Multiple awards in the set #718
Replies: 20 comments 83 replies
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Bonus-type achievements needs a different treatment, they need to be isolated. Most bonus achievements are not something that players should be expected to endure. Bonus IS a trash bin; you could look at it like that. It's like NG+++ for people who've mastered everything and still want to toy with the game. These challenges need to be separate from the rest or we need to completely scrap bonus sets. They usually do break the rules for what is considered good achievements; e.g. too hard, glitch based, or maybe just an overflow when a set gets super bloated. I'm all for the tiered awards as presented; great approach.
Sure, if you want to make mini-sets to feature a hack, why not. This needs to be handled carefully, otherwise it'll get messy. |
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In my opinion Bonus type of achievements really don't need a seperate treatment, if the set will be "quasi open" (offering not only one award).
Additionally we could prearrange that bronze+silver (with completion) will be 100% of the whole set, and gold+platinum will be additional 100% (giving 200% in total).
@GameDragon2k suggested we could use subachievements here, creating single but complex challenges based on unique features. |
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As I understand it the main goal is to merge Core and Bonus and then give you trophies based on total percent of completion. When there are super hard challenges present a platinum trophy level is available. |
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An approach for dealing with bonus content. Players would be able to choose in the emulator which bonus content they would like to go for, leaving off what they're not interested in. Keeping them separate will allow for core sets to remain focused and balanced, not end up bloated or overly difficult, while offering all kinds of content for those who wish to have it, as bonus, as in extra, optional content. Everybody wins! |
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As I understand, both someone with 80% completion and someone with 100% completion would have platinum badges, is that correct? In this case, wouldn't people think 100% completion should award something better/unique? Also, as badges would be even more the focus of RA, wouldn't people feel incentivized just to reach 75% of a game instead of 100%? On the other hand, if someone with 100% completion would have a better/unique badge: what if I want to make an insane difficult cheevo, like WR tier or very close? Nowadays I can do it because they fit in bonus sets (specially in the original idea where they didn't even award a badge), but what about in that system? Let's say I wanna do a cheevo in which only one person in the world is currently able to achieve it (to incentivize someone else to get to that world record level, for example), would only those one/two persons in the whole world be able to reach the 100% completion and no one else? |
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Hey fellows, I was focused on other parts of the site and was leaving this subject to a later moment. But as this topic is in vogue I think it's time to step in. I'm speaking as one of the programmers who probably will help on the implementation of what is being discussed here (tagging the other nerds: @ScottFromDerby, @GameDragon2k, @Jamiras and @luchaos). And although I think it's possible to implement such schemes, it would be a hard work (many changes on the site, on the integration and on RetroArch). I tend to be resistant to what adds complexity. I'm always trying to simplify things. And while thinking on this topic I found an approach where I can see these advantages:
My proposal
P.S.: After looking for related issue-threads I realized that I'm kinda giving more input for what @kdecks proposed in this issue moved to RAIntegration's issue tracker. |
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Right now I think about giving awards only for what would be considered a core set, and anything alse would bring additional procentage and points. For example if you would get both core and bonus achievements in Mega Man, you would have 150% Platinum, with just core you would have 100% Platinum. About single achievement with exceptional difficulty - doesn't those achievements a proof enough of your deeds? Why everyone forgets about value of single achievements themselves? This could also create a possibility to include multiplayer achievements in the same pool (you could earn regular awards with multiplayer achievements, if it would be possible for you), or any other extension to add more to the beyond 100% procentage. Achievements which currently qualifies for bonus or multiplayer could be properly marked (with specific tag, or even additional overlay element). There also could be additional feature to hide bonus and mulitplayer achievements, if they are disturbing by any meaning. This system honors all players, not only completionists, but