The problem:
I observed this in the thread about http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index....howtopic=103981" target="_blank">how to balance skill on a server</a>. Given the following quote, my own observations of issues with newbies and experienced players, and many other factors I think it is clear this is a problem with need to be addressed.

First let me give my response to this quote, then I will move on to just one part of the solution which I feel could be implemented in NS2.

...and x5 too. (I agree with your definition pertaining to skill being un-quantifiable) But on the other hand, as another already said here achievements could be used as part of a "tutorial" to help new people learn or notice things some of the things you can do.

READ THIS:
I strongly feel however that kills, damage dealt, deaths, and time played are stupid benchmarks or achievements to use. Why? Because they have no relation to how challenging the games played were, how well the user used teamwork, how well the user followed the team's strategy or commanded that strategy to specific tactics, or even how much the user is learning the game.

Part-of-the-Solution Idea Summary:
It could be argued that this problem can’t be solved completely, but there are ways to address it.
This idea is to propose using achievements to help at least point new players in the right directions of learning the game and promoting teamwork. It is also being suggested that this idea be used as a means to use that % of completed achievements as a variable to allow users entry to “level appropriate” servers with applicable reason and fairness (i.e.: a server variable / cvar, at the discretion of the server admin(s)).
Here's a far better list of possible achievements:

• ACHIEVEMENT: Time Welded
  MEASURED IN: total seconds welding a target to goal
  BEHAVIOR ENCOURAGED: welding teammates' armor on marines
• ACHIEVEMENT: Damage Healed (healspray)
  MEASURED IN: total number hit points restored to goal
  BEHAVIOR ENCOURAGED: healing teammates as a gorge on aliens
• ACHIEVEMENT: Kill Assists
  MEASURED IN: total number kill assists (non-automated defenses, allied teammate user ONLY) to goal
  BEHAVIOR ENCOURAGED: covering fire for your teammates, raising the user's situational awareness in combat
• ACHIEVEMENT: Hives Built
  MEASURED IN: total number of hives dropped and grown to completion to goal
  BEHAVIOR ENCOURAGED: spending resources on making vital structures for the aliens as opposed to...
  (you all know the drill: hoard res, waste it on dying as a higher life form vs. tech-ed up marines, wait to get sieged FTL)
• ACHIEVEMENT: RTs Built
  MEASURED IN: total seconds of RT building time (whether assisted or not in building of structure)
  BEHAVIOR ENCOURAGED: Secondary objective of building resources (unfortunately there is no way to measure defending that RT that I can think of)
• ACHIEVEMENT: Skulk-Missile
  MEASURED IN: number of multi-kills to goal with one hit of the weapon "divine wind" (xenocide) to goal IN CLASSIC MODE ONLY (assuming Combat exists)
  BEHAVIOR ENCOURAGED: Getting three hives up, Getting the resources and map control for three hives, breaking down marine turtles, and benefits for players who were gorges for most of the game and now have low resources

If you noticed, all of those encourage cooperative team play instead of stat-whoring which is the only real thing a kills, damage, deaths, or time-played achievement could result in (talking resultant behavior of). Also notice how we should be paying attention to the resulting behavior to each achievement.
(Radix are you listening? Please? )

Of course even better skills like returning to a hive under siege, bile bombing a critical marine position, a lerk using gas to suppress light armor marines, phasing through the phase gate to rush the alien hive as marine, light armor marines sacrificing themselves to keep things welded and the heavy armor marines safe, following the commanders orders (or ejecting an insane commander intentionally trying to sabotage the game), giving your buddy cover fire, staying with your buddy, etc. are sadly NOT capable of being measured quantitatively.

Thus, I can ONLY see this as be used as introductory aides specifically to help new players and anything else is just unhelpful. (i.e.: an example of a f-ing BAD achievement in ol' NS terms would be how many knife kills which results in the behavior of idiots trying to see if they can get that one extra knife kill in instead of doing something critical) In the context of helping new players learn, I feel it has a hundredfold the potential that Combat ever did in promoting learning.

IT MUST BE IMPLEMENTED WISELY!

Reasoning/Why:
Simple, the goal is to encourage behaviors that were described above while helping point new users in the right direction. The second part is that this allow for a percentage of completed achievements to be used as a server variable.

Hence, my reactions to these quotes:


No sir, I disagree. There are better ways, just use my example above. Use % of achievements completed as your server-client variable to use in the conditional.

I agree with you; this is a concern to be addressed in NS2.


Hey now! That's stereotyping newbies. I think the better way to say what you meant is:

"I [Radix] think that new players will all have different level of tolerance for trying to learn a challenge, but I [Radix] feel that NS2 may be too hard for the average tolerance for newbies to learn like NS was"

Ah that's better, aye?


We share the same goal but I reject your "acid-test" of K&D as being absurd and in practice extremely damaging to the community in the long run as FPS stat-junkies take over.


Right now the trainer servers are the only means of semi-education for new players to learn to play the game. Ego of not being able to jump right in, shunning at learning to play vs. bots, the drastic difference between playing with a bot and a thinking (usually) team of user players, or even just being ignorant of the difficultly going in are some factors that could be hindering newbies with low tolerance for learning to adapt to a challenge in trying the game once, then leaving.

