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General: Achievement Breakdown
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Achievements are great. What isn't so great is the grind to get to some of them. In today's Guild Sores comic, MMORPG.com's David North satirizes the Kill Ten Rats Achievement Grind. Check out Guild Sores: Achievement Breakdown and then leave us your thoughts on the ol' achievement grind in the comments.
Ever feel like this guy? If so, read today's Guild Sores!
Comments
I like that achievement!
Eh, always found it both puzzling and kinda funny how modern gaming missed the point of achievements and turned them into another form of grind for some games. Achievements should've been reserved for truly extraordinary things you'd go "woah, is that for real?" over, not mundane things you accomplish during the course of the game anyway.
You spelled Achievement wrong in the Michael Douglas block.
Though I can appreciate the sentimnt.
Its so much part of current gaming the use of the word is hardly ever questioned. An achievement is not doing today’s daily; completing a tough raid, mastering a craft, that’s an achievement.
Made me think of "Indiscriminate Murder Is Counter-Productive" by Machinae Supremacy.
"Memories are meant to fade. They're designed that way for a reason."
Oh damn. Great comic Brilliant reference.
It is best for the industry the MMO throne remains an dusty empty seat never to be filled.
Toon goes postal and slaughters town? I like it :-)
Poor Rathgar, he just wanted some breakfast but he needed to kill ten rats before they would serve him.
Because flying a Minmatar ship is like going down a flight of stairs on an office chair while firing an Uzi.
Even when a 'toon reaches "hero" status in any MMO, they're still being asked to "kill 10 rats".
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There was one game that broke the cliche and it WAS FFXI,there was no silliness in go kill 10 of this or that.There was also none of the ridiculous free xp handed out for doing these quests or fetch me or run to a npc.There was however some hidden qwuests that asked for a certain amount of items.
XP is suppose to be a skill,it is not a tangible item you can hand out ,that is the ridiculous idea that baffles me about quest design.Rewards are good yes,you would expect some kind of reward for doing a quest,but XP?...pfft.
I think Achievements shoudl be something that is a really tough accomnplishment.Developers such as SOE for example in EQ turn it into something again ridiculous,it's like you get an achievement for just walking around.
The definition of achievement,really should be shared with accomplishment.You can't possibly feel accomplishment for doing the majority of achievements.An example of perhaps a worthy achievement would be if you manage to get 1000 kills without dying,or perhaps killed 10 bosses in a row without dying or perhaps finished 200 quests without dying[legit ones]not quests that have you just run to a npc.Perhaps something along the lines of finding/uncovering a whole tier of recipe books,example level 10-20 books as people often just buy them.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
City of Heroes, as it was initially, did it best with their badge system. You could get history and exploration badges which were cool for those who just didn't want to grind out mobs.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
well for quest xp rewards work for like what you did learn from doing that quest? think for xp rewards like the moment you say ok i'm done what you asked like on that moment you remember everything you did during it and get wise.
Corrected cartoon posted! Thanks for the heads up.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Rats come in all shapes, sizes and attitudes. So even as a hero there are surely big bad hero rats that need taken care of? Just sayin :P
PS I like Rats in reality, they are really fascinating animals.
You have obviously had to work a pest control job with several chinese restarants on your route...
LOL nice! 99% of achievements = trophies for participation.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
That made me lol. Maybe you didn't get quests to "Kill 10 of this" but how else did you get exp? You just "killed 1,000s of this" until you leveled. I mean talk about grinding, the whole point of questing is to alleviate some of that grind and add a little story to some of your adventures. Just sitting there and killing the same mobs over and over with a group of people is not switching things up. Thats called EverQuest.
I do, however agree that some quests with more meaning are important. EQ2 did questing pretty well with a lot of side quests involving books that you could find the missing pages for or different mobs you could learn about. Also epic quests with huge arcs that reward with a heretige item at the end.
L2 was serious grind killing. A few quests, the rest grind leveling. I'd rather have the quests...Actually I'd like to have the quests AND fully fleshed drop/loot tables so I can kill for quests, then grind kill for drops. 2 levels grinding and FINALLY getting that 'green' drop. Of course I've outleveled it by then...but I GOT IT!
The whole archievement story in mmos is ridicilous. You brand some random action with an archievement and suddenly everyone acts as if its special. Now its not all black. There are some good archievements like "never get hit during bossfight" that actually show how good a player is but the majority seems to be casual " /fart 10 times", "kill all kinds of rabbits", "jump into dragon dung" which just keeps peoples wasting time collecting them by often doing what they don't even like. I'm not even sure if this is funny , sad or simply pathetic but it sure seems like an exploit of our wiring to complete things (gotta catch em all) and be better than others (gotta have more than everyone else).
Pi*1337/100 = 42
GARBAGE.... WTF is this in news?
Maybe one could try out experimenting more with achievements... It's true someone could tie content to achievement. But that wasn't really the topic i guess.
I absolutely support the OPs argument that our MMOs degrade the big hero in some way. I mean you get something like a shopping list. Seriously, we are the hero, that is not what a hero should do. Now, what are we supposed to do next: Laundry, Cooking... (I don't want to promote stereotypes, the opposite)
Well, SWTOR may be the same, but they hide the grind and they also tell us that we have freedom of choice. Well, I can not comment how much that will influence what you will do. What I would actually appreciate would be something like this:
You have an escort mission where there are two ships in a fleet. You get the decision which ship you want to protect. The other ship is protected by an NPC companion. If you took ship A your ship will be attacked by pirates and you have to fight them back and destroy their ship. If you took ship B your NPC friend would be captured and you would have to rescue him from the pirate Base. I think that could also be some kind of flashpoint scenario but you could also integrate such missions into your personal story, no problem.