The Achievement Thread - Page 11

Shakes · 07/27/08, 8:47 PM

I believe they said they haven't tuned the numbers on the zone quest achievements yet, so they may not be possible right now.

darkra · 07/28/08, 12:37 AM

I guess you are right. Since there isn't a way to award the Achievements to everyone they deserve them it makes more sense to give it to no one.

I like the suggestion of Achievements specifically for the quests, and the main reason is because (unless I'm much mistaken) Blizzard has records of the date you've completed the quest, thus giving to us old timers a bragging tool, without taking anything away, since we'll have to visit the old raids again for the kill achievement.

Feats of strength like:

The Heads of the Black Dragonflight: Present to Thrall/Bolvar Fordragon Onyxia and Nefarian's Heads.

Godslayer: Return the Eye of C'Thun as proof of his demise.

would be nice.

On a completely different note, Achievement system is revealed to have rewards like titles, tabards and minipets. I'd love to see mounts added to this short list. Unique looking mounts, always fun.

The City Crier Achievement (exalted with all 5 faction cities) should give an Undead Wolvkodaptostrider for the Horde and a Mechanically-enchanced Elekorseramsaber for the Alliance

Vasala · 07/28/08, 3:51 AM

Overall I think that I would be happier if the whole Scarab Lord achievement either were not put in or if it was opened up to anyone who completes the quest chain. The main reason I say that is ultimately the people that made that "achievement" could not have done so without the backing of 40+ other people. So why do they deserve a permanent mark but the others who helped can never get that mark even by completing the same quest chain?

It sounds like it is not possible to retroactively reward the others who made the various Scarab Lords possible so why not either open up the chain to give the same reward to all that complete it or give it to no one? In most cases it was not even the work of a single guild as it was a server wide effort. That is at least the thoughts of this Scarab Peon (or whatever you want to call those of us that helped in the opening of each server's gates). Ultimately it is up to the developer's to decide but it is something that I feel should at least be thought about.

Hildegard · 07/28/08, 8:01 AM

Life isn't really fair and a World of Warcraft also isn't really. If you try to make a system that is perfectly fair to everyone you anavoidably open up lots of ways to trick the system. This approach was taken in the German tax system. The result over the year was that over 60% (over even more?) of the whole literature about taxes is written in German and that only experts are able to understand the system and only in the area of their specialisation while on the other hand the exact opposite of the intended was the result. Companies with highly skilled tax departments are able to pay no taxes at all while people not being able to afford such experts pay higher taxes than they should.

The same thing could happen - of course to a lesser extent - when trying to be perfectly fair with achievements. There should be things that you can't achieve. This gives the system a lot more interest. The less it is possible to cheese achievements the more they will actually mean. If you helped a lot while wiping on a boss and are not in the setup when he dies - tough luck you didn't get this achievement.

The approach to make this absolutely fair will diminish the meaning these achievements have by a large margin. I favor achievements that are only achieveable once and only for the "winner(s)".

Masaren · 07/28/08, 10:52 AM

Does anyone know if the achievements are going to be account wide? Pre TBC, I grinded all reputations exalted, etc, the worst thing I could possibly imagine is to have to grind old world instance reputation again.

Edit
Or more along the lines of what I was trying to discuss, is for raid instance reputation, Hydraxian Waterlords or Brood of Nozdormu, and once TBC is old, Violet Eye and Ashtongue Deathsworn. With the rep being raid instance only, and the instance being raid IDed, I dont think its too much to ask for those kind of reputations to be account wide.

Things that you can solo grind I wouldnt expect to be account wide, as they need to be grinded for it to be an "achievement" but with that kind of raid instance reputation, I dont think it would be too hard to have that rep to carry over, or at the very least give some kind of solo grind such as a new set of mobs we could grind out for those kind of reputations.

Zurgat · 07/28/08, 10:59 AM

Originally Posted by Masaren

Does anyone know if the achievements are going to be account wide? Pre TBC, I grinded all reputations exalted, etc, the worst thing I could possibly imagine is to have to grind old world instance reputation again.

