Achievements
HeatSurge
Some Guy Join Date: 2012-09-15 Member: 159438Members, Reinforced - Supporter
Some Guy Join Date: 2012-09-15 Member: 159438Members, Reinforced - Supporter
Irrelevant: The commander achievement made me laugh. I like the realism of becoming more evil, impatient, dictatorial, and abusive as commander (the drool was a hilarious touch too), and players becoming more and more oppressed to the point of crying or not caring at all.
http://imgur.com/a/KYQij
Relevant: I would avoid achievements which depend on rare events of cosmic significance or that you can't get without the specific presence of other people.
Case in point: Survive with 1 hp and get healed. 1 HP is really, really, really rare. Since most things in NS2 do step damage, it would have to be an extremely odd combination of luck and failure to reduce your health to exactly one. I think the achievement should be "5 or less, survive and get healed" or even 3 or less which would still be pretty rare, but not nearly as much as ONE HP exactly.
Case in point 2: Kill a developer. I've never played with a developer, except Hugh (does he even technically count as a "developer" and who does if not him, since nobody of the original development team ever plays ns2 anymore afaik?!) at the very peak of NS2 when he still joined pubs very very rarely. Now that he's gone and basically noone from the dev team plays (at least I haven't seen anyone!?), the achievement is a meaningless blank basically at release.
Case in point 3: Follow 5 attack/move/defend orders. Nobody issues those orders anymore. Not even good coms. I'm not sure how much value it would add to annoy marine coms with "issue an order so I can get the achievement" for days on release.
Also, I would suggest many, many more skill-type achievements, such as:
- Perform 500/50000/5000000 wall-jumps
- Kill a marine with lerk without losing any health
- Kill a marine with fade with metabolizing between the first and last swipe
- Cockblock >500 shots/damage/whatever with onos boner shield
- Deploy a connected gorge tunnel in the room adjacent to the marine start room
- Successfully team-bile bomb a command chair in less than 10 seconds
- Attach babblers to a fellow life-form 10/100/1000 times.
- Kill 5 or more marines with Xenocide
- Kill a lifeform with >20% accuracy since the first shot landed (skulks, onos excluded)
- Land a 100% meatshot with the shotgun (onos and structures excluded)
- Land a fully charged rail shot (onos, skulks, and structures excluded)
- Fun fail anti-achievement overheat both your miniguns
- Jump out, repair your own exo suit, and jump back in!
- Drop weapons as marine commander / drop a lifeform egg as alien commander
- Drop medpacks / use nanoshield / drop dogpacks / drop ammo on a marine with less than 10% ammo remaining without him requesting it as marine commander, etc.
- Echo eggs
- Survive for >30 sex being chased by skulks (jetpack or jumping around, not sure how that would be well-defined but you get the idea)
- Kill an alien hive by ARCing
- Energize an IP, Energize a phase gate, energize an obs and successfully beacon, Nanoshield a power node
- Research armor 2or3 or weapons 2or3 or leap or bile bomb or level 3 upgrades by time "X" (e.g. 3 minutes into the game - reward rapid upgrades)
- Have 5 RTs by time "Y" (e.g. 2 minutes into the game - reward rapid expansion)
- Assign a MAC to guard an Exo
- Kill a non-skulk lifeform with mines
- Eject commander who drops a sentry blueprint before it's built (kek, I wish)
- Accumulate sprint 60/6000/6000000 seconds with the axe out
- Spawn Hallucinations/Enzyme/Mucus on 5 or more aliens at the same time
- Map movement achievements - hard to define but things like jumping over the railing east of falls on Biodome (by jumping on the wall thingy), jumping on the curved part before the railing and over the railing in docking in courtyard towards lockers, jumping on top of the pillars on docking in terminal, jumping off/on (successfully) the pipe in refinery in lava falls etc. etc. etc.
- Map fun fail anti-achievements like "fall in a gap" or "get crushed" or "die in lava" etc.
etc. etc. etc.
Basically think of what's something good players do in the game while it's not artificially stupid, rare, or useless and reward that with an achievement (maybe for repeated use, where relevant). That way, the achievements themselves become teaching tools for advanced tactics (I loved the para-bite-bite achivement) rather than stupidity or grind (I don't particularly like the "deal 7.5K structure damage"-type achievements).
A simple example of a stupid achievement which would create and reward terrible and useless behavior would be to kill a lerk/fade/onos with an axe or welder.
http://imgur.com/a/KYQij
Relevant: I would avoid achievements which depend on rare events of cosmic significance or that you can't get without the specific presence of other people.
