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silveradept[This is part of a series on video games, their tropes, stories of playing games, and other related topics. If you have suggestions about where to take the series, please do say so in the comments. We have a lot of spaces to fill for this month.]
I will probably never finish Bejeweled 3's achievement list. This is despite enjoying the game very much and thinking of it as a stellar example of a match-three game, with plenty of different modes for different players to enjoy. Because Bejeweled asks me to do the extremely highly improbable as part of their achievements and trophies list. Despite match-three generally getting seen as a "causal" genre of games, several of the modes of Bejeweled 3 are meant to reward quickness in matching gems, rather than strategically looking at the board and deciding on the best match for the situation. The Diamond Mine, Ice Storm, and Lightning modes are all time-based, and each offer four tiers of achievements related to total score in the mode and a particular activity unique to the mode.
To put it mildly, these modes are stressful to anyone who doesn't have enough pattern recognition skill to know what their next move is going to be as the last move is resolving itself, and at least one of the achievements requires someone to make twelve vertical matches in a row, each match coming almost immediately in the heels of the last. To have a prayer at achieving this, the player not only has to know where the next match is and move toward it, they also have to know that pressing keys on the keyboard will move gems in the direction pressed, so that one doesn't have to click and drag them into place (which is too slow to keep a combo going.)
Furthermore, the high scores and the chain combos rely not only on pattern recognition and decisive movement, but luck that the correct sequences of gems drop in so they can be matched easily and time maintained / combo continued. A good run toward twelve vertical matches could be stopped by all the available matches being horizontal without any lessening of skill on the part of the player. Or the player having to frantically scan for the single available match that is far away from the progress they want to make, wasting time while waiting for correct gems to drop in and be put to use. Many of the platinum-level achievements in Bejeweled 3 rely on having one game where everything falls into place correctly and there are no issues that get in the way. It would be like an unmodified very random RNG turning up maximum values 10 times in a row. Sure, it's mathematically probable, but it's not likely to happen. And if you want to have a complete set of achievements, it gets really old fast having to play 1000 games for the possibility that one of them might align exactly correctly to achieve it.
Luck-based achievements are terrible things to implement, unless the game has been programmed in such a way that the player is going to get lucky (or unlucky) with enough regularity that the achievement can be earned through normal play. Yes to achievements that are "land a critical hit!", no to achievements that are "land 50 critical hits in a row!" unless you have also programed a weapon into the game for each of the PCs that always hits and always critical hits.
A lot of game designers don't have many, if any, purely luck-based achievements where something improbable randomly happens and there's a reward for it. However, they tend to make up for their lack of luck with achievements they believe are based on skill, but are equally as frustrating to players than ones based on pure luck. The Bejeweled 3 achievements are of this kind - after all, a sufficiently skilled player should be able to do this under time pressure, right? Except for the randomness of the jewels that drop in to replace the ones that go out.
Many of the "skill" based achievements aren't things like "successfully land a high-risk move" or "beat the game within a time frame that allows you to make an occasional mistake," but instead are "defeat the deliberately unfair bonus boss at the highest difficulty level" or "complete the game in a time where you have to have supernatural knowledge of what is going on so that you never miss a beat." Games that set achievements like that seem to be thinking that players will invest the necessary time and dedication into their game to memorize and get skilled and be able to do any and every thing possible in the game that is thrown at them so they can collect the complete set of achievements. What they actually do is send people to walkthroughs and forums to discover if there's a way to achieve the thing through cheats or cheese. Counterintuitive gameplay or exploiting a flaw in the AI routine is often what makes these achievements possible in the first place, and much of the time, it's not deliberately intended for the routine that breaks the AI to work. (Sometimes it is, that's usually a Puzzle Boss instead.) Because, with the amount of games that exist in the universe at any given time, the reason your game is getting played is usually because it's fun. (Or, if you're NIS, because you're up front about the fact that you have the story game, and then you have the post-game grind for all the other content that is additionally present, or the grind to find the alternate endings to the story that require fighting extremely powerful characters to achieve. And even then, they usually have a mechanism that allows the player's party to grind levels fairly efficiently.) When the game stops being fun and starts being a chore, it should be for something with an actual payoff, like competing in tournaments for cash prizes, rather than for a digital badge that's going to go into your collection.
