Cannon_FodderAUSBrisbane, AUJoin Date: 2013-06-23Member: 185664Members, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
I think achievement if structured properly WILL help new players focus (especially for those that read what achievements are there). Don't do silly ones that are like welder kill a skulk (this encourages bad behaviour). @Benson some of your suggestions are really good, my only concern is how can the current game engine keep track of some of this stuff? Achievements to encourage team play is good for the game if it can be implemented. Though it might be too late at this stage, so a remastered version with achievements in a few years?? ;-p
@NotPaLaGi Well, the later is safer I think. Imagine that rookies doing: buy welder, drop welder, buy welder ...
Though there are those capable of front-welding you when you try to shoot something with grenade launcher....
That's another thing, why are grenades effective against lifeforms? I don't get that one bit. It's game ruining
@Nordic@Cannon_FodderAUS
Yeah, I just made those up off the top of my head, I'm sure much better ones can be thought up by better players than me
as far as tracking the unlocks go...I dont know anything about the back end of it, but couldn't Hive be used to track these with only a few additional stats recorded?
Still I think you underestimate how capable and relentless stupid people are.
It doesn't matter what my estimate is. This argument is a non-sequitur. If people are just "relentlessly stupid"; then nothing we do makes any difference. That includes negative effects.
The best cure for incompetence is; proper guidance.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited March 2015
I've always liked those server side stats screens listing general things you do ingame, where you see things listed like this at the end of a round:
TSF:
Medkit addict
Trigger happy, most shots fired
Glutton for punishment, most damage taken
Big Bertha, most damage done
Greasemonkey, most welding done
Dancing Joe, most bouncy/jumps while under attack not taking damage
Kharaa:
Bilebomb George
Epic Spacecow, longest Onos life?
A bat outah hell, longest Lerk life
Lork on the Clorf, most spike kills/damage
It Hovars without Flapping, longest gliding distance as Lerk?
and so on... randomly selected perhaps with a weight added to them if it is a rare event like an axe/babbler/xeno kill or something... Kinda fun to have at the end of a round and on a lower level as an incentive to get them. Maybe tied to achievements or something, that stuff is popular but should be tied into the game and not prone to grinding but actual unlocked by gameplay. hmm kinda puts the XXX amount of YYY done out on the time out bench, even though they are fun
The medic and repair stuff on a stats screen kinda pushed some people to do that stuff in ... I think it was Return to Castle Wolfenstein or Enemy Territory... I've seen them in action, just to get that stat on the end screen :P
Will it retain playas, dunno doubtful. Will it improve teamplay, maybe *sniff* maybe... I've yet to meet player who can outsmart incentives
The best and reliable cure is to let them be stupid and distribute stupidity equally among both teams so stupids still have some fun, while not ruining it for others. Ability to learn from mistakes is a skill too... you can't do it for them.
Proper guidance is a nice thing, but I think it can't be automated with stupid achievements. I mean, by all means for the 10-20 h first game play, to bring them up to speed, make hints like: "this is an RT. Thats where your credits come from. weld it! Defend it with your life!". But when 100h player does not do what he's supposed to, that's the point when you know, it can't be fixed with achievements. I mean, if you make achievement in chess "do not lose your queen before your opponent", that won't make us all grand-masters.
Maybe make one public server dedicated to not just winning rounds but primarily learning. Skilled players would be encouraged (when they get bored playing) to order people around from spectator, giving them hints and advice. Make it nice social experience....
Hasn't this thread gotten way off topic? I'm seeing rehashes of old threads from years gone by here with all the people talking about achievements and f2p.
Hasn't this thread gotten way of topic? I'm seeing rehashes of old threads from years gone by here with all the people talking about achievements and f2p.
I'd say it's still discussing remasters and what people hope they would bring assuming their existence
Would prefer NS1HD tbh. That's what most people wanted from ns2. Getting a remastered version of NS2 would be akin to Nintendo remastering Super Smash Bros Brawl, rather than Melee.
I wish we had Melee HD. IMO SSB4 was worse than brawl and melee. (diddy kong, dodge roll frames, counters, rosalina)
Wow, did NOT know NS2 players followed comp smash...
@NotPaLaGi Well, the later is safer I think. Imagine that rookies doing: buy welder, drop welder, buy welder ...
Though there are those capable of front-welding you when you try to shoot something with grenade launcher....
