Schik
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So, in DROD 5 we'd like to have some sort of Achievement feature. I'd like to start some public discussion of it before we write any code, because there are a lot of options. I don't want to put a lot of work into a complex system that hardly gets used, nor do I want to pass on something that might be easy and I didn't realize a lot of people would want.

Potential goals
1. A set of achievements for official holds
2. Architects are able to add achievements to their own holds
3. Anyone is able to add an achievement to any hold (i.e. the Challenges board, but supported in-game)

Scoring
Is there any scoring for these? Is it added into the current "Score" or is there a separate achivement score? I just don't know.

Achievements vs Challenges
Do we distinguish between the two? Suggestions welcome but my current opinion would be that all user-defined challenges (for your own hold or other holds) would be called Challenges, and would have no scoring, but could still be tracked, for the completionists out there. And then admins (HAs or some new Achievement task force) could pick the *really good* challenges out, and make them official Achievements. Achievements would be more visible (perhaps shown on every post just like your rank points, linked to a list of your achievements) and could have their own little trophies or something.

General implementation
For goal 1 and 2, we would just need to add an "Achievement" or "Challenge" scripting command. Scripting is advanced enough that you could script detection of many of the things on the Challenge board as-is, so just the ending "yep, done!" command is all that we'd need.

For goal 3, we'd need some new challenge editor which would probably just let the user make up to 2 scripts - a global script, for multi-room challenges, and a script local to the room - and export them into a challenge file, which could be downloaded and installed or downloaded automatically over CaravelNet as you play. The script would be injected into the room, and would obviously need to be an invisible character that doesn't change anything, only reads state/events to determine if a challenge has been met.

Okay that's it
Opinions? 1) and 2) are essentially the same goal. Is 3) highly desired? Are there other goals I didn't even think about? Help us make this a great feature!

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gamer_extreme_101
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I'd be happy with calling them challenges still - achievements tend to normally be the things that get added in and would be along the lines of "Kill 100 roaches!" if any other video game maker was doing them. Right now, unless you do the generic "Complete/kill/whatever" achievements, I think room challenges accomplish what you want.

In terms of goals, I think that 1, 2, and 3 could all be accomplished with changes to the Challenge board. Things that I think would need to be accomplished to assist with it:

-I'd love to see a system similar to H&S implemented for the Challenges board. Clickable room images in the topic, searching for challenges based on the room, creating a new topic by selecting a level and room, etc. This would mean going through the old ones and assigning, which would be a pain, but I'm sure people would be up to the task.
-Whoever the group of admins are, give them rights to "Publish" a challenge directly through the topic. Topics could be official with some icon or something along the same layout as the bug tracking (Or, heck, they could even just assign and mark with bug tracking too if we wanted too).
-For official holds, simply get someone on the Caravel team to post them and approve them when the game goes up.
-Don't allow demos to be posted on the board? I really don't think that demos are really needed for challenges anyways. With the previous system, it can act as a H&S board for challenges anyways.
-As opposed to doing separate medals for each, why not have a "Challenge Score" on a person's profile indicating how many challenges they have completed, and having the list of challenges they have done in their profile/HS page?
-In-game integration I'm a little hazy on. The best implementation I can think of right now would be a semi-scripting on a per-room basis. Similar to a room editor, loading it up in-game with options for don't step on, numbers for completing the room in a specific pattern, and other things based on what makes the most sense. Then exporting a file to attach to a topic, or auto upload in-game? (This is where my ideas get weak)

Thoughts:
-Incorporating a difficulty scale into official challenges. Maybe just do a simple "Easy, Medium and Hard"
-Some kind of bonus for people who come up with challenges?
-Architects can I think go through the same process as official holds - if they have challenges, maybe they can get them preapproved through the HA/CAs for release with the hold?

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Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

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Oh my god yes I would love to make achievements

Mostly because I would make horrible achievements for doing stupid things, all the time, and I would love it

I would retroactively make an achievement for -that- scroll.

Pearls
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Banjooie wrote:
Oh my god yes I would love to make achievements

Mostly because I would make horrible achievements for doing stupid things, all the time, and I would love it

I would retroactively make an achievement for -that- scroll.

I have two videos of me trying to get -that- scroll. No one will ever see them. No one should hear the words I said.

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Chaco
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Banjooie wrote:
I would retroactively make an achievement for -that- scroll.

As long as it's worth exactly 1 point, where a normal challenge like killing a bunch of goblins without turning your sword is worth like 10 to 100 points or some similarly inflated number.

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SirNiko
Level: Delver

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What scroll is -that- scroll? I'm intrigued.

I don't care for achievements being scored. On Kongregate, my score feels pretty meaningless because I know I've skipped a bunch of pretty easy achievements in games I didn't enjoy playing. I do very much like badges, but more because I like to admire a perfect grid of badges with no gaps in it to show that I have them ALL. A UI that lets me see all my achievements for a hold in a single screen to admire them (think Smash Bros. Brawl or Kirby Air Ride style) gets me all kinds of excited. I generally earn achievements for my own amusement, so I don't really care about how others would see them.

