Achievements Ruined the Spirt of the Game

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by KrakenReality, Oct 26, 2020.

  1. Flatchy Court Jester

    I am torn on this now. I used to be like the original poster and hated having to jump through all the hoops. I did not have time so I played my way. Slogged through till max level then geared up the best way I could. That was my game and I was content with it. I blame Crestas earring for changing my mind. I have always done some TS in this game and worked them all to 300. The earring quest really got me into it as it was a nice reward. BUT I could not max it because I did not have access to them sarnaks that would kill you. (Still dont) So I took the earring as far as I could and it was still better than group gear.

    Now on this expansion .I have taken it further. I am one zone away in hunters achievements to being able to go up another level on my earring. I still kind of think hunters and collectibles are a little over the top for restrictions for advancement. (Keep in mind I have never totally finished either before in 18 years of playing). I would not mind that restriction being lifted but if not I will continue to work towards that goal.

    In the end you have to put in the time if you want the top stuff. I am content getting the best I can in my little grouper world.
    Duder, Accipiter and Nadisia like this.
  2. KrakenReality Augur

    I don’t know how people read into I’m being too lazy. If, you can’t see how fundamentally flawed this clipboard style gameplay has become. You can’t avoid it by saying I’m not going to check the achievement window. You have to check all the crap you’re missing, because they made it required for other important parts of the game.

    It ruins any sense of spirit of being a game.
  3. Zamiam Augur

    the spirit of a game named EVERQUEST .. ya ...
    Duder likes this.
  4. KrakenReality Augur

    Most people didn’t even know there were quests or how to get them, the name means nothing. Besides, that has nothing to do with my point. The achievement based design breaks the fourth wall. You’re handed a list of the content as soon as you log in. It’s not a fun way to present your game.
    Raptorjesus5 likes this.
  5. Zamiam Augur

    lol your funny , and from that statement alone I can tell you have not played this game long .. I think your trolling now ..
    and I try not to encourage them..I'm done!!
  6. KrakenReality Augur

    How am I trolling by saying that people couldn’t find quests? It’s why WoW made it so obvious.
  7. Fian Augur

    I wish they would convert the PoP flagging system to achievements. Achievements is better than what we had before.
    Duder and Joules_Bianchi like this.
  8. Joules_Bianchi A certain gnome

    As already noted, I think people were well aware Everquest has quests, hence group gear, J5 Mercs blah blah ad infinitum.
    As for the second statement, perhaps you;ve seen or heard tell of... allakhazam.com, EQTraderscorner, EQResource and so on.Not to mention people who have tested / played beta.

    By the time content is released everyone knows what to expect already. Fouth wall be damned.

    I get your point about the /ach hunt overtaking the game, but... Umm.. Having been away from live game and on TLPs for some years now, coming back and seeing all these high level players doing all this old content for /shock rewards and asking in /guild if anyone wants to come along, even XP leech lower level members., Well, the IS the spirit of Everquest and more people are- Doing the quests, ALL of them. How can that be a bad thing?

    Personally, I prefer Everquet provide the information so I don't have to, in addition to playing the game, essentially hire myself as an office clerk.

    spreadsheets.

    Nah.

    (I also have like 5 binders of hand drawn maps I don't need so much any longer).

    (None of them are new).
  9. Joules_Bianchi A certain gnome

    "Am I one with the wall?" the halflings asked the marshall almost hourly, never knowing their true level of trust here. Decades later, the question lingered... "Am I one with the wall?".
    Nennius likes this.
  10. Tucoh Augur

    I like achievements, I just wish there weren't so many in most games. Kinda devalues the whole thing when you can't put a pair of pants on without getting an achievement notification.
  11. Vumad Cape Wearer

    ACH have greatly enhanced the game. Very few people mindlessly ran around talking to NPC to find quests and then solve them. A small amount of people would figure things out and everyone else got them from Zam.

    The big problem with Zam is that the answer key is on the same page as the test. Labeling Quest NPC, improving the quest system so you have some idea of what to do next and adding ACH so you know which quests you have missed has removed the need for [Unauthorized 3rd Party Resource].