That's another thing, why are grenades effective against lifeforms? I don't get that one bit. It's game ruining
i think it's great that the GL can do damage to aliens, i dislike how large the grenade itself is though. it makes landing them trivial to anybody with decent experience with projectiles from other games.
much smaller projectile + decrease in speed. in order to make it desirable you would want to lower the self-damage and the minimum travel distance for it to explode (think comp mod has done this already) as well I think, otherwise nobody would use a more difficult version of a weapon nobody uses currently.
@NotPaLaGi Well, the later is safer I think. Imagine that rookies doing: buy welder, drop welder, buy welder ...
Though there are those capable of front-welding you when you try to shoot something with grenade launcher....
That's another thing, why are grenades effective against lifeforms? I don't get that one bit. It's game ruining
They are effective against lifeforms? Why has nobody told me??? :-O
Lerk: deal 10,000 damage with spikes (makes players not use bite)
ugh, then I'll just see more lerks spiking RT's instead of biting...
I wouldn't try to pick these apart because they are just an example of what some achievements might look like. I am positive that if achievements were put into place they would have much more thought put into them by many people in comparison to those.
What about "stop promoting achievement system for a week" achievement?
No? :P
Could you repeat for me what do you want to achieve exactly with achievement system (pun intended)? Why would that warrant development effort, which will be diverted from bug-bashing, performance upgrades and hopefully new content creation? Which games have that kind of system, and to what degree they observe the beneficial effects you want?
What about "stop promoting achievement system for a week" achievement?
No? :P
Could you repeat for me what do you want to achieve exactly with achievement system (pun intended)? Why would that warrant development effort, which will be diverted from bug-bashing, performance upgrades and hopefully new content creation? Which games have that kind of system, and to what degree they observe the beneficial effects you want?
I have never been a fan of achievements in any game. I ignore them. I do find that some of the arguments for achievements have merit. I think it was said best as:
Achievement systems are an interesting topic I think. I agree with @meatmachine, that there's a bit much opposition to this. I think there's both merit in the opposition, but I also think there is some productive use for achievements.
I think most of us can agree that silly achievements like "get 1,000 welder kills" would severely damage the gameplay, as far too many players would deviate from the core purpose of the game.
We want to encourage people to play the main objective. One could make the argument that a "Win 1,000 games with both races", would help encourage that. However, even that might have negative effects as well, such as an increased amount of stacking.
I wouldn't look at examples like the above and then prematurely conclude that it's simply always bad to have achievements. Instead I would try to think carefully.
What are some of the problems of player behavior in the game? Let us say; not enough people welder their team mates and this offsets the balance in favor of the aliens in public games. One attempt to solve that could be; give players points on the scoreboard for welding team mates. If that isn't enough, you could supplement that with achievements.
I look at achievements as a tool to socially engineer player behavior. So you shouldn't just make a bunch of achievements for the sake of achievements (i.e. "get 1,000 fade frags with a welder). But use achievements to promote what ever kind of behavior you believe would improve the gaming experience.
tl;dr - achievements should be implemented with great consideration, but can be productive wrt gaming experience.
The biggest problem with ns2 is its ability to retain players. One aspect of that is difficulty in learning the game. Achievements may help teach and retain a certain segment of players. Whether or not that is worth development at this point I am not sure.
What about "stop promoting achievement system for a week" achievement?
No? :P
Could you repeat for me what do you want to achieve exactly with achievement system (pun intended)? Why would that warrant development effort, which will be diverted from bug-bashing, performance upgrades and hopefully new content creation? Which games have that kind of system, and to what degree they observe the beneficial effects you want?
@Nordic Okay, thats the first and second part of the question( encourage good behavior, retain and you are not sure.) Now the second part. In which games ever does it had such an effect?
@Nordic Okay, thats the first and second part of the question( encourage good behavior, retain and you are not sure.) Now the second part. In which games ever does it had such an effect?'
Yes because god forbid, that we attempt to use existing tools to innovate.
Even if it is granted that nobody else have been able to pull it off successfully, doesn't mean it's not possible. Moreover, gaming history is young, and achievements is a relatively new concept.