also keeps everything, which really don't need to be seperated in one place. Completionists are not the only type of players to consider, and I think this soultion could be attractive to them regardless. Not every single player aims for all achievements in the pool, and here you have several goals to aim for. I think this system is the most attractive for largest group of player - those who joins the site just to play games. If someone obtain 5 achievements from a pool of 40, they will have 12,5% of whole set in old system. In new system they will have 50% of bronze award, and I think that could motivate more to stay an play the game more or return to it to reach the bronze goal. There is also a matter of potential issues, and technical problems of implementing a system where something is seperated. It will require more complex structure, and might make other features harder to implement (like any change in the point system, which desperately cries for the change in my opinion). This Multi-award system technically would only use procentages and numbers with graphic overlay for game icons. |
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Old thread so I apologize if this is in the wrong place (let me know if I should post elsewhere), but I had some related thoughts/ideas. In my experience, there are a few main "types" of achievement hunters:
Making all 4 of these types of achievement hunters happy can be pretty difficult! meleu wrote some good points on complexity/confusion:
In addition to the ideas from the posters above, I think one thing that could reduce a lot of subjectivity/confusion is this idea: Wario Land is a good example of "kinda difficult but represents in-game content / in-game acknowledgement / in-game reward": These achievement from SMW though are not represented by in-game content, and have 0 in-game acknowledgement (even though they are not seen as "extremely difficult" by most players, they are not acknowledged in-game): The goal should be that more people want to do bonus set-type material - not that core sets get "easier". If the game HAS in-game content for something very difficult, then I think it's just a hard game (Metroid is another example of a game with built-in speedruns in its in-game content). What's pretty much necessary here is with the v2 promise that Core+Bonus can be earned at the same time on the same hash. This reduces complexity/confusion/subjectivity because it's no longer about "what is difficult or not" - it simply becomes "is this challenge acknowledged by in-game content or not?". This means completionist-style players can be rewarded with a "core set mastery" by fully experiencing all the in-game content, with achievements driving them towards interesting easter eggs, full collections/completion/side quests/etc. Challenge Hunter players can focus more on bonus sets and rack up big points for difficult achievements / unique challenges not represented in the game such as deathless runs, strange condition runs, and "what if" kind of challenges. This gives a very simple, clear definition of "core set" and "bonus set". |
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I wouldn't mind discussing something like this futher. With all the new implementations and features we're getting might be a good time to revise this idea. Being able to tag achievements to count towards a specific tier style seems to be a way of doing things and allowing for people to complete a set without having to do everything a developer wants to put in to a set or a developer holding back on content or having to split it up and people having to swap to a patched rom (soon to not be required hopefully). Take for example my Final Fantasy I (PlayStation Portable) Set. This set could be broken down into a few categories. [Progression] [SideQuest/Extras] [Collection/Completeionist] [Subsets]
People who may just want to do progression only and move on to another game, they could at least showcase that they've cleared just the completion in some form instead of being stuck at like 40% of the game's completion and hurting their overall ratio. Random mock-ups I did as examples
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This is easily the most in action and visualized version of the ancient tier plan. Now it just needs to happen, maybe with room for a 5th glitch/bonus tier |
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I guess you could technically merge SideQuest/Extras/Collection/Completionist into one Tier. Prog / Extras/ Subsets & Bonus could work with just 3 tiers |
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We currently give badges out for 5 second sets. the 4 tier system or 5 tier system is still the way to go |
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Slight nitpick, but I like colored borders more than stars. There's a lot of great artwork on the site- I feel like stars obscures it. |
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This is similar to what was discussed in a staff meeting near the end of last year so I'll try to summarise it here and see how it overlaps.
