Are MMOs becoming too rewarding?

TheScavenger

These days, and it isn't just MMOs (but I play MMOs the most)...you can do ANYTHING and get an achievement for it

Craft 10 items? Achievement

Explore any location? Achievement

Or in WoW (slightly similar to explore), in Broken isles there is a building you can run up. All you literally do is run to the top (its actually a statue and you are inside it)...and at the top (inside the building) is a chest (that is fine)...but then...ACHIEVEMENT. For literally doing nothing but running up a ramp

Or a lot of MMOs do this. Get 5 levels? Reward with a ton of items, goodies and all kinds of stuff!

Did you kill 5 goblins? ACHIEVEMENT and maybe a reward of item. Oh and I should add, killing 5 goblins probably took 1-2 hits to kill each one

its getting pretty stupid how stupid achievements and reward items are getting

waynejr2

Loved City of Heroes achievement systems at launch.  Later when they added crafting, it felt more like spreadsheet to me.  Craft 10 of A get badge, Craft 10 of B get a badge.

I joked with a buddy of mind about this.  You get the first timers badge for creating your first character.  Then you get the badge badge for getting your first badge.  Etc...

You didn't have to chase badges in coh they were a nice thing to do.  When games like GW2 came out it felt like it was part of the leveling process.  Go to this location give get some xp type of thing.  Get rid of the xp and points systems (looking at you wow) and make them something people enjoy outside of pure leveling.

Loke666

Too rewarding might not be the perfect wording here but they certainly are way too genrous with achievements. Clearing out a tough dungeon the first time should give you one. Killing 100 goblins shouldn't.

But generally MMOs have watered down a lot of things, in certain games everyone have mythical or legendary gear (which probably would have been called "rare" or even "mastercrafted" in early games).

Stuff isn't worth much if you constantly get it and the kick you get for getting something awesome goes away if it rains "epic" items on you all the time.

Now, it might not be fun either if you never get anything good even when you play hard so there need to be a middle ground but that middle ground needs to go far to the rare occasions from where it is now.

Achievements should be hard to get but offer a good reward when you actually unlock them. Sure, not all of them should demand a great player but they should at least take commitment to unlock.

ann4

Ok?

There are also a lot of people who take a lot of fun of out achievement hunting. It's not everyone's cup of tea (clearly) but it is what it is.

Sovrath

I think achievements should be "real" achievements". Getting some badge or title for everything I do in game is ridiculous.

I personally never pay attention to such things.

Scorchien

Sovrath said:

I think achievements should be "real" achievements". Getting some badge or title for everything I do in game is ridiculous.

I personally never pay attention to such things.

Achievements ..................meaningless waste , i dont know anyone who gives a rats arse about such nonsense ..

waynejr2

Loke666 said:

Too rewarding might not be the perfect wording here but they certainly are way too genrous with achievements. Clearing out a tough dungeon the first time should give you one. Killing 100 goblins shouldn't.

But generally MMOs have watered down a lot of things, in certain games everyone have mythical or legendary gear (which probably would have been called "rare" or even "mastercrafted" in early games).

Stuff isn't worth much if you constantly get it and the kick you get for getting something awesome goes away if it rains "epic" items on you all the time.

Now, it might not be fun either if you never get anything good even when you play hard so there need to be a middle ground but that middle ground needs to go far to the rare occasions from where it is now.

Achievements should be hard to get but offer a good reward when you actually unlock them. Sure, not all of them should demand a great player but they should at least take commitment to unlock.

City of Heroes had the Zookeeper Badge for killing 10,000 rikti monkeys.  That I am ok with.  But if you start doing this with all mobs, it becomes a spreadsheet.  The rikti monkeys were annoying enough to make it a task worthy of a badge and fun little extra to get.

In city of villains at fort hades there were a ton of ghosts and there were a few ghost traps. If you could lure a ghost on top of a trap, it would be trapped.  This non-kill activity had two badges.  It was something different.

Erken

I miss the rare stuff. Like 1 in a game items or titles. I never had em, but could look in awe at them who had.

cameltosis

I've personally never given a shit about achievements in any game I've ever played. I try to avoid looking at achievements before I've played a game through to completion as they can spoil what lies ahead. 

If the game is good enough, I'll look at available achievements after completion to see if it will give me any ideas to guide my gameplay. One that stands out is XCOM, there was an achievement for completing a mission with an all-female squad. That was something I hadn't considered so I worked for it and eventually did a playthrough where every single character was female (well, took me a while to hire enough women but once I had I got rid of all the men). 

In MMOs, achievements are definitely overused. Again, I mostly ignore them unless there are sufficient rewards attached, but they are usually grindy so I try to avoid. 

Jemcrystal

I don't mind having my ego stroked every five seconds.  It's not game breaking but I don't mind it.

Iselin

Yeah they've gone a bit overboard with that. I remember getting my Explorer achievement in WOW pre-Cata on a PVP server. I was pretty proud of that.

Now I get congrats messages in the UI every couple of minutes in the MMOs I now play. There ARE hard to get achievements still but the sheer quantity of praise I get for trivial stuff sort of dilutes the good ones.

Theocritus

People wanted instant gratification and WOW gave it to them....Now the genre is nothing but instant gratification.

waynejr2

Iselin said:

Yeah they've gone a bit overboard with that. I remember getting my Explorer achievement in WOW pre-Cata on a PVP server. I was pretty proud of that.

Now I get congrats messages in the UI every couple of minutes in the MMOs I now play. There ARE hard to get achievements still but the sheer quantity of praise I get for trivial stuff sort of dilutes the good ones.

Grats on that! haha

waynejr2

Theocritus said:

People wanted instant gratification and WOW gave it to them....Now the genre is nothing but instant gratification.

What is funny to me about wow was how quickly you could level.  As first timers came to vanilla wow, they complained about how long it too to level.  It took 9 months for the first player to cap in EQ.

Wizardry

I believe in immersion and every other rpg player should as well.

There are far too many coded ideas in games that come off as coding rather than an immersive idea within the game world.
I don't like these achievement ideas,however as much i don't like it,they actually do carry a small bit of relevant immersion.I could akin them to for example a record holder in a sport.Or even as simple as achieving lots of points in a sport will gain you an achievement "bigger salary/contract".
However we still need to keep the ideas in perspective,they should remain plausible to what your character is roleplaying.

Example if i am a Wizard within a world,i cannot see any relevance to gaining an achievement for what devs are calling "discovery".A discovery is not one as such if someone else has already discovered it,you would simply be recognized as someone passing over a land mass that someone else has already discovered.It might be a new discovery to YOU,however why would you feel that warrants a reward of any kind?When is the last time you walked around somewhere and felt....oh man i have never been here before,please someone give me a reward??

Burntvet

More like, MMO/MMORPGs are so disposable these days, that producers use every single trick in the book to try to keep people playing for just one more month (because the gameplay obviously not compelling enough or people would not be leaving after 30-60 days).

So, the "fast achievements" and other psychological hooks are there for the singular purpose of getting one more sub fee or one more month of cash shot purchases out of players.

And it is not like it costs the devs anything, so why wouldn't they shovel that stuff out?

When you can't make a compelling enough game, you have to rely on the gimmicks.

CodeBlu

I guess it's part of their player retention. They need to think of ways how to make the players get hooked with their games. Like in a mobile game that I play MU origin, not only that they reward you achievement points but also free in-game item when you stay logged in for a couple of minutes. There are so many games out there that players can play so they need to sell their games more.