I just remember how Wings of Liberty did their 'Achievements'. I found them completely useless. And you had to complete them to unlock content THAT I ALREADY PAID FOR!!!
Ok, getting down off of the clock tower now...
Nothing to see here. Move along.....
Only things you could unlock in WoL through achievements were avatars + unit decals, both of which are cosmetic. Essentially show-off rewards.
It's not like they made you complete them to unlock units or anything lol
EDIT: I guess I should actually post on topic while I'm here then:
I think that achievements are a cool way of adding interesting things to do in a game. Good achievements are the ones that either (a) Showcase your skills so you can show off or (b) Give you a new perspective or idea on how you should play.
An example of (a) is "Complete Chapter X without using any Magical equipment" An example of (b) is "Complete a playthrough where every character joins your party for a considerable time"
However, achievements would always be more of a side "Cool things to have" list rather than solid content. There is the obvious argument of whether or not it would be worth the developing time and effort to implement an achievement system, and I think that unless adding that sort of thing is quite trivial to do (which I highly doubt it would be), it's not worth the time.
EDIT 2: Trading Cards are a different story. That's mostly a feature of Steam, and the only variable I know of that affects you getting Trading Cards is your playtime*. That would mean that as long as Steam has record of you playing the game, that could be implemented.
*FTP games work differently with Trading Cards, with you requiring particular tiers of in-game purchases to be able to unlock the Cards. This is irrelevent here though.
One of my major complaints about acheivments is that I suffer a little from OCD, and some acheivements are totally ungettable, stuff like Win 10000 multiplayer games. Basically they can be really lazy. Now if a bunch of achievments are all like this then it doesn't bother me. If however, I have completed every achieivment in the game bar 1 or 2 of the ridiculously difficult ones, then it really bothers me.
Back in my day, we used to play and explore games because we liked those games, not to impress the anonymous internet crowd.
Yes, because everyone who play World of warcraft,Starcraft2 or Diablo3 are just "achievement hunters"
See, the problem I have with a majority on this board is that they can't see things co-exist. You can't enjoy a great game and have achievement at the same time.
In my eyes there's simply no real point for achievements. When I want to talk to my friends about the cool stuff I've experienced in a game I'm playing I can do so without needing some little picture with a catchphrase in some profile window. Everyone else is consequently just anonymous internet guys I have no direct contact with.
Is there really any point in talking about BG2EE achievements when there is a good chance that the game isn't even ever coming out?
I honestly think they do, because both parties have an invested intrest in it at the end. Also, they wrote ". Rest assured that we will find a way to bring Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition back, along with Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition."
In my eyes there's simply no real point for achievements. When I want to talk to my friends about the cool stuff I've experienced in a game I'm playing I can do so without needing some little picture with a catchphrase in some profile window. Everyone else is consequently just anonymous internet guys I have no direct contact with.
Do you really think I discuss achievements first with my irl friends or even sister and brother when I recommend games?
Also, sometimes achievement is a good wake up call. Sometimes I go back and check my account and see how many achievement I miss, and why is that. Sometimes it can refresh my memory that I still missed out on many things in a good game. Like for ex Fallout 3 which has an achivement for every side-quest and exploration area. Now obviously if the game is crap I wouldnt wanna play it again. But then again, I sometimes like to collect rare achievements - thats right. If steam for ex says 0.1% have this achievement, and its a hard one, I might go for it. Yes, maybe its my ego boost to say, look I and only 0.1% of every Total War gamer manage to finish it on Legendary, so what? It let me knows I'm one of the better players out there and I understand the game on a higher level. Clearly that achievement is for me and others who wanna challenge themself and let them know how "Hard" it really is to get it.
Now I know that modding usually prevents achievements, or cheating in general, depending on what game. But lets say baldur's gate 2 had an achivement to finish the game on the hardest diffculty "insane" I suspect very much that there would be a 0.1% as well. I think many people think they are expert's at a game, or rather say it over the forums, but clearly arnt as good as they claim. And many will be exposed for the noobs they are And yes, maybe thats what scare some people.
