The Achievement System 2012-11-21 12:00

Objectives

We didn’t want to create an Achievement system that only gave a player bragging rights. Achievements will also:

  •  Offer new gameplay options to all players: Achievements are available for everyone from level 1 to 200, playing alone or in group, and they are tied in to almost all the activities the game has to offer. In a nutshell: they involve all types of players.

 •  Give players an alternative mean of progress: by giving Kamas, experience, and resources (among other things), Achievements will offer a fun alternative way to progress as a character.

 •  Guide players and give them concrete objectives: Achievements can be considered as missions to complete, with a dedicated interface for tracking your progress and organized by zone or level of difficulty.

 •  Highlight the diversification of activities available in DOFUS: Achievements will target almost all the game content and will encourage players to discover content that has been put aside, forgotten, or might not even be known by most players. Achievements will also push players to get involved in a wide range of activities rather than always using the same activities to progress (“farming” of monsters or dungeons for example).

 •  Highlight difficulty and reward challenge and risk-taking: some Achievements require a lot of organization, training, and thoroughness. Players will be rewarded for their commitment.

 •  Put in place a global mechanic that works on merit: by rewarding risk-taking, knowledge and overall mastery of the game (zones, monsters, quests, dungeons, professions, etc.), we’ll be able to give away rewards that are consistent with a player’s skills and merit with greater ease.

“How does it work?”

The Achievement system is pretty simple; they're organized in an interface and sorted by category (professions, exploration, quests, dungeons, etc.).
The details of an Achievement allow players to learn the objectives they need to fulfill to complete the Achievement and rewards they can win. Achievements can also be found quickly thanks to a search system.


When an achievement is unlocked (completed), you’ll receive an in-game notification (using the new alert system) telling you that you've unlocked an Achievement.

A small icon then appears above the central medallion; this icon is a button linking to the reward interface.



This interface allows you to control when you collect your rewards. This allows you to avoid awkward situations (for example, winning millions of experience points while leveling a Dragoturkey that only required a few hundred points to hit 100)!
It also reminds you very clearly that you’ve just won loads of rewards, which means two things:
 •    You’re a killer (and a little richer as well)
 •    Devs are very cool, generous people who love you (try to remember this every time you use this interface, thanks!)

Achievement rewards can be redeemed whenever you want (even after logging out) and can’t be lost. All rewards are set by the difficulty of the task and they scale according to the character's level at the time the achievement is unlocked. This means there's no need to wait for your character to reach a higher level before redeeming a reward in the hopes of getting more exp.

We have 4 main Achievement difficulty levels:
    •    Discovery Achievements: they’re in the minority and give small rewards. They mainly concern the first use of an in-game feature (e.g. crushing an item into runes).
    •    Natural Achievements: you can complete them by playing “normally” without specific effort (reaching a level, beating monsters, discovering zones, and so forth).
    •    Epic Achievements: they require commitment and efforts (killing Boss X with two characters in less than 15 turns for example).
    •    Meta Achievements: they reward players for unlocking groups of Achievements (completing all quests in a zone, discovering all zones of the game for example). Meta Achievements can be easy (if the Achievements they concern are easy themselves), or hard (if they contain groups of hard Achievements). Meta Achievements generally require a lot of commitment and a good knowledge and mastery of specific game content.

The Achievements interface has the following major categories:
    •    Dungeons (killing the bosses in various ways, etc.)
    •    Exploration (discovering zones)
    •    Monsters (fighting families of monsters, Dopples, completing challenges, etc.)
    •    Quests (completing quests and quest chains, etc.)
    •    Breeding (obtaining the birth of some mounts, etc.)
    •    Professions (crafting items; reaching a profession level, etc.)
    •    Events (completing the content on Kwismas Island, Vulkania, etc.)

The Kolossium isn’t currently part of the content involved with Achievements at this time. We prefer to improve the availability of battles before offering achievements there, otherwise the main difficulty to unlocking Kolossium achievements could be simply getting a battle.

Achievements are assigned individually to each character (it’s not possible to share Achievements between characters of a same account). This choice was made for technical reasons, primarily because centrally managing the achievements for an account would have required ages of extra development (especially for character migrations).