A game that I think got achievements right is Super Smash Brothers Ultimate (it's the first time, I think, that they got it completely right on the achievements). While I will dock them points for having a section of achievements that are related to playing the game online (never do this, especially if you charge people for an annual subscription to play your game online, unless your game is meant to be played solely online with or against others, at which point, I'm probably not buying it unless it came with a bundle), all of the achievements they have are actually achievable to someone without having to become a super-powerful Smash player. Including the "defeat the hardest level CPU" set of challenges, which would otherwise be a problem. (And, I think, the "Cruel Smash KOs" achievement is cumulative over play sessions, rather than having to do it all in one.) The defeat high-level CPU challenges are set up to specify that certain rules must be followed to set up the situation, but all the other rules are free for the player to choose. So, instead of having to do "No items, Fox Only, Final Destination" and win against a CPU playing the same, I could set what items I wanted to have appear on the stage, which both myself and the computer player could take advantage of. I could choose the character to play, and the character that would face them, and I could choose what stage the match was played on. Which meant I could fight a top-tier CPU using my strongest character and playstyle on a stage that was suitable for that character and playstyle, instead of being required to replicate what someone else's idea of skill is. (There are some other achievements that are "do this task with this character" that are difficult for that character to do, but they do not rely on luck or exploitation of little-used mechanics or secrets.) Which, I suppose, is really where I get steamed when it comes to the impossible task achievements. They're often set up in ways that are "disadvantage yourself to the extreme, advantage the opponent to the extreme, and find a way to win against them anyway" in such a way that a person who is a casual player or otherwise just wants to enjoy the game will not be able to complete them, and if they are the kind of person that doesn't like leaving achievements undone, it will annoy them that it's still not complete, and probably won't be, unless cheats or cheese. I like completeable achievement games. A lot.
(Also, the Tt-designed LEGO games are really rather good about having an achievement list that's doable through normal gameplay, and they don't penalize the player if they use the cheats to do things like wildly increase the value of each stud to assist in getting the "collected enough studs on the level" achievements toward a full set of gold bricks. And the difficulty is set so that people of all skills can feel like they're making progress and getting through the story of the games. They're really well-made games, all around.)
I will probably never finish Bejeweled 3's achievement list. This is despite enjoying the game very much and thinking of it as a stellar example of a match-three game, with plenty of different modes for different players to enjoy. Because Bejeweled asks me to do the extremely highly improbable as part of their achievements and trophies list. Despite match-three generally getting seen as a "causal" genre of games, several of the modes of Bejeweled 3 are meant to reward quickness in matching gems, rather than strategically looking at the board and deciding on the best match for the situation. The Diamond Mine, Ice Storm, and Lightning modes are all time-based, and each offer four tiers of achievements related to total score in the mode and a particular activity unique to the mode.
To put it mildly, these modes are stressful to anyone who doesn't have enough pattern recognition skill to know what their next move is going to be as the last move is resolving itself, and at least one of the achievements requires someone to make twelve vertical matches in a row, each match coming almost immediately in the heels of the last. To have a prayer at achieving this, the player not only has to know where the next match is and move toward it, they also have to know that pressing keys on the keyboard will move gems in the direction pressed, so that one doesn't have to click and drag them into place (which is too slow to keep a combo going.)