It also tends to be that some of your larger servers are either full NS servers or nearly-full combat servers. Studies show time and time again (sources from XBox Live and EA's Battlefield2 & 2142) show that new players especially will gravitate towards trying larger servers first. Maybe this is because they want to "hide among the herd" where they feel they won't do as much damage to the team if they suck; who knows? What is happening from what I observe in NS for the past 2 years is that people jump into a Combat server that is large and populated and get owned. The hard core FPS Deathmatch junkies do alright on marines and learn to like it, try classic and get frustrated with the concepts of teamwork, patience, strategy, resources needed for upgrades, building structures, and many more of a myriad of things that are CRITICAL to playing the game. If you add the elitism factor and rudeness towards newbies it is no wonder why many new players give up.

Achievements could help, so could to improve the attitude and etiquette of the community towards new players. But as we all should be competent enough to realize is that the community develops AROUND the game. In other words, if our game is just about the individual's scores and one-upmanship then don't be surprised if your percentage of rude jerks goes up. If the game not only encourages teamwork and selflessness, but REQUIRES it; then I'd bet money you'd see people in the community who are passionate about having fun as a team (and are more apt to give back to the community too, i.e. the so called "prosumers")

Make sense? Are you still reading for comprehension and not skimming this? Then let’s wrap this up.


Pro's:

• Achievements such as the examples listed could be used to help “point” new players to NS2 in the right direction
• Achievements such as the examples listed could be used to help reinforce positive, selfless teamplay-oriented behaviors (which by the way, isn’t that part of “bringing the world together through play”? Hmm?)
• Could be used as a % of completed achievements as a required-to-access-server variable that would empower server administrators to make “user level” appropriate public games more balanced

Con's:

• Presents a degree of risk in that it is a departure to what we (current community) are used to an will have few people whine about it until they get used to it
• Could be poorly implemented in what the achievements are -- with benchmarks like a certain number of kills, certain lack of deaths per game, certain quantity of resources spent on life-forms or structures, a certain amount of time played, a certain number of damage dealt, and many others that would only encourage solo-ing and draw people who are only interested in their virtual stats
• Could be poorly implemented in how the % of completed achievements is used for server-entry – in that it could be abused to segregate the community or trade one kind of elitism for another

^^^ Read all of the above and then discuss ^^^

Thanks,

x5

Achievements are a fantastic way to encourage players to do things they wouldn't usually do. Instead of trying out different options or routes or whatever 'just for the fun of it', achievements actually give players incentive, even if that incentive is simply abstract 'points' that add up.

Xbox 360 is a perfect example of this. I beat the Original Halo on the Legendary setting over the course of a few weeks, simply because it was such a massive challenge. Not many players have the same kind of drive. I did the same for Halo 3, but this time around, when it was beat, i got more than just my own glory; I received all the extra Achievements. Even Halo 3 multiplayer offers achievements for random tasks, such as stealing a vehicle within 10 seconds of it being stolen from you. Such an achievement is a small deal, but it gives players reason to attempt specific tasks. After they do it once, they have the experience, and will likely do it again 'just for the fun of it'.

Achievements in NS2 is a great idea and could really tie in with not only the tutorial concept but also the matchmaking concepts.

As a learning tool, the devs could definitely add in achievements for such things as 'welded for 3600 seconds (one hour)', etc. An achievement as such could be worth say 50 points, and could even have those points be given in increments of 5 up to 25, with the final total giving the extra 25. This would let new players have attainable goals in the beginning to 'just get a couple achievement points', while leaving it open for the long-run of gaining all the points.

These points could be given in dozens of different categories, hence offering incentive for players to learn all aspects of the game. There could even be a category for damage dealt, and even for a kill streak (though elitist ones like these should be low in points, or at least one-time deals, as the focus should be on teamwork).

The other way these achievements could benefit the game is in the matchmaking process. There could be a server cvar which sets the minimum achievement points required to join. Obviously, early in the release these would be rare. But after some time, full-achievements-required servers could be seen almost as the Vet servers. If the full number of achievement points is set to something easy like 1000, it could even be used as a simple gauge for matchmaking, since servers could have a running tally of the average Points per player. Matchmaking could locate the server with the closest Points per Player to the user, and try to join.

Of course, there would need to be tinkering with the points given and the amount of work required. I would say that roughly 20 hours of 'work' should be required to progress to the full 1000 points. That is, 20 hours of NS2 gaming while playing with full teamwork. Perhaps that would actually take 20 hours if you were always getting the equipment you needed and such, and would take 40 hours under normal circumstances, and would never be achieved if you are a K:D Stat ######.

Anyways, my 2 cents. I'm all for achievements.

I read it all, but due to the severe length of it, I've forgotten everything you've said except 'put achievements in NS2'. Good job.

Nice of you to put this idea that's been kicking around in one place in a coherent form. I'm for teamplay-based achievements in NS2. I would also like to see:

Bad Sushi - X marines parasited
Handy Dandy Mechanic - X time spent building
Death From Above - Fall from at least X feet onto Y marines(as skulk)
Silent But Deadly - cover X teammates in umbra
Spider Gorge - ensnare X marines in web
Stay Away! - stomp x marines

I like.

This is one of the reasons I like the awards plugin. It helps show achievements (or failures) other than kills. Being mobile on the map, being the healing gorge, using Lerk gas, most time welding, etc.

