Achievements Consensus Building

[Cerdip]

Beyond the HC recognition awards system, there are the "standard" player achievements. The system we have right now (which I spent a lot of time debugging & revising back in April/May) basically takes the high scores (various metrics) for every one of the playable units, assigns a Bronze/Silver/Gold equivalent to them, and puts them available on the Campaign Achievements page. This is nice enough, but doesn't match the spirit of the kind of achievements we see on Steam, for example, for varous other games.

Some new achievements might require adding new event captures & reporting to the either the client or the server - most likely the server in most cases.

Categorization

In order to have an achievement, you need to have appropriate stats collection to underwrite the achievement. Stats collection comes in roughly four flavours:

Level 1. "Too Easy"

The easy kills in this exercise would be stats based upon data already being gathered and sent to the databases. Dealing with those would be mostly a matter of some judicious database queries and web-site code, with possibly some art assets thrown into the mix.

Level 2. "Easy"

A little more involved would be changes to, or adding stats that would involve a modification to server game script code. Server-side changes can normally be effected without affecting the client, which means no mass distribution or update or patch needed. Being script, means no rebuild required.

Level 3. "Moderate"

Server-side changes have the benefits that you see in "Easy", but some changes will require modifying the C++ server code. This means a rebuild of the server, which is always replete with more anxiety than script changes.

Level 4. "Hard"

Some stats might require changes to the client. The best way to frame this is: if a proposed new stat requires a client patch, then it had better be a damned awesome stat, and well worth the hassle & risk. The hassle part is rebuilding the client and deploying the patch. So as impediments go, the hassle, while not major, is not minor either.

The risky part is, whenever one changes the client one has to ensure that one isn't creating an exploitable weakness. Especially in an MMO.

Rolling the Ball

• Longest Sniper kill.
  
• Least ammo spent on air-to-air kill (could be issue with plinking kills)
  
• " " " tank-to-tank
  
• " " " whatever-to-tank kill
  
• " " " destroyers (I think you get the idea)
  
• Fastest lap at Spa
  
• Good Samaritan - provides most assistance on help channel
  

(Good Samaritan could also potentially tie-in to some kind of noob feedback rating system. maybe something like "noob9000: /kudos awsum1995" where the noob gives awsum1995 a kudo for his help. Some constraints would likely need to be in place, ie. perhaps only a green tag can do this.)

Solicitation

So have at it gents. Pour out your suggestions, lemme see 'em. Keep in mind that we are also looking for as many Steamable ideas as we can, but even non-steamworthy suggestions are welcome.

I will try to monitor this post fairly closely, but I won't be able to jump in and moderate it, so keep it civil, and really try to work out a consensus. Try to persuade and not bully, etc. You should know the drill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making' rel="external nofollow">

[SNIPER62]

Strategic Bombing Achievements:

Bomb Runs Made on Factories

Factory Hits

EA Kills

Deaths

Squad Achievements

Edited July 22, 2014 by SNIPER62

[bigrow]

Well firstly I'd like to see an approach to stats and awards that favours(or at least includes) positive, or team oriented game-play. So:

Truckers

1. The ability to track the number of passengers and towed weapons.

2. Number of FRUs placed.

3. Re-arming stats.

4. Dare i say road-kills? Friendly and/or enemy.

Transport pilots/captains

1. Number of paratroops/sailors transported.

2. Percentage of successful drops.

Mission leaders

1. Number of FRUs placed, maybe with durability/distance/traffic parameters.

2. Similar to the kudos system you mentioned, the ability to (anon?) rank MLs.

3. Mission success stats..... damn i wish we had dynamic mission targets, but even without, maybe tracking of capture/kill rates for those on mission would suffice? Fb defence and attack too.

I'm not massively keen on the suggestion of 'least ammo used on..' not least because of the (fairly regular tbh) scoring anomalies.

Also, while you could argue it might encourage weapon discipline, I can see times when players may be reluctant to take shots that, while may not be high percentage, would benefit a teammate.

Engagement range based awards/achievements would be great. It's always nice killing that sniper hiding 600m out of town with a normal rifle, or a 100m+ kill with a smg. So could long range kills against superior weapons get extra recognition?