For consistency earning all achievements in a set would reward a gold mastery badge even if the set is missing the Content tier (due to being a simple game) or the Challenge tier (due to having no developer imposed restricted achievements). With the core/subset merge looming on the horizon I'm in favour of keeping them to their own badges (perhaps separated from normal badges on the site visually but that's outside the scope of this discussion). With a lot more data now since we have many more subsets on site, we can see that they could easily be split using this tier system. For subsets that are largely challenge based, we could instead repurpose bronze/silver/gold based on difficulty since all achievements are either dev enforced or glitch showcases. This has the added benefit of encouraging users to attempt bonus sets like the one for Super Mario World and being able to secure a badge without having to earn every achievement, making progress in those sets visible over time. If the set dev is unwilling to segment the set in this way, they could instead opt to have all achievements be gold tier. Tagging is the big thing here, with achievements being tagged 0/1/2 on the site for each tier. This could also be a good time to tag missable or secret achievements since it could be marked in a different field, 0/1/2/3 (with 3 meaning both secret and missable). Initial mockup: Sample set: |
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Plenty of games have all their challenges and collections wrap up before the final boss. I mean, it'd be a little silly, but not inconceivable that someone could do everything except final boss in that situation. Not a big deal, requiring progression before awarding additional tiers feels harder and more special-casey, code-wise, so an 'any one, any two, all three' system makes sense to my programmer brain. |
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I think one of the biggest problems and I've said it over and over in here is that people are looking at tiers like it's a new points system. We already have a points system in place for the weight of a specific achievement. We need to find a way to make it just be a separation of content to people can get a complete badge without having to do all the extra stuff in a game a developer wants or has put into a set. |
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Alternatively, we could do like PSN where they show up individually for it like tele mentioned for subset merger here - #1057 (comment) |
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That does look good, they even have it showing the individual achievements of each tier within each dlc. Not sure how that would look like with our mastery wall style but it'd probably work on something like completionist.me |
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Love me some insets like that subset merger image. |
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As mentioned in #687 (comment), a lot of older games don't really have a clear-cut Completion point.
Would those games just not have a Progression category and everything be under Challenge? |
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The Dev conduct mentions that arcade style games are exempt from the progression rule when they focus on high scores, and we can use that as those game's progression. For Donkey Kong's Game A/B it comes down to what we consider optional. You don't need to beat A to play B yet both are available on the title screen, so it becomes a decision between considering both of them required or both optional. I don't believe we'll ever have a set rule on what constitutes progression and that's okay, each game will need a individual look and we have the QATeam to discuss with now which wasn't around when that comment was made. |
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They just simply wouldn't have progression like void said, similarly to how some sets won't have a Silver/Gold category. For some Aracade games usually there's a level where once beat it loops over so if a developer wanted to make a "Progression Tier" for a game that has that, I personally wouldn't see an issue for it. |
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i think tiers are an awful idea. It's a ton of work for something that ultimately doesn't accomplish much. People are still going to complain about challenges being too hard for the challenge tier, or certain in-game content being in the content tier. I think there's way better ways of removing the "all or nothing" approach to being rewarded for playing a game. |
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"Not my fault it's in the game" is what I live for, unfortunately the backlash is harsher for these scenarios because it locks people out of having a shiny badge and 100% - Which is why I want more people to bring input here and figure something out that gets a general "yes" without being overly complicated and 15 tiers long. |
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Honestly I like the idea of tiers in achievements, I think the tiers could be subjetive and decided by the devs and how many of them add, example: Progresion There are games than could have a max of 2 tiers or even none for how the game is, like the Gundam game for Virtual boy could just have 2 tiers, beat all the levels and kill all enemies. My idea for differenciate them could be custom colors for the tiers (choosen by the dev), in the same Gundam game, the beat all levels tier could give a white border (like the icons) after getting them, and the Kill all enemies a red one, and if you complete both you receive the traditional yellow border. In this particular game is imposible to have the only the kill all ememies cheevo, but you get my point. So with the borders any player could go and see in other's user mastery icons and ask, why this icon have a border of this color? Put the cursor on top and it says: [Name of the tier] mastered(HC)/completed(SC) (date) I feel like this could give more freedom to the creation of tiers and add a simple way to differenciate them. And with this the 'progresion' tier could not give any border in particular, just say than you mastered or complete the tier. Or even the complete badges could have a incomplete border, insted of a complete line a dotted line, keeping the same colors as mastered and the tiers borders. (Maybe will be better if I post this in the main topic) |