Granted, the awards plugin only gives the top rated player, and achievements would show a set of players who fulfill the requirements, thus making achievements more conducive for multiple players being more team friendly. However, I've never had a time where someone intentionally went around welding to get the Golden Wrench award, so no worries on people playing for awards. =]

My only concern is that usually achievements plateau, at least the way they're implemented right now for Steam. If there was also a system that gave an achievement each round based on a smaller threshold, I think that would be much more beneficial. Otherwise, someone who was achievement running could simply go around one round only welding, or gorge res building, then after getting the achievement go back to pushing their K:D ratio. At least to me that's not the point. There should be some sort of award/incentive to switch up your roles on a more regular basis instead of grinding that role just to get an achievement.

--- Legendary WoT. Above this line ---

Short version:
Add achievements please.

I do have to agree though. That is a lot of words.

You skipped out some equally important facets of this idea: on the server bit and a caution about choosing achievements by resultant behavior (avoiding bad achievements).



Bad and unhelpful Achievements that must be avoided like the plague:

• ACHIEVEMENT: Killing Spree
  MEASURED IN: total enemies killed to goal
  BEHAVIOR ENCOURAGED: kill stealing, stat junkies, rude behavior towards others
• ACHIEVEMENT: Undying
  MEASURED IN: not dying once in a game
  BEHAVIOR ENCOURAGED: hiding from everybody in the game, not participating in helping the team, not assisting out of fear of risk of the first death
• ACHIEVEMENT: Damage Dealt
  MEASURED IN: total quantity of damage dealt in a single game exceeds goal
  BEHAVIOR ENCOURAGED: not helping your team by only attacking what you get good damage points for, bias towards certain weapons for their damage rather than gameplay function, friendly fire intentionally against players or structures to exploit extra damage points
• ACHIEVEMENT: Time Played
  MEASURED IN: total time played in hours and/or minutes to goal
  BEHAVIOR ENCOURAGED: intentionally dragging out a game for everybody to get a goal (games should be long because the teams are equally matched and fun, not because of apathy to progress due to a conflicting goal), people feel required to play the game too much in their lives to hurry to this achievement (causes negative real-world impact due to where a day's time is being spent too much)

What ever is implemented make sure it is both fun, helpful for point the newbies in the right direction, and encouraging the behaviors that we all hold most dear to this game such as the team attributes such as selflessness, constructiveness, communication, assisting, etc.

I disagree, but only slightly. I think that overall the achievements should encourage teamwork most of all. But you could still have a few that reward skill or even more isolated game scenarios. Perhaps a kill streak of 10 could be worth 30 points, and dealing 3000 damage in a round could be worth 30 as well. But these would be one-off achievements.

The bigger achievements would be ones like Welding. Get 5 points for every 2 full minutes of welding, up to 50 points for 20 minutes, but when you hit 20 minutes, you get a bonus of 50 points. So, there's the incremental points as you progress, and then a big fat bonus for completing the achievement.

Some achievements CAN be more elitist-driven, like an overall damage achievement, but you can easily balance these by low scores and/or high requirements. But for the ones that are to the benefit of the community, such as the ones that encourage people to learn parts of the game and use teamwork, give them lower requirements and higher points.

Another example; 50 points for killing 10 marines with only two bites and a parasite each (with them having taken no other damage). Perhaps give 5 points for the first one as well. This alone would teach players the most efficient early-game kill method.

But wouldn't you be risking the "slippery slope" effect? There are so many good ones to be had -- even ones that may not serve a particular purpose, but could be fun and perhaps humorous. (ie: terminal velocity, from portal)

PS: I'm all for letting the community decide (vote?) what the titles of these achievements should be.

The slippery slope effect has nothing to do with game design. Such an effect means that once you give in on one thing, you'll give in on the next, and the next, etc. In games, the devs place a line, and that line never moves unless they decide for it to move.

I'm just saying that you shouldn't alienate the more traditional goals of a videogame. Traditional goals for Shooters are obviously dealing damage and getting kills. While NS2 will be focusing more on teamwork and such, it could still pay small homage to the other aspects of Shooters with a few smaller achievements. Have perhaps 80% of the achievements be dedicated to promoting 'proper' gameplay and player development, with the other 20% be dedicated to the traditional types.

There's another small aspect of achievements that should be mentioned.

Say they totalled 1000 attainable 'points', and in the TAB scoreboard anyone could see anyone else's points. Tailor the achiements so that a teamwork-oriented player could have them complete within 2 weeks of somewhat dedicated playing (an hour a night?).

That sounds like it would be approximately the amount of time it takes a player to surpass the NS1 learning curve. Of course, NS1 takes a lot longer than that to master, especially since a large part of mastering NS comes with intimate level knowledge (and there are 17 official classic maps right now?).

But if you give objectives for a new player to overcome in his first couple weeks, it would be an innate helping hand. Make them easily visible, perhaps with their own shortcut in the main menu, under 'Find Servers'. That way, people who are new to the game and start asking questions could have people tell them 'try to earn all the achievements'. They would then check them out, and come back asking perhaps, 'what does it mean to kill a marine with bite bite parasite?'.

Used as a quasi self-learning tutorial, the power of achievements is massive.

*new, impluse idea*

Or rather just an icon for (like constie, PT, dev, etc. icons) shows up next to the name on the scoreboard (if there is one in NS2 at all) of those who have completed all achievements?

i really like the idea of achievements, mostly because it will bring extended game life and varied game experience.

some player will not bother with achievements untilt hey are bored of the normal game, and some people will just like doing them for the fun of it

The achievements need to be carefully designed though, so that they enhance gameplay and create well, fun!