Steam achievements are normally along the lines of:

1. Completed basic training.

2. Joined X branch.

3. First kill/cap.

etc etc

More like these could also be a useful way to prompt new players into performing certain gentle introductory tasks(with silly award style names):

1. Say something on squad channel(they still start in a squad?). - Report for duty

2. Use the help channel. - Seek assistance

3. Guard a CP for 2 minutes. - First watch

4. Register on TS3. - Radio check

5. Practice offline? - Extra training

6. Visit the forum.... okay maybe not this one

7. Become a subscriber. - Official supporter

8. Become a HERO!! - Hero of the realm, master of many sheep!

You did ask

I know, or assume anyway, many of these are level 3 or 4. Not all on my wishlist either, but I think you're right to make sure this game doesn't look out of place on steam. These kind of 'extras' are simply expected for any mmo these days. On that note, will any of this be getting 'in game' at all? A basic stats page in the UI, or maybe pop-up or chat based achievement notifications?

Anyway I like the gold/silver/bronze system in CSR 2.0 and those could still work well as steam achievements imo. Most games I've seen only have 50-100 achievements, so that would seem like a reasonable range to aim for.

[jwilly]

There have been many discussions over the years of how team gameplay could be re-organized. At present, a team is a loose affinity group that operates and is scored as a bunch of individuals. Instead, a mission leader could be encouraged to provide actual leadership and even green-tag mentoring by being scored according to how other members of the group do during the same time period, mission or battle.

This would or could dovetail with a re-organization of rank, so that it no longer would be uniformly achieved by accumulated kills/captures/seniority, and instead would be split into several tiers according to role. An initial tier, up to say Corporal, would represent basic personal combat proficiency and survivability. No one would be required to advance beyond this level.

The Sargeant ranks and officers up to Captain would be mission leaders and would be scored not at all according to their own achievements, and instead 50% by the achievements of the lower ranked soldiers on their missions, and 50% by those soldiers' survival...so your job as a mission leader would be to succeed and keep your men alive.

Ranks from Major up would be reserved for HC; there would be no progression upward from Captain, as HC ranks would be reserved for active HC players. Those HC players would use a "regular" earned rank when fighting tactically.

This all is responsive to your question in this way: the Achievements system could encourage advanced team leadership by offering two scoring systems for mission leaders, with the alternate scoring path based not at all according to the leader's own achievements. Instead 50% of the leader's score would be according to the achievements of the lower ranked soldiers on the mission, and 50% by those soldiers' survival.

[jwilly]

Gameplay might be strengthened if the game moved beyond the common shooter concept of spawn-die-spawn-die. One way to move in that direction would be to briefly maintain a record of scoring as it occurs, and delete those scores if the player doesn't continue to play, and survive, for at least X time after the score is obtained.

X might be five seconds for flyers...just long enough to discourage suicide bombing. Maybe five seconds would be long enough for infantry gameplay, too.

[delems]

Shelling factories (from destroyers)

Over stocking of units

Edited July 23, 2014 by delems

[Bierbaer]

Funny stuff. Not that it matters at all but I was just wondering recently how many Kilometers I might have ran in the game the past 10 years. This is quite expendable to all branches and units in game.

bb

[B2K]

# of FRU's emplaced

for RDP what sniper has listed plus:

# of RTB after causing factory damage (may help to discourage alt-F4 and/or suicide RDP bombers)

[B2K]

http://forums.battlegroundeurope.com/showthread.php?t=426251

This link is to the thread gopher has in the sticky section addressing the same issue that has some good ideas in it as well.

In addition to my last post, id love for there to be some way to vary the way stats are looked at by personna-unit type. For example as a rifleman, it'd be nice to see my stats:

By country (ie French, Brit, US), by side (allied/axis), or by unit type (all countries combined).

I'm assuming the scoring data already is available as part of the mission function(s). Being able to sort it along these lines would enable for recognition of efforts by the respective sides (country and/or side levels), as well as showing a true "top" list (all rifleman personna-unit total (french+British+U.S.+german)).

Apply to all unit types of course.

This would allow for the recognition of players that are good with one countries weapon systems, one sides weapon systems, as well as overall proficiency with all 4 armies weapon systems (theoretically).

Edited August 1, 2014 by b2k

[maxios]

Bump

[SNIPER62]

anything?