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I'm also opposed to tiers, as I don't see any real benefit and I believe it will lead to further arguments and/or make developing sets less desirable. A lot of games do not have a clear end point - I see the solution is "Well, they wont have a progression section" or "We'll pick a high score etc to be the completion", but that seems kind of arbitrary. If we're going to split up the achievements in sets, but then only some sets have x tiers, won't it be confusing? It's more work for the developers, more controversy, without much to gain. I get there are some players complaining about sets being too hard to master, but is the solution really to give them a badge for simply "beating" whatever section of a game we define? They have the achievements to show they have done whatever feat, or finished the story of a game, why do they also need a badge for that? Maybe make it easier to show off achievements with a showcase, as mentioned, but I don't think much is needed beyond that. That's my two cents. |
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I don't see how it's more work for the developers. It would be just adding a tag or a checkbox to say what category it's part of? Some games don't have specific tiers? Might encourage other devs to revision to add the missing tiers. I really don't get the part of more work more controversy, the reason for it is to be able to put whatever you want into your sets without having to limit yourself because people will still be able to obtain a badge and if they decide to do the extra content or challenges or massive grinds you can get an indicator saying you did it... I've left out quite a bit from some of my sets because people who be angry because of how much of a grind it would be, but I for one love a good grind. Maybe its the early 2000's 500 mmo grind mentality I have but 🤷 |
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If a decade in we can't even define this split Challenges: Beat a boss without dying, beat a stage without dying, Beat the game without dying, Beat X using default weapon, speedrun this level Vs Brutal Challenges: Beat the game without killing anyone, Beat the game without damage ever, Speedrun the game never jumping or using weapons and the game is mega man 2, Beat the game while blindfolded and tied to a llama Then what are we even doing. Progression = easily defined Now if you do 3 tiers you are in challenge hell yea |
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Man though doesn't that just break an unwelcome concept? I mean, I guess there is a point, but it's so obviously ridiculously grindy. |
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It depends on what type of "content" it is. As an example, in Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise there is an in-game certificate for playing for 50 hours. Technically content, right? I don't believe that should be an achievement however; playing for a certain amount of time with no skill/no required input from the player involved is not something worth noting. Note that I said "in the main set". I agree that there needs to be separation, but main set and bonus covers that - why split it further? Because people don't play bonus sets? That's probably due to the fact that the grinding or incredibly difficult achievements are unreasonable to 99% of players. |
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It's not to split further just because. Were looking at it as a way to make more options available. I'm sure there's plenty of people who just want to play through the story and have something to show they beat the game but don't want to look and collect every collectable in the game to make sure they get that badge or have to worry about doing damageless. You start splitting up more and more into subsets and it just clogs up pages on thr website and each game has 6 pages at thay point. If you bundle most of it up like we do now and give people the option of the content they want to clear and get something to identify that they beat the game or did more beyond that it would be an option. |
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As it stands a lot of games have damageless, I'm sure a ton of people would be happy to not have to worry about damageless to get the base badge for just besting a game but then if you want the "challenger" identifier to say you did all the challenges in the set you can do them and have something to show for that too. |
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The point of separating Core (in-game recognized content) and Bonus (out of game ideas, unrecognized challenges such as "beat the game without jumping" etc.) isn't to load up Core with a bunch of grindy/painful stuff that's technically "in the game". No one is saying that a dev MUST include an achievement to play 1,000,000 Versus matches in Melee or other such grindy stuff. It's more about making sure devs aren't putting completely made-up, out-of-game, unrecognized-in-game challenges into Core base game sets. It's a clear separation between "I 100%ed all the actual content in this game" and "I did a bunch of awesome challenges for this game, like beating it damageless and never using healing items while under level 10". When Core and Bonus are playable at the same time without patching this will make it so much easier |