I can imagine alien achievements would be very fun :
e.g. how long a skulk can hang on to a marines back, extra points for cumbersome HA and extra points for riding a jetpacker lol

or onos crushing people by jumping on them
amount of people knocked over with a single onos charge ...


I think a funny (but possibly annoying one) would be Turtle achievement for the commander, basicly by not spreading out but only creating an impenetrable fortress of turrets, mines, welded obstacles in marine spawn, and seeing how long you can hold out



would these acheivements give cause for awards though? like icons on your name? or medals/bagdes on your armour? battle scares on alien players?

Phew.

I'm strongly against using those "stats" to restrict access to some servers. Not only it has the risk to divide the community, it would also encourage some people to abuse the system so they can access X or Y server.

What can we do to prevent those players to setup their own server and "achieve" whatever they need to? Given the small budget, i believe official/ranked servers are not an option there.

That said, i don't mind having achievements in NS2, if it is just for the "fun/look at my icon!" factor. Especially if it can encourage players to use teamplay, etc. Heck, even just for a fancy icon in the scoreboard, some idiots might abuse it...

I agree with Drogg on this on.


If I understand this correctly, there will be certain goals to gather achievements and after you achieved "everything" you get a (or the highest) fancy icon.

New players don't stats###### anyway and their lack of teamwork is mostly because of the overwhelming new things they have to learn.
While this seems a very good idea to point new players in the right direction as already mentioned multiple times before, it won't do anything to enforce teamwork in the long term nor decrease statswhoring.
After you gather all those achievements, you can proceed with statswhoring, if you are sick of building stuff, just like some clanplayers do in ns right now by running straight to the hive.

Don't take me wrong, I'm supporting this idea, but I'm also wondering, wether it maybe would be smarter to have the achievements either wearing off slowly, if you won't keep up the teamwork, or to add some sort of a 2nd reward system enforcing teamwork in the long term.

You seem mistaken about something.
Natural Selection is a game about killing not welding.


So I agree with:


I also disagree that achievements for kill streaks or lack of deaths or other combat-related achievements cause undesirable behaviour. They've done it in battlefield 2 and I never saw that it created rambos or stupid behaviour (of course that has a lot to do with the flow of the game).

And I've gotta say, if you seriously hide for a whole game waiting through all that boredom so as not to die, you've got some admirable determination.

I think all this talk of misbehaviour is unwarranted, there'll always be undesirable behaviour but I'd say they're simply anomalies. There's always going to be someone playing for achievements (if they're there) or kills/deaths, and there will even be a few that will have the determination to ignore everything else and do stupid/boring things to get those achievements.

The greatest strength of the achievement system is encouraging diversification and breaking routine - and as an extension of that, encouraging players to learn (all aspects of) the game. But if you don't encourage killing people as a skulk, or a fade, etc. where's the incentive to learn those roles? Or is Natural Selection going to turn into a competition of who can weld/heal the most? Please.


I do understand that having a kill streak achievement may ruin the game for others and perhaps undermine teamwork, but it's just a one-off thing, no? But even if it weren't to go in, I have no idea why you wouldn't want damage achievements - or why you would choose, in ANY situation, a lower damage weapon to a higher damage weapon if you had the option of a higher damage weapon (as x5 has suggested that people do) that is better at killing members of the opponent team.

However, dealing damage really isn't much of an achievement in NS (considering someone can be medpacked, or regen health. However, it does give new players incentive to learn to aim). Kills are.

But if you're still so averse to having (many) strictly kill-based achievements, then what about achievements that total both kills and kill assists (which will be going in, right? Right?) - it's a better indicator of what you've done to the other team, by extension: what you've done for your team - and rewarding kill assists encourages sticking together: team behaviour.

Agreed.

Statswhoring by ignoring all other tasks is one thing, but sooner or later everyone should at least be ok-ish in aiming and movement to cause more damage, to avoid to be killed and thus contribute more to the team.
If kills, kill assists, deaths and whatever else are just a little part of the whole big archievement thing, there should be no problem with that nor with people only focusing on this part.
Eventually you'll be in a team full of supporters, welder-guys, healers and you either have to learn or get defeated easily.

agree whit the_x5

ACHIEVEMENTs should be in but not killing spree or things like this..

achievements who improve gameplay and teamwork are a way better way to make the game more fun and interesting as simple kills

vote JES for achievemends

That's incorrect. Many elements of gameplay difficulty are quantifiable such as upgrades or classes. Further, you're missing the primary goal of a matchmaking system entirely - to remove the rage factor of dying to a superior technical player.

Without the need for ranked servers, the devs could place restrictions on these achievements. Perhaps that the games need to last longer than 15 or 20 minutes, and that the playercount needs to be higher than 10 or so.

Again, the kill and damage achievements should just be one-timers. Whereas the more team-work ones should be longer term.


How does this sound for a list of achievements?


50: Cap an RT within the first 2 minutes of a game as an Alien, 20 times.

50: Cap 50 RTs as an alien.

50: Drop an MC in the first 2 minutes of the game, 5 times.

50: Drop a DC in the first 2 minutes of the game, 5 times.

50: Drop an SC in the first 2 minutes of the game, 5 times.

100: Drop a hive which built to completion, 10 times.

50: Get 3 kills from a single OC, 5 times.

50: Take 2000 damage in a single Heavy Armor suit, 3 times.

50: Fly 1000 feet in a single JP, 3 times.

50: Get three kills with a single mine, 10 times.

50: Weld armor for 1000 seconds.