Also, I just checked the final fantasy 7 achievements.
Only 10% have got the Yuffie and Vincent one. That is 2 optional characters, and they have their own optional story - I mean, the island of wutai is probably a couple of hours long.
But see what achievements can expose? People missing out content that they never knew about.
I usually ignore most achiements in games, though I get why people like them. My guess why they weren't included in the EE is that they weren't in the original BG so might seem out of place to the fan base, most of which grew up without fancy achievements, heck we didn't even have online games when I was a kid. We also walked to school, uphill both ways. And we liked it!
I just remember how Wings of Liberty did their 'Achievements'. I found them completely useless. And you had to complete them to unlock content THAT I ALREADY PAID FOR!!!
Ok, getting down off of the clock tower now...
Nothing to see here. Move along.....
"Content that I paid for" Achievement profile pictures are clearly a way to let people know what you done in the past or not. Yes, someone with the Achievement 500 win with protoss is an easy way to say- look im good with Protoss, we can do 2vs2 together etc. This system was already in Warcraft 3. Not to brag but, I was the 4th guy in Europe to get the 1500 win orc Achievement profile picture.
Which is perfectly fine for people who actually care that others know how you are doing. I don't play games to brag about my successes to others. I play games to have fun. If I need to complete X challenge just to unlock a given map that I paid for already, why?
Instead of having predefined achievements, go DIY! Players are able make up a name and description for an achievement, and award (or not) to themselves. Everyone can click on the achievements to see what crazy-ass route others took to victory (Solo no-reload bard, wand of polymorph only, no use of magic items....)
I can understand a small desire to have an official validation of achievements (kill count in Fallout/Baldur's Gate. heh, neat), but I don't understand the great urge to have achievements. What does it say about a player who stresses the importance of achievements and wants them on launch day? Is it an addiction? Ego from the internet site validation? Obsessive collecting of meaningless points? Once you start, you can't stop? What?
You've hit my exact question squarely on the head. I do not understand why people want them. However, I am curious as to why people demand them with such eagerness, and would really (genuinely) like to know, as just about everything I can think of or has been talked about has an alternative.
Ha! More like I restated your question then repeated it. XD
My guess is it's a need to collect things like hockey cards, with a goal of collecting as many as possible. Or at least collecting the most important ones.
What if it actually all started with Pokemon (at least for video games)
It is really strange that this thread is so looong. Why you so badly are asking about not including it? It won't hurt your precious little old game. Problem with those achievements are exactly the same problem like with DLC. It was recently used a lot with such bad manner. But you know? It was used by those who wanted to use, and because of the choice everybody is happy.
And most importantly everybody can use it in anyway he/she wants; will or will not loose immersion, get crazy little endorphins released because of it, will tell the whole world about your achievements or lock the profile (so nobody will see it), or just simply won't use achievements and never check them at all. Seriously if some people use something in stupid way its their problem.
PS. To the @raxtoren you can easily make a change and move it to feature request part.
Ok, lemme try posting this again. My internet is wonky
I despise achievements for most games. They are immersion breaking annoyances that just bloop at me while I am trying to either listen to an important NPC talk or line up the perfect headshot. The witty title followed by the "you just killed x amount of this. Way to go!" Just irks the hell out of me. Let me play my game god dammit. I do not care.
Now that is for most games. Some games, I enjoy achievements, like Civ5. Why? because it is less immersion breaking and most of them are for finishing the game using different settings and or countries. You get that feeling of accomplishment as another box gets ticked off. Others are little tongue and cheek things that you actually do to get the achievement.
So I get both sides of the issue. If there was an option to turn achievements off an on, I'd be more ok with it. They're can be some quite challenging ones for BG2 like:
"Read every possible dialog option. Multiple play throughs allowed." "Collect every book in the game." "Kill Drizzt with a PC elf named Drizzt." "Finish the game with Edwina in your party"
So it can't be all bad unless they get lazy and bloop me for finishing a chapter or killing x amount of goblins. Or scoring a critical hit. Or rolling a gnome. If they are like that, I'll be looking for the off switch quickly.