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It's an achievement hunting/completionist website so those are clearly the goals. If you are someone who just wants to "beat" a game - you get the achievements relevant to what you did. You do not get a badge. |
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As getting to the sweet spot of how tiering should be handled will likely take a lot of theory crafting and then a lot of work on site, I would like to propose a temporal quick (or so I hope) solution to this that can work as a base for the future:
This solution ignores the fact of having to divide ingame content, challenges and glitches, it is just "Progression - Core Set - Bonus Set" but I feel this would be enough for the community while a bigger and better solution is made, as this encourages casual people to play on hardcore and getting a nice badge on their profile while maintaining mastery as the bigger goal, as currently people don't have a way of showing their games if the don't 100% master them. |
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Honestly, I'm not opposed to this idea. It's like a middleground where you can get a badge but not have to complete it, but if you do maybe gives you a different color border if you 100% every achievement. |
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Not a fan of this. The issue here is this emulates psn which is already really flawed in its setup. You are essentially proposing that all achievements of different categories thrown into the set together to get completion status. That's the flawed system we already are in. You think of this as simple but forcing glitch achievements, and brutal mr perfects on players will cost the site more players. |
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It wouldn't count towards your 100% complete and badge, the extras would simply give you sn indicator or over 100% you wouldn't have to clear everything for a badge. It's the same concept as different badges for subsets and such just simplified into something we already have with a tweek |
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This idea is mainly a way to tweak the current system as little as possible to reward players on an earlier point than the 100% master, it's still has most of the flaws of the current system, but it would work as a hotfix for casual players now that softcore doesn't matter a lot and to start working on the structure of how tiering would work internally, as a cheevo categorizing feature is needed in any kind of solution (and it's also useful to mark missables in a better way). |
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I'm not really a fan of the PSN Platinum system, I think it breeds a natural confusion between "platinum" and 100%ing a game. RA should be trying to reduce confusion since it already has a lot of very confusing things, such as 100% vs. 200%, softcore/hardcore, needing to patch between core and bonus + all the built-in confusion just setting up RetroArch and all its obtuse settings. All of these might sound minor to experienced RA players, but these confuse new people all the time and I guarantee it makes a lot of people leave and never come back. |
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I think the idea of tiered badges is wonderful, but I wanted to express my ideas for showcasing tiered badges as well because that is something that hasn't been brought up yet (I believe). This is for the following arguments:
I made some photoshops with over-exaggerated borders. This obviously won't be how they look, but it gets my point across well... I hope. This is how I would not prefer it. I made two example of how I would prefer it. The first example keeps the showcase exactly as it, but uses separators for every tier. The second example uses tabs instead, which has my personal preference because it makes the highest tier still stand out as much as they should.
(Ideally I would also like to separate hacks, unlicenses and homebrew on the mastery showcase but that is a discussion for another day that doesn't apply here lol) |
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@Xeinok-Pals To add to your idea, there can just be "Default" boards that have the option to change if any artist wishes to submit a change just like the current system for badges. |
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I agree with Xeinok, I feel it should be a uniform design instead of manually redesigning every badge to give them a unique border. At that point the only thing that really needs to be done is the discussion of when a game falls within a specific tier, and that's something that would probably have to be done manually. |
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Borders are one of those things that half the community likes but the other half hates. If an idea comes around that eliminates them, I don't think it's the end of the world. |
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I don't like the idea of separating badges. One of the appeals of the tier system is showing your progression for a franchise all together, even if you can't get the highest tier in all those games. If I played all Wario games, but 2 are in Gold, 1 in Silver and 2 in Bronze, it defeats that purpose. This is how I'd display badges. Only 1 badge shown per game:
I think 3 tiers is enough, if a game in particular needs more "achievements groups" (grindy collections, level 1 runs, etc.), then any number of subsets can be used. |
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I only think certain subsets (Bonus/Multi/CollectablesThatShouldReallyBeInTheCoreSetButAren't) should be included in that and the rest stay their own seperate thing, the 50 billion pokemon challenge runs probably aren't necessary to get the full pokemon experience and some subsets can be difficult/meaty enough to be worth the seperate badge |
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I love this idea. I fully support it. It allows for people to collect badges for their favorite games. It rewards those who put in more effort.
