Achievements, a whole lot of achievements (and stuff)

[Hoja Lateralus]

Hi there
Since achievements are important for most of the community and not only we want them to be changed* in some way but also we know from the Devs that they are planning on some changes** in leveling system as well as in achievements themselves I'd like all of us to look closely at our achievements and make (as a community) list of changes we'd like to incorporate. Examples can be shown below, but I'll also give one: there are spotting achievements for engineer and they all are like "spot X ships on distance over Y meters" and the distance grows with higher achievements, so it's like 1000, 1500, 2000 and then after some achievements.....1000 again, which seems just silly. That's why I'd like to gather all ideas in one thread and after some time (week? month?) send all the ideas gathered and accepted by community to the Devs so they have a basis to work on.
Since Wilson's Notes / Evadne's Reports / Lusse's Travels works similar to achievements I also want to remind this thread:
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4517.0.html
And last and the least: I think that getting the Citizen badges is too easy. To be a Golden Citizen you only need 40 recommendations and 10 recommendations from enemy captains. Well make it 200 and 50 so you actually have to work some time on it.

* i.e. topics:
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4606.0.html
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4583.0.html

** achievements will no longer affect the level of our character but will still work as a way of unlocking things, if someone hasn't heard about it yet; all of that is just a plan in pre-production phase

Here's the picture showing those spotting achievements:

[pandatopia]

Conversely, the teaching achievements are impossible.

I'm all for helping newbies, but do you really think the way to do that is sit with them in practice, for EIGHT HOURS?

Really?

How many of you can you say seriously spent 8 hours, or rather, would ever spend 8 hours again in practice?

Much better to have those be in game time instead.

Also the 2k spot is horrible, only applicable in certain maps, and generally only when the game first starts.

The map achievements are also universally loathed, and at the very least I think they should be open concurrently (esp since they don't have any bearing on a "progression" of harder and harder achievements).

[Hoja Lateralus]

I'm all for helping newbies, but do you really think the way to do that is sit with them in practice, for EIGHT HOURS?

This. Sign me in.

Also the 2k spot is horrible, only applicable in certain maps, and generally only when the game first starts.

Well, it would be understandable if it would be a 14 or 15lvl achievement. They can and should be hard. But since it's lvl7 achievement people are simply going to stuck there and be annoyed or "cheat" they way out of this achievement with rangefinder and group of friends.

The map achievements are also universally loathed, and at the very least I think they should be open concurrently (esp since they don't have any bearing on a "progression" of harder and harder achievements).

Well the suggestion is - at least put them in order of difficulty, so first all the 2v2 maps then 3v3 - which will also encourage more experienced players to play 3v3 rather than just 'so-so' experienced.

This kind of discussion we need to send clear message to the Devs what and how things need to be changed.

[shaelyn]

I'm all for helping newbies, but do you really think the way to do that is sit with them in practice, for EIGHT HOURS?

Really?

How many of you can you say seriously spent 8 hours, or rather, would ever spend 8 hours again in practice?

wait wait this is an achievement?

right, y'all, case in point:
I made a valiant effort to get my friends in game.  the copy I purchased was a four-pack, and when the game went on sale, I spammed the hell out of facebook for people to buy and join me, and even bought a few copies for friends that wouldn't otherwise have bought it but claimed interest in playing.  all in all, about ten friends ended up with copies.
Daemacil, Merddyn (who was as active as we were at the time but fairly quickly dropped off the face of the game) and I hosted a practice match, though we were still fairly new to the game ourselves.  one practice match.  it did last a few hours, but once that was done, most of my friends never picked up the game again, despite my best efforts.  the ones that did played with me once or twice more, and I haven't seen them in game since, even when I was still putting up facebook shout-outs to play.

if the interest isn't there, I'm not going to be able to host a practice round.  that was my best effort for friends, and I'm tired of fighting to get them on board.  I would be more than willing to host a practice match for a new player outside of my friends circle, but...that's just not something that comes up.  ever.  I may want to and be able to swing some special event for it or some crazy bidness in the future now that this thread has given me an idea for it, when I'm not focused on packing to move, but for now, for the purposes of this thread and what most people in-game are likely to do, I can't imagine it coming up enough times to account for the achievement for the average person.

though there's something to be said about not handing out achievements like candy, and I'm sure the point of this achievement is to actually get people to teach and not to get people to land another achievement, I'd still scale this one back.