I'm not above conceding your point, I cannot think of a good example where achievements have improved player behavior - and I think there's many reasons for that, such as, achievements in fps usually comes in the big money games, and with them an entirely different demographic than we have in this niche game ns2. It's a bit of a leap to compare CS:Go players behavior with NS2 players behavior for example, simply because Cs:Go has a much more diverse audience.
Moreover, I'm not sure where I would even go about gathering data in terms of poor behavior in games to make the study.
However, I think given your own premises, that achievements can lead to worse player behavior (that's what I gathered from some of your previous posts), it should be possible to channel that phenomenon in to something positive as well.
We know it's possible to affect player behavior positively. League of Legends did some pretty comprehensive experiments. I don't know if they use achievements however.
So I'm happy to concede that I don't have all the answers. I don't know if it's possible to affect player behavior positively with achievements. I do know however, that the claim is relatively easily testable.
Edit: btw, re-reading my post I realize that I'm probably conflating toxic behavior with the behavior in the context of the discussion, which refers to players deviating from the main goal of the game and not necessarily people trash talking or trolling. But I think you can use some of the same tools to affect both types of behaviors.
To put it bluntly, if you don't have all the answers, don't experiment on players and don't push the idea. If nobody else managed to do it even partly successfully on top of that, it makes the proposition even more dangerous/risky. Especially on a game that has already small player base, despite deserving much better.
Or you know, do experiment, make a mod.
Second thing you probably don't understand is why achievements were made in the first place. You are trying to repurpose them for something they are not intrinsically made for. If you want to innovate, think of something truly innovative instead. Do not try to reuse the worst of game mechanics there is. I am trying really hard to remember if I ever said: "The game is really bad, but you know the achievements really saved it."
EDIT: I think I never said explicitely achievements lead to worse behavior (other than stat addiction, which we already have. And players that don't like them leaving the game.). I think I said, that in some (well probably in every and all you can ever think of) defined achievement (e.g. "weld someone for x"), they could lead equally to good and bad behavior, so on average having no beneficial effect.
To put it bluntly, if you don't have all the answers, don't experiment on players and don't push the idea.
Isn't this exactly what UWE has done since release?
You have described practically every feature that has ever been introduced into ns2. NS2 = one giant ongoing experiment.
What do you mean? That we should encourage them in it?
Not all of the features. Some are small incremental changes, but yeah, don't get me started on e.g. metabolize, making fade strong and independent of alien economy/or healing gorges. Now even when you manage to scare fade away, you know he will be back in 5 seconds, and that is if they have only one fade.
I suppose they are, if they are tastefully made/unobtrusive. And if devs have time to make them. But trying to make out of achievents what they are not will not work.
To put it bluntly, if you don't have all the answers, don't experiment on players and don't push the idea.
Well if none of us have the answers we can't push the idea, why does anyone discuss anything EVER. Most discussions here, especially the quality ones are purely speculative. I am not pushing the idea, I am discussing the idea and all its merits good or bad. Who says we are experimenting on the players? Nobody.
Achievements have been talked about for years, so this is not a new discussion. It is only even slightly inline with the OP but the discussion of achievements for the most part has been quality. Do you think that if we discuss achievements here the CDT will implement it? Not unless we make a really good argument as to why development time should be spent on them instead of something else and I doubt we will make such an argument.
I loathe achievements. I ignore them. I have argued against them before. A point has been brought up that maybe achievements can help some new, maybe even old, players learn how to play ns2 if the achievements were thought out well. Since the biggest problem with ns2 is its ability to retain players I find this prospect very interesting. If a set of good achievements were made it could hold more casual players in the game awhile longer. If they stay longer they would probably learn the game better just by hours played and the achievements might help them focus on what to learn. If they learned how to play the game more maybe, just maybe they will stick around awhile.
Whats the worst that could happen with achievements? The worst thing is that they could be ignored for the most part by rookies and it would of been wasted development time. Some players might focus too much on them and less on winning the game itself. I don't think that is a serious issue with achievements because if they are thought out well and only achievements that would encourage quality behavior, like welding. Lets say a newbie decided to weld all game to get that achievement. He/she is going to learn very quick that is a bad idea. If there is one rookie in a team of veterans is it really that different if he/she only welds?
At this time I don't think achievements should be pursued by development. I think there are bigger problems to solve first. This does not stop me from thinking and discussing achievements though.