I would very much love for achievements to contain little hints to direct the player to where to find the challenge, even if they were very vague and just hinted at things I had yet to find (eg, Find a flighty foe in a hidden room by a lava pool). One thing I love about achievements is they serve as something of a soft spoiler, directing me to new challenges I have yet to see. Some kind of an achievement menu (especially one with a cool graphical UI that fits the DROD theme) that lets me peruse achievements from the get-go really motivates me to play. Kid Icarus Uprising even goes so far as to censor its achievements, so an achievement like "Kill the Archivist in Sunset Ruins Thrice East Twice North in under 210 moves" would become "Kill ?? in ?? in under 210 moves" until you reach that room. This means I get the benefit of the motivation without the risk of ruining a future boss fight or mid-level challenge. This would require additional coding, though, when the same effect could be obtained by architects carefully phrasing their achievements to be vague.

Achievements of the simple "Complete Room XX in less than XX moves" would be really boring and I'd probably never bother to complete them. Hopefully your challenge editor will be robust enough to allow for really complicated challenges, like killing one particular monster before the others, or completing rooms with certain orientations of the player, or even getting the room into a particular no-win condition. The best challenges require the player to approach a level from a completely different direction than they would if the achievement didn't exist.

It really doesn't affect your coding, but I would also love to see challenges in holds have the additional feedback of comments from NPCs or Beethro when you succeed. For example, like in Flood Warning when Beethro congratulates himself for beating a room with fewer mirrors than are needed. Little visual rewards like this make me really want to earn all the achievements. Of course, the downside is that this means less skilled players are forced to complete the achievements to see all the dialogue.

Moo
Level: Master Delver
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Nice, two things I had suggested/requested announced in one day
But yes, "traditional" type achievements wouldn't really work for DROD, so what are currently called challenges would be the obvious answer. And maybe ones for having completed/mastered the official holds.

Damien
Level: Delver
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Schik wrote:
Potential goals
1. A set of achievements for official holds
2. Architects are able to add achievements to their own holds
3. Anyone is able to add an achievement to any hold (i.e. the Challenges board, but supported in-game)

These seem great.
As for scoring, I'd rather have the challenges be exclusively represented with badges/things rather than scores. Achievements are not part of the core of the game, they must remain extra, a nice addition, different from the game.

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[Last edited by Damien at 06-15-2012 04:56 AM]

Banjooie
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Pearls, I'm gonna say this: I got that scroll once, I never want to do it again.

I'm also going to say that I deserve to see those videos.

Hyeron
Level: Delver

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SirNiko wrote:
Achievements of the simple "Complete Room XX in less than XX moves" would be really boring and I'd probably never bother to complete them. Hopefully your challenge editor will be robust enough to allow for really complicated challenges, like killing one particular monster before the others, or completing rooms with certain orientations of the player, or even getting the room into a particular no-win condition. The best challenges require the player to approach a level from a completely different direction than they would if the achievement didn't exist.

This.

Scoring isn't particularly needed. It would, imho, detract from the purpose of achievements, just like "kill 10000000 queen roaches in the 3rd Level of KDD2" is not an achievement.
DROD is the perfect game to feed the players with real achievements possibilities, the thriving "Challenges" board is proof enough of that. AFAIAC everytime I finish a challenge, I get this little "ding! Achievement!" feel. And boy, do I suck at DROD challenges.

It doesn't necessarily need to be headbanger stuff. Just... quirky/funny/different ways to complete rooms.

Said board is pretty much a summary of what's actually wrong with your garden-variety achievements. You don't achieve anything. You just grind or play the game mindlessly until poof! achievement.
"Achievement unlocked! You just clicked on 'new game', oh you great player you!" - and I swear to god I wish I were exaggerating.

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[Last edited by Hyeron at 06-15-2012 10:42 AM]

Banjooie
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Yeah. Too bad that there aren't global achievement stats for a company to see what percentage of their playerbase has the 'started a new game' achievement, to compare it to the other milestones, thus allowing them to know: of people who bought the game, who actually played it, and of them, how many made it to stage 1, or stage 2, or beat the game, etcetera.

Yes, your face when modern achievements exist basically as amazing marketing tools to find out what part of the game players focus on.

Hyeron
Level: Delver

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Banjooie wrote:
Yeah. Too bad that there aren't global achievement stats for a company to see what percentage of their playerbase has the 'started a new game' achievement, to compare it to the other milestones, thus allowing them to know: of people who bought the game, who actually played it, and of them, how many made it to stage 1, or stage 2, or beat the game, etcetera.

Actually, some do. I believe Bioware did it with Mass Effect. IIRC. Maybe the wrong company/game, but I know I've seen someone publish those stats. And twas kind of hilarious. Not even half the total players finished the game.

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Banjooie
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...

I'm letting you get away with that because you've only been here for a month.

SirNiko
Level: Delver

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I don't mind achievements that exist simply to show regular progress in the game. If badges are displayed for others, it serves as a sign of how far into the game you've gotten, kind of like how some people put hold progress lists in their signatures. In some cases, they are useful to urge the player to engage in some parts of the game they normally would never use.

For example, an achievement for downloading a demo and watching it would ensure players actually do this and learn how it works. An achievement for spending ten minutes in chat would encourage players to use the chat room. You just have to be careful you don't force the player to do something they will regret afterwards.

If it was just for market research, the same companies could just as easily keep these stats recording secretly in the background so you're none the wiser.

I think having some achievements for mandatory tasks is okay, so long as they only cover a few basics and don't dominate the achievements list.