I haven't jumped in before now because I'm interested in getting a variety of different perspectives on this, but I should say something before we all retread the same ground over and over too many times.
The leveling system is definitely unusual in that it's a hybrid of achievement and mission systems, and for the most part I'm satisfied with how it's working. It's meant to encourage experimentation HOPEFULLY without requiring any behavior that's outright detrimental, and while it's meant to take a while to progress through, you shouldn't have to go too far out of your way to do it, and you shouldn't have to grind. In other words, it should nudge you toward varied but not unnatural play. The system itself is not likely to change.
What I do want to hear about though are the points of frustration where a particular achievement is a roadblock to progress, or encourages unnatural or detrimental play. Sometimes this is due to a bug (ramming, anyone? Sorry...), sometimes it's due to balance changes and the evolution of meta, sometimes it's just down to a bad guess, and I've certainly made plenty of missteps before. I'm always collecting feedback and have made frequent adjustments to the achievement objectives, and I'm working on another pass right now in preparation for new levels. (Also sorry about the gunner extinguishing...again, down to a bad prediction about balance. I can't remember when I looked at that one, but if it's not removed already it'll be gone in the next update.)
So please, tell me about the achievements like that one that you feel are unfair or broken, and I'll take a look and do my best to address them.
Thanks!
EDIT:
You might want to check your future achievements, I think I remember Muse saying you can earn points towards future achievements before you get to that achievement.
Nope, this is incorrect. All of the progression achievements are gated and you can only progress on the currently unlocked one.
Some future non-progression achievement tracks will be un-gated, though, so you can complete them in any order. The only one that currently works like this is the Tutorial track.
In a perfect world ... you'd have achievements classified to each peice of equipment and each ship, each weapon and each role. You'd maintain the current "Role Rank overview" to give a curt "How good are you at the role you're planning to take on...", as well as having a percentage score that showed how adept you were using the current ship, with it's current weapon load out, with
your current equipment load out, that showed what percentage of all the achievements related to these currently selected things you have achieved (you could even obfuscate this value to show a simple, Bronze, Silver, Gold or 5 Star rating).
You'd then gate every ship, weapon and peice of equipment achievement progression separately. Whilst gating a lot of the required ROLE achievements into the ship, weapon or equipment progression as achievements that are both classified as both Role AND Ship, Weapon or Equipment related.
And ontop of that you'd add in Medallions that would reward a seemingly eclectic mix of achievements from different progression paths ... for example, a person who had gained ALL the
initial Weapon and Gunner and Engineer Equipment achievements might well receive the Bronze "
Gungineer" Medallion. These medallions would help add larger collections of achievements which would further deepen the achievement meta and potentially encourage variety.
Why would you do all this? Because competitive game communities can thrive on statistics, they provide a sense of investment and visualisation of the learning curve you and others comparatively have progressed. They tell a very personal story.
On a similar note, some statistics after each match would go a long way towards reinforcing each match as a different experience, whilst giving you an opportunity to expose players to the some of the information that drives their progression, encouraging people to get involved with progressing, thereby encouraging people to continue playing and encouraging players to improve, thereby creating a more competitive community. Showing statistics of other players would further the competitive edge, again driving people to both play more and improve etc etc.