    And ACH greatly enhances gameplay. Having a conversation about which hunter you needed did NOT exist prior to ACH because no one cared. ACH added something to do. More importantly, adding compare enhances cooperative gameplay, and my personal favorite, lets those of us who are ahead help those who are behind (They can't tell us what they need to do if they don't know what to do.)

    And the idea that ACH have added a bunch of hurdles like the ToV aug is more than laughable. Epics existed before ACH and quest window. We called them quests and epic quest. They had hidden flags every time you completed a step. Those were just moved to the quest window. Then you had to have Epic 1 to complete epic 2, and that Epic 1 was an ACH you were required to have epic 2, we just didn't call it an ACH back then, we called it an item, same difference.

    And the same is true, for example, with PoP flagging vs RoS flagging. What was hidden now is known.

    The Augs, ToV ear, etc are all just modern versions of epic quests. The ACH window is just an in game tracker of each completed quest step. Nothing about the gameplay has changed meaningfully, just how we track it, and that change is vastly for the better. Remove the hotkey and track it on a clipboard if it is important to you.

    Replace the "ACHIEVEMENT WINDOW" with "QUEST COMPLETION WINDOW" and you'd realize this whole topic is dumb. Sorry not sorry there are more quests now than there used to be, and the people who do the bigger quests have bugger rewards.
    Yinla, Duder, code-zero and 1 other person like this.
  12. KrakenReality Augur

    I’ll take my “L” on this, but I just can’t agree with “itinerary style” gameplay.
  13. Nadisia Augur

    Achievements are now a part of almost every game, for single player or multiplayer games.

    And even before that *vogue* , the locked/keyed zones were a form of required achievements : you can't get access to Old Sebilis without the key, you can't get access to Vex Thal without the key, get access to BoT without some PoJ trial, to PoP elemental planes without some kill flags, and so on.

    I perfectly understand that, and it was fine to me, because it was a part of prgression.

    But now, when it comes to some pretty boring or silly achievements, maybe it has gone gone too far.
    A couple of examples:
    As Flatchy said, let's talk about collections.
    I'm not a collector in real life, and even less in a game.
    Where is the fun for people like me to collect hundreds and hundred of shiny dots placed randomly everywhere ? Well ... nowhere.
    And on top of that, it gives me headache when I need to sort and stock all that *crap* in bags/bank/houses :D
    But to unlock one of the finals stages of the ToV earring, the scavenger achievement was mandatory
    Same to unlock the rank 2 of the TBL gloves : scavengers, scavengers, scavengers ... boring.
    For that matter, about the TBL shoulders : why, in the name of Innoruuk, a crapton of useless, obsolete ... and boring (again) kills for the PoP slayer achievement ?
    It's just a time sink, that's all. I'm ok with achievements somewhat relevant to my level, but absolutely not when it's completely trivial. It's just a chore, and a game shouldn't be a chore, even less a boring chore.

    And it's about the same for some Challenger achievements, that's why I do agree with Annastasya when she said:
    As pure «just for fun» achievements, for the compulsive completionists, why not.
    Who am I to judge the fun of these people, after all.
    But to unlock some ranks, abilities or whatever (like the TBL Challenger to empower the augs), maybe not, because in some cases, and for some group compositions, some of these challenges are nearly impossible to complete.
  14. Accipiter Old Timer


    How do you mean? I do the progression tasks that I must do for a given expansion in order to get to the end zone but aside from that I pretty much ignore achievements. I might be missing out on a couple of gadgets but I can't say it has hurt me in any way (other than that damned EoK progression).
  15. Vumad Cape Wearer


    So like, lets change the name of collections to research. We'll Name the first ToV book War the Wastes and make it chapters 1-4 with 8 pages per chapter. Then The second book can be called Greatly divided, with 4 more chapters. When you complete a collection, I mean, research set, you have a full book. This full book contains the lore explaining the Warlords ear giving you understanding. Also killing the named mobs bloodies the ear. The knowledge from the books and the power of the leaders gives you the ability to unlock the full potential of the Zek ear.