It is really strange that this thread is so looong. Why you so badly are asking about not including it? It won't hurt your precious little old game.
It would take some time away from other things the team could be doing. Thinking of achievements is one thing, but they would have to write checks to know when the player's save file has hit an achievement point.
Mostly, I think we're just passing time while waiting for the patch to be released and to hear about BG2EE.
I was more thinking of the fact that in Pokemon Red and Blue you had tiers of achievements for how many different pokemon you'd captured. Like Professor Oak would say different things if say you had 40 vs 151. I'm sure there were other video games that preceded it that had something similar but its the biggest example that comes to my mind anyways (while still being a fairly old game).
It is really strange that this thread is so looong. Why you so badly are asking about not including it? It won't hurt your precious little old game. Problem with those achievements are exactly the same problem like with DLC. It was recently used a lot with such bad manner. But you know? It was used by those who wanted to use, and because of the choice everybody is happy.
And most importantly everybody can use it in anyway he/she wants; will or will not loose immersion, get crazy little endorphins released because of it, will tell the whole world about your achievements or lock the profile (so nobody will see it), or just simply won't use achievements and never check them at all. Seriously if some people use something in stupid way its their problem.
The point about not including it is this: why take any time away from actual development (no matter how much time that may or may not be) to include something that will be entirely outside the game?
Personally, I think Steam should do away with the achievements and move entirely to the cards, as both mean about the same thing with regards to being in-game. Which is to say that they have nothing to do with in-game material. Cards are given simply by leaving a game running, without actually 'playing'. Unlike adding something like multiplayer, the achievements on Steam and GFWL do absolutely nothing but give bragging rights to people who think other people care, or to people who require some 'encouragement' in order to do something (implying that they wouldn't be bothered otherwise, I suppose? Why are they playing the game, then, if they cannot be bothered to explore it?).
I can understand someone using something 'in a stupid way' if it was something that actually impacted something in-game. So far, I've seen only a couple of intelligently-put comments regarding this from @raxtoren and Dee, but in each scenario it can be shown that achievements are not paramount, usually far from it.
So, again, I would ask: instead of avoiding a discussion and telling people to 'deal with it,' what would be... forgive the wording, achieved by added achievements to a game that hasn't needed them in order to thrive for the last fifteen years, and why do people put so much stock into something that isn't essentially part of the gameplay?
Also, sometimes achievement is a good wake up call. Sometimes I go back and check my account and see how many achievement I miss, and why is that. Sometimes it can refresh my memory that I still missed out on many things in a good game. Like for ex Fallout 3 which has an achivement for every side-quest and exploration area. Now obviously if the game is crap I wouldnt wanna play it again.
Ah. So you need Achievements to tell you how to play the game and tell you where every last secret is in the game? That is called "spoilers" where I come from.
Lemme tell you something. I have been playing BG practically since the game came out 15 years ago. I still learn new things and find new secrets in the game that I never knew about. I love it that after all these years I can still learn something new ON MY OWN. Baldur's Gate is a game of MANY easter eggs. Having a thing to tell you where all the easter eggs are just so you can get a thing for seeing them sucks the fun and enjoyment right out of the whole discovery aspect.
"I've traveled the length and breadth of Faerûn, and there's always something new." Volo
But then again, I sometimes like to collect rare achievements - thats right. If steam for ex says 0.1% have this achievement, and its a hard one, I might go for it. Yes, maybe its my ego boost to say, look I and only 0.1% of every Total War gamer manage to finish it on Legendary, so what? It let me knows I'm one of the better players out there and I understand the game on a higher level. Clearly that achievement is for me and others who wanna challenge themself and let them know how "Hard" it really is to get it.
Now I know that modding usually prevents achievements, or cheating in general, depending on what game. But lets say baldur's gate 2 had an achivement to finish the game on the hardest diffculty "insane" I suspect very much that there would be a 0.1% as well. I think many people think they are expert's at a game, or rather say it over the forums, but clearly arnt as good as they claim. And many will be exposed for the noobs they are And yes, maybe thats what scare some people.