I will point out if there are more maps for practice, it would be easier on the eyes if someone wanted to actually work towards this achievement and did try to train people in practice.  I'll make a new thread for it...

[Hoja Lateralus]

Apparently new maps for practice isn't going to be there soon/any time for some reasons (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4649.0.html). Let's hope this will change someday.

Well I think that 'help' can't be measured in hours spent in practice mode because many people instead of this prefer rather to:
A) Just explain things in lobbies (i.e. loadouts, damage types, tactics etc.)
B) Help somebody in real game (i.e. when you have 3 people in a crew in pub match then you can shelter some unexperienced player and let him experience good working crew by himself.
And just that does help a lot especially for novice. That's why I think we need special kind of recommendations/thumbs-up for learning, just a book (with thumbs up?) icon in profile, so every time you explain something you can just go "If you found it helpful just give me learning-recommendation". This could also be mentioned in tutorial.

Getting back to the topic - the same kind of "harder achievement earlier, easier achievement later" thing as I mentioned before in engineer achievements happens in gunner achievements.

Also:
-Please remove the "kill harpooned ships" achievement from pilot. Or every achievement with harpoons.
-Achievement "Kill X ships with mortar" for gunner is pretty pointless. On no ship gunner shoots the mortar, at least usually. So to make this achievement I have to actually find a friend who will agree to cripple his ship so I can get achievement. Similar goes to "kill with flak" achievement, except there actually is one way to do this - heavy flak on spire - but this happens so rarely that I'd be happy to get removed/replaced it.
-Less baloon rebuilding achievements for engineer. Luckily I got almost all of those at once and had to rebuild only ~150 baloons instead of ~250.
-Silly "put out fire with chem spray" achievement. Chem spray is used to prevent fires, so this is counter-intuitive at least.

[GeoRmr]

Kill X ships with mortar also counts lumberjack kills.

[shaelyn]

Apparently new maps for practice isn't going to be there soon/any time for some reasons (https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,4649.0.html). Let's hope this will change someday.

I was actually hoping for more info straight from the devs...as N-Sunderland didn't specify if they said no practice maps period or that they won't put current maps into practice...
but now that I've play-tested matchmaking, I've honed in on that.  I'm going to fight for the maps another day.
that, and that's a discussion for the other thread anyway.

-Silly "put out fire with chem spray" achievement. Chem spray is used to prevent fires, so this is counter-intuitive at least.

yeah I'd love to see this changed, but there's a question of what to change it to...

[obliviondoll]

-Silly "put out fire with chem spray" achievement. Chem spray is used to prevent fires, so this is counter-intuitive at least.

yeah I'd love to see this changed, but there's a question of what to change it to...

Use chemspray to prevent X fires - when the ship is hit with fire weapons while your chemspray is still in effect, you get credit towards the achievement.

That would be an ideal alternative, but it might be difficult to code the game so it tracks whose chemspray it was.

Also, on the topic of practice mode, I've taken a couple of friends into practice mode when they said they didn't feel confident going into a proper game yet. Also, have you guys noticed that you can create multi-ship practice lobbies? You can set up 1 vs. 1 duels there, which seems odd, but I want to try it out when I have a large enough group of friends to make it work.

[Hoja Lateralus]

Use chemspray to prevent X fires - when the ship is hit with fire weapons while your chemspray is still in effect, you get credit towards the achievement.

That would be an ideal alternative, but it might be difficult to code the game so it tracks whose chemspray it was.

The simplier alternative may be something like "chem spray X parts" where X would have to be big enough (and, as buffing achievements, would only count when duration of previous buff on a part is completed). It's not perfect, but I think it's better.

I was actually hoping for more info straight from the devs...as N-Sunderland didn't specify if they said no practice maps period or that they won't put current maps into practice...
but now that I've play-tested matchmaking, I've honed in on that.  I'm going to fight for the maps another day.

If I'll be on the Chat with the Devs I'll try to tackle that issue.


If you have any other achievement-related suggestions - feel free to join to discussion.

[pandatopia]

Another thing is that buff X things requires you to wait until things become unbuffed.

At first this makes sense - obviously sitting at one place buffing the same thing over and over is silly.

However, i also don't think you should have to wait for the entire thing to go down before rebuffing, as in a general combat scenario you will rebuff if the buff is going to fall off anytime in the next 30 seconds or so.

I would propose that buff achievements also count when the timer on them is <20% or <10 seconds, whichever is easier to calculate.