    Yeah, I think we all agree that the PoP hunter requirement to the TBL chase items was a mistake. But the ACH themselves are not the problem. It's just a lore issue. We will not get epic quality lore and instances, but we are getting epic quality time sinks and gear.
    Duder likes this.
  16. KrakenReality Augur


    Well articulated post and I agree with your points. I bolded and highlighted that portion, because it describes how I feel when I see the achievement window for the modern expansions.
  17. Incantatrice New Member

    For the most part, achievements are just an in-game tool for tracking completion of various different tasks. They are a simple way of tracking progress on the same types of activities that you would otherwise do in game. Planes of Power flagging is the perfect example.

    Back in POP, you still needed to follow the “itinerary” in order to do the content. You go to Plane of Innovation, kill a mob, and hail an NPC for an invisible flag. Dozens of these invisible flags were needed in order to progress an experience the expansion. Unfortunately to know where you stood you had to hail an NPC and practically decipher a riddle to find out which NPC you failed to hail that is preventing you from zoning into the next area. The introduction of achievements keeps the exact same gameplay mechanics (complete quest/raid A to flag for zone B) while introducing the huge Quality of Life benefit of easy tracking.

    As for collections, this isn’t an achievement issue, it is simply not liking collections. How many times in a quest have you had to run around and pick items off the ground, put them in a container, and combine them? Veeshan’s Peak key, some epics, and plenty of other quests required picking up ground spawns throughout Norrath. Collections are an alternative method of this same gameplay mechanic and the ONLY thing locked behind collections is small increases in player power. No keying or progression is locked behind collections. It is one of the many alternative but ultimately optional things you can do in EQ to make your character stronger.

    Furthermore, if you’re frustrated with the Rallos Zek earring requiring collections, then I think you’re actually arguing against yourself. You don’t want an itinerary of things things to do when you log in. The very nature of collections / tradeskills / quests / hunter / EXPing is that there are a multitude of things you can do in EQ upon logging in to enhance your character. You’re advocating for eliminating one of these methods and directing character progression through the way that you want to progress your character. I agree that collections are NOT fun for me, but I also accept that I have some friends who LOVE collections and don’t want to eliminate their preferred way to play EQ. This is from someone who has fully evolved six pairs of TBL shoulders, in era...

    Lastly, and this is probably your strongest argument, I sympathize with what can feel like “nonsensical” achievements for beating missions and raids in strange ways. I’m very happy with achievements such as “beat the mission without anyone dying” or “beat the mission without failing any emotes (Avatar of War)” — these achievements are awarded for proper execution. Achievements such as “Three at Once” in the Plane of Smoke trial of three which generally required a certain group makeup and wacky execution are not good ones. That said, while I sympathize with your position, I personally enjoy the challenge and like having them in there.

    So to summarize and reiterate, I think your problem is not actually with the achievement system itself, but more with the gameplay mechanics. To test this, would you be okay if every named in POP dropped a unique item, and you had to hand in every one of these items to an NPC in order to evolve your gloves? If the answer is no, your problem is probably with the requirement and not with the achievement system.

    Full disclosure: I’m a completionist who has done nearly all of EQs achievements.
  18. Velisaris_MS Augur

    If there were an NPC in game that offered a quest that said "I'll give you this big bag if you kill this list of monsters", the anti-achivement crowd would say "wow, that's a really great quest!" But because they cut out the middle man and made it an achievement, suddenly it's killing the game???
    Yinla likes this.
  19. Nadisia Augur

    Many times, yes, but not ... over 250 times (this is roughly the number I get by parsing quickly the items starting by 27082 and 27083 in the Everquest/Achievements/AchievementComponentClient.txt, and that for ToVelious only :D)
    I don't want to eliminate the collections, not at all, and all the fun for people who love it.
    But as I said : as an optional activity, no issue at all.
    But totally facultative, and not mandatory.
    Or at least, not like an uneatable and slimy spinach laddle dropped into your plate : *splotch!!* Eat all first !!! I SAID ALL !!! :p
    Woaw, just woaw.
    You deserve a special achievement and a badge for having endured this ... torture.
    After one pair, I was already mad ... or depressive ... or both. :)
  20. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    Achievements are only a problem if not having them done bothers you. If you are indifferent no problem. :)

    When playing EQ we all get to decide which gerbil wheels we want to run.