50: Weld structures for 2000 seconds.

50: Kill a lerk with a hand grenade, 10 times.

50: Build marine structures for 1000 seconds.

50: Weld 100 weldables.

50: Pistol kill a fade when you dealt less than half the damage to kill him, 3 times.

50: Winning 3 games as Commander (spending more than 75% of the time in the chair).

20: Get a kill streak of 10 as a skulk.

20: Get a kill streak of 10 as a marine.

20: Deal 5000 damage in one round.

20: Take 5000 damage in one round.

20: Kill over 150 res of aliens with a single HMG.

Total: 1000 points.

900 points are for longer-term teamwork-related objectives, while the final 100 are more twitch- and aim-related objectives.


I think a list of achievements like this would take roughly 2 weeks of dedicated playing to fulfill. That is, if a player was playing at least an hour a day, and was keeping an eye on his achievements, always with a goal in him mind.

I also think the achievements page should show up-to-date progress. Most 360 achievements don't do this, whereas I believe its the Orange Box achievements that do. As in, the achievements area in-game says '30/50 glowies killed' or whatever.

Now that I think of it, there are still no achievements for a lot of things. Such as devouring HA, killing onos or gorges, killing hives, killing structures, biting RTs, even using the 'request order' command. The achievements could obviously be tinkered (and a bunch could be lowered to 25 instead of 50), but I feel that that list is a good starting point.

I'd recommend at least grabbing the ones in the current awards plugin found here: http://www.nsmod.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=329

It includes stuff like number of Onos devours (titled Hungry Hungry Onos), most Primal Screams (I am Lerk, Hear me ROAR), and most heal sprays.

It also has a few comical ones, or I guess anti-awards. Such as died with the most res in equipment, Minesweeper (guess what that's for), or most deaths due to electrification (Fork in Socket, man I love that title). Probably can skip these for the achievements. I mean, unless you see an advantage to getting killed on mines.....

I also am against making servers that require certain stats/achievements. If you care that much about having a non-n00b game, make a private passworded one.

Let's consider a scenario.
NS2Player, your average FPS player, has just finished welding a set number of armour/building points. And hey! He just got an achievement!
"Hey, that's cool. I actually got something for all that time spent holding a button. Let's see what else there is."
He then proceeds to get the achievement for RTs Built and then Kill Assists, and then by some stroke of luck or skill manages to singlehandedly kill 5 skulks in succession without dying.
And that's not the easiest thing in the world.
So, he's going to get an achievement now, right? Right?
WRONG.
"Wait, what the f-ck. Where's my damn achievement?!"
Poor misguided b-stard.
-
Do you see what you've done? You're cheating them of their expectations. And you're not a cheater, are you?
-
And even if you told them there were no achievements for kill/death/damage-related things beforehand (I would advise you didn't - you might as well say 'This is a team game, people that wanna play first person shooters can F-CK OFF.'); they would simply think
"well, that's kinda lame. why would they have achievements but none for kills? this would've been better if they had..."
It would've been better, indeed.

So, Harimau, that was in favour of what I was suggesting? It sounded negative and came right after my post, so I was confused

Oh, no, not necessarily.
It was against the suggestion that there be no (or even severely limiting the number of) kill/death/damage-based achievements.


As for the various life-form-specific awards, then Yes. I like that idea.
Actually, allow me to quote myself:


Also, I do like the under-achievements idea ;P (Include being-devoured 3 or 5 times in one round, for example.) It should be broadcast across the server when someone gets that non-award. It'd be hilarious.

Under-Achievements is an idea that would be a first for an actual dev team to implement. Sure there are the goofy Unreal 'DOMINATION' ones etc, but NS2 could implement the idea in a much more classy way.

What about the same types of under-achievements that we have in plugin form right now (Fork In Socket: most electrification deaths, etc), but when they are achieved in-game, a small news ticker goes by on the bottom of the screen or such? Instead of the 'most' achievements, perhaps it would be more like '10 elec deaths', or being devoured X number of times, or devouring X number of times, etc.

Could be fun. And if it was a small news ticker that goes by at the bottom of the screen, it would be a semi-classy way of showing everyone a funny, random stat.

New Revised question:

Should the focus be more on helping newbies learn to play the game?

That question is filled with an extreme amount of bias toward the former, or rather, against the latter.

Are you referring to acheivements that lock out players vs those that don't? Something broader?

Yeah it's a pretty stupid question. The focus is obviously not to "segment the community".

I could have sworn we have already had a thread talking about achievements. At any rate achievements should be used purely for fun and generally are only a reflection of how long someone has been playing/doing a specific task. Achievements/ranks are not an accurate representation of skill (especially in a team environment).

A game that I think does a great job of ranks and achievements is World in Conflict. You can view my profile here WIC Profile

Rank is a reflection of total points and leaderboard position. Leaderboard position is determined by total points in your last 20 games (and decays over time). Rank is never used to balance play but to give people a general idea of who has been playing longer.

NS can implement similar achievements and ranks. I will not rehash as many people have given suggestions for specific achievements. In summary, if implemented ranks and achievements can add an element of replayability and reward players who stick it out.

Achievements (combined with stats-tracking) can be used as an indicator of experience, though. So you could rank players based on experience, eg. Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced.

Yes to both questions -- the second yes referring to the wide context as discussed in other player skill balance and hypothetical matchmaking threads.