So, as we've already covered, achievements reward game knowledge, and offer both prizes and new goals for players who may feel that they've completely beaten the game and have nothing left to do. And thanks to progression gauges and targeted achievements, they also help show players content that they may have overlooked or forgotten!


The Pros and Cons of Achievements

The good thing about integrating an achievement system 10 years after they appeared in video games for the first time (please excuse us for the delay), is that we can benefit from our predecessors (without necessarily giving up our pioneer spirit)! During the conception of our Achievements system, we tried to respect the following rules (not without some difficulty) but we believe that we have avoided creating what we call “Unachievablements." Here are some of the principles we tried to follow:

 • No hidden or unknown Achievements: Achievements must be visible to all and their objectives must be clear. Achievements can thus include searching and exploration, but players have to understand what they’re asked to do.
 • Don’t disturb other players’ gaming experience: a player who’s trying to complete an achievement shouldn’t slow down or compromise other players in their team who are trying to achieve their own goals. Battle Achievements are thus treated as Challenges and must be completed by the entire team to be validated.
 • Avoid repetitive actions (in general): Achievements are supposed to be an alternative to “Grinding” and “Farming” (kill the same monsters over and over for example), and therefore shouldn’t reward the killing of 10,000² Arachnees. We see achievements as missions; a player should be able to choose and complete an Achievement without feeling compelled to go through a repetitive and unpleasant task. The only exceptions we allowed in this case were achievements that can be unlocked naturally during the normal progress of a character (completing 1000 Challenges for example).
 • Create achievements that don't depend on chance: the resolution of achievements should be deterministic; players shouldn’t need to count on luck to succeed.
 • Achievable: Ideally, players should be able to complete all the Achievements given enough time; the completion of one achievement shouldn’t compromise completion of another achievement.
 • No undeserved shortcuts: the quickest way to unlock an Achievement should be a noble journey that requires skill. For instance, an Achievement that requires 100 critical hits could be completed quite quickly on a Poutch (no challenge) rather than during interesting battles. This means achievements like this should not be created in the first place.
 • Don't force players to fail or do inherently counter-productive things: Achievements have to include at least one deserving objective (that can sometimes consist of exploration or discovery of a functionality) that enriches the character, even if it is in a small way. For example an achievement that requires 3 critical fails in a row is the perfect example of a "dechievement."

Alternative progress

We want achievements to give players a fun new way to progress through their life's story.
This alternative progression will probably only be an augmentation to more traditional means of progression at first (there's not enough exp in the system at the moment to allow a character to go from level 1 to 200 just by unlocking achievements), but as the game continues to grow (and new achievements are added along with new content) achievements should become a complete alternative to current mean of progression.

Achievements can only be completed once per character (like a non-repeatable quest), which allows us to give level-appropriate rewards while ensuring that players have to give their best and try a large variety of game content to obtain lots of achievement rewards.

The majority of achievements have rewards that scale with a character's level (like most quests), which means that a very high level character will be able to get some rewards from even low-level achievements.

The additional character bonuses will apply to achievement experience rewards, it will thus be very beneficial to complete achievements with secondary characters if you want to have them progress with greater speed.

And let’s not forget that character progress isn’t simply about gaining experience, it is also necessary to give your character some fine “stuff.” That’s why some (but not all) achievements will also give prizes of kamas and resources that should let players obtain or craft equipment.

Rewards:
Unlocking achievements give 5 main types of prizes:
    •    Experience: scaled to the character's level and based on the level of difficulty  
    •    Kamas: a fixed quantity of kamas that depend on the Achievement difficulty.
   •    Resources: Achievements that include monsters or Bosses will allow players to get extra resources from these monsters.
    •    Titles: a few new titles will be available through Meta Achievements.
    •    Ornaments: A new cosmetic reward that allows personalizing the appearance of the character’s name when moused over.

We want the Achievements to bring players a stronger gaming experience that is more accessible and less repetitive than the one that consists of doing the same dungeons and killing the same monsters over and over.

Therefore, finishing a dungeon for the first time will unlock an Achievement that will reward characters with the assurance of obtaining rare resources common to the Boss (making it easier to craft an item).
Extra Achievements (harder ones) for a sole Boss will also reward with rare resources common to the Boss.
It should be possible to win the majority of the items related to a Boss by focusing on the challenge and unlocking all the Achievements related to this Boss.