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I've been on the site since 2015, so maybe I'm a little reluctant to changes, but I'm personally not in favor of splitting achievements into tiers, but I'm not fully against it. I'm more in favor of keeping all the achievements together (not including sub-sets & bonus, I'll get to those), but maybe categorizing them on the game's page instead of all the achievements lumped up together in a massive list. So for example you'd have a category for your standard progression/story achievements, another category for collectibles, challenges, etc. with the ability to hover your mouse over the achievement thumbnail for a description without having to click into it. Here's a rough idea of what I had in mind: I do like the idea of having a badge for just beating the game. I know there are a few games out there where they don't exactly "end" but I feel there's some line we could draw to consider it "beaten". I feel having the ability to get badges (not ones as flashy) for beating games would entice more people to play more games. As for sub-sets and bonus sets, I feel these should stay the way they are, especially bonus. I would love to see some design changes to the site regardless. If we go to a tier system, I do like the look of what Nepiki posted as a prototype design of having games categorized by their award instead of solely looking at colored borders. I propose the idea of making the masteries list a scrollable window instead of a massive list, and have the options to customize how games are displayed (Alphabetical, Date mastered, point total, etc). Same with a beaten games list. Here's a rough idea of what I had in mind |
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I like this idea of at least having the option to separate/categorize the types of achievements in each set. What you are proposing is essential an organization option that could be toggled on or off. I'd imagine that each set would need to have each achievement flagged as Progression, Collectibles, Challenges etc in order for the website to organize them. We could have the best of both worlds where they can all be in one giant list, like they are now, and categorized as you propose. I like it. |
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I'm strongly in favor of this idea. A few thoughts I had while reading through the discussion so far: The biggest benefit of this system would be in its potential for drawing in and retaining new players. When we become deeply invested in a community like this, it's easy to lose sight of this greater perspective. This is a common pitfall you see all the time with MMO development: updates are increasingly focused on the most elite players while the early game is off-putting, ultimately resulting in these games gradually dying as the veteran players eventually move on. When I first joined RA, I was intimidated by some of the ridiculous achievements in many of my childhood games, and I assumed there would be very few sets I would actually be capable of mastering. Although I eventually realized I was capable of far more than I expected, it took a while to get to that point, and many potential users would likely bail before overcoming that hurdle. We're all attracted to RA because we place value on the concept of achievements. I've seen some comments suggest that such a feature would be unnecessary because it's already covered by sites like Backloggery, but the key difference here is rather than manually organizing the completion status of your game collection, RA provides a way to actually prove what you have accomplished. When you play a game outside of RA, beating or completing it are both major milestone moments, and it only makes sense that they should be rewarded within this sort of system. I struggle to understand the "participation trophy" argument, because isn't that what RA is at its core, just a bunch of small recognitions that "you did it!" for that extra dopamine rush? From a personal perspective, this feature would motivate me to play sets that I have previously ignored due to perceived difficulty. Reading through the Discord conversation, I see that I'm far from alone in feeling this way. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there were situations where earning the silver qualification would be that push I needed to go just a tiny bit further to complete those last few super hard challenges for the mastery. It's ultimately a system that gives players far more options in how to approach their game playing, rather than the strict "all-or-nothing" that is the current implementation. I do think it's vital that this system be implemented in a way that does not remove any existing features, however. As a mastery hunter, I place great emphasis on the number of total masteries as seen on the global leaderboard, and would hope that anything short of a full mastery would not increment this number, as that would entirely change the meta and devalue masteries. Ideally, I would like to see a separate number for each tier. One of the most common arguments I've seen from veteran players is "why would I go for the mastery when I can get the badge just for beating the game?", and while I do not necessarily share this way of thinking, I do think it is important to somehow visually present the mastery badge as a far greater accomplishment than lower tiers. In what form this may take, I'm not sure, but this is an issue that seems to be important to many. Finally, I think it's worth noting that the introduction of this system would inevitably lead to a certain amount of infighting. There will be disagreements on things like what exactly constitutes beating a game, or whether or not certain extreme challenges that are technically included within the game should count toward the silver tier. There's inherently a certain amount of subjectivity that goes into trying to define these sorts of things, and it will never be possible to outline a comprehensive list of criteria that applies to all games. Still, the rescore initiative has shown what the most dedicated members of this community are capable of (as well as the kind of fallout that can occur), and none of this should be interpreted as a reason not to proceed with this project. |