The one thingy you're missing is that your achievements are hardly suitable for ns gameplay as we know it. If achievements take a lot of time to get, people just hang around lategame not even trying to finish the game. TF2 achievement work because, there isn't tech, lifeform and map control advantages and most of the awards are done in a few minutes.

If you encourage people doing something that takes 20 minutes, the quickest way to get it is to stick around in the part of the game you can do it. The old /skill stats all over again, people sporing and spiking while they could be onosing the base down.

Awards can't really unlock servers. A good player on some multiplayer can rack up kill and adapt in the ns gameplay in a short period of time. Now you might be forcing him to play on low-skill servers for days or even weeks.

A bit pessimistic about the trends of human behavior, but you make a good point. There will be bad apples.

Let me ask you a few questions that approach this topic in another way:

Isolating the achievements thing from the server-balancing thing, meaning that just the achievements alone are there and it doesn't affect server access at all.
1. Would you be in support of this idea if it was just achievements?
2. What would you say to those that make a valid point about the difference in player skill level a game will see years later in its life?
and most importantly...
3. Are achievements enough, in your opinion, to cause significant improvement in player behaviors, such as cooperative teamwork?


A second reward system would be preferable, decaying achievements is just a horrible idea. In truth, it would encourage players to waste their lives trying to maintain their level, making NS2 disgustingly close to one of the primary vices of a MMORPG. Of couse, everybody is different, but why stress people out with maintaining their achievements? If you combine that with the server access aspect of my original two-part proposal, then you have a real issue where old friends you used to have fun play with couldn't get in the server simply because they haven't played in a long time. Furthermore, it assumes people forget their learned skills completely which just isn't true (unless you have clinical memory loss).


You don't have to put emphasis on the FPS-stat type of achievements because the game is an FPS.


Yes, my core desirable outcome for the idea I'm proposing in this topic was indeed about reinforcing teamplay behaviors and having some fun doing it.


1. Yes I know many are quantifiable, but some would make poor choices to have as achievements.
2. No, I'm not blind the primary goal of the matchmaking system, nor do I think I would describe it as an antidote to a "rage factor". The matchmaking system is about making the game balance and by proxy theory, therefore more fun to play in multiplayer.

I'm starting to feel combining this "achievements idea" with server access in the same thread was poor foresight on my part... It's creating confusion and detracting from the most important idea here.


One by one:

50: Cap an RT within the first 2 minutes of a game as an Alien, 20 times.
vote yes
Fantastic, this will both help new players be aware that capping resources early is important and encourage that behavior right off the bat. Perhaps you should make this achievement split up into multiple levels (i.e.: 20 times, 60 times, 100 times), that way new players are reminded and realize they can get more achievements by repeating the same behavior.

50: Cap 50 RTs as an alien or marine
vote yes, to both
Resource collection is a vital aspect of teamplay in Natural-Selection (though it is often neglected in NS by "pubstars" who just expect somebody else to do it), and will almost certainly continue to be important in NS2. Reinforcing that behavior of vigorously going after resource nodes from early on with new players (without having to get yelled/complained at by frustrated teammates) is a excellent idea. Again, this might be best to break up into multiple achievement levels to hammer the idea home and provide extra incentive. Try an exponential (instead of linear) in this case since the task is clearer, (5^x)*10: 50 RTs, 250 RTs, 1250 RTs. And lastly make sure it such that it is measured in RTs that you helped build, or this idea will be ruined by people fighting over capping an RT for themselves (instead of working as a team to cap it). If both teammates can get closer to the achievement by working cooperatively then that does wonders for reinforcing teamplay as well. (and introduces new players to the power of multi-build -- when multiple players building the same structure divide the time needed to build that structure)

50: Drop an MC in the first 2 minutes of the game, 5 times.
I'm neither for no against this. If chambers are unchained in NS2 this could be a good idea, but if they are not then this could cause problems.

50: Drop a DC in the first 2 minutes of the game, 5 times.
I'm neither for no against this. If chambers are unchained in NS2 this could be a good idea, but if they are not then this could cause problems.

50: Drop an SC in the first 2 minutes of the game, 5 times.
I'm neither for no against this. If chambers are unchained in NS2 this could be a good idea, but if they are not then this could cause problems.

100: Drop a hive which built to completion, 10 times.
vote yes
Hive building has always been vital for the success of the alien team. (Any idea why the alien team frequent fails to rush to get the second hive up in NS public play? I never understood that apparent laziness...) Again three level may be wise here on a strictly power of ten exponential scale: 1 hive, 10 hives, 100 hives. There is a very specific reason for the one hive level of achievement: new players won't know what a hive is, by congratulating them right away on the first one it draws attention to this being a very, very important behavior to the gameplay (which of course it is).

50: Get 3 kills from a single OC, 5 times
vote yes
This is kind of a stat-like achievement but it has another function that makes me support it inspite of that: building defenses / holding territory. Plus I like the way you worded it, if it's what I think you meant. What I think you mean is, "3 marines killed by one particular offense chamber, unless it is destroyed, five different times in your playing of NS2, non-consecutive." You'll have to be more specific, but it's good that you put it as a "number of times to hit this minimum" instead of a straight, cumulative summed-up minimum. The difference is that if it's a sum total then players will tend to just spam OC's without regard to keeping them alive n' running. By wording the algorithm that way, you are not only encouraging players to put the offense chamber in an area where it will see action, but also that they must keep it alive long enough to get the minimum three kills, and repeat that performance five times at minimum.