As the poster below stated, character based for now.
If you look at the professions this is also a clear indicator of this system.

I'd be in favor of having certain info like a player's raid experience shared across the account, since you may reroll alts.
Factions, pvp kills, etc, I don't really see a point in though.

malthrin · 07/28/08, 11:14 AM

From the first post in the thread:

For now, they are by character. Eventually, our plan is to expand these to account-wide achievements. More details to come in the future. For launch of Lich King, however, they will remain at the character level.

Please read the thread before posting.

Copernicus · 07/28/08, 12:33 PM

Originally Posted by Zurgat

As the poster below stated, character based for now.
If you look at the professions this is also a clear indicator of this system.

I'd be in favor of having certain info like a player's raid experience shared across the account, since you may reroll alts.
Factions, pvp kills, etc, I don't really see a point in though.

I'm hoping that account-wide achievements will have some carry-over to new characters. Either in the form of legacy items (if those do get implemented) or by giving new characters a boost if the "mains" jumped through enough hoops. For example, if someone has two level 80s who have Exalted in a faction, I see no problem with giving all their other characters Honored with that faction. Or, to compete with Death Knight rerolls, giving the option to start new characters at a higher level based on the number of level 80s on an account. Or, with legacy items, giving new level 80s free blue-level PvP gear if they've achieved enough arena/pvp achievements.

But that's a non-issue at the moment, with account-wide achievements not scheduled until after WotLK goes live.

Fabinas · 07/28/08, 4:44 PM

I cant understand why people request account-wide achievements for faction reputation, killed bosses etc. If u happen to have a character that has done ALL vanilla and TBC content, why these achievements and their alleged points be transferred to any alt of the same account? That would lead to funny results, like bank alts of lvl1-5 having killed Illidan etc. At any rate: Achievements are character-only, and they should stay so. The rest is just greed.

djhbrd · 07/28/08, 4:55 PM

Originally Posted by Fabinas

I cant understand why people request account-wide achievements for faction reputation, killed bosses etc. If u happen to have a character that has done ALL vanilla and TBC content, why these achievements and their alleged points be transferred to any alt of the same account? That would lead to funny results, like bank alts of lvl1-5 having killed Illidan etc. At any rate: Achievements are character-only, and they should stay so. The rest is just greed.

Why should they? When you look at the character screen, you're not seeing the character so much as you're seeing the person playing said character. If you've done an achievement, you've done it. It's not like you've done it but it doesn't count on your alts.

Although I would be in favor of something that displays how many characters an achievement has been done on, I guess.

Masaren · 07/28/08, 5:24 PM

Originally Posted by Fabinas

I cant understand why people request account-wide achievements for faction reputation, killed bosses etc. If u happen to have a character that has done ALL vanilla and TBC content, why these achievements and their alleged points be transferred to any alt of the same account? That would lead to funny results, like bank alts of lvl1-5 having killed Illidan etc. At any rate: Achievements are character-only, and they should stay so. The rest is just greed.

Well, its not just greed, let it be for account wide achievements only count once you reach max level, or some other solution.

Account wide achievements for reputation would be for rerolls. Its close to impossible to get exalted with Brood of Nozdormu for say horde paladins, alliance shamans, or deathknights. To do so, youd have to kill every boss in the instance for what, 10 weeks or 12?

A solution would be to add mobs that gave this rep for solo kill somewhere in Silithus, if they did that for Hydraxian Waterlords, or Brood of Nozdorm, I would agree with you.

Denogran · 07/28/08, 5:26 PM

Originally Posted by djhbrd

Why should they? When you look at the character screen, you're not seeing the character so much as you're seeing the person playing said character. If you've done an achievement, you've done it. It's not like you've done it but it doesn't count on your alts.

Although I would be in favor of something that displays how many characters an achievement has been done on, I guess.