Furthermore, the high scores and the chain combos rely not only on pattern recognition and decisive movement, but luck that the correct sequences of gems drop in so they can be matched easily and time maintained / combo continued. A good run toward twelve vertical matches could be stopped by all the available matches being horizontal without any lessening of skill on the part of the player. Or the player having to frantically scan for the single available match that is far away from the progress they want to make, wasting time while waiting for correct gems to drop in and be put to use. Many of the platinum-level achievements in Bejeweled 3 rely on having one game where everything falls into place correctly and there are no issues that get in the way. It would be like an unmodified very random RNG turning up maximum values 10 times in a row. Sure, it's mathematically probable, but it's not likely to happen. And if you want to have a complete set of achievements, it gets really old fast having to play 1000 games for the possibility that one of them might align exactly correctly to achieve it.
Luck-based achievements are terrible things to implement, unless the game has been programmed in such a way that the player is going to get lucky (or unlucky) with enough regularity that the achievement can be earned through normal play. Yes to achievements that are "land a critical hit!", no to achievements that are "land 50 critical hits in a row!" unless you have also programed a weapon into the game for each of the PCs that always hits and always critical hits.
A lot of game designers don't have many, if any, purely luck-based achievements where something improbable randomly happens and there's a reward for it. However, they tend to make up for their lack of luck with achievements they believe are based on skill, but are equally as frustrating to players than ones based on pure luck. The Bejeweled 3 achievements are of this kind - after all, a sufficiently skilled player should be able to do this under time pressure, right? Except for the randomness of the jewels that drop in to replace the ones that go out.
Many of the "skill" based achievements aren't things like "successfully land a high-risk move" or "beat the game within a time frame that allows you to make an occasional mistake," but instead are "defeat the deliberately unfair bonus boss at the highest difficulty level" or "complete the game in a time where you have to have supernatural knowledge of what is going on so that you never miss a beat." Games that set achievements like that seem to be thinking that players will invest the necessary time and dedication into their game to memorize and get skilled and be able to do any and every thing possible in the game that is thrown at them so they can collect the complete set of achievements. What they actually do is send people to walkthroughs and forums to discover if there's a way to achieve the thing through cheats or cheese. Counterintuitive gameplay or exploiting a flaw in the AI routine is often what makes these achievements possible in the first place, and much of the time, it's not deliberately intended for the routine that breaks the AI to work. (Sometimes it is, that's usually a Puzzle Boss instead.) Because, with the amount of games that exist in the universe at any given time, the reason your game is getting played is usually because it's fun. (Or, if you're NIS, because you're up front about the fact that you have the story game, and then you have the post-game grind for all the other content that is additionally present, or the grind to find the alternate endings to the story that require fighting extremely powerful characters to achieve. And even then, they usually have a mechanism that allows the player's party to grind levels fairly efficiently.) When the game stops being fun and starts being a chore, it should be for something with an actual payoff, like competing in tournaments for cash prizes, rather than for a digital badge that's going to go into your collection.
A game that I think got achievements right is Super Smash Brothers Ultimate (it's the first time, I think, that they got it completely right on the achievements). While I will dock them points for having a section of achievements that are related to playing the game online (never do this, especially if you charge people for an annual subscription to play your game online, unless your game is meant to be played solely online with or against others, at which point, I'm probably not buying it unless it came with a bundle), all of the achievements they have are actually achievable to someone without having to become a super-powerful Smash player. Including the "defeat the hardest level CPU" set of challenges, which would otherwise be a problem. (And, I think, the "Cruel Smash KOs" achievement is cumulative over play sessions, rather than having to do it all in one.) The defeat high-level CPU challenges are set up to specify that certain rules must be followed to set up the situation, but all the other rules are free for the player to choose. So, instead of having to do "No items, Fox Only, Final Destination" and win against a CPU playing the same, I could set what items I wanted to have appear on the stage, which both myself and the computer player could take advantage of. I could choose the character to play, and the character that would face them, and I could choose what stage the match was played on. Which meant I could fight a top-tier CPU using my strongest character and playstyle on a stage that was suitable for that character and playstyle, instead of being required to replicate what someone else's idea of skill is. (There are some other achievements that are "do this task with this character" that are difficult for that character to do, but they do not rely on luck or exploitation of little-used mechanics or secrets.) Which, I suppose, is really where I get steamed when it comes to the impossible task achievements. They're often set up in ways that are "disadvantage yourself to the extreme, advantage the opponent to the extreme, and find a way to win against them anyway" in such a way that a person who is a casual player or otherwise just wants to enjoy the game will not be able to complete them, and if they are the kind of person that doesn't like leaving achievements undone, it will annoy them that it's still not complete, and probably won't be, unless cheats or cheese. I like completeable achievement games. A lot.