50: Take 2000 damage in a single Heavy Armor suit, 3 times. [is that per life?]
Hmm... At least you put, "single Heavy Armor suit", as that makes a huge difference. (it reduces the solo factor because if you die you don't get it). I'm not convinced on this one, yet. It has potential to be a good achievement, much more than the next one I dare say...

50: Fly 1000 feet in a single JP, 3 times.
vote no
...why? This doesn't teach any useful behavior. So you can fly. So what? Maybe if it was a map-specific maneuver that is difficult to do. This is kind of... useless?

50: Get three [or more?] kills with a single mine, 10 times.
vote yes, with some trepidation
As much as I am loathe to risk encouraging mine spam this rings as a humorous type of achievement, this does have one great lesson to teach: place your mines wisely. (i.e.: strategic placement for maximum effect and use of resources, such as on an IP, PG, or RT)

50: Weld armor for 1000 seconds.
vote yes
No reason not to include this!

50: Weld structures for 2000 seconds.
vote yes
No reason not to include this!

50: Kill a lerk with a hand grenade, 10 times.
vote no
Remember the Award's Plugin from NSMod.org? Remember how many, not a just some or a few, people in the server (usually Combat, tbh; and especially if it was a bot server) would constantly try to get the knife-kill achievement? Or the "pistol whip" achievement? Apparently it was amusing to be of no help to your team while you tried to knife attacking aliens. Furthermore, why encourage nade spam? Do we want every vent in NS2 to feel like the TFC's original dustbowl map when blue team tried to leave 2nd spawn through the firey gate of incessant nade-spam? Please god no...

50: Build marine structures for 1000 seconds.
vote yes
No reason not to include this!

50: Weld 100 func_weldables.
vote yes
Cool way to encourage players to explore mapper-created triggers

50: Pistol kill a fade when you dealt less than half the damage to kill him, 3 times.
Is it worth risking having some players trying to do nothing all game but get attempt to prove they can get this more complex achievement?
(readers, answer that question for yourself before responding) Personally, I'm actually leaning in favor of this idea.

50: Winning 3 games as Commander (spending more than 75% of the time in the chair).
vote yes
Winning is game as a commander against a competent, competitive, equally-matched alien team is immensely satisfying. Anything more to celebrate and inflate the ego of a new player so they learn to savor such a victory is excellent. But how do you make it so that it isn't something people can just "fake" to get it? (i.e.: playing against easy, severely-nerfed bots)

20: Get a kill streak of 10 as a skulk.
vote yes
Meh, basic/introductory enough for me to support it, despite being a FPS-stat-like achievement

20: Get a kill streak of 10 as a marine.
vote yes
Meh, basic/introductory enough for me to support it, despite being a FPS-stat-like achievement

20: Deal 5000 damage in one round.
vote yes
Meh, basic/introductory enough for me to support it, despite being a FPS-stat-like achievement

20: Take 5000 damage in one round.
um, repeat?

20: Kill over 150 res of aliens with a single HMG.
vote no
Wrong weapon to encourage: use the flamethrower, GL, or shotgun.
Achievements for destroying alien (or marine) structures is a good idea, just fix the weapon with one players should be using for maximum effectiveness.


Good suggestions! And yes progress updates are good too. (Who's hosting the achievement-tracker server and with what money? Will Valve host it at no cost to UWE?)



Then expand & revise the list already!


And it also has horrible ones like the ones for knife kills and pistol kills which are proven to cause a significant people to act completely stupid.


Fine. I revised it.


Unless, the achievements are simple enough or clever enough not to make it something people would want to do over winning the game.

Will a few people always resource hoard for a higher lifeform when a hive is needed or build a gorge fort? Some things you can't eliminate the risk of, but there are ways to reasonably reduce the risk so you can and equilibrium with maximum benefit and minimum risk.

I wasn't unaware of or "missing" that when I posted this topic originally, but perhaps now you can see why I feel strongly that some suggested achievements are better than others.

Sounds like a good way to get new players to do their "team's" works =].

Here is my suggestion for an achievement, and I call it "Rank".

YET, not the normal ranking system that you see in almost every game that gives the player a higher status rank because of his or her kills.

I recommend a *individual* Teamwork ranking system, meaning your kills wont count unless your with a teammate or within a certain radius of the commander's waypoint. ( This promotes players working together instead of going off solo to improve their rank, while giving marines yet another reason to follow waypoints =])

Achievements are fine as long as they do not interfere with gameplay.
To translate this: Dont give benefits out for completing an achievement!

I hate it in TF2, if you want to have those new cool weapons, you just think about "hmm what achievement to get next", then you concentrate on getting that achievement and you get frustrated on a public server.
So you join a crappy achievement server and do them there.

Have the achievements related to team based and building goals.

Like: Put up two hives in one game.

Drop three Sensory Chambers.

Drop three Defense Chambers.



Help construct a phase gate.

Weld a single teamate for over 400 armor.

Kill an Onos with a marine in their belly.


You can even have commander mode achievements to promote commanding.

Win a game as commander.

Build 200 structures.

Takedown a hive as commander (Siege turrets would do the trick, or credit for just having downed a hive)




But I agree that things like, "Killing spree" don't belong. The TF2 stats already show what your highest score is for each class, and isn't included in the achievements. So it isn't needed.



Creative, and Team-Oriented Achievements are good. And I think most people would agree.

