog.
These systems should never turn into neverending and repetitive grind of the most boring kind, or encourage players to farm or to do other unenjoyable things in a very limited timeframe, usually that of the “special” (right now, they seem to have become mandatory for every online game!) festival event, be it an xmas, easter or whatever holiday special.
I will give some examples from popular games, like Lord of the Rings online, WoW (I do not really have to write World of Warcraft for WoW, right? ^^), Guild Wars and EverQuest. In particular Sony’s “Station”.
GOOD TRACKING/BRAGGING: WoW has the most extensive interface for this so far. Blizzard really shines at the implementation of their ideas. The achievement tab even includes a bunch of more or less useless or interesting statistics. The very same interface can be accessed online over the “WoW armory”, that shows your current gear and stats. Sony’s EverQuest Station had web stats for realm first kills and strongest/highest level chars long before World of Warcraft, but they never went this much into detail. The highest amount of gold you ever had on your char is displayed, but never your current amount of gold or items in your inventory or bank vault.
Money and other (virtual) belongings are the most important thing nowadays, and thus get kept a secret, it seems! This is where we, the players, demand privacy. This is quite odd, but there are many civilized first world nations where rape causes less automatisms of you getting on special black lists than stealing an USB stick in a super market. We seem to transfer the same mercantile spirit where theft of property weighs more than physical harm to our online worlds. Thanks god times are changing, animals are also not treated as much as property as before, when torturing an animal to death only demanded financial recompensation for the value of the “property”. For example, if you do not pay a credit, german credit agencys or retailers report it to the SCHUFA, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schufa , where all credit agencies, banks, or retailers that are members can check your record if you are credit worthy or not. Before I get sidetracked too much, I just want to point out that I am still missing the switch to hide parts of that data. A friend had some guy on ignore, but this guy was rather unforgiving and continued to track him over his name. WoW lists the area where you are if you search for the player name. I think this got fixed and is no longer possible if you are ignored by the person in question. I would still ask for a privacy mode switch, to avoid getting bombarded by annoying friends for example. 5 seconds after you went online you get asked to powerlevel again someone you once gave an inch… I also know people who dislike that the guild panel always shows when you were online last time. A friend caught his little brother this way. He was supposedly ill and in bed. :>
Blizzard/WoW probably intentionally does not allow “invisible/private” online status, while Guild Wars does. I think it is due to the EverQuest roots, not so much due to the fact that they do not consider this a problem. I still think I should be able to choose if I want to display on the Web (WoW Armory) when I was logged in last time and different statistics/gear and so on!
Guild Wars allows you to show off ingame, and also to transport certain achievements to Guild Wars 2 vs the Hall of Monuments, your personal vault listing and displaying your achievements: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hall_of_monuments
I will talk later about some flaws oft he implementation of this otherwise brilliant idea.
BRAGGING/REWARDS: So far all MMOs chose to reward players with titles, price discount for merchant items (or e.g. 10-20% less repair costs in WoW) and special pets/items that were purely cosmetic. The white albino drake mount that you get per mail if you attain 50 mounts is a special unique texture of the standard drake mount skin. Most usual is that the rewards are cosmetical/for show only. Some titles are more prestigious than others, e.g. PvP titles or titles that demand skill rather than time/money spent.
No game so far gives you any special skills or advantages for player vs player combat for achievements. Maybe except the Warcraft Arena system, but this is not part of the achievement system actually.
Guild Wars: Eye of the North offered some special PvE skills that increased with your standing with the faction in question. “Norn” skills e.g. became stronger with your reputation with the Norn faction.
The general consensus seems to be cosmetical advantages or PvE only extras.
But this also leads to certain problems:
1.) Achievement Hunt
is fun and keeps people playing. But it also leads to “guides” how to maximize achievements. I had people nag me to “vanquish” (kill all foes in one area in GW) another area because they already had their achievement for this area and had some others left. Getting 4-8 people to agree on which area to vanquish demands Team Speak…^^ Achievement hunt for the sake of accumulating achievements can also become a chore, when the achievements required are horrible to your enjoyment of the game. Let me explain…
2.) Silly achievements, silly requirements, and players still go for them
… because there are max achievement tracks that unlock other achievements. For example, if you have 25 titles maxed in Guild Wars, you get the title “My Guild Hall Smells of Rich Mahogany” http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Maxed_titles_rank, at 30 you get the very cool title „God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals”.