Same reason my warlock and warrior alts don't get Tier 6 tokens when my paladin gets a Tier 6 token. When I'm in-game, I'm not looking at the person playing the character, I'm looking at the character. If you didn't grind out enough rep on a toon to get the cool title (or whatever the reward is), you shouldn't be seen riding around Stormwind with that title. Same as if you didn't put in enough time on that toon to kill Illidan, you shouldn't be running around with his shield.

malthrin · 07/28/08, 5:27 PM

Again: account-wide achievements are not going live in WotLK. Let's please restrict ourselves to discussion of the achievement system that we know is going to be implemented, not a hypothetical one.

Sydane · 07/28/08, 5:52 PM

It would be nice to see achievements for finishing off all parts of some of the "long storyline" quests like the Worgan in Duskwood, kidnapping of the SW king, Silithid invasion, and so on. Many of these quest lines run across multiple zones and tell massive stories. Achievements like that might also encourage Blizzard to actually finish off those lines that they left hanging.

The latest patch notes say they will be determining the fishing contest winner achievement by checking for the item reward, it will be interesting to see how far along that route they are willing to go. I know a lot of people are hoping their mini pets from quests that they destroyed will be restored and credited with the new systems.

Jagiya · 07/28/08, 11:40 PM

More specific class achievements would be groovy.
ie. DPS classes achieving over 2500 DPS on a single target, (re-tuned to a reasonable plateau for each class), main Tank surviving the duration of a complete instance clear, or even the entire raid surviving with 0 deaths. (This could be a problem in some circumstances... Gorefiend and Azgalor for example.)

But either way... there's alot of potential for some really cool individual (class/trade-related) achievements, too.
"Unlock 1000 lockboxes" !!
"Disenchant 1000 epics" !!
"Proc 1000 duplicates with Alchemy" !!
"Drop 1000 totems" !! (lol)
"Heal/Resurrect 1000 people" !!
etc!

Hildegard · 07/29/08, 3:54 AM

I disagree with account-wide achievements. Who cares if you are exalted with the Hydraxians ? Why even build an achievement around something such stupid and repetitive. Achievements shouldn't support stupid time-sinks too much. Achievements like completing the Shartuul event or something funny would be so much better. Do you really want back to reputation grinding like in Silithus ?

The character should always remain present and account-wide achievements allows by the way to track who has which alt. Will be great to uncover all these trolls...

Fun things could be for example:

- Pick pocket a really hard to reach mob (perhabs at the end of a gauntlet with many patrols) to steal his diary
- Having more than 150 people /cheer you within two minutes
- Perhabs something including a firework
- Scoring 500 kills in Battlegrounds or Open PVP on one day without dying
- Making more than XXXX amount of gold on the auction house on one day
- Blade Edge bombing quest on a non-epic flying amount without ever getting hit by the cannons

I favor creativity over repeating things. Repetition is something the game design should not encourage.

Benita · 07/29/08, 5:51 AM

Originally Posted by Hildegard

I favor creativity over repeating things. Repetition is something the game design should not encourage.

And yet it is the bread and butter of a MMO. I agree on wanting more genuine new creative content, but its not impractical to make the repetitive tasks more fun like it already happened with going from pure grinding to daily quests.

Hildegard · 07/29/08, 6:16 AM

Yes but this is for a clear advantage. You get money for this, which supplies you easily and with short time with all resources you need to buy consumeable or pay for respecs. But actually re-introducing something like a Silithus like reputation grind is a horrible design decision.

Repetition isn't the bread and butter. Repetition is the lack of really good design. Future mmos will have a lot more variations. Instead of working on achievements like this the focus could be spent much better on actually improving the present part of the game. The could easily implement 100 different cooking quests with lots of different ingredients and have five of them available per day.

A lot of quests just lack in depth: Why are we bombing down cannons near Ogrila which only purpose is to shot on attackers trying to bomb them and why does any one pay gold for that ? Such design flaws hurt a lot.

What the developers basically say is: Ok we give you five points for Vanity pets or a tabard if you play the worst part of the game we created. The sad thing is that even some of the readers here seem to fall for it and are actually willing to grind Hydraxian Waterlords reputation.

darkra · 07/29/08, 6:25 AM

Originally Posted by Hildegard

What the developers basically say is: Ok with you five points for Vanity pets or a tabard if you play the worst part of the game we created. The sad thing is that even some of the readers here seem to fall for it and are actually willing to grind Hydraxian Waterlords reputation.