Case in point: Survive with 1 hp and get healed. 1 HP is really, really, really rare. Since most things in NS2 do step damage, it would have to be an extremely odd combination of luck and failure to reduce your health to exactly one. I think the achievement should be "5 or less, survive and get healed" or even 3 or less which would still be pretty rare, but not nearly as much as ONE HP exactly.
Case in point 2: Kill a developer. I've never played with a developer, except Hugh (does he even technically count as a "developer" and who does if not him, since nobody of the original development team ever plays ns2 anymore afaik?!) at the very peak of NS2 when he still joined pubs very very rarely. Now that he's gone and basically noone from the dev team plays (at least I haven't seen anyone!?), the achievement is a meaningless blank basically at release.
Case in point 3: Follow 5 attack/move/defend orders. Nobody issues those orders anymore. Not even good coms. I'm not sure how much value it would add to annoy marine coms with "issue an order so I can get the achievement" for days on release.
Also, I would suggest many, many more skill-type achievements, such as:
- Perform 500/50000/5000000 wall-jumps
- Kill a marine with lerk without losing any health
- Kill a marine with fade with metabolizing between the first and last swipe
- Cockblock >500 shots/damage/whatever with onos boner shield
- Deploy a connected gorge tunnel in the room adjacent to the marine start room
- Successfully team-bile bomb a command chair in less than 10 seconds
- Attach babblers to a fellow life-form 10/100/1000 times.
- Kill 5 or more marines with Xenocide
- Kill a lifeform with >20% accuracy since the first shot landed (skulks, onos excluded)
- Land a 100% meatshot with the shotgun (onos and structures excluded)
- Land a fully charged rail shot (onos, skulks, and structures excluded)
- Fun fail anti-achievement overheat both your miniguns
- Jump out, repair your own exo suit, and jump back in!
- Drop weapons as marine commander / drop a lifeform egg as alien commander
- Drop medpacks / use nanoshield / drop dogpacks / drop ammo on a marine with less than 10% ammo remaining without him requesting it as marine commander, etc.
- Echo eggs
- Survive for >30 sex being chased by skulks (jetpack or jumping around, not sure how that would be well-defined but you get the idea)
- Kill an alien hive by ARCing
- Energize an IP, Energize a phase gate, energize an obs and successfully beacon, Nanoshield a power node
- Research armor 2or3 or weapons 2or3 or leap or bile bomb or level 3 upgrades by time "X" (e.g. 3 minutes into the game - reward rapid upgrades)
- Have 5 RTs by time "Y" (e.g. 2 minutes into the game - reward rapid expansion)
- Assign a MAC to guard an Exo
- Kill a non-skulk lifeform with mines
- Eject commander who drops a sentry blueprint before it's built (kek, I wish)
- Accumulate sprint 60/6000/6000000 seconds with the axe out
- Spawn Hallucinations/Enzyme/Mucus on 5 or more aliens at the same time
- Map movement achievements - hard to define but things like jumping over the railing east of falls on Biodome (by jumping on the wall thingy), jumping on the curved part before the railing and over the railing in docking in courtyard towards lockers, jumping on top of the pillars on docking in terminal, jumping off/on (successfully) the pipe in refinery in lava falls etc. etc. etc.
- Map fun fail anti-achievements like "fall in a gap" or "get crushed" or "die in lava" etc.
etc. etc. etc.
Basically think of what's something good players do in the game while it's not artificially stupid, rare, or useless and reward that with an achievement (maybe for repeated use, where relevant). That way, the achievements themselves become teaching tools for advanced tactics (I loved the para-bite-bite achivement) rather than stupidity or grind (I don't particularly like the "deal 7.5K structure damage"-type achievements).
A simple example of a stupid achievement which would create and reward terrible and useless behavior would be to kill a lerk/fade/onos with an axe or welder.
Comments
Also I have been saying the same thing about achievements, you have to be careful about what achievements you make as you can't really change it afterwards. Achievements that would require rare situational events like killing a dev are always so annoying in games too.
Overall I'm quite ok with the acheivements in their list as a first-run. Even the following orders one, if it helps people learn how to comm, and helps comm tell people what to do, maybe we'll all remember that that thing exists. Rookies certainly do follow them (just like how they follow every single computer generated waypoint to built all of the power nodes), because they just don't know any better.
The illusion that it is statistically improbable to come away from an engagement with 1 HP is to significantly underestimate the number of engagements that happen over the course of an evening in the NS2 universe.
1 HP escapes, especially as a skulk, are common enough for me to have had quite a few over the years.