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Achievement Rewards

KhizanKhizan Member Posts: 2,648 ✭✭✭✭✭

A lot of the achievement rewards are... rather lacking, when you get down to it. The majority of them seem to just give a timed experience bonus and that's really a rather lackluster reward as soon as you hit Aspect, imo.

I'd really like to see a lot of the upper-division achievement rewards changed to minor artifacts or artifact fragments, as from the promotion we had a while back. Achievements would be more worth getting and, and this is the important part, I think it could really help to resolve some of the late-stage IRE feeling, where new players are diving into a game filled with players who have played for years and thusly have years of investment into artifacts and such. Instead of it being "Well, if you want to not suck at tanking prepare to drop the $$$$", it would be "Well, if you play the game and accomplish these things, you can get some decent 'starter artifacts'.

I'm thinking things like...

  • Hit PK Level N (where N is decently high, 80-85 or so) and you get a token for a level 0.5 artifact weapon/collar that does +5% damage, and which can be upgraded to a full L1 weapon for, say, 100cr. (strangely, that is exactly how many credits they'd get for deciding to pick up an elite membership...) 
  • Kill some combination of bosses, get a 5% surcoat, upgradeable to a full surcoat for ~300cr. Maybe do a 10% version at 100 credits(elite membership amount!) and that goes to 15% for 100 more(keep the elite for another month).
  • Offer up a certain amount belief to a sect, gain a noteworthy amount of lessons. 
  • Harvest X shards from a shardfall area, gain a fragment of a con belt.
  • Hit quest level M, gain another con belt fragment. (questing is more involved than bashing, almost certainly involves asking your city questions, etc)
  • 500 caravan plunders, a con belt fragment.
  • Participate in a Coliseum(not city arena) arena event on X different days(instead of queueing for 30 in one day, they'd have to farm 30 across 30 days) for lessons.
  • etc, etc, etc

These examples were chosen to meet two specific criteria.

  1. Tasks: The biggest problem with achievements like the 100k and 1,000k mob kill achievements is that not that their required activity is so unbearable, but that they are, by nature, solo achievements. I couldn't bash with Aulani when she was hunting for mob kills to get her 100k silver bracelets, because every kill I got hindered her achievement progression. This is pretty terrible design. The big rewards are either stupidly solo achievements like mobkills, or things like the Legion that take excessive amounts of time from your organization because they have to organize all those boss kills in short order. This is a problem because the rewards that benefits the new players the most and that might encourage them to stick around are locked away behind achievements those new people are unlikely to reach.

    The tasks here were specifically chosen to be things that requires some form of interaction with the game beyond bashing, preferably interaction with other players. Getting people involved in the game that way is far more valuable than getting them to bash to 100k mobkills without talking to anybody and so those  are the achievements that should be rewarded with nice things. Instead, we get bracelets on "grind alone for hours and hours" and a few crappy hours of double experience for things like "harvest 1000 shards in the shardfall conflict system" and "learn how to fight and kill 100 players" and "attack and plunder 1000 caravans". This is wrong and backwards and stupid. Encourage the things you want people to do, like fighting, sects, and getting involved with the playerbase. Don't encourage the crap you don't want people to do, like AFK bash.

  2. Reward:  The rewards are chosen to help address the imbalance in artifacts between the newer players in the established players by providing either weaker powered items that upgradeable or fragments of an full power artifact. The former give the player an immediate benefit while lowering the investment necessary to get the full-powered version. Once you've gotten them to open their wallet once, you can probably get them to open it again. The latter make the full-power artifact cheaper(they can just buy the rest of the fragments) and they encourage players to do more than one thing(free con belt means putting a lot of time into things A, B, C, D, and E) and spend their playing time interacting with other people(good luck caravaning alone, people who are not Shou).

    I remain convinced that once you get somebody started enough to make some kind of investment you've got a far better chance of getting them to buy credits in the future; it is the first purchase that is the hardest to talk yourself into. I also believe that the best way to encourage that first purchase is to get them involved with the playerbase. On top of that, I also believe that one of the best ways to keep older players interested in the game is to keep them involved with the newer players, so that it's not always the same old group of people. Towards this end, I suspect that you'd be much better off using achievement rewards to promote things like caravans, FFAs, boss kills, and other such things instead of boring crap like smithing and bashing.

"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."