Actually Hydraxian Waterlords, Zandalar Tribe and Brood of Nozdormu are Feats of Strength, worth no points, and not appearing on your tab as a non completed achievement. Seems like they actively try to avoid people doing that.

• nj00s · 07/29/08, 8:09 AM

I don't doubt for a second that most of the people who would grind the level 60 reputations for an Achievement would also grind it for a Feat of Strength.

As for the Feat of Strength thingI assume they would do something similar to the WotLK achievements for a 3d expansion. Move them off somewhere, and restart the achievement system. It makes perfect sense and it seems to be the new blizzard way, it encourages re-rollers and new players to bother to participate in the "Achievement-game". What they could do is make the Hydraxian water lords achievment an account achievement, alot of players (myself included) have rerolled a number of times from the character we used in Molten Core. This would also prevent the Alliance shamans and horde paladins from feeling left out of the old school club, where they may belong.

songster · 07/29/08, 8:28 AM

I think there's a lot of people here who are in violent agreement. It makes no sense that a level 1-5 bank alt should get the "killed Illidan" Achievement on a personal level. However, if a Scarab Lord rerolls, it's a bit harsh that they can't somehow display that Achievement on their new main.

The solution, it seems to me is to put a checkbox on the Achievements pane, so that someone looking at you can choose whether to see the Achievements of that specific toon, or the summed Achievements across your account as a whole. Likewise for the Armory pane when you look someone up.

• nj00s · 07/29/08, 8:37 AM

You should have an option to show the achievement on one or two other characters. This would prevent level 1 bank alts running around with Scarab Lord in their achievement tab. However his should only work for the Bigger Achievements of course, like was mentioned the Scarab Lord title and server first end boss kills (Illidan, Kil'jaeden, <wotlk ones>) and probably something else big I can't think of. I would at least like to see the achievements only a set of players can get in a servers lifetime to stay on the server in some form, even after rerolls. PCTs would fuck this up though, as they do with many things.

Zurgat · 07/29/08, 8:43 AM

Originally Posted by songster

I think there's a lot of people here who are in violent agreement. It makes no sense that a level 1-5 bank alt should get the "killed Illidan" Achievement on a personal level. However, if a Scarab Lord rerolls, it's a bit harsh that they can't somehow display that Achievement on their new main.

The solution, it seems to me is to put a checkbox on the Achievements pane, so that someone looking at you can choose whether to see the Achievements of that specific toon, or the summed Achievements across your account as a whole. Likewise for the Armory pane when you look someone up.

That makes an interesting topic actually.

What if they "did" show the killed illidan / scarab lord tag on all your characters.
You'd lose that simple anonymity that you may have wanted to have on your bank alt.
I wonder if they'll add an option to "hide" achievements from public viewing.

Vasala · 07/29/08, 9:58 AM

Originally Posted by Zurgat

That makes an interesting topic actually.

What if they "did" show the killed illidan / scarab lord tag on all your characters.
You'd lose that simple anonymity that you may have wanted to have on your bank alt.
I wonder if they'll add an option to "hide" achievements from public viewing.

This might also cut down some on the low level forum trolls on the official forums since account wide achievements might make it easy to figure out who their main is.

Sydane · 07/29/08, 12:03 PM

Personally I think that account wide achievements should only be for things that are accomplished at the account level. Stuff like having a level XX of each class, max level characters of each faction, and so forth. Individual character achievements should be left to the individual characters. Do we really need an achievement that says "achieved exalted with SSO on 7 characters"? Does your bank alt really need credit for 100,000 HKs?

The amount of harassment complaints would go up drastically if Blizzard linked all characters together. If they wanted this functionality in place, it already could be. They are smart enough to know that people don't always want all their alts to be known by everyone. Getting rid of anonymous low level forum trolls would be easy to do in multiple ways with functions already existing, so it's clear they won't be adding additional functionality in order to do that. I think you'd be surprised how big the backlash against something like that would be.