We also plan on using the Achievements as equipment criteria for future items.


My co… counter is the biggest

What would an Achievement system be without a score? It's beyond anyone's imagination (except Bridget’s maybe).

For every unlocked Achievement, players will receive points that will be collected in a meter which is visible in the Achievement interface.


You’ll have the ability to compare this score with your friends’… But be careful, it won’t be about showing off and being a poser because you bought the latest trendy hat in Asturb Market. The Achievement Score will be the mirror of your knowledge and overall control of the game.  It's simply impossible to have a high score if you haven’t tried and dominated all the game content (quests, breeding, professions, dungeons, etc.).

Some cosmetic or material rewards can only be unlocked if you have a high score.

Retroactivity:
So no doubt you're reading this and getting more and more excited (and maybe seeing tons of kamas and exp in your future), but by now, a nagging question may have arisen in your brain: “Will achievements be attributed retroactively when the 2.9.0 update comes?”
The only achievements that will be retroactively granted when 2.9.0 is released are those that concern the following non-repeatable content:

    •    Quests
    •    Leveling-up a character
    •    Leveling-up a profession

After 2.9.0 update, upon first connection a character will retroactively validate some achievements and will be granted the related rewards. It’s not impossible for some characters to go up a few levels during this operation.

The rest of the Achievements (e.g., those related to the birth of mounts or the completion of a dungeon), can’t be retroactively assigned because their status are not currently recorded in version 2.8.

So yes, this means you’ll have to beat the Royal Pingwin after version 2.9.0 is released in order to unlock the related Achievement, even if you’ve already defeated him 290 times before update 2.9.0.

It’s deeply unfair, but unfortunately that's how it is.

The future

The Achievement system is a new mechanic we wish to include in any future content. There are also some types of content (exploration and professions among other things) that will be handled better in the future.

For version 2.9.0, we’ve already planned more than 600 Achievements. But we won’t stop here; this system concerns every character, no matter their level or activities in the game.

When new achievements are added, you should expect your completion gauges to be updated and decreased. For example, if you’ve completed 100% of the game’s Achievements but new ones are added during an update, your gauge could fall to 90%. This might come as an unpleasant shock, but it’s the simple representation of reality: new content is added and you’ve not explored it yet; under the circumstances it's logical that your completion gauge should undergo a rollback.

The functionality could be improved during the upcoming updates with a better highlight of scores and Achievements that are in the reach of each character (according to their level, zones, and activities for example).

For centuries now, we’ve shared with you our intention to give Dofus eggs to people who deserve them rather than allowing them to continue to drop them willy-nilly. We want to use the Achievement system to serve this goal but we preferred not to offer a Dofus directly as an Achievement reward. We will develop a better means of integration for these precious items. The implementation of the Achievement system is an important step of the process of distribution of old and new Dofus to deserving players.

We’re also currently working with our Web department to integrate a page for Achievements and scores on our websites, attached to each character's personal pages.

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Answers to questions that have probably been forming in your brains while you read this article (yes, we're psychic, and yes, we know about that dream you had involving lichen and the gobball in a pink tutu):

When will this system be released?
The Achievement will be available with BETA 2.9.0. The final version of the update 2.9.0 is scheduled for this December.

Why are you making it faster for players to level up?
We believe that in-game progression is still too long and difficult for beginners and players who play with one account and don’t get any help (be it leeching or otherwise) from other high level characters. Achievements don’t directly speed up game progression but offer an alternative and fun way to level your character up if you’re new or prefer to fly solo. We think this alternative will make progressing more pleasant for new players who play in a normal manner (with one account, without knowing the entire game, and without getting important outside help).

I’ve already killed the Royal Gobball 666 times, why do I have to beat it again if I want to win the Royal Gobball achievement?
You skipped the paragraph on retroactivity, which was a very bad thing to do (we've made a note in your permanent file). Please do note that several Achievements can be completed at the same time if you respect the required conditions. You just have to try your luck with the Bosses again to unlock their achievements.

You’re about to destroy the economy of the whole game and universe with your rewards. Don't you care?
We’ll give more rewards with the Achievement system, especially Boss resources, which could see a price decrease. We're aware of this possibility and we believe that it is necessary to allow occasional players (or players who prefer to focus on the difficulty and diversity of actions rather than on Boss “farming”) to win resources that are required to craft items with greater ease. We want to decrease the dependence of casual players on players who generate lots of Boss resources by doing the same dungeons over and over again.