@NordicSo doing bad arguments for some purpose is desirable now? Are we discusing it, so it never gets implemented by CDT then. I am all game in that case. :P There is a point to not (re)discussing bad ideas. You are giving them validity and undeserved popularity, if you do. I think even ideas should be presented responsively. If you know something is a bad idea, you say so openly and do not encourage or defend it. I am not against speculative ideas where it may be 50/50. I am not even against ideas, where someone asks ONCE if this or that would work and sombody tells him it won't and it ends there.
I get it. I must sound like a complete jerk, destroying undermining the inocent little idea at it's not very solid foundations. But in this case I think it must be done without mercy. It is exactly that type of stupid ill-advised idea that actually manage to get implemented because of public demand and because other games have those. I simply do not see any winning scenario in this endeavour:
BEST CASE with achievements is as I said that they would be unobtrusive - like one more option in the menu, with stats and achievement badges. I personaly won't mind having those in my game. But it is wasted dev effort. I think there are more important development priorities (and I would mind, if they were not done, because of this achievement distraction). And do not delude yourselves they can teach players to be grand-masters. As I said and examples were given, that any achievement can be interpreted both bad and good way, and will lead to both bad and good behavior cancelling each other out. I actually like the video:
We know it's possible to affect player behavior positively. League of Legends did some pretty comprehensive experiments. I don't know if they use achievements however.
By all means do colored in game and in menu hints on good teamplay and sportsmanship instead.
IN WORST CASE, they would be annoying. Annoying like play 7 consecutive days nonsense pop-up or full fledged coin based economy. And devs may even try those, if they decide to put energy into this. It will be wasted effort, if the achievement system is not expanded to it's full potencial, after all. It would make money in the short run, but encourage some people, who can't stand those, to leave this game for ever. New people who like that sort of thing might not come to replace them. They will burn the gained money on changes like simplifying(not in the sense of making it more intuitive, but in the sense of making it more trivial, because that is easier) the game more and doing graphics rehash, to attract them. Those people will get bored with this game and move within year to newly relesed titles of this sort. NS2 may die prematurely or it's soul will, in this worst case. Nobody wins.
I think you are missing the point. No one is saying to have useless achievements, or suggesting a "full fledged coin based economy".
In fact, the idea that most people are pushing towards is not achievements at all, its more toward tutorials and built-in guides. Achievements, while they may be tedious to make well, are in the end, much less work then a full fledged tutorial that most people will not play.
People are not suggesting they be useless, stupidity rewarding, pat-on-the-head things you seem to be making them out to be. They are suggesting they be a gentle guide people can look at and get an idea of good behavior from (such as welding players).
But hey, its just an idea, and if you want to believe that any form of achievements, even well thought out ones that can guide rookies to learn basic mechanics, will ultimately lead to the end of NS2, thats one opinion.
In any case, the achievements suggested are an idea toward player retention and training, which is a non-issue unless NS2 gets more publicity, such as a "remastered" version, as is the main topic of the title.
@Nordic So doing bad arguments for some purpose is desirable now? Are we discusing it, so it never gets implemented by CDT then. I am all game in that case. :P There is a point to not (re)discussing bad ideas. You are giving them validity and undeserved popularity, if you do. I am not against speculative ideas where it may be 50/50. I am not even against ideas, where someone asks ONCE if this or that would work and sombody tells him it won't and it ends there.
We were having a discussion on the merits of achievements until you made an argument. A discussion should include all sides. Read these, here and here, if you want to know the difference between a discussion and an argument because I want to get back to a discussion.
You seem to be making the argument that achievements would be bad, and negatively impact the game. We both agree, at least for the time being, achievements are not worth the development time. You have yet to give a good reason why they are bad ideas or why they should not be talked about. If you have been on this forum long enough you will see that there is plenty of discussion on ideas with less merit than achievements. Should they not be talked about? Is this not a public forum?