Really? Afraid of noob exposure? I can tell you that is the LAST thing on my mind... Screw that; It doesn't even enter into my mind as a reason that I do not want achievements! I actually find such an implication rather insulting. I may not play super duper SCS hardcore mode on insane difficulty and all that. I may also reload like mad and always make sure my character is as powerful as they can possibly be. So what? I am not playing this game nor taking part on this forum or even volunteering as a beta tester for the express purpose of gaining popularity and prestige. I do these things simply because I enjoy them.
Now I know that modding usually prevents achievements, or cheating in general, depending on what game. But lets say baldur's gate 2 had an achivement to finish the game on the hardest diffculty "insane" I suspect very much that there would be a 0.1% as well. I think many people think they are expert's at a game, or rather say it over the forums, but clearly arnt as good as they claim. And many will be exposed for the noobs they are And yes, maybe thats what scare some people.
You want to kill the modding community and prevent people from playing the game the way they want to, just so you can troll a few people on forums and saying they're not as 1337 as you are? Get a job.
Achievements are not important to me but that doesn't mean I can't live with them. I just hope the developers will implement new content and iron out any bugs before adding achievements. First things first!
I'm saying that Achivements doesnt unlock with mods/cheats usually, not that you can't play with mods.
How would you check for mods/cheats/save editors having been used?
How the f would I know? i'm not a programmer working in the industry - wakey pakey dummy, I know though that if the game detect cheat/mods usually the achievement system get disabled.
Comments
Don't know if they had to do something for steam etc.
It's not like they made you complete them to unlock units or anything lol
EDIT: I guess I should actually post on topic while I'm here then:
I think that achievements are a cool way of adding interesting things to do in a game. Good achievements are the ones that either (a) Showcase your skills so you can show off or (b) Give you a new perspective or idea on how you should play.
An example of (a) is "Complete Chapter X without using any Magical equipment"
An example of (b) is "Complete a playthrough where every character joins your party for a considerable time"
However, achievements would always be more of a side "Cool things to have" list rather than solid content.
There is the obvious argument of whether or not it would be worth the developing time and effort to implement an achievement system, and I think that unless adding that sort of thing is quite trivial to do (which I highly doubt it would be), it's not worth the time.
EDIT 2: Trading Cards are a different story. That's mostly a feature of Steam, and the only variable I know of that affects you getting Trading Cards is your playtime*. That would mean that as long as Steam has record of you playing the game, that could be implemented.
*FTP games work differently with Trading Cards, with you requiring particular tiers of in-game purchases to be able to unlock the Cards. This is irrelevent here though.
See, the problem I have with a majority on this board is that they can't see things co-exist. You can't enjoy a great game and have achievement at the same time.
". Rest assured that we will find a way to bring Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition back, along with Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition."
I trust them.
Also, sometimes achievement is a good wake up call. Sometimes I go back and check my account and see how many achievement I miss, and why is that. Sometimes it can refresh my memory that I still missed out on many things in a good game. Like for ex Fallout 3 which has an achivement for every side-quest and exploration area.
Now obviously if the game is crap I wouldnt wanna play it again.
But then again, I sometimes like to collect rare achievements - thats right.
If steam for ex says 0.1% have this achievement, and its a hard one, I might go for it.
Yes, maybe its my ego boost to say, look I and only 0.1% of every Total War gamer manage to finish it on Legendary, so what?
It let me knows I'm one of the better players out there and I understand the game on a higher level.
Clearly that achievement is for me and others who wanna challenge themself and let them know how "Hard" it really is to get it.
Now I know that modding usually prevents achievements, or cheating in general, depending on what game.
But lets say baldur's gate 2 had an achivement to finish the game on the hardest diffculty "insane" I suspect very much that there would be a 0.1% as well. I think many people think they are expert's at a game, or rather say it over the forums, but clearly arnt as good as they claim. And many will be exposed for the noobs they are
And yes, maybe thats what scare some people.