Don’t you ever think of real players? Those who’ve already finished the game 6 times, those who think that Frigost is way too easy and finish all the dungeons in one turn by playing 8 characters?
These players were one of our main concerns when creating the Achievement system. We want to increase the difficulty of some content by offering new challenges and exploring alternative methods to handle the existing content. If you truly are part of the Dofusian elite and not a muppet that got leeched to 200, you’ll even get the opportunity to show it thanks to unlockable cosmetic bonuses.

I love pets and I collect them. Will some Achievements be about pets?
There is an Achievement about pets indeed, but if you like pets, I’d advise you don’t try to complete it. Overall, we didn’t include Achievement related to the collection of pets or items that can be exchanged because this would have given players the possibility to exchange their item collections to quickly complete achievements (this falls under the forbidden development category of achievements that are too easy).

How can I inform my friends when I complete an Achievement?
There is a new option (which is turned on by default) that allows players to receive a message in the chat (with the name of the achievement) when a friend or a guild member unlocks an achievement. Soon, you’ll have new occasions to congratulate your friends and ensure your daily quota of social interactions thanks to a few strategic applications of “GG.”

What will happen if you add new Achievements to dungeons? Will you update the Meta Achievements so they integrate the new Achievements?
We don’t plan on updating Meta Achievements by adding new achievement as extra objectives. We prefer to wait for enough new achievements to create new Meta Achievements.

How much flexiliblity will there be in the achivement system between BETA 2.9.0 and the release? If I suggest an achivement during the beta, can it go into the live release?
The main purpose of the BETA will be to ensure the achievements work well, server performances are good and that attributed rewards are attractive and balanced enough. We won't be able to consider implementing major changes to the achievement system during the BETA phase.

We do plan to add more achievements related to new content in future updates, so if you can think of an achievement that adheres to all of our development goals listed in the article above (achivements must be able to be completed by all players, must not cause players to interfere with others, must not be too easy, must not depend too much on luck, etc), please post them on the suggestions forum! If we like it, you never know, it might show up in a future update.

Is there an Achievement to reward players who are the first of their servers to kill a Boss?
No, and for two reasons: we want all characters to be able to win all the Achievements (given enough time and effort) and we thought that the investment in terms of development time to handle this type of achivement was too much to take compared to the number of characters who could benefit from it.

Is there an achievement for having every profession at level 100?
We want all characters to have the opportunity to win every achievement; therefore, there won’t be achievements that are specific to some professions in the version 2.9.0, because it is impossible to have a single character with all the professions at the same time. We’ll offer Achievements that reward leveling any profession to a specific level. However, we’ll think of solutions to this problem for a future update.

Will alignment quests have their own achivements?
We’re not considering this type of achievements for update 2.9.0, we prefer to wait until we improve and finish them before offering dedicated achievement.

How can I show other players that I’m the best and I completed a lot of Achievements?
Some Meta Achievements offer graphical personalization (through the Ornament or title systems) which gives you the possibility to show off your success. A new command (%su%) allows you to automatically your Achievement point score, as well as the global completion rate (in percentage) in the chat.
 
Do you think you will ever add an Achievement for players to defeat each boss solo?
At the moment, the difficulty for this type of Achievements would vary greatly depending on a player's class, and thus we preferred not to force players to defeat each boss with a single character. However, we’ve prepared Achievements that ask to beat a Boss with two players at maximum and in a limited number of turns. This combination of flexibility and constraint seemed more appropriated to us to allow all classes to win their Achievements, and the addition of the turn limitation puts the focus on battle organization and optimization rather than turtling and gradually wearing a boss down.

Did you think of the use of "disposable” characters accompanied by a powerful character in order to obtain Achievements’ rewards over and over?
Achievements that allow characters to drop resources or items by fighting monsters or Bosses have an extra level objective in order to be completed. Which means that you can complete the main objectives at any level, but you won’t be able to unlock the last one (and thus rewards), unless you reached a minimum level to fight these monsters. This system makes the use of low-level disposable characters to win the Achievements multiple times impossible.