I get it. I must sound like a complete jerk, destroying the inocent little idea at it's not very solid foundations. But in this case I think it must be done without mercy. It is exactly that type of stupid idea that actually manage to get implemented because of public demand and because other games have those. I simply do not see any winning scenario in this endeavour:
Best case with achievements is as I said that they would be unobtrusive - like one more option in the menu, with stats and achievement badges. I personaly won't mind having those in my game. But it is wasted dev effort. I think there are more important development priorities (and I would mind, if they were not done, because of this achievement distraction). And do not delude yourselves they can teach players to be grand-masters. As I said and examples were given, that any achievement can be interpreted both bad and good way, and will lead to both bad and good behavior cancelling each other out. I actually like the video:
Worst case, they would be annoying. Annoying like play 7 consecutive days nonsense pop-up or full fledged coin based economy. And devs may even try those, if they decide to put energy into this. It will be wasted effort, if the achievement system is not expanded to it's full potencial, after all. It would make money in the short run, but encourage some people, who can't stand those, to leave this game for ever. New people who like that sort of thing might not come to replace them. They will burn the gained money on changes like stupidifying the game more and doing graphics rehash, to attract them. Those people will get bored with this game and move within year to newly relesed titles of this sort. NS2 RIP. Nobody wins.
Destroying. Stupid. Such negative words. You have not destroyed anything. What is wrong with achievements beyond development time? You seem to be making a straw man argument out of all this. Coin based economy? Your the only one who has suggested anything that extreme. Why would they consider an achievement for 7 consecutive days of play? Your the only one who has suggested anything that silly. We have been discussing the merits of achievements. Well thought out achievements that might be one facet of a hypothetical improved tutorial system.
Who would leave because of achievements? I loathe them. I can ignore them just like I do in every other game.
Stupefying the game? I think that is a bit extreme. Some little achievement like "Weld 10 Different Players" will not "stupedfy" the game. The veterans would ignore and play the same as they always have. The new players might actually use them and learn something about the game. You say those people will move on within a year, but how is this any different than now? If anything a year is too long. It seems most people move on after less than 10 hours of gameplay.
Comments
That's another thing, why are grenades effective against lifeforms? I don't get that one bit. It's game ruining
Yeah, I just made those up off the top of my head, I'm sure much better ones can be thought up by better players than me
as far as tracking the unlocks go...I dont know anything about the back end of it, but couldn't Hive be used to track these with only a few additional stats recorded?
The best cure for incompetence is; proper guidance.
TSF:
Medkit addict
Trigger happy, most shots fired
Glutton for punishment, most damage taken
Big Bertha, most damage done
Greasemonkey, most welding done
Dancing Joe, most bouncy/jumps while under attack not taking damage
Kharaa:
Bilebomb George
Epic Spacecow, longest Onos life?
A bat outah hell, longest Lerk life
Lork on the Clorf, most spike kills/damage
It Hovars without Flapping, longest gliding distance as Lerk?
and so on... randomly selected perhaps with a weight added to them if it is a rare event like an axe/babbler/xeno kill or something... Kinda fun to have at the end of a round and on a lower level as an incentive to get them. Maybe tied to achievements or something, that stuff is popular but should be tied into the game and not prone to grinding but actual unlocked by gameplay. hmm kinda puts the XXX amount of YYY done out on the time out bench, even though they are fun
The medic and repair stuff on a stats screen kinda pushed some people to do that stuff in ... I think it was Return to Castle Wolfenstein or Enemy Territory... I've seen them in action, just to get that stat on the end screen :P
Will it retain playas, dunno doubtful. Will it improve teamplay, maybe *sniff* maybe... I've yet to meet player who can outsmart incentives
Proper guidance is a nice thing, but I think it can't be automated with stupid achievements. I mean, by all means for the 10-20 h first game play, to bring them up to speed, make hints like: "this is an RT. Thats where your credits come from. weld it! Defend it with your life!". But when 100h player does not do what he's supposed to, that's the point when you know, it can't be fixed with achievements. I mean, if you make achievement in chess "do not lose your queen before your opponent", that won't make us all grand-masters.
Maybe make one public server dedicated to not just winning rounds but primarily learning. Skilled players would be encouraged (when they get bored playing) to order people around from spectator, giving them hints and advice. Make it nice social experience....
I'd say it's still discussing remasters and what people hope they would bring assuming their existence
Wow, did NOT know NS2 players followed comp smash...
Melee for life
ugh, then I'll just see more lerks spiking RT's instead of biting...
i think it's great that the GL can do damage to aliens, i dislike how large the grenade itself is though. it makes landing them trivial to anybody with decent experience with projectiles from other games.
much smaller projectile + decrease in speed. in order to make it desirable you would want to lower the self-damage and the minimum travel distance for it to explode (think comp mod has done this already) as well I think, otherwise nobody would use a more difficult version of a weapon nobody uses currently.
unless its only player damage.....c'mon think about it a little.
