Steam Achievements for NS2
Sherlock
Join Date: 2012-11-09 Member: 168595Members
Join Date: 2012-11-09 Member: 168595Members
I threw this idea around briefly in another thread (about killstreaks/rankings) previously, and I think achievements could not only keep people coming back to the game, but actually improve the teamplay aspect too. Wanted to have a civil discussion with people.
We've had hundreds of threads on killstreaks and rankings, and I agree that both are bad, but achievements could make better players. Of course, you wouldn't add achievements for things like "reach 1000 kills" or "finish a game with X kill/death ratio", as people going for that achievement would be detrimental to the game ethos. Instead, you would want achievements that are easily reachable by good, fair, team-based play, and can otherwise introduce game mechanics to players that would otherwise take a lot longer to realise they can do it.
For example, Marine-based:
Do X amount of structure repairing with a welder
Weld a teammate back to full armour
Buy your first jetpack
Destroy one of each alien upgrade structure
Kill a harvester within the first 180 seconds of a game
And Alien based:
Destroy an observatory whilst it is starting a beacon
Equip every type of upgrade X amount of times
Destroy out X number of phasegates
Get your first kill as a silent fade
Kill the power in an enemy techpoint room
I don't see how anybody particularly going for those achievements could have a detrimental effect to a game. In fact, they might actually aid a player browsing the achievement library in thinking about game mechanics which they had otherwise overlooked. "Oh, I can weld a teammate?", or "Oh wow, I'm actually really good with a regen lerk!"
Thoughts?
We've had hundreds of threads on killstreaks and rankings, and I agree that both are bad, but achievements could make better players. Of course, you wouldn't add achievements for things like "reach 1000 kills" or "finish a game with X kill/death ratio", as people going for that achievement would be detrimental to the game ethos. Instead, you would want achievements that are easily reachable by good, fair, team-based play, and can otherwise introduce game mechanics to players that would otherwise take a lot longer to realise they can do it.
For example, Marine-based:
Do X amount of structure repairing with a welder
Weld a teammate back to full armour
Buy your first jetpack
Destroy one of each alien upgrade structure
Kill a harvester within the first 180 seconds of a game
And Alien based:
Destroy an observatory whilst it is starting a beacon
Equip every type of upgrade X amount of times
Destroy out X number of phasegates
Get your first kill as a silent fade
Kill the power in an enemy techpoint room
I don't see how anybody particularly going for those achievements could have a detrimental effect to a game. In fact, they might actually aid a player browsing the achievement library in thinking about game mechanics which they had otherwise overlooked. "Oh, I can weld a teammate?", or "Oh wow, I'm actually really good with a regen lerk!"
Thoughts?
Comments
Only thing I'd like to see is some type of matching/pug system which rates you using hidden stats (so we don't know how we're being rated, hopefully by overall wins) and have it mark you with a symbol or a badge or something so you can match against other people with the same junk, just no advanced elo/trueskill horrible piece of junk; those things are abusable and fail so hard (and probably require a huge playerbase) so basing off of wins is good enough
Normally I don't care about a matching service, but from everytime I play this game the public play is just really, really bad. Besides the fact that people seem to enjoy 24 slots and all of that garbage (seriously everything goes down the drain with that many players) the unevenness in matches is awful, and I know how good this game feels to play in an even competition match; it's great and I just want to experience that everytime I hop on
No matter what kind of achievements you put in, there will always been those that cause people to do stupid things (hurting the game) in order to achieve them.
Just looking at some of your examples:
"Weld a teammate back to full armor" - could cause people to not help in engagements so that someone loses all of their armor so they can get the achievement
"Destroy one of each alien upgrade structures" - I can see people just running around for the entire game looking for upgrade structures and not helping their team
"Kill a harvester in the first 180 seconds of a game" - people will just rush for the aliens first base/expansion and if they don't get it, leave the server to try again
"Destroy an observatory whilst it is starting a beacon" - people won't attack the observatory until it starts to beacon or will leave it at 1% until it starts to beacon
"Equip every type of upgrade X amount of times" - spawn, evolve upgrades, /kill, repeat
"Kill the power in an enemy techpoint room" - only attacking techpoint power the entire game or not helping until the very end to try to get the kill
etc.
Not only will this cause stupid people to do stupid things to get the stupid achievements, it is a waste of dev time to think up achievements and implement them.
On one hand, they can cause people to go "achievement hunting" and ruin games.
- They can cause people to ignore the actual game to get achievements
On the other, things like "welding a teammate back to full heath" can reinforce the importance of welding your team
- They can help people learn the game if they are given tasks to compelte
- This can also be done with a tutorial, but achievements require less work
Basically, I'm for achievements so long as they are easy to get and straightforward enough to direct people towards playing properly and not based on kills. (things like having parasiteing as a skulk, and powerbuilding a hive as a gorge)
I personally think some steam achievements would be good for this game but they should, like I said, be ones that you would naturally get and they should not be ones that you must grind to get. For example, Kill 5, 10, 25, 100, 500 skulks/lurks/etc is an achievement that one will naturally progress to and grinding to get that achievement just means you play the game. Structure killing achievements are a bit different. To Ghosthree's point, you dont want people grinding to kill Spurs so the achievement should be left at "kill 1 spur/shift, etc" instead of "kill 10 spurs" -
I think there are many simple, non-intrusive achievements that can and should be added for the benefit of the game. I would just stay away from time based (for example, "be cloaked for 30 minutes" is a stupid one that would lead to idiots standing around) and grinding ones (for example, "pop 1000 cysts" could lead to people popping cysts at the wrong times). That being said, there are still many, many fun achievements that could be added (Kill X amount of [alien lifeform] is a good one along with "build x amount of structures" "heal x amount of structures" "evolve x amount of times" "escape with with 1 life point as alien and heal to 100%" etc.
I'll put up with 1 guy out of 30 being a slight detriment for a small amount of time (until they get the achievement), if it means expanding the player base, even slightly.
Also, mega grinding achievements like lordfarva said are all fine. But to be safe, the achievements shouldn't show the current status. (As in, a player shouldn't be able to see they have 8 cysts left to pop for an achievement, because then you will have that 1 in 30 guy who goes on a cyst Rambo rampage)
NS2 can be a little complex for beginners to understand everything they should be doing, having achievements could be used as little pointers to rookies about what to do:
Protect teammates from xx amount of damage with umbra
Bile bomb xx structures skulks are attacking
Kill an alien within xx seconds of it damaging a powernode
Drop your LMG to pick up a dead xx team mate's [res costing] weapons
Damage a marine within xx seconds of a team mate damaging it.
Perhaps nothing quite so obvious, but i'm shure you all get what i mean
How are steam achievements done anyway? Is it possible to have community modded steam achievements?
Maybe more viable achievements would be...
Buy a Shotgun
Evolve into a Lerk
Buy mines
Weld a team mate to full armor with a welder
Win as a Marine Commander
Win as an Alien Commander
Win on Refinery as Aliens
Win on Tram as Marines
Etc...
People will be more willing to buy shotguns, become commanders, evolve into lerk instead of saving up for onos, and actually be more focused on winning games.
Badge : None, just having a good time, satisfaction, fun of gaming
DON'T DO IT.