Achievement Set Revisions

Revision Types

Any changes to a set with existing achievements is considered a revision. They typically happens after someone present a plan in the game's forum topic and in the #revision-voting channel on Discord and the plan is approved by the achievement creators community.

There are three types of revisions:

• Standard Revisions - Changes to an achievement set that affect another developer's work. These include adding achievements, removing achievements, and reworking existing achievements.
• Rescores - Changes to the point value of an achievement.
• Icon-Gauntlet - Changes to a game page's icon that is awarded upon mastering a set and changes to the individual achievement badges.

Each are assigned their own Discord role:

Type	Role	Getting the role	Who can get the role
Standard Revisions	@revision-voting	React with 🗳️ here	achievement creators
Rescores	@rescore	React with 💯 here	achievement creators
Icon Gauntlet	@icon-gauntlet	React with 🎨 here	any verified discord user

Standard Revisions

Any developer wanting to revise a set need to:

1. Prepare a plan for each (where you're not the original author)

   • Addition
   • Demotion
   • Achievement rework

2. If the original set developer(s) are still active, inform them of your plans. Not only would this be a "courtesy call," they may have valuable insight or resources that you can utilize to help your revision.

3. Present the plan in the game's forum topic. NOTE: Be as specific as possible, but if you have only a vague plan, provide a general idea of what you want to do and don't go too far from that idea.

4. Post a link to that topic in #revision-voting. If you're not on Discord, another developer can do it for you.

5. Once a revision vote is posted, the developer can address any comments, concerns, and objections the community may have to the plan. The vote is approved/rejected after 24 hours and is pass/fail by simple majority.

Note: Anonymous revision proposals - If desired, a developer can choose to propose a revision plan while remaining anonymous throughout the voting process. Simply contact a mod or admin to request that the plan be presented on your behalf.

When Making a Revision

• Try to avoid making copies of existing achievements, or clone and demote existing copies. If there are issues with current achievements make fixes to the existing ones.

• Resolve any open tickets for achievements that will be kept in the set. Tickets for achievements that are being demoted can simply be closed with the demotion cited. In cases where the revision is simply the demotion of one or more achievements, the developer does not need to handle the tickets for other achievements in the set.

• If you are adding a similar concept to one found in the set, where possible reuse the old concept and update it rather than make a new one. This prevents players from having to unnecessarily re-earn achievements, restricts needless changes to sets, and preserves good quality developer work and concepts.

• Since revisions vary in the amount of adjusted content, they are treated the same as an achievement set reservation. If three months have passed since your revision plan was approved, you will need to provide an update that details the current progress. Not doing so will invalidate the revision and the plan will need to be approved again with a new vote.

No Need for Approval

• Making changes to an achievement or to an achievement set where you are the original author and no other developer has revised it; it is still a good idea to post the plan for your changes in the forum.
• Resolving tickets or bugs on achievements made by developers who are listed as inactive in the list of developers. In these cases you're only allowed to fix the achievement to match the description; do not change the intention of the achievement without going through the revision process above. If you find a problem with an achievement that has an active developer either create a ticket or contact them to assist in resolution.
• Adding battery save, cheat code, or password protections to achievements where the developer is inactive. (be sure to properly test your changes). If they are active, either create a ticket or contact them to assist applying the improvements.
• Fixing misspellings, grammatical errors, and other typos in the achievement names or descriptions. In some cases, these are intentional, so be sure to make note of it in the forum.
• Making updates to game page information and title / screenshot / box art images.

Merging Sets

In the event that a revision includes merging two sets together (e.g. the Pokemon Red/Blue merge), the developer who does the revision needs to keep track of achievements in the demoted set and their equivalent achievements in the set it is being merged with. If the revision vote passes, this information must be sent to an admin so the achievements from the merged set can be manually awarded to the earners of the demoted set.

Rescores

Up until June 2019, RetroAchievements sets had a cap of 400 points, with no restrictions on individual achievements. The set cap was removed to focus less on overall set totals and more on the achievements themselves. This initiative was also meant to eliminate the misconception that a set worth 400 points is a "complete" set, but is also an ongoing community effort to promote fairness across the board. Information on the scoring process can be found here.

Anyone wanting to rescore a set needs to:

1. Prepare a rescore plan that shows the original scores and the proposed scores. A quick and easy way to do this is by utilizing this sheet; you can enter the Game ID in F2 to bring up a full list of that game's achievements and scores.

2. Post the plan in the game's forum topic.

3. Post a link to the topic in the #revision-voting channel on Discord.

4. Prepare to do some negotiating with other users and try to find a good middle-ground.

5. Voting will be active for 24 hours. If a rescore passes, you can make the necessary changes.

No Need for Approval

Some achievement sets can be rescored without going through the voting process:

• If you are the only credited author of an achievement set being rescored and no other developer has rescored it.

• If a co-author you collaborated with on an achievement set gives you their blessing to do a rescore and no other developer has rescored it.

Icon Gauntlet

The Icon Gauntlet is used to vote for new game icons or new badges for a set. With the vote it is checked which version is preferred by the community.

Any user wanting to change the game icon or badges of a set need to:

1. Create the game icon or new badges. For more info, see Badge and Icon Creation.

2. Upload the work on an image sharing site (e.g. https://imgur.com/, http://lensdump.org, etc.)

3. Post your images in the correct forum topic.

   • Add the [game=GameID] tag and insert the Game ID which can be found in the URL of the game's page.

   • Add the [img=http://YourImageURL.png] tag and insert the URL from your image into it along side the one which should be replaced and mark which of them is the new one.

   • An example of a typical game icon vote can be seen here.

   • An example of a typical badge vote can be seen here.

4. Post links to the old icon/badges and their contenders in the #revision-voting channel on Discord by using the following template:

   Discord Template

   @icon-gauntlet
   📊 [Game Name] [Console]
   [Game URL]
   :regional_indicator_a: Current: [Old Image URL]
   :regional_indicator_b: Contender: [New Image URL]
   
   

5. Voting will be active for 24 hours. If the voting passes, a developer can replace the Icon/Badges.

Notes:

• In cases where there are several designs, the contender list can be extended. Remember to add the letter emojis, in alphabetical order, as soon as you post the proposal so people can vote by clicking on them.
• If you are not active on Discord, you may have someone else post the vote on your behalf.

No Need for Approval

1. The game does not have an achievement set, nor is it reserved by a developer.

2. The entry has no game icon or badges.

3. The new icon/badge(s) display the same content, but are of better quality.

4. You are the existing set's sole developer and no other developer has changed the icon/badge(s).

Voting and Discussion

Revision voting was originally dev-only and remained that way until late-2019 when the top 150 players were granted access to the channels. More recently, this was discarded in favor of an opt-in role that any verified Discord user can obtain. While voting is exclusive to Discord, please remember that anyone can express their comments, questions, concerns, criticisms, etc. in the forum thread in which the plan was posted. The issues regarding Discord exclusivity will be addressed in a future version of the website.

• If you vote against changes in a achievement set, please state your reasoning in the discussion channel. This is so potential compromises can be made for a broader acceptance of the changes.

• Hijacking revision, rescore, or icon-gauntlet votes will not be tolerated. Votes from alt accounts will be discarded if discovered and repeated occurrences will result in the alt account being removed from the server. If the alt's primary account is confirmed, they will have their vote(s) discarded and may face suspension from future votes.