Also, does anyone on the CDT have numbers on the average performance increase since launch?
I wouldn't try to pick these apart because they are just an example of what some achievements might look like. I am positive that if achievements were put into place they would have much more thought put into them by many people in comparison to those.
No? :P
Could you repeat for me what do you want to achieve exactly with achievement system (pun intended)? Why would that warrant development effort, which will be diverted from bug-bashing, performance upgrades and hopefully new content creation? Which games have that kind of system, and to what degree they observe the beneficial effects you want?
I have never been a fan of achievements in any game. I ignore them. I do find that some of the arguments for achievements have merit. I think it was said best as:
The biggest problem with ns2 is its ability to retain players. One aspect of that is difficulty in learning the game. Achievements may help teach and retain a certain segment of players. Whether or not that is worth development at this point I am not sure.
Fixing bugs doesnt make this game more fun
It does make it less unfun.
Achievements doesn't make any game more fun.
Rifle Jam.
Even if it is granted that nobody else have been able to pull it off successfully, doesn't mean it's not possible. Moreover, gaming history is young, and achievements is a relatively new concept.
I'm not above conceding your point, I cannot think of a good example where achievements have improved player behavior - and I think there's many reasons for that, such as, achievements in fps usually comes in the big money games, and with them an entirely different demographic than we have in this niche game ns2. It's a bit of a leap to compare CS:Go players behavior with NS2 players behavior for example, simply because Cs:Go has a much more diverse audience.
Moreover, I'm not sure where I would even go about gathering data in terms of poor behavior in games to make the study.
However, I think given your own premises, that achievements can lead to worse player behavior (that's what I gathered from some of your previous posts), it should be possible to channel that phenomenon in to something positive as well.
We know it's possible to affect player behavior positively. League of Legends did some pretty comprehensive experiments. I don't know if they use achievements however.
http://gdcvault.com/play/1017940/The-Science-Behind-Shaping-Player
So I'm happy to concede that I don't have all the answers. I don't know if it's possible to affect player behavior positively with achievements. I do know however, that the claim is relatively easily testable.
Edit: btw, re-reading my post I realize that I'm probably conflating toxic behavior with the behavior in the context of the discussion, which refers to players deviating from the main goal of the game and not necessarily people trash talking or trolling. But I think you can use some of the same tools to affect both types of behaviors.
Or you know, do experiment, make a mod.
Second thing you probably don't understand is why achievements were made in the first place. You are trying to repurpose them for something they are not intrinsically made for. If you want to innovate, think of something truly innovative instead. Do not try to reuse the worst of game mechanics there is. I am trying really hard to remember if I ever said: "The game is really bad, but you know the achievements really saved it."
EDIT: I think I never said explicitely achievements lead to worse behavior (other than stat addiction, which we already have. And players that don't like them leaving the game.). I think I said, that in some (well probably in every and all you can ever think of) defined achievement (e.g. "weld someone for x"), they could lead equally to good and bad behavior, so on average having no beneficial effect.
Just like trading cards or female marine player models.
Isn't this exactly what UWE has done since release?
You have described practically every feature that has ever been introduced into ns2. NS2 = one giant ongoing experiment.
Not all of the features. Some are small incremental changes, but yeah, don't get me started on e.g. metabolize, making fade strong and independent of alien economy/or healing gorges. Now even when you manage to scare fade away, you know he will be back in 5 seconds, and that is if they have only one fade.
I suppose they are, if they are tastefully made/unobtrusive. And if devs have time to make them. But trying to make out of achievents what they are not will not work.
Achievements have been talked about for years, so this is not a new discussion. It is only even slightly inline with the OP but the discussion of achievements for the most part has been quality. Do you think that if we discuss achievements here the CDT will implement it? Not unless we make a really good argument as to why development time should be spent on them instead of something else and I doubt we will make such an argument.
I loathe achievements. I ignore them. I have argued against them before. A point has been brought up that maybe achievements can help some new, maybe even old, players learn how to play ns2 if the achievements were thought out well. Since the biggest problem with ns2 is its ability to retain players I find this prospect very interesting. If a set of good achievements were made it could hold more casual players in the game awhile longer. If they stay longer they would probably learn the game better just by hours played and the achievements might help them focus on what to learn. If they learned how to play the game more maybe, just maybe they will stick around awhile.