We can spend hours thinking of fun/cool achievements to get, but what about the reward for achieving them all. Someone suggested an icon, like the consti icon. Maybe you could choose different skins, like a marine with a blue helmet or something, or a skulk with glowey eyes.

maybe achievements could be granted to teams or squads rather than individuals....


e.g. if a team on a given game, achieves say all 3 hives in the fastest time to date eveyone on that team on that server gets an icon attached to their profile until another team on the same or different server breaks the record.

A similar system could exist for rine squads or teams, if they either achieve something or break a record in some central database they get an award attached to thir profile but they get the award attached to the squad or team rather than the individual. When viewing their profile you could click on the award or record and see all the other players that helped achieve it and the date, server and any other info

this would demand team work for awards and records

of course a weakness wtith this is players leaving and joining server mid game do they or dont they get the award or record , how do u work out their involvement, the other problem is some players may contribute nothing to getting the award their team got and will still get it attached to their profile, but this can be the nature of team play.

if the records and awards are chosen well this maybe minimal. and the records after theyve been broken a few times should be out of reach of teams where one or two players arnt playing ball.

Indeed, but in this place it is best if you exemplify your point so other readers can see what you mean.\

StixNStonz had running, brainstorming list I replied to. Could you please point to some of those, or perhaps some of the others mentioned (or some new ones), so they could be discussed in greater detail?

That might be nice as long as random teams are on. Otherwise it might turn out to be a nasty little stack. I'm still a little worried about the prolonged games, but that at least eliminates the completely individual stats driven gameplay when it comes to achievements. New parasites per minute and total assisted frags might be somewhat useful indicators for teamwork.

There always the possibility of that, but of course appeasing and controlling ALL possible aspects of recalcitrant group behavior is, regrettably, impossible. At least I'm sure we could agree that the pro's of teamwork-oriented achievements outweigh the possible cons that could arise, aye?

PS: Considering PsympleJester made a new thread on this topic apparently it needs to be brought up again for newer visitors. Please try to use search people. Nobody's perfect but we need to remember to try search, please.

This topic has been dead for a couple of months. I prefer to link it for those interested in reading it and letting discussion continue in the new thread in these situations.

A high kill to death ratio suggests an invaluable player. I understand that there are many other ways to measure skill and to be useful to the team, but I seriously doubt that anyone has enough twitch skill to get a high K:D ratio without intimate knowledge of alien lifeforms, alien strategies, marine strategies, and marine technology. Not to mention intimate knowledge of the maps being played (which means lots of play time). All of those things are necessary for getting a high K:D ratio. However a high K:D ratio is not necessary to being an invaluable team-mate.

But yeah I like achievements, and no they should definitely not centralized around kills/deaths/damage, as those things come secondary to strategy (although there are certain players who can wander into the alien hive and practically win the game for a team).

K:D ratio doesn't really have anything to do with achievements. A "knife ten skulks" achievement would not be indicative of skill at all, nor would it be a good team oriented goal. Since achievements are bad at describing skill team oriented achievements are better because at least they mean a player knows how to work together with his teammates.

Your list of achievements in based upon your definition of teamwork, which I believe you do not clearly define. My definition of teamwork is that people using their strengths to cover up their teammates weaknesses to achieve victory. Most NS players think teamwork is a bunch of marines hanging around each other so much to make up for a lack of male intimacy that was not experienced when they were younger. Allow me to explain further.

The most successful teams in NS pub or competitive using their own strengths to a degree of efficiency over the other team. Meaning if you have some guys that can really shoot, you let them go off on their own to contain the enemy in a location, while the other team members go around and secure resources and put pressure on nodes. You however do not want to reward those players who are contributing SO much to the team, just because they aren't around other teammates, does NOT mean they are not contributing to the team, or are not team players. They are simply using their talents to the best of their ability for the benefit of the team. Why not reward these players for their talent? Its not the team with the most tackles or interceptions that wins the game, its the team with the most points. Kills in NS are the most crucial aspect to winning the game, which is often ignored because of the popular maladaptive teamwork definition.

If you want to reward the hustle stats such as welding and healing, be my guest. But not in place of the kills or K : D. I see no reason why one should be separated from the other.

Your elitism argument is marginal at best. There are elitists in every single skill based event/game in the world, including online play. If people do not have the skin to see through some mean comments once and a while, then really they have no business subjecting themselves to an environment where a severe lack of skill/talent could be detrimental to one's own ego/self esteem. And why do we need a stats system to reward newbies anyway? New players aren't 5 year olds that need a candy everytime they do something right. There have been MANY games that grew without any concept of stats system implemented by the developers.

and Truthfully, I'd rather have the FPS-Junkies, then a bunch of people who can only weld and heal spray. Without those people who can put points on the board, all the hustle stats in the world do not matter. You want to reward players for doing things that while are important are the LEAST skillful actions in the game. Is that really going to promote the game NS2 is intended to be? I don't think so in the long run, as it will reward the mediocre/lower standard deviation skilled players over the average/higher standard deviation skilled players.

Fair enough firewater I didn't define teamwork, but then again as an optimistic-leaning person, I didn't think I had to explain something that trivial. A bit of naiveté on my part perhaps, pardon me.

With that said, it is easy to highlight the flaws in an idea or concept while quite more challenging to present your own case for what should be done and how the existing idea can be improved. Thus far, see some fair points mixed with some slippery-slope pessimistic fallacies, but I do not see your action plan. Where is your new & improved, full-version edit of the original idea? Criticism is welcome, but constructive criticism is much better.