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I share Sting's concerns about emulating the PSN achievement model, which I think is awful. I'm concerned about making too many tiers and diluting things so much that it all becomes meaningless. I kind of understand the over arching goal, but the implementation has a lot of risk. I'd advocate for not changing the concept of "mastery" - that is getting all available achievements in the primary set. I think "mastery" should remain the primary showcase reward for set accomplishment. "Completion" badges really kind of feel like participation trophies to me and to have them prominently displayed and potentially nearly indistinguishable from "mastery" badges is a big mistake in my opinion. Someone at some point mentioned a concept of badges for "mastery" as we currently have them and stickers for "completion". If the sticker icon was noticeably less impressive then I think a model like in SHANEvsGAME's second picture is doable. I'd like the option to hide completion though as I think there will be a sizeable portion of folks who don't value it and don't want it displayed on their profile. |
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I've got no idea how this would be perceived by the "veterans" mentioned in the thread but a recent idea that I had would be a Titles system. Each game would be split into drop downs like seen in SHANEvsGAME's first picture with separate groups of achievements joined under a category (can't think of a noun for progression but examples like 'Completionist' for 100% in-game content, 'Secret Discoverer' for easter eggs, 'Speedrunner' for timed challenges and stuff in the current Speedrun Showcase subsets, 'Hacker'? for glitches etc.) with each title having it's own completion percentage. Examples like mentioned above would have their names agreed upon and feature in most sets consistently, with other titles for game or series specific challenges as well. Some of these would then have their own badges like with current subsets (one off the top of my head would be solo class FF games being 'Lone Thief' with the badge of that class perhaps featuring everyone else in the party dead with the thief holding a trophy for every single class) to signify particularly difficult challenges. I think this fixes a current problem I have with mastery badges being their value. Genres like JRPG's have in my opinion much easier badges to gain than platformers or action games because of the vastly lower achievement count/difficulty due to their length, and placing these next to each other on the profile makes them look like they took the same amount of time/effort. By giving specific challenges like low level or damageless runs their own spot, it could show just how much effort you spent mastering a game, as well as exactly what you had to do rather than a more generalized mastery. For example, I've personally mastered Dragon Quest 1 so let's say I have a single badge for 100% completion which in this case is reaching max level, getting all the endings (only took about 10 minutes with FF and a save) and collecting all special optional equipment. This would then be placed next to several Super Mario Bros badges: beating warpless, pacifist, coinless, all coins etc. (probably less than that but you get the picture) Somebody viewing my profile could then, with no knowledge of the games or their sets, see at a glance that I've completed Dragon Quest, and finished several challenge runs of SMB. I think this helps to answer the question of 'What should count as a mastery?' Do you think it's doing everything the game has to offer? Maybe that's too vague, how about knowing a game like the back of your hand? But does that mean being able to beat it as quickly as possible, or as perfectly, or understanding its mechanics so you can break it to pieces and abuse its programming flaws? What about community-made challenges that have been dubbed an ultimate test of skill like whatever the hell LLNIIENACMO means? This system would give that choice to the player, letting them decide what they deem worthy of their time and effort in each game to feel truly 'mastered'. There would probably have to be a seperate 'traditional' mastery badge which could be either every single achievement, or a mix of several "subsets" and/or certain achievements from more difficult ones. My inspiration came from the recent split of the SM64 Coin Collector subset from the core set, so this is really just the current subset system except expanded upon and given a much larger focus now that Core+Subset is hypothetically released, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing as it gives much more headroom for more subsets without "controversial" revisions and new features like:
I'm sure this would need a lot of work but my creatively bankrupt brain is already brimming with ideas. |
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and others
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I observed players reactions in relation and generally I think Core/Bonus/Multi is a concept which is missing some points. The biggest issue with it right now is the fact Bonus is treated more like a trash bin for all achievements not fitting some standards. I think it would be all better if we should join the core and bonus content together, and use the procentage of achievement. What I want to propose is:
crown/star on top: game beaten "Beaten" game, NEW trophy award level #56
0%>25% one star (bronze - easy*)
25%>50% two stars (silver - medium*)
50%>75% three stars (gold - hard*)
75%>100% four stars (platinum - master*)
*in well balanced set
This pic is just a kind of visualization of the idea, not a complete concept.
In my opinion in such system overall set balance will still be something very important, the bonus content will be included, but will be more justified.
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