Also, I just checked the final fantasy 7 achievements.
Only 10% have got the Yuffie and Vincent one. That is 2 optional characters, and they have their own optional story - I mean, the island of wutai is probably a couple of hours long.
But see what achievements can expose? People missing out content that they never knew about.
Also, entirely satirical, something that seemed fitting...
It won't hurt your precious little old game.
Problem with those achievements are exactly the same problem like with DLC. It was recently used a lot with such bad manner. But you know? It was used by those who wanted to use, and because of the choice everybody is happy.
And most importantly everybody can use it in anyway he/she wants; will or will not loose immersion, get crazy little endorphins released because of it, will tell the whole world about your achievements or lock the profile (so nobody will see it), or just simply won't use achievements and never check them at all.
Seriously if some people use something in stupid way its their problem.
PS. To the @raxtoren you can easily make a change and move it to feature request part.
I despise achievements for most games. They are immersion breaking annoyances that just bloop at me while I am trying to either listen to an important NPC talk or line up the perfect headshot. The witty title followed by the "you just killed x amount of this. Way to go!" Just irks the hell out of me. Let me play my game god dammit. I do not care.
Now that is for most games. Some games, I enjoy achievements, like Civ5. Why? because it is less immersion breaking and most of them are for finishing the game using different settings and or countries. You get that feeling of accomplishment as another box gets ticked off. Others are little tongue and cheek things that you actually do to get the achievement.
So I get both sides of the issue. If there was an option to turn achievements off an on, I'd be more ok with it. They're can be some quite challenging ones for BG2 like:
"Read every possible dialog option. Multiple play throughs allowed."
"Collect every book in the game."
"Kill Drizzt with a PC elf named Drizzt."
"Finish the game with Edwina in your party"
So it can't be all bad unless they get lazy and bloop me for finishing a chapter or killing x amount of goblins. Or scoring a critical hit. Or rolling a gnome. If they are like that, I'll be looking for the off switch quickly.
Personally, I think Steam should do away with the achievements and move entirely to the cards, as both mean about the same thing with regards to being in-game. Which is to say that they have nothing to do with in-game material. Cards are given simply by leaving a game running, without actually 'playing'. Unlike adding something like multiplayer, the achievements on Steam and GFWL do absolutely nothing but give bragging rights to people who think other people care, or to people who require some 'encouragement' in order to do something (implying that they wouldn't be bothered otherwise, I suppose? Why are they playing the game, then, if they cannot be bothered to explore it?).
I can understand someone using something 'in a stupid way' if it was something that actually impacted something in-game. So far, I've seen only a couple of intelligently-put comments regarding this from @raxtoren and Dee, but in each scenario it can be shown that achievements are not paramount, usually far from it.
So, again, I would ask: instead of avoiding a discussion and telling people to 'deal with it,' what would be... forgive the wording, achieved by added achievements to a game that hasn't needed them in order to thrive for the last fifteen years, and why do people put so much stock into something that isn't essentially part of the gameplay?
Lemme tell you something. I have been playing BG practically since the game came out 15 years ago. I still learn new things and find new secrets in the game that I never knew about. I love it that after all these years I can still learn something new ON MY OWN. Baldur's Gate is a game of MANY easter eggs. Having a thing to tell you where all the easter eggs are just so you can get a thing for seeing them sucks the fun and enjoyment right out of the whole discovery aspect.
"I've traveled the length and breadth of Faerûn, and there's always something new." Volo
And then there is this: Really? Afraid of noob exposure? I can tell you that is the LAST thing on my mind... Screw that; It doesn't even enter into my mind as a reason that I do not want achievements! I actually find such an implication rather insulting. I may not play super duper SCS hardcore mode on insane difficulty and all that. I may also reload like mad and always make sure my character is as powerful as they can possibly be. So what? I am not playing this game nor taking part on this forum or even volunteering as a beta tester for the express purpose of gaining popularity and prestige. I do these things simply because I enjoy them.
Toughness: You have played for 10 days without restarting with a new caracter.
Get a job.