Meeee waaaants… my Necro http://www.gwchars.de/character.php?id=80 (<- example of a char showoff website run by a friend of mine, I wonder why it is still not an official fanpage, as this feature is highly popular, x thousands of player chars registered, and Guild Wars does not offer it) is still not there and will never be. I really envy those who can waste time on that, Veblen is quite right. And it would also not enjoy what I have to do to get there:
Now read the guide on this page, wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Maxed_titles_rank , at 26 titles, you have to grind: Drink 10.000 Beers (takes days of real time, you must drink a beer every few minutes and stay drunk, you cannot swallow them at once, and you have to get the money for the beer, too), eat 10.000 sweets (takes only clicking time) and use up 10.000 points of party items. Then you also have to become max rank at relations with the Kurzick or Luxon faction, which recently got boosted so that people can attain faction more easily and with more “normal” gameplay rather than hyper specialized and repetitive farming.
There are also titles that are outright stupid: If you death-level your char for http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Defender_of_Ascalon , you have to die for hours and then revive and kill the foes that leveled up while killing your level 7-8 char. So go away, come back 2 hours later and kill the guys that killed you! Repeat for days…
There is also the lucky/unlucky title track: wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Nine_Rings in this game, you win/lose roughly every 15 seconds. You can go afk while doing so. The money evens out, you lose over time statistically. But nobody plays this New Year festival only game because it is fun or because of potential rewards, they play it for DAYS afk (!) to maximize the lucky/unlucky title. I refused to participate anymore after a few days, as this was the total perversion of supposed Guild Wars mantras like skill > time and no grind. The new philosophy seems to be “every grind is optional”, but achievement grind is not always that optional…
3.) You are measured by your achievements
If you did not maximize the Norn title track yet, your Ursan Blessing uber-PvE-skill (badly balanced, got remedied at least partially by now) is not as strong as that of one with a max title track. Guild Wars was a game where skill and the choice of spells/equipment according to the enemy/environment was basically what made you a good or bad player. Not the equipment, as max stat gear was easy to get for everyone. Just in a plain skin, fancy weapons and armor cost more and are harder to obtain. Now people check your progress in this or that to filter out suboptimal or noob players. Now the optional abilities are not optional anymore, but become your entry card for raiding/playing with others.
4.) Special event: Farm this or that rare item during a special event
Brewfest became a daily quest basically: Kill Coren Direbrew and hope a brewfest kodo drops. It also counts as an achievement and is one more mount for the collection…^^
I did not get one! I also did not get the rare horse by the horseman, but completed the other requirements for the title “Nightmare” in WoW. So I was content despite not having achieved everything. There are also achievements connected to doing all quests and getting some items during special holiday events in WoW, to the point where it becomes more of a “must log in and do this or that” chore if you want to collect achievements. Blizzard probably keeps customers playing this way, but they probably also alienate and bore players this way.
WoW still did much better in this regard, the grind is less intense than in Guild Wars which funnily claimed to be less of an item hunt and grind than WoW initially. They also added less stupid achievements than Guild Wars or LOTRO: In Lord of the Rings, you get the title “the beloved” for getting kissed: http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/The_Beloved
Title: The Beloved
Category: Social Titles
Title granted by being the target of emotes.
Requirements: Receive 100 /Kiss emotes. This can only be incremented 5 times per day.
Details: It will take a minimum of 20 days with someone targeting you and doing the /kiss.
This is where it becomes silly…! I already mentioned the even worse “nine rings” grind in GW, that interestingly thousands of people do during the festival, afk gaming…
Bottom line: Achievement systems are fun and overall an addition to the game. Bad implementation can still make people feel like they are doing unwanted daily work if things become too repetitive or silly. You should play the game in a way you enjoy and reap benefits and achievements while doing so, being artificially forced to do unenjoyable and silly things to progress in the achievement track is definitely a downer.
I had to remove http from some links, as more than one link caused the blog not to accept the entry.
I hope you enjoy my “Veblen-esque” rant.
While I’m not really big on achievements, I generally don’t see the problem with them. Generally I’ll go out and earn myself a cool title, then never change it, not bothering with achievements otherwise.
I have seen them lead to some minor issues in City of Heroes though. Several badges were distributed around the pvp zones. Badge hunters felt that they shouldn’t have to pvp in the pvp areas(despite the massive warning they get the moment they enter them), and would pitch a huge fit the moment anybody attacked them. Anybody that thinks pks have a case of potty mouth haven’t seen the rants you get from a carebear when you kill them repeatedly. Crazy stuff.
I am afraid that some of the more questionable achievements in various games have proven what you pointed out, Cambios.
That people will do everything. No matter how boring and stupid it is.
People do not play the game anymore once you introduce such achievements in a system that gives rewards for having a lot of achievements in form of new achievements and so on. They play a meta game and basically have a work-list with progress indicator what they have to do.
I hope that we do not get more and more artificial and outright stupid achievements in future, like killing 10.000 mobs with bare fists, dying 10.000 times in a row, or being drunk during a whole dungeon run. ^^
I find lists of achievements a great idea. Even if some (or all) of them are grindy, doesn’t mean I have to do them. And if I work towards them a little bit, I enjoy the fact that I’m working towards something