(Also, the Tt-designed LEGO games are really rather good about having an achievement list that's doable through normal gameplay, and they don't penalize the player if they use the cheats to do things like wildly increase the value of each stud to assist in getting the "collected enough studs on the level" achievements toward a full set of gold bricks. And the difficulty is set so that people of all skills can feel like they're making progress and getting through the story of the games. They're really well-made games, all around.)
no subject
Date: 2019-12-12 05:59 pm (UTC)Anyway, the difference in achievements is interesting. In WoW, you got achievements by killing X of Y, but frequently that was it: nothing that exhibited on your character. I gained a weapons master achievement, and then they took away the need to master weapons and everyone was an insta-master. That was one of the many changes that I didn't like.
In LOTRO, we have Deeds. Kill 30 wargs in Breeland. Do that, you get some reputation points with the Men of Bree, 5 LOTRO points, and maybe something else or the other, maybe the title Bane of Wargs. Which you can now make your toon's name appear as Bob, Bane of Wargs. And you get Advanced Warg Killer deed: kill 60 wargs in Breeland, starting over at zero. Kill orcs, krabans, bandits, wights, etc. Use Weapon Skill X (varies by class), achieve X number of crits with skill Y, etc. You get titles for leveling up skills, for activating professions. One that I particularly like and have on some of my toons is Bob, Easily Lost.
But I'm easily amused.
Another achievement method is collecting vendor trash. Certain types of trash can be sold in different areas for area reputation and XP, which is a good way to gain faction rep. For example, before going into Moria, you must be exalted with Moria in order to buy a goat: normal mounts do not work in Moria. So you're probably going to do a lot of rep grinding for Thorin's Hall when you're in your 40s. But 40 Gilded Sword Sheaths which is worth rep in area A is only worth money in area F, so you need to watch what you keep and sell.
We played free to play for almost a year then started paying, which opened up a tremendous amount of content, but not all. With their Black Friday sale, I bought a quadpack of expansions that gave me four expansion areas, which I'll need, +2 character slots, 2 mounts to every character I have and create, and a couple of titles. And I got it for half off or more, it was an excellent deal. Unfortunately my wife couldn't buy it as she'd already bought one of the expansions in the pack, so she's going to have to piecemeal the others and she just found out that she needs one to progress past 90.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-12 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-12 06:39 pm (UTC)Oh, there's plenty of that content, especially when you approach the 120/130 level cap tops. Minas Morgul released a month or two ago and took the cap from 120 to 130. My wife has been able to take her top toon to 90 with very minimal raid grouping, almost entirely solo work. My top is a hunter at 60 and the only group play I've done is with my wife. There are the standard MMO instances and an instance finder, that seems to be SOP in MMOland.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-12 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-12 06:55 pm (UTC)In WoW, my wife and I had no problem getting max level with solo play. We didn't have top tier gear, but more than adequate to handle player vs environment encounters. We had no interest in PvP, so acquiring that top tier gear held no interest for us. We'd wait until we were sufficiently above-level that we could two-man instances and enjoy them with just us. It wouldn't be a cake-walk, but we could fight our way through with just the two of us and still see the content. What sucked was that when they re-released some of the old content, like the raid to kill the dragon Deathwing, they made it scalable, so if you brought in a group of 120s, it would be tough for 120s when the original content was at 60 or whatever, so regardless you'd never be able to two-man it. Thus, I'd never get to see that content.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-12 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-12 10:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-12 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-12 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-13 12:22 am (UTC)