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Comments

  • JulesJules Member Posts: 1,080 ✭✭✭
    Well, I'm honestly just glad Imperian doesn't say "screw you. go bash moar" like every other IRE game, so I can't in good conscience complain about XP bonuses, and I even like seeing my collection of them that I never used because I saved them all for when I "really needed them".  

    The other great thing is how we try to get absolutely everyone who has a glimmer of interest involved in PK, but because we do emphasize PK so much, players with no significant damage mitigation probably are going to be awfully frustrated.  I assume it's not just a short term problem (although part of it seems to be with several classes getting large damage boosts lately, which I am guessing will be toned down somewhat), but I don't really know.  

    Also have to be really careful about rewarding the "hurrrr, I don't buy credits" crowd, too, because as has come up before, there is something about those people... I don't like them as people.  To be absolutely clear, not the people in the "I don't have money to buy credits right now but I would like to when my financial situation improves" boat, but the people who have this bizarre, stubborn attitude that they'd rather not support the game they enjoy playing even if they could afford it.  Our free to play and smaller purchase buyers are very important to rounding out our population, and part of that is that they need to decide the game is worth spending money on.  The other people... ugh.  Might want to make the "great price" contingent upon actually buying that Elite membership, for example (which they could then spend the credits on the surcoat or whatever).  
  • EdricEdric Member Posts: 52
    I agree with that last part in particular. I can't buy credits but I have Elite. The Surcoat is awesome but 750 credits would take forever to save up to (8 months, I think?). If I could get a Surcoatlite after some kind of achievement that'd be awesome. Saving for 3 months to upgrade it seems a lot more doable. And then I'd be spending the same amount anyway, I'd just be getting artifacts in small increments. Perhaps even buy small amounts of credits when I can afford it to speed up the process. Same investment over time, but I wouldn't have to shell out 750 credits worth of money immediately, which I can't, or slowly buy smaller amounts and then just have them sit in my bag doing nothing. 

    Basically I think it just makes the whole artifact system more approachable without having to lower the price of anything that already exists--just gives us more stepping stones to slowly upgrade towards it as we can. And tying that in with achievements sounds like a cool, innovative idea.
  • ArioArio Member Posts: 171 ✭✭✭
    I totally support this approach. There's times when I'm able to drop a bunch of cash into the game, and then there's times when Elite is my only source for credits usually. It would also give people an incentive to do these achievements outside of bonus xp to push to aspect. If I could get any item that is upgradable to a full artifact? I'd do it.
  • KristosKristos Member Posts: 44 ✭✭
    I 100% support this idea, as I am who you are talking about. I bash a TON every day just to buy anywhere between 4-8 credits from the market unless there is a guild or city credit sale. The time it would take me to save up for any artifacts to make me any less squishy is going to be years, even with an elite membership that I have yet to purchase. Plus, I would like to experience other parts of Imperian rather than just bashing until there is a caravan or shardfall to go fight in. I know I could now, but I always see it as opportunity loss due to not bashing for gold currently.
  • MereisMereis Member Posts: 229 ✭✭✭
    yassss

    Aspect is fairly easy to achieve (not too hard, not too easy), but after that, the double experience rewards of achievements just kind of... stack up. I know I have around 1000+ hours of double experience just sitting around, and I don't even bash that much. It would be great if there were rewards for bashing other than something that would make you feel like you have to bash more D: (I hate wasting anything, if I activate a 24-hour double experience reward, I'd feel like I have to be bashing for at least 20 hours of online time).
    currently tentatively active
    (may vanish for periods of time)
  • DiceneDicene Member Posts: 913 ✭✭✭✭
    Speaking of.

    "You pay 750 credits and receive a steelweave surcoat."

    "You have played for a total of 120 days, 10 hours and 59 minutes."
    image
  • RascaRasca Member Posts: 124 ✭✭✭
    Fully support this idea. Can't see any negatives to it. Artifact-lite is a great idea. Besides, as any good dealer knows, give'em a taste for free then charge for the reup.
    無駄だ!無駄無駄無駄無駄無駄無駄無駄無駄無駄無駄無駄無駄!ザ・ワールド!時よ止まれ!くらえ!そして、時は動き出す。
    image
  • IniarIniar Member Posts: 3,213 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Supersize Me.
    wit beyond measure is a Sidhe's greatest treasure
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