Whats the worst that could happen with achievements? The worst thing is that they could be ignored for the most part by rookies and it would of been wasted development time. Some players might focus too much on them and less on winning the game itself. I don't think that is a serious issue with achievements because if they are thought out well and only achievements that would encourage quality behavior, like welding. Lets say a newbie decided to weld all game to get that achievement. He/she is going to learn very quick that is a bad idea. If there is one rookie in a team of veterans is it really that different if he/she only welds?
At this time I don't think achievements should be pursued by development. I think there are bigger problems to solve first. This does not stop me from thinking and discussing achievements though.
I get it. I must sound like a complete jerk, destroying undermining the inocent little idea at it's not very solid foundations. But in this case I think it must be done without mercy. It is exactly that type of stupid ill-advised idea that actually manage to get implemented because of public demand and because other games have those. I simply do not see any winning scenario in this endeavour:
BEST CASE with achievements is as I said that they would be unobtrusive - like one more option in the menu, with stats and achievement badges. I personaly won't mind having those in my game. But it is wasted dev effort. I think there are more important development priorities (and I would mind, if they were not done, because of this achievement distraction). And do not delude yourselves they can teach players to be grand-masters. As I said and examples were given, that any achievement can be interpreted both bad and good way, and will lead to both bad and good behavior cancelling each other out. I actually like the video: By all means do colored in game and in menu hints on good teamplay and sportsmanship instead.
IN WORST CASE, they would be annoying. Annoying like play 7 consecutive days nonsense pop-up or full fledged coin based economy. And devs may even try those, if they decide to put energy into this. It will be wasted effort, if the achievement system is not expanded to it's full potencial, after all. It would make money in the short run, but encourage some people, who can't stand those, to leave this game for ever. New people who like that sort of thing might not come to replace them. They will burn the gained money on changes like simplifying(not in the sense of making it more intuitive, but in the sense of making it more trivial, because that is easier) the game more and doing graphics rehash, to attract them. Those people will get bored with this game and move within year to newly relesed titles of this sort. NS2 may die prematurely or it's soul will, in this worst case. Nobody wins.
I think you are missing the point. No one is saying to have useless achievements, or suggesting a "full fledged coin based economy".
In fact, the idea that most people are pushing towards is not achievements at all, its more toward tutorials and built-in guides. Achievements, while they may be tedious to make well, are in the end, much less work then a full fledged tutorial that most people will not play.
People are not suggesting they be useless, stupidity rewarding, pat-on-the-head things you seem to be making them out to be. They are suggesting they be a gentle guide people can look at and get an idea of good behavior from (such as welding players).
But hey, its just an idea, and if you want to believe that any form of achievements, even well thought out ones that can guide rookies to learn basic mechanics, will ultimately lead to the end of NS2, thats one opinion.
In any case, the achievements suggested are an idea toward player retention and training, which is a non-issue unless NS2 gets more publicity, such as a "remastered" version, as is the main topic of the title.
You seem to be making the argument that achievements would be bad, and negatively impact the game. We both agree, at least for the time being, achievements are not worth the development time. You have yet to give a good reason why they are bad ideas or why they should not be talked about. If you have been on this forum long enough you will see that there is plenty of discussion on ideas with less merit than achievements. Should they not be talked about? Is this not a public forum?
Destroying. Stupid. Such negative words. You have not destroyed anything. What is wrong with achievements beyond development time? You seem to be making a straw man argument out of all this. Coin based economy? Your the only one who has suggested anything that extreme. Why would they consider an achievement for 7 consecutive days of play? Your the only one who has suggested anything that silly. We have been discussing the merits of achievements. Well thought out achievements that might be one facet of a hypothetical improved tutorial system.
Who would leave because of achievements? I loathe them. I can ignore them just like I do in every other game.
Stupefying the game? I think that is a bit extreme. Some little achievement like "Weld 10 Different Players" will not "stupedfy" the game. The veterans would ignore and play the same as they always have. The new players might actually use them and learn something about the game. You say those people will move on within a year, but how is this any different than now? If anything a year is too long. It seems most people move on after less than 10 hours of gameplay.
Edit: I'm amazed at how many prophetic claims @krOoze can spout though. How he gained this enlightenment I'